7-26-2020 The Kingdom is Like...

Thomas J Parlette

“The Kingdom is Like…”

Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52

7/26/20

          Jesus told a great many parables that were agricultural in nature. Not surprising since his audience was largely made up of fishermen and farmers. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus hasn’t really gotten to the big city yet. He’s still in the region around Galilee, preaching, teaching and healing among the common, everyday folk. He won’t venture into the big city until after the Transfiguration.

          Matthew 13, from which our verses for today are drawn, is especially agrarian. Everything is seeds and weeds, with a little yeast thrown in, some buried treasure, some fine pearls and finally a net cast into the sea.

          We began this chapter with the Parable of the Sower and then the Parable of the Weeds among the Wheat – both of which Jesus takes the time to explain – the only two parables in Matthew that he does that with. In between the seeds and the weeds, we have four Kingdom parables, a parable of judgment and a pop quiz, followed by a charge to the disciples.

          The Kingdom parables all begin with the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like…”, and describe how God’s Word works in the world and how people will react to the Word.

          The first three – the one about the mustard seed, the yeast and the buried treasure – are interesting because they present some surprising difficulties.

          First – there’s the mustard seed. Most of us have heard the parable of the mustard seed many times- the tiniest seed growing into the greatest of all shrubs. It has become sort of a quaint, comforting little story about fulfilling potential. But in reality, this is a strange story. The mustard plant was not desirable at all – in fact it was a weed, an invasive species and nobody would intentionally plant it. It is only because the seeds are so small that they go un-noticed by the sower and get planted by accident that we end up with a mustard shrub tree at all. And yet even though it is initially un-planned and perhaps un-wanted, the mustard seed grows into something valuable, something desirable – even useful, as the birds come and find a place to nest.

          And then there’s the yeast. In most cases, yeast is something evil, something unclean. Yeast is something a Jewish household was supposed to get rid of – remember the unleavened bread during the Passover, no yeast – and yet in this parable, again, something you would normally want to get rid of has positive effects. Just a small amount of yeast leavens three measures of flour – which would have been enough to feed a whole community of people.

          Within the last week, our country has been saddened by the loss of two icons in the on-going fight for civil rights and social justice. Rev. Cordy Tindell (C.T.) Vivian passed away and then John Lewis also passed. Both men played an active role in the movement for voting rights and racial equality in the 1960’s right up until the present day. And they left an indelible mark.

          On his first Inauguration Day in 2009, Barack Obama, our country’s first African-American President, presented John Lewis with a photo inscribed “Because of you, John.” Without the efforts and sacrifices of people like John Lewis and Rev. Vivian, a Black President would not have been possible. Both men were proud to cause what Lewis used to call “good trouble.”

          In 2018, Lewis said to his supporters:

          “Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month or a year. It is the struggle of a lifetime. Never be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

          What John Lewis called “good trouble, necessary trouble,” Jesus might describe as yeast. Certainly both John Lewis’ and Rev. Vivian’s lives acted like a bit of yeast in our society, leavening our common life and yielding a hundred fold. Jesus points out here that God’s Word acts like a mustard seed or a bit of yeast. The world is changed into something closer to what God intends when we sow God’s Word consistently and faithfully.

          Just how valuable is this Word? Jesus tells two more parables to illustrate.

          First, there is the parable of treasure in the field. This is an interesting parable with some problematic details. To begin with, why is this person digging around in someone else’s field? There is something a little shady about someone clandestinely excavating a field that doesn’t belong to them and quickly hiding the found treasure and running off to make a deal on it. A little sketchy. But the point is, that’s how valuable the treasure of God’s Word is.

          But I think I do prefer the parable of the merchant in search of fine pearls to make the point. This one is a little more straight-forward. The merchant knows value when he finds it – and he’s willing to give everything he has to attain it. That’s how valuable God’s Word is – it is worth giving all you have.

          The fifth little parable Jesus tells here follows the lesson taught by the weeds growing among the wheat story. It is, in general, about judgment. There will come a time when judgement will come. At the end of the Age, a net will be cast – and the good will be separated from the bad. So make sure you are hanging on to what is truly good and valuable.

          Then Jesus gives his disciples a pop quiz – “Have you understood all this?” And they answer, “Yes.” And Jesus refers to his disciples as “scribes who have been trained for the Kingdom of heaven” and likens them to “the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

          This is the part of this passage that hardly anyone really remembers. A lot of us remember at least one or two of the short parables Jesus tells today – but hardly anybody remembers being called “scribes of the Kingdom, called to bring out the treasures from what is new and what is old.”

          This is where our Old Testament reading from Psalm 119 really supports Jesus’ teaching. The treasure that Jesus points us to today is the Word of God – the same word the Psalm celebrates as “wonderful” and “light-giving”, something to be yearned for – “With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments.”

          Jesus challenges us to bring out the treasure of God’s Word from the Psalms (something old) and from his own teaching (something new) – for God’s Word is the valuable treasure that leavens our society and grows into something worthwhile and valuable.

          Sometime in the early 1980’s, Greg Jones remembers watching a wonderful interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu on public television. It is hard to believe now, but that was back when apartheid was still very strong and there was no outward sign that it would end anytime soon. Tutu said this curious thing:

          “When the white people arrived, we had the land and they had the Bible. They said, “Let us pray.” When we opened our eyes, they had the land and we had the Bible. And we got the better of the deal.”(1)

          The Word of God is always the better end of the deal – a priceless treasure, worth everything we have, that leavens our society and yields s hundred fold, bringing our world closer to what God intends.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Greg Jones, “Africa and the Bible,” www.episcopalcafe.com, July 28, 2007.

7-19-2020 Life and Death Matters

7-19-2020  Life and Death Matters

Rev. Jay Rowland

Romans 8:12-25

Last Sunday, during the Young Worshippers time I spoke about the difference between “living according to the flesh” and “living in the spirit” Paul talks about in the beginning of Romans 8. I pointed out that this difference is one of the themes that makes the Harry Potter books so engaging. 

It’s also what makes our life in Christ so engaging, right?

So I’d like to pick up where I left off last week with you Young Worshippers. In the passage before us today, as Paul picks up right where he left off last week, boldly declaring,

“ … if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” (Romans 8:13) 

For me, this verse evokes the famous scene in Genesis where God says to Adam and Eve, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.  (Genesis 2:16-17)

You may recall from this scene that some time later on, the crafty serpent comes along to offer a free interpretation to Adam & Eve; something along the lines of, Did that Old Fool really say you’ll die?!  Oh c’mon--that’s so dramatic! Listen, You Won’t Die. I’ll show you-you’ll see you won’t die-go ahead, take a bite. You’ll still be alive. Oh and by the way, you’re welcome.  (Genesis 3:4)

The thing is, it’s true: Adam and Eve did not die.  

They changed. But they did not die. Not bodily anyway.

The way I see it, a vital part of them died that day. But not the whole. The part of them that died is the part that knows that God is The Source of abundance: abundant life, abundant joy, abundant health, abundant peace.  Everything we crave and truly need to be whole.  

The Scripture put it this way, “Their eyes were opened.”  (Genesis 3:5)  

In other words, they discovered you can DEFY GOD and you won’t die!  You won’t fully live, either, but you won’t die. Not really.  They also discovered that they could live without having to care about God, Creation or … even each other.

Cut to the serpent:  “What? Was I wrong? Is that wrong? Hey, all I did was clarify terms. Don’t blame me for this mess! I didn’t force anybody to do anything they didn’t want to do.”

This is what plays out in my imagination when I hear Paul’s declaration “if you live according to the flesh, you will die.”  

I hear the serpent perk up and say, “No you won’t.”

Paul: Yes you will.

Serpent: No you won’t.

So who’s right: Paul or the Serpent?

Well …  both, right?.  

When Adam and Eve defiantly eat of the fruit God bid them do not eat, what “died” in that moment was their reliance upon the vital interconnectedness of life: their unbroken communion with God, with Creation, with each other.  

In Paul’s letters, "flesh" almost always signifies a power, call it sin if you like but in any case a significant force or impulse that resists the Spirit of God (*Mary Hinkle Shore) and as Paul says elsewhere, is “hostile to God.” 

Whenever we live like we are somehow entitled to get whatever we want, when we want it, that’s living in a way that opposes the spirit of God and is hostile to God. 

What that “looks like” as it plays out in everyday life is living in constant fear of losing what we have or not getting what we want. Paul calls that living in "bondage to decay" which is the exact opposite of living in the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

Note this freedom is not freedom from the material world, but freedom within a restored creation; the freedom of being an embodied spirit made in the image and glory of God (cf. Genesis 1:27).    (*Mary Hinkle Shore)

Earlier in Romans, Paul uses the words "son of God" and "child of God" to refer to Jesus. Here, it’s significant to note that Paul changes and applies these precise terms to refer to followers of Jesus, 

... all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. (Romans 8:14-15) 

Through the person of Jesus God “adopts” us as God’s own children. And just as children eventually receive an inheritance from their parents, we share as adopted children of God the freedom God offers and delivers through Jesus Christ. 1

And so, living according to the flesh is life driven by a power that enslaves us and keeps us from participating in God's glory. Living in the Spirit is life driven by the power that frees us from that enslavement through our adoption in Christ and identifies us as children of God.

To be children of God just as Christ is, is to experience both humiliation and exaltation. To be in Christ is to share in Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection. In describing what it means to be children of God, Paul is *not* saying that anyone including Christ earns glory and freedom by suffering; rather, Paul notes that as children of God, our life is characterized by the same pattern that shaped Christ's life. 

Theologian James Dunn puts it this way when he says that we are being saved not from creation but with creation:  “The sonship [we] are privileged to share in some sense with Christ, [we] in turn share in some sense with creation."  He continues, "The gift of the Spirit reclaims the believer for God and begins ... the tension between human belonging to God and human entrancement with the world of human control and success, the warfare between Spirit and flesh" (Word Biblical Commentary: Volume 38A, Romans 1-8, James D.G. Dunn, p.87)

Paul eventually broadens the scope of suffering to include anything intended to separate us from God's love (8:35-39). For now, the suffering Paul speaks of is that which comes from knowing what the world could be as we live in the world as it is. (*Mary Hinkle Shore)

The suffering we see and experience threatens our trust in God’s sustaining and creative Love. Right now it’s hard to “see” let alone trust God’s love when nearly all we see and experience lately is so much chaos and division and destruction.  I’m not suggesting that we ignore all of that and pretend that we can find freedom and resolution by somehow learning to focus on living more according to the spirit. 

No, that’s not how we live.  And that’s not who we are. We are children of God because we follow Jesus who faced rather than fled from the painful realities and truths of life. I guess that’s what I’m driving at: We follow Jesus. Not vice-versa.

Even so, all of this going on right now is very very heavy.  I feel it in my body.  I feel it in my spirit.  And I find myself just wanting everything to be other than it is right now.  I want God to just make it all better right now.  C’mon Jesus do something. But then I realize that’s not following Jesus or trusting Jesus.  That’s me trying to lead Jesus.  

In times of crisis and suffering, we can catch ourselves telling Jesus what to do, or how this is supposed to go. Chaos, uncertainty, and fear can provoke us into doing that, or provoke us into assuming that there is something we are supposed to be doing, or that we’re somehow supposed to overcome the anxiety that comes with all of this and somehow reconcile everything that’s happening with what we believe in our hearts about Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.

And so perhaps the key to living during all of this is finding ways to deepen our spiritual connection with God, with Creation, with one another. Finding and meeting God the Spirit in our breath, in meditation.  I will share a link to my resource for guided meditation and talks that I find helpful in restoring my spiritual orientation (at the bottom).  But what works for me may not work for you. Search for resources which can build up your spiritual orientation.  

I do not mean to suggest that this will instantly or magically resolve any of the crises happening all around us or the anxiety churned up. But in my experience what this can and does do is create and nurture space within our oft-depleted spirits, space into which the Holy Spirit of God can do its necessary work in our spirits, moment-by-moment, day-by-day, as we live with these intense life and death matters, hand-in-hand with God in Christ, hand-in-hand with God’s glorious creation, hand-in-hand with one another.  For that is what enables us to see in the midst of pandemic and everything else that causes anxiety, in spite of what our eyes tell us is happening, that the Kingdom of God is ever and always inching ever closer to us.          

My go-to resource for guided meditations which helps me build up my spiritual orientation is Tara Brach.  To see her website, copy and paste the following address into your web browser: https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations/

Endnote(s):

* Indicates terminology which is the work of Mary Hinkle Shore in her Commentary on Romans 8:12-25. I found the following excerpt particularly interesting and insightful: (italicized emphases are mine)

1 “A cluster of words from the realm of family helps Paul describe the freedom that believers have in Christ and the relationships in which they now find themselves: sons, Abba, Father, children, adoption, heirs, joint heirs. The vocabulary describes relationships within a family and a household. Such language is not particularly common in Romans. Two times in the opening verses of the letter, Paul reminded his hearers of Jesus' identity as a child of God. He defined God's good news as "the gospel concerning his Son, who was... declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:3-4, NRSV). He refers to Jesus once more as Son in Romans 5:10.

“Then, in Romans 8 Paul uses the words for "son" and "child" to refer not to Jesus, but to his siblings who are led by the Spirit. As "flesh" had referred to a power that enslaves humans and keeps them from participating in God's glory, the Spirit is the power that frees and enlivens humans for a new identity as children of God.

“To describe what it means to be children of God, Paul employs a series of compound verbs built on the preposition syn-. We are joint heirs with Christ, suffering with him, and being glorified with him. Readers should not fret over the conditional syntax in verse 17. It is a simple condition in which "since" could be used as well as "if" (cf. the translation of the same Greek word at Romans 8:9). The idea is not that anyone (including Christ) earns glory by suffering; rather, as Paul seeks to describe what it means to be a joint heir with Christ, he notes that the joint heir's life is characterized by the same pattern that shaped Christ's life. To be connected to Christ is to know humiliation and exaltation. To be a joint heir with Christ is share in Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection.

“In the remaining verses of the reading, Paul talks as forthrightly as possible about the suffering of humanity and creation as together we await the revealing of what we are in Christ, that is, children of God. As syn- compounds had described our connection to Christ, now they describe the mutual suffering of all creation: the whole creation, Paul says, groans together and suffers together, "and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:22-23).  http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=974

7-12-20 Seeds

Thomas J Parlette

“Seeds”

Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23

7/12/20

           There was once a farmer sitting out on his porch near a remote stretch of dirt road. A stranger puller up to ask directions, and the farmer offered him a glass of lemonade. 

          The stranger asked, “So how’s your cotton coming along?”

          And the farmer said, “Ain’t got any.”

          “Did you plant any?”

          “Nope – afraid of the boll weevils,”      

“Well, how’s your corn?”

“Didn’t plant any – afraid there wouldn’t be any rain.”

“Well, how are your potatoes?”

“Ain’t got any – scared of the potato bugs.”

“Really, what did you plant?”

“Nothing – I just played it safe.”(1)

But really, how safe is it to not plant any seeds at all?

Jesus was a keen observer of the world around him. His observations resulted in many of the parables that he told. That is certainly true in today’s parable about seeds and soil. It’s a simple parable – but one the most important that Jesus tells. It appears in all three synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – which suggests that it is something we should pay attention to.

A farmer went out to sow. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.

In Jesus day, sowing seeds was done by hand. You had your bag of seed, you pulled out a handful and you scattered along the ground. Imagine how inefficient this farmer must have been in his sowing. The seed was going everywhere. Jesus doesn’t talk about nice ordered rows, carefully labelled some he’d know what was growing. This farmer seems very slip-shod in his work. The biblical scholar Don Juel writes, “The farmer in our story is not overly cautious, he doesn’t play it safe. He throws seed everywhere, apparently confident that there will be a harvest in spite of the losses.”(2) He simply keeps sowing his seed, believing that growth will come. This leads us to believe that this parable isn’t really about the farmer and his methods, or about the seeds. It’s more about the soil in which the seeds land. And it’s about God, who brings forth the harvest.

          It’s interesting that this is one of the very few parables that Jesus actually explains. Usually Jesus tells a story and then lets it hang there, open to interpretation. But not here. Jesus uses this parable to teach something important. Jesus describes four kinds of soil. And again, Jesus isn’t really interested in teaching us how to grow crops – he’s interested in describing four different kinds of people, and how they will receive the Gospel. When you read this same parable in the Gospel of Mark, Mark uses this story to frame the rest of his story. All the people Jesus encounters in the Gospel of Mark following this parable can be grouped into one of these four kinds of soil.

          To start with, there is the unbeliever, the agnostic or even the atheist. “Listen then,” said Jesus, “to what the parable means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path.” The seed that falls on the path is like people who hear the Gospel, but they don’t understand it, or perhaps it’s more that they don’t accept it, they don’t take it to heart. They hear the Word, but they don’t make it their own.

          I was reading recently about the so-called Psychic Services Industry. It’s a booming business these days. They are psychics everywhere, according to this report. Did you know that psychic readings and other similar services such as reading palms or tarot cards or tea leaves or whatever, is a 2 billion dollar industry in this country. According to Fortune magazine, many of the consumers of these services are atheists or agnostics, and many of them are top tier executives, particularly in the tech industry. Which proves the validity of the observation that when people quit believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; instead they will believe in almost anything.(3)

          Then Jesus moves to the second group – let’s call this the morning- glory group – the seed that falls on rocky ground. This refers to someone who hears the word, says Jesus, and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.

          Rocky soil is not quite as treacherous for planting seeds as the hardened path. Plants might at least grow initially in rocky soil. But the prospects are dim, because the soil is so rocky that the seed doesn’t get the nutrition it needs. Without the proper nutrition nothing grows like it ought to grow.

          Take for example, baseball coaches will talk about the “morning-glory” syndrome. Morning glories bloom in the morning, but then fade in the afternoon’s hot sun. So this morning glory nickname gets applied to young ball players who perform great in spring training and get off to a fast start in the beginning of the season, but by July, they start to struggle with the long, hot season, and they begin to wilt like a morning glory – and they end up back down in the minors to build up their endurance.(4)

          Seed that falls on rocky soil is like that. It may take root at first, but because it doesn’t get the nutrition it needs, it eventually wilts and dies. The nickname morning glory could apply to those Christians who make an initial commitment to Jesus, but then things get tough, and they fall away. Whereas the barren path shows no faith at all, the rocky soil shows at less a bit of faith at the beginning.

          And then there’s the third group, the distracted group. The third group, says Jesus, consists of the seed that falls among the thorns. They hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, the distractions of life, choke the word, making it unfruitful. We talk a lot these days about distracted driving, but what about distracted living, where we focus on nearly everything except on how Jesus calls us to live?

          During the Revolutionary War, General George Washington faced many challenges in leading the Continental army. One of his biggest challenges was maintaining troop strength. His biggest foe was distraction.

          Most of Washington’s soldiers were farmers. So when the time came to plant and then harvest their crops, the army would dwindle as the soldiers would go home to take care of sowing their seeds in the spring. They would show again during the summer to join the fight, but then leave again for the harvest. It was a difficult way to conduct a war.(5) That is the seed that is sown where there are weeds and thorns- they become distractions.

          Three groups – unbelievers, morning glories, and those who are distracted – Jesus knew that many of those who listened to his teachings would fall away or, at least, would give only minimal service to his kingdom. Remember the Pareto Principle? It says that in every group, 20% will do 80% of the work. That’s certainly true in the church.

          Fortunately, there is one more group that Jesus describes. This is the seed that falls on good soil. Let’s call this soil the company of the committed. Jesus says the good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop yielding a hundred, or sixty or thirty times what was sown. Jesus is saying that when we do things in Jesus name, the things that Jesus tells us to do – our influence on our family, our community, even our world is greater that we can possibly see.

          Take the experience of woman named Dale Bourke. She wrote a  book called Second Calling in which she tells about a time she went to a publishing conference. A friend of hers named Bruce offered her a ride to the airport. As they were about to leave, the doorman from the hotel stopped them and said that the hotel’s bus had broken down. Would they mind taking another guest to the airport? They said sure, and the grateful fellow traveler hopped in the back seat.

          Bruce asked the man what he did for a living, and the man said he worked at a Christian publishing house affiliated with Campus Crusade. Bruce immediately perked up when he heard this – “I have really fond memories of that group! When I was in college, I attended a weekend retreat one time sponsored by Campus Crusade and that’s when I became a Christian. It was in 1972 in New Hampshire.”

          Bruce went on to explain that he had not only become a Christian that weekend, but a year later he explained his faith to his family and they became Christians as well. His sister would later become a Wycliffe missionary and translated Scripture for a group in Africa. His parents turned their publishing interest to Christian books and published some of the biggest Christian books of the next few decades. Bruce himself had become the owner of a major Christian publishing house as well, and brought many significant and best-selling books to the public. It was obvious that the impact of that retreat in New Hampshire had reverberated throughout the world.

          Their passenger, the man who worked for the organization that had sponsored that retreat in 1972, sat strangely quiet throughout the story. Then he said quietly, “I led that retreat. It was my first time as a conference leader and I felt like a total failure. I had no idea what I was doing. Until this moment, I have always believed that conference was one of the biggest failures of my life.”

          “By the time we reached the airport,” says Dale Bourke, “we all had tears in our eyes.”(6)

          You never know what’s going to happen when you take a risk and plant a seed. Those of you have been on one of the mission trips to Bedecan know that these seed stories that Jesus tells are a favorite of mine. I have used them as our “send-off” devotional before almost every trip. I do that because every time we conduct a VBS, or help out at Channel One or volunteer at Friendship Place or simply have a conversation with a friend about why church and faith is important in our lives, we are flinging seeds out into the world. It may seem haphazard. It may slipshod. But remember – it is God who will give the growth. Not every seed will land in good soil. But some will. Some will. And God will take it from there.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline.com, retrieved June 30th, 2020

2.    Ibid…

3.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, p10.

4.    Ibid… p11.

5.    Ibid… p11-12.

6.    Ibid… p12.

7-5-20 Come to Me

Thomas J Parlette

“Come to Me”

Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30

7/5/20

          I don’t know about you, but I haven’t felt “normal” since mid-March. With our “stay at home” order, online school, masks and social distancing requirements, everything in life has felt out of balance. My normal, comfortable routines have gone out the window. Everything from stopping to get my morning coffee to getting up early on Sunday morning to come to church is different. It’s exhausting to absorb so much change, so much technology, so much new information that changes every day, sometimes every hour. It’s exhausting. And it is stressful.

          I read recently that many people are finding temporary relief from their stress by watching videos on You Tube. Which I understand, I do that too. But what is surprising is what they’re watching. They’re watching videos of people cleaning their house. That’s right, watching people clean their house. For myself, I’ve always agreed with the wise soul who said that cleaning with kids in the house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. But some people are de-stressing by watching cleaning videos. Actually, they are hugely popular, with millions of fans.

          The people tuning in to these videos say that watching someone else clean and organize their home makes them feel less anxious, more in control of their own surroundings. The people who make the videos say they regularly get emails from their viewers telling them their show helped with anxiety, depression and various life crises.

          One young woman said she falls asleep each night to cleaning videos because they clear her head of anxiety and fear. Another viewer said the videos, “make my head stop rushing around for a bit.” And another says, “I think there’s a lot of aspects to our daily life that seem chaotic, so watching something in a state of order is relaxing.”(1)

          That’s an interesting way to deal with stress. My own “go-to” strategies are things like take a walk or ride my exercise bike, listening to my favorite chamber music, or watching an episode of Downton Abbey. But I guess cleaning videos work for some people. But it doesn’t really tackle the deeper problems in our life that cause us to feel out of control in the first place.

          Perhaps you’ve heard of something an organization in South Korea has started doing to help people deal with their stress. This organization stages “living funerals.” Participants in living funerals write out a short testament of their last thoughts and wishes. Then they put on a funeral shroud and lie down in a closed coffin for about 10 minutes.

          Sounds a bit ghoulish, I know. But the point of living funerals, which is a free service offered by the Hyowon Healing Center, is to help people gain a new perspective on life. About 25,000 South Koreans have undergone a living funeral so far. The director of the Healing Center says that some people have reconciled with family or friends after their living funerals. Others have changed careers. Some participants who were contemplating suicide credit their living funeral with changing their minds. The purpose of the living funeral, according to the director, is to realize that “Happiness is in the present.”(2)

          Happiness is in the present. Most of us would agree with that, but many of us don’t really live like that. All too often many of us describe our lives as busy, hectic, even crazy. That seems to be the norm. No one has any time anymore. No one gets any rest.

          In our passage from Matthew today, Jesus challenges the people around him with these words, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

          Jesus points out here that weariness is not meant to be our natural way of living. That’s not what God created us for. In fact, no matter how productive our out-of-control schedule makes us feel, it is actually living in opposition to the rhythms of life that contribute to peace, clarity, and purposeful living.

          Weariness and burdens blind us to the true purpose of our lives and binds us with a sense of powerlessness. They isolate us. When you are weary and burdened, your focus narrows to what is right in front of you, to what is urgent instead of what is important. This behavior is the norm in our culture, so we don’t question it. That’s just the way life is, everybody does it. Except that Jesus says it isn’t the way things are meant to be. So what did Jesus mean by rest for our souls?

          This predates my time in Minnesota, but perhaps some of you remember back in 2005, a store opened in the Mall of America called MinneNAPolis. I tried googling it, but it kept auto-correcting to Minneapolis – but no, evidently there was a store called MinneNAPolis. For 70 cents a minute, tired shoppers could rent a sound-proof room for napping. The rooms had special themes like Deep Space, Asian Mist, and Tropical Isle. Or, if you didn’t feel like napping, you could sit in a massage chair, gaze at a waterfall, listen to soft music and breathe in the “positive-ionization-filtered air.” It was described as “an enjoyable escape from the fast-paced lifestyle.”(3) I could see how that would be nice after dealing with the Mall of America.

          However, rest for our souls is not the same thing as a nap, or a vacation, or breathing in positive-ionization-filtered air while gazing at a fake waterfall. It’s not a temporary respite from our stress. Rest for our souls is a re-orientation of our values and perceptions of life to match up with the values and perceptions of God, the One who created us – the Source of our soul.

          Listen again to Jesus’ words, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

          So the first thing Jesus is saying to us is – “You have a soul.” Or, to be more precise, you ARE a soul. You are not a random collection of cells. You are not the sum of your current circumstances. You are a work of art, made in the image of God. You have the imprint of the eternal, all-powerful God within you. Your soul is a mark of God’s abundant love for you. It marks you as incredibly valuable in God’s eyes. Which leads us to a question – are you experiencing life the way God meant you to experience it? Or do you feel weary and burdened because you are living in a way that is disconnected from your soul?

          Mike Jaffee was a young, successful business man working for a Fortune 500 company. In his mid-thirties, he began to realize that he wasn’t fulfilled in his work. He was neglecting his family. He felt disconnected from any greater purpose in his life.

          Every morning, Mike’s wife would drive him to a train station for his 2 hour commute into New York City. Their 1 year old daughter slept in the back seat on the way to the station. Mike worried that he rarely saw his daughter when she was awake, and his wife was basically a single mom.

          His success at work wasn’t making a meaningful difference in the world. His life was so hectic he barely had time to think. But all of Mike’s colleagues and friends lived like this too. Who was he to think that life could, or should, be any different?

          Then it happened. One morning, Mike decided that he would stay home and eat breakfast with his wife and daughter and take the late train to work. To him, this was a huge sacrifice. All his colleagues came in early and stayed late. He couldn’t afford to stand out. But he was just so tired of being controlled by his job and missing out on his family. That morning, Mike and his wife and daughter had a great time eating pancakes and chatting about their week. And Mike took the late train to the office.

          Because of this one decision to re-connect with his family, Mike Jaffee was not in his office in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, when the first hijacked airplane slammed into the building. His life was spared by a simple decision one morning to have pancakes with his family.

          Mike Jaffee has written a book about the tragedy of losing his friends and colleagues in the Sept. 11 attacks. It’s titled Wake Up! Your Life is Calling. He says his mission now is to be a Human Wake Up Call, to convince people to live meaningful lives that don’t revolve around society’s definition of success.(4)

          That’s what Jesus is for us – the ultimate wake-up call for our soul. Listen to some of the other statements Jesus made about our souls – “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or, what can anyone give in exchange for their soul.” Or this one – “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” Jesus cares about our souls because he knows that our souls are a reflection of God’s image within us. So, are you weary and burdened because you are living in a way that is disconnected from your soul?

          Here’s another thing Jesus’ words tell us – we have a bridge between our soul and God. Jesus did not say, “Come to me, and all your troubles will go away.” He said, “Come to me, and I’ll share your life. You won’t be alone anymore.” That’s what he meant when he said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…”

          A devotional that appeared in Guideposts tells about a young boy named Caleb who was diagnosed with a nervous system disorder that left him for a time with temporary paralysis. You can imagine how Caleb’s parents ached to see their little boy’s slow recovery from this illness.

          One day Caleb’s dad came to visit him at school. From a distance, he watched as 5 year old Caleb limped across the playground. Caleb’s father was heartbroken to see other kids playing all around his son, games in which he couldn’t participate.

          But then he saw Caleb’s best friend, Tyler, come up beside him. Tyler could have been off with the other kids, running and playing, but he chose to walk slowly alongside Caleb for the rest of recess.(5)

          Tyler didn’t take away Caleb’s burdens. He simply walked beside him in his weakness. Jesus does the same thing for us, and having that love and power freely available to us makes any burden easier to bear. “Take my yoke upon you…”

          We have a soul and we have a Savior. Jesus also says to us, we have a solution for our weariness and burdens.

          “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

          There is a woman named Rose who has experienced unbelievable stress in her life – stress that should put our anxieties into perspective. Rose is a woman in Rwanda who lost most of her family to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. This was a horrible conflict in which Hutu citizens of Rwanda murdered more than 800,000 Tutsi citizens in about 100 days. But Rose and her two daughters survived the attacks. When asked how she dealt with the shock and grief of witnessing such carnage, she says, “For this, I have Jesus.”

          Rose adopted two children who were orphaned in the attacks, and now she supports he family by translating Christian pamphlets into the local language and organizing an annual conference for widows. She has been asked what inspires her, what keeps her going in the face of such loss? And one more time she says, “For this, I have Jesus.”(6)

          “Come to me, all you are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

          For this, we have Jesus. May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVI, No. 3, p3

2.    Ibid… p3-4

3.    Ibid… p4

4.    Ibid… p5

5.    Ibid…p6

6.    Ibid…p7

6-28-2020 What God Remembers

Thomas J Parlette

“What God Remembers”

Psalm 13

6/28/20

          Like most teenagers, Jill Price had her share of difficulties – the usual highs and lows. But Price’s world was changing in ways that she didn’t understand. No one else seemed to get it either. Since she was 8 years old, she could remember just about everything that had happened to her. And then, when she was 14, she had the intuitive knowledge that her memory was complete. She could, in fact, remember everything that had happened to her.

          Her grades in school were average. She couldn’t remember lists, names, dates, formulas any better than anyone else. But she had total recall about events she’d experienced, that she lived through. For example, she could remember the dates she saw the dentist from 5 years ago. She knew what she was doing on any Christmas Day from years gone by.

          Some would say she was blessed – or was she cursed? – with a memory that would not allow her to forget anything!

          Later, in the early 2000’s, Jill would be the first person to be diagnosed with “Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory” or HSAM for short. After spending years working with Dr. James McGaugh, a neuroscientist and memory researcher with the University of California, Irvine, she co-authored a book about her life living with this syndrome called The Woman Who Can’t Forget.

          The claim for what the media would describe as “total recall” is admittedly weird. This sounds like the making of a Twilight Zone episode, or perhaps the Super Power of a Marvel Hero – or maybe Villian, I don’t know.

          Fortunately, as McGaugh and others began to work with Price, the truth of her claims became apparent. She had kept a diary, and this allowed researchers to verify her claims.

          If you were asked to name the dates of single time you’ve visited a doctor in the past five years, could you do it? I know I couldn’t. I have to stop and think what I had for breakfast this morning, let alone last week. But Jill price could rattle those dates off with precision.

          Since the media has caught wind of Price’s amazing memory and the HSAM phenomenon, others have come forward with this ability, including an artist named Nima Veiseh. Once, he corrected scientists when they erroneously cited a certain date on which Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Researchers believe that as few as 50 people in the world have HSAM, so total recall is very rare.(1)

          And then there’s God. God has the highest form of memory. God has the memory of a mother. God has a memory like no one else. God is memory. And yet, curiously, God can also forget. At least that’s what the Psalmist seems to think.

          The writer – let’s assume it’s David, as the heading of the Psalm suggests – says that God has forgotten him. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” To paraphrase the first sentence, we might put it this way – “Really? You’re still ignoring me God?”

          And then David says, “Can you really forget me forever?” And he doesn’t let up – “How long will you hide your face from me.” He feels like God is absent, that God has withdrawn from the world, at least his world. God has forgotten him – or so David believed.

          He continues like this for the entire psalm. Four times, his complaint begins with “How long…?” This one sided conversation begins to sound a lot like a break-up call. The jilted party has phoned, or these days texted, a jillion times:

          “Hey! How long are you going to ignore me? How long are you going to keep avoiding me? You think you can forget about me forever? Could you please have the decency to tell me how long you’re going to keep me hanging here, cause I’m in some pain – as if you cared. I put my trust in you and you’ve humiliated me! So how long am I supposed to put up with this?”

          That’s the tone here. Raw. Bitter. Harsh.

          In the Old Testament reading for today we heard the terrifying story about Abraham being instructed to sacrifice his son Isaac. He appears prepared to follow God’s instructions. We never hear Abraham’s internal monologue as he leads his son to the altar and ties him up. Everything is silent until God appears in the form of a ram and Isaac is spared.

          The organizers of our lectionary usually arrange the readings so that the Psalm selection somehow speaks to the Old Testament reading. Sometimes it’s very hard to see the connection – but not today. I think these words of David’s lament might give us an insight into what Abraham might have been thinking as he silently walked his son to his death – “How long O Lord… have you forgotten me? How long must I bear this pain… But I trusted in your steadfast love… I will sing to the Lord because the Lord has dealt bountifully with me.”

          Fortunately for Abraham and Isaac, the Lord shows his face, and delivers a ram. But for David, no answer comes from God. David doesn’t get closure or relief. He’s left with doubts and despair.

          Honestly, have we not had moments like this in our lives. This is an experience that we all share with David.

Is this not what we’re feeling as we look at the racial divide and injustice all around us as Black people die. Black lives do matter – and sometimes it feels like God has abandoned us in this struggle.

Is this not what we feel as we wrestle with the Covid 19 virus and it’s impact on people’s lives and jobs and futures. Where is God? Why no answer? It seems like God has switched off the Divine cell phone, or seems to have blocked our prayerful texts.

 So, it seems like God doesn’t care. It would appear that God has run out on us, abandoned us and left no forwarding address. After all we’ve gone through together, and now it seems like God has forgotten us.

          But here’s the thing. There are some things that God cannot forget. And you – we – are one them. God may be omnipotent, able to do all things. But there is one thing God cannot do. God cannot forget us.

          There’s a remarkable passage in Isaiah 49: 14-16. It begins by noting that Zion complains that “the Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” But then, a rhetorical question is posed: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb.”

          Of course not.

          The text continues by asserting that it is more likely that a mother will forget her child than God will forget us. It’s not going to happen.

          And then there’s this addendum in verse 16: “See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands…” God says that we are tattooed in his palm!

          Here God is saying that the Divine, ineffable Creator and God of the Universe has inscribed us in the palm of his hand. God cannot forget us. We’re right there in his palm, tattooed in the hollow of the hand of God. God cannot forget us.

          And yet… the psalmist clearly believes otherwise. What can we do when our mind is telling us lies that the heart does not want to believe? We think that God has abandoned us, but our heart does not quite believe it.

          This is what we call the trial or testing of our faith, as Abraham’s faith was tested. It is the refiner’s fire, as James calls it. It is the “fiery ordeal” about which Peter wrote, and about which we should not be surprised.

          So then, we should not be surprised when confronted with moments of divine silence, according to Peter. We should remember that, as James wrote, the testing of our faith has several positive outcomes.

          We should have a conversation with God as did the psalmist in this text. Conversation is good. When we lift up our doubts and fears, our prayers become more authentic than ever. God doesn’t mind, and perhaps welcomes those moments when we share what we really think.

          And finally, we must act and move forward in faith as though God has not forgotten us. Because… God has not forgotten. The psalmist seems to come to this place at the end of the psalm. He writes, “But I trusted in your steadfast love.” Even when he felt ignored and forgotten, his trust in the steadfast love and loyalty – and memory of God – brought him through the crisis.

          But there are some things that God can forget. God does not live with the curses of HSAM, not being able forget the things you would rather not remember.

          God does have the ability to forget – God forgets our sins.

          The prophet Jeremiah reminds us that God says, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

          Isaiah’s word from the Lord is similar - “I will blot out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.”

          In Hebrews, we read, “For I will be merciful towards their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”

          Many people would say that Jill Price, the remarkable woman with the incredible memory now called “Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory” is blessed. Maybe so – he abilities do serve her well in her job as an administrative assistant at a law firm.

          But often, her memories arise unbidden, chaotic and unwelcome. She says, “Imagine being able to remember, or rather unable to forget, every fight you ever had with a friend, every time someone let you down, all the stupid mistakes you’ve ever made.”

          Sounds a bit closer to a curse. She remembers all that stuff.

          But God does not. God forgets all that stuff.

          God forgets all the times we screwed up and hurt people around us.

          God forgets all the times we’ve been unkind, callous and unsympathetic.

          God forgets all that stuff. And maybe we should too.

          As Isaiah writes, “Even these will forget, yet I will not forget you.”

          Our sins may be forgotten, but we won’t be forgotten.

          For we are what God remembers.

          And for that, may God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline.com, retrieved June 8th, 2020.

6-21-2020 Courageous Faith, Compassionate Witness

Rev. Jay Rowland

Romans 6:1b-11 & Gospel of Matthew 10:26-39

I’m haunted by the murder of George Floyd.

I’m haunted by the defiant look, the nonchalance on the face of the Minneapolis police officer who killed him. I’m haunted by the realization that George Floyd is a casualty of the legacy of slavery; the racism and white supremacy that embedded slavery into our nation’s social order from its founding, and which remains in place to this day, unacknowledged, un-confronted and unresolved here in 2020. And so, when I opened my bible to the passages from Romans and from the Gospel of Matthew for today, many of the verses jumped off the page at me and pierced my spirit:

“If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good?” (Romans 6:2)

“Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call!” (Romans 6:7)

“Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did.” (Romans 6:11)

“Don’t be intimidated. Eventually, everything is going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don’t hesitate to go public now. Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being …” (Jesus, in Matthew 10:26-28b)

“Stand up for me against world opinion and I’ll stand up for you ...” (Jesus in Matthew 10:32)

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth … “ (Jesus in Matt 10:34)

“If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find your (true identity) self. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me.” (Matt 10:38b-39)

[from The Message Bible]

Please let me assure you, I’m not interested in heaping guilt on anyone’s heads; I’m not interested in blaming, shaming or moral platitudes; I’m not here to throw righteous salt on anyone’s wounds. But I want to be clear with you about how I feel and what I believe. I believe that racism and the embedded ideology of white supremacy stands in the way of the Kingdom of God. Racism and the ideology of white supremacy defies and opposes the Lord Jesus Christ, his life, death, resurrection and ascension.

After the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was dismantled, the racism and the ideology of white supremacy which justified and upheld slavery for hundreds of years remained unchallenged and unchecked. Ever since then black Americans have been consistently opposed when it comes to enjoying the privileges of citizenship. But we need not let any residual guilt or shame provoke us to avoid or diminish the painful legacy of slavery as it continues to oppress black Americans. It’s important that we don’t take on all of the baggage our ancestors left to us—it’s not our personal fault.

But it is our responsibility to do what we can to help level the playing field our ancestors refused to allow or consider for black people. It is our responsibility to speak and act against the daily humiliation, and the daily persecution, torture and destruction of black bodies, minds and spirits. How many more unarmed black men must die at the hands of white authority before we cry out in solidarity, “ENOUGH!”

White America is blind to the unending menace hounding black folks every day of their lives from childhood through retirement—if they even live that long. I cannot profess to be a minister of the gospel, let alone a follower of Jesus Christ and lover of God while remaining silent about the gigantic, diabolical elephant in the room that is racism. This elephant “sits” unrecognized in every room and community in White America. We must remove the blinders and begin seeing the terrorism which seeks to annihilate every black human being. Ask any black person if they’ve ever been pulled over by the police for no reason. Ask any black parent whether or not they teach their children what to do when—NOT IF—but when the police pull them over.

Too often white folk complain, “why does it always have to be about race?”

The answer is, because for black folks in this nation it IS always about race; because every waking-sleeping- breathing moment of every single day of their lives they’ve been told and shown that they are the wrong color. I consider it my sacred duty as a wanna-be “disciple”, as a follower of and believer in Jesus Chris to stand here today and say the words:

Black Lives Matter.

Period.

To say Black Lives Matter takes NOTHING away from any other lives. It simply affirms the worth of an entire community of people who’ve been pushed down and shot down and chased down, harassed, accused, convicted, insulted, degraded, incarcerated and lynched. George Floyd in Minneapolis and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta are the most recent examples. God forbid but there will be others.

Please bear with me, and please hear me out: I’m not condemning all police officers or all white people. I’m not here to spoil anyone’s day or communion with God. But we’ve been sitting out and sitting down too long. It’s time to stand up. The God I meet and the Jesus I meet in the scriptures and in my personal experience stands with every person who is persecuted and oppressed. Jesus was himself harassed, and arrested, and tortured and killed by the human forces of oppression. Jesus was raised by God from death and from the human-inflicted oppression and rejection and terrorism. Jesus was raised by God the Creator and the Author of Love and Life, in order to show us where God stands when it comes to sin and death and persecution and oppression—all of which are present in the sin of racism and white supremacy.

Jesus says in Matthew’s Gospel today, Don’t be intimidated. Eventually everything is going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don’t hesitate to go public now. Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies (Matthew 10:26-28a—The Message Bible). This is my public acknowledgment in my faith community that the ideology of white supremacy remains enmeshed in American society and continues to energize racism, oppose, injure, and kill black people.

I don’t expect everyone in this community or church to agree with me. But I will do what I can to engage the legacy of slavery and racism--to move toward it, rather than run away from it, resisting the temptation to become defensive or non-participatory. We practice Courageous Faith to oppose racism. We can stand with our black sisters & brothers as Compassionate Witnesses to their pain and suffering. This is only the beginning, admittedly small but important first steps we can take together to toward a more compassionate and supportive presence with black people in America.

I believe this is how we can move toward the Kingdom of God which is forever reaching out to and moving toward us through Jesus Christ. I’m hopeful that as we admit we don’t fully understand the legacy of slavery and the realities of racism, we shall begin to move toward reconciliation with our black sisters and brothers. Because I believe that every injury, every death, every humiliation of every person of color at the hands of white authority defies the Kingdom of God that Jesus lived, died and was raised to reveal.

After the flames burned out and the smoke cleared from Minneapolis and other cities which erupted in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, someone shared an old African proverb with me: “The child that is not embraced by their village will burn it down to feel the warmth.”

We all agree that riots and destruction only make a bad situation worse. We all agree that burning down the village is not the answer. But do we have the courage to admit we have not experienced generations of alienation in our own nation, city, neighborhood, back yard or home? Without that experience, we do not understand or accept the impulsive reactions of broken human beings.

But rather than let uncommon incidents further divide us, I propose we try to find common ground in the complexity of our own human experience. Take some time to think deeply. I wonder how many of us have ever experienced being rejected, threatened, shamed, felt unsafe with the police. I wonder how many of us have been physically or emotionally violated by a person who is supposed to protect and nurture us. I wonder how many of us have experienced the dis-embrace of the village, whether that village is that of family, friend group, school, team, a valued organization or interest group—the village you longed to inhabit.

It’s important to consider or at least sympathize with the intense spiritual damage inflicted upon human beings by persons who abuse their authority. Especially when it is repeated. People who are traumatized and re-traumatized are forced to bury or compartmentalize the intense feelings of a physical and emotional violation in order to function and survive in daily society. We all have the capacity to do what we have to to “survive”. But at the same time, we are all equally capable of acting out aggression, even emotional or physical violence as part of that survival instinct—it’s built into our nervous system.

We can perhaps also imagine how such an intense injury can also trigger self-condemnation and self-loathing—beneath the intense anger or rage there could also be self-doubt which festers over time and eats away at a person’s esteem. Unless or until it is met by another human being who shows compassionate witness and nurture or therapeutic intervention and treatment.

Perhaps we can imagine how broken human beings, broken by an injury inflicted by another human being(s) might begin to see themselves as unlovable, as unworthy of anyone’s care, as defective, or as deserving the injury. Perhaps we might be able to image how under such circumstances someone might start getting the message that they don’t matter, not even to God.

We cannot fully or properly understand the full impact of the pain experienced by people of color in our country. But we can seek to understand or offer compassionate witness to their pain rather than reject or deny it or otherwise diminish another’s experience. If we can learn to move toward another’s experience of injustice or trauma, allow ourselves to feel and endure being uncomfortable but present with another’s anger and trauma and intense feelings, we can begin to redefine community and refine our village’s capacity to nurture.

We all have good medicine inside of us, compassionate witness and courageous faith which can become a vaccine for the lethal virus of racism which has daily infected our society and our villages. I’m encouraged to see more and more people standing up against racism after generations of remaining seated; more and more people crying out against racism after generations of silence. This is what I hear when I hear Jesus say in the gospel of Matthew, Stand up for me against world opinion and I’ll stand up for you ... (Matthew 10:32) and Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth … (Matt 10:34) and If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find your (true identity) self. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both your true identity and Me. (Matt 10:38b-39)

I hear Paul’s Christian witness vibrantly apply to racism when and white supremacy when he says, Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! (Romans 6:7), and Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did. (Romans 6:11)

Each of us has good medicine we can apply to the gaping wound racism has inflicted upon too many people--black & white—for too long. Each one of us has an important role in creating a village where every child is embraced and protected by their village. The world and village we believe in and long for every time we pray, Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.

To learn about racism and the experience of black people in America, listen to a talk given in 2014 by Bryan Stevenson at the Westminster Presbyterian Church (Minneapolis) Town Hall Forum … just click the link below:

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/15/bryan-stevenson-westminster-forum

Learn about racism and the experience of black people in Minnesota, check these links:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-05/revealing-the-divisive-history-of-minneapolis

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/2001/06/lynching

6-14-2020 Stained Hands

Thomas J Parlette

“Stained Hands”

Romans 5: 1-8

6/14/20

          There are many ways one could go with a sermon on these verses from Romans. It’s a rich passage to be sure, with allusions to being “justified by faith”, boasting in our sufferings”, “suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope and hope does not disappoint.”

          All of those phrases are worthy of a deep look. But not all in the same sermon. As one of my preaching professors used to say – “Don’t preach on everything a passage has to say, save some for next time.”

          So instead of trying to dive into all the possibilities this passage contains, I’m going to zero in on the final couple of verses, in fact the very last phrase of the text, that says “while we still were sinners, Christ died for us.” To help us do that, I’d like to tell you about Rachel Held Evans.

          When RHE, as she was known online, a wife and mother of two small children died on May 4th, 2019, at the age of 37, it was not just her family, friends and acquaintances who were saddened. Thousands of people across the nation who’d never met her face to face also felt a deep sense of loss. The bond was forged because of what Evans had written about the Christian faith in her popular blog and books.

          Such was the power of her words about moving from the evangelical faith of her youth to a progressive stance on Christianity that a writer for the The Christian Century called her “the most influential mainline theologian of her generation, the C.S. Lewis of her time.” While Evans herself was neither trained nor credentialed in religious studies, and was not ordained and never pastored a church, she influenced many people who entered the ministry, especially women.

          Although she was raised in a conservative Christian home and environment and as a teen embraced that expression of Christianity, she eventually found herself pushing back against traditional evangelical positions. She challenged gender roles in the church and advocated for LGBTQ inclusion. “At times, she was a friendly dialogue partner,” said journalist Kaye Shellnut, writing in Vox. And other times, Evans was “a watchdog against the tradition she grew up in-earning the title ’the most polarizing woman in evangelicalism’ per The Washington Post, and being described as ‘saying the things pastors can’t in the Christian magazine Sojourners.” The Atlantic dubbed her a “hero to Christian misfits.”

          Evans had a broad appeal, even among her critics. While she lay in a coma before her death, her well-wishers ranged from conservative evangelical leaders who openly disagreed with her as well as people so theologically liberal that they disagreed with the very idea of prayer.

          Katelyn Beaty, editor at large for Christianity Today, commented that Evans “wrote unflinchingly about how hard it is trust God, to forgive church leaders, to wrestle with Scripture. There was a quiet sadness to her writing, a grief over having lost a simpler faith and faith community.”

          “RHE taught the beauty of a messy and complicated faith,” wrote an Evans follower, Christina Rosetti, on twitter. “She showed us how to hold multiple perspectives in tension. She made people feel safe to talk about doubt.”

          Although Evans eventually moved away from her evangelical faith to a more progressive position, she never left the church, instead moving to a congregation of a mainline denomination. In her book Searching for Sunday, she says that she remained a Christian despite all her doubts and objections to traditional theology “because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is present in ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition – that we are not okay.”(1)

          Which, of course, is what Paul says in different words in Romans 5 - “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

          We are not okay.

          Of course, Paul was not the first to say this. Centuries earlier, the prophet we sometimes refer to as “Second Isaiah” or Isaiah of Babylon” wrote about a Suffering Servant and declared, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way,” and as a result, the Lord has laid on that servant “the iniquity of us all.” And many generations before Isaiah, the Lord told the Israelites to put fringes on their garments so they would remember “all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and not follow the lust of your own heart and your own eyes.”

          It’s always been true – we are not okay.

          But we don’t need to go way back into Scripture to know this. Many of us are aware that we individually and collectively have piles of moral garbage that we don’t want others to see.

          In Searching for Sunday, Evans spoke of the stark language in prayers of confession, which acknowledge plainly our sinfulness, and likened them to the kind of introductions that are typical at Alcoholics Anonymous meeting: “My name is----, and I’m an alcoholic.” In the sme way that those introductions equalize attendees at AA meeting, Evans said, prayers of confession equalize worshipers in church.

          These prayers, said Evans, “remind us that all move through the world in the same state – broken and beloved – and that we’re all in need of healing and grace. They embolden us to confess to one another not only our sins, but also our fears, our doubts, our questions, our injuries and our pain. They give us permission to start telling one another the truth, and to believe that this strange way of living is the only way to set one another free.”

          But, Evans noted, our churches sometimes feel more like country clubs that AA meetings, especially when we mumble through rote confessions and merely exchange pleasantries with fellow worshipers “while mingling beneath a cross upon which hung a beaten, nearly naked man, suffering publicly on our behalf.”

          She said she suspects this habit stems from the same impulse that told her she should drop a few pounds before joining the Y (so as not to embarrass herself in front of the fit people), “the same impulse,” Evans said, “that kept my mother from hiring a housekeeper because she felt compelled to clean the bathroom before the Merry Maids arrived (so as not to expose to the world the abomination that is a hair clogged shower drain).”

          “The truth is, we think church is for people living in the “after picture,” said Evans. “We think church is for the healthy, even though Jesus told us time and time again he came to minister to the sick. We think church is for good people, not resurrected people.”

          Stan Purdum writes about an experience he had a country church he pastored years ago. He decided one Saturday in October to harvest the black walnuts that were falling to the ground, encased in tough green husks as large as baseballs, from a large tree behind the parsonage. He collected a couple of baskets full of nuts. He knew that the nuts were buried deep inside these tough outer skins. While he supposed the husks would eventually split open in time – he saw no reason to wait, and he tried to speed up the process with a knife.

          After some effort, he got a couple cuts made through the shell and began trying to peel off the husk. It was tougher than he expected, so he went after it with a screwdriver, with the clear juice from the meat of the husks running onto his hands. After about a half hour he had succeeded to opening up two walnuts – so he gave up.

          When he washed up, however, he found that the husk juice had left dark stains on his hands that would not come off, not even with undiluted bleach.

          Then it dawned on him, it was communion Sunday the next day. He was going to have to serve communion with his stained hands. So in church the next day, before starting communion, he told the congregation about his walnut adventure, and despite appearances, his hands were clean. The whole congregation had a good chuckle at his expense, and nobody seemed to mind being served communion by a pastor with stained hands.

          After the service, one of the older farmers said, “You know, there is a way to get the nuts open if you still want them. Just dump them in your gravel driveway and leave’em there for a few days, running over them with your car as you come and go. That’ll loosen most of the husks and you should be able to pry the nut out no problem – just remember to wear gloves.”

          In his book New Mercies I See, Purdum writes that “ it was only later that I realized I had missed a good opportunity for a solid theological statement: Nobody comes to the Lord’s Supper with clean hands.”(2) Everybody who comes before the Lord has stained hands.

          Fortunately, God doesn’t require that our hands, or our souls, be clean before welcoming us. The gospel message tells us that God sent his Son NOT to condemn us, but to save us. And although Psalm 24 says that only those with clean hands and pure hearts can stand before the Lord, the point is that God cleans our hands and purifies our hearts so that we can stand in the Holy Presence.

          Whether we actually say these words or not, we come before God, as Evans indicated, with the AA-inspired statement, “My name is----, and I am a sinner.”

          And God responds with, “Your name is child of God, and you are redeemed.”

          That’s what Paul tells us in our text: But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” He’s the servant upon whom, Isaiah said, “the iniquity of us all” – our moral garbage- is laid, and he carries it away.

          Rachel Held Evans, despite her persistent doubts and knee-jerk cynicism, found the right reason to stay with the church – “because Christianity names and addresses sin,” our stained hands, and directs us to the Lord, who cleanses us and redeems us.

          And for that, may God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline.com, retrieved June 1st, 2020.

2.    Ibid…

6-7-2020 The Mystery of the Trinity

Thomas J Parlette

“The Mystery of the Trinity”

Genesis 1:1- 2:4

6/7/2020

          So it’s Trinity Sunday today. Last week, we celebrated Pentecost, perhaps our most colorful Sunday of the year as we break out the red banners and vestments and celebrate the birthday of the church with talk of wind and flame. It’s a pretty dramatic Sunday in the church year.

          And that brings us to Trinity Sunday – perhaps our most confusing Sunday of the year. Some of our best hymns were written for this Sunday, but the theology of the day can be hard to grasp – and I’ll be honest, it can be hard to explain and preach on too.

          And we don’t get too much help from the historical documents of the church either. For instance, consider the ancient Creed of Athanasius, one that’s still found in the Book of Common Prayer used in the Episcopal Church. This creed begins with “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance.”

  Then, trying to further clarify the three persons, the creed continues: “The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate, and the Holy Ghost uncreate. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible… And yet… there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one created, and one incomprehensible.”(1)

And we are left with the question – “WHAT!!!”

You see what I mean that this can be a confusing Sunday.

Whereas Pentecost is one of the most dramatic and colorful Sundays of the church year – Trinity Sunday is one of the most mysterious and sometimes confusing Sundays in our liturgical year.

Which might explain why the lectionary puts the first creation story from Genesis as our Old Testament Reading for today. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the concept of the Trinity – but perhaps it’s inclusion speaks more to the mysterious of this day, rather than the theology.

The creation story in Genesis 1 is certainly mysterious – “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless….. void. And darkness covered the face of the waters…. While a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

It’s not science, but poetry – poetry rooted in faith rather than biological facts. God spoke, and creation happened.

          The author of Genesis 1 did not debate or defend the divine role and presence but simply assumed that there was a God who created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning was chaos. Then God breathed over the chaos, over the watery mess, and God’s ruach (breath, wind, or spirit are all appropriate translations) moved over and separated the waters. God spoke, and order began to take place. God spoke and the world appeared. God spoke, and divided the day from the night. God spoke, and separated the water from the land. Out of the chaos came order and life. An important thing to remember in when we see so much chaos around us – God’s Spirit brings order and life.

          The description of creation is precisely ordered. In the first three days of creation, God created the habitat – day and night/ heaven and the oceans/ earth and sea. In the next three days, God created the inhabitants forth this space – sun, moon and stars/ birds and sea creatures/ cattle and all animals, including earthlings, known as humans. (2)

          Be sure to take note of the order of creation. God didn’t make human beings and then provide them with animals. No, the animals were created first and then human beings last. The way this text is structured, it puts humans into the leading role.

          Think of attending a play or a musical. At the end of the show is the curtain call. This wouldn’t seem like a big deal – but for those in the theater world, it is. The curtain call even gets it’s own music in the score – at least most of the time.

          It starts with the actors that had the smallest parts and works it’s way to the lead actors. For those who’ve been in a play or a musical, the importance of the curtain call is well known, and it’s always something you rehearse in that last week of preparation.

          Well, here in the creation story, humans receive the last bow, the final curtain call. Everything else is on the stage, and humanity enters, then God declares creation good, and takes a Sabbath break to enjoy what has been accomplished – the applause of heaven, perhaps.

          Humans are the crown jewel of God’s created order. To paraphrase Paul in Ephesians 2:10 – “You are God’s masterpiece.” God created the world because God loves people, after all, we’re the only ones made in the image of God.

          So, instead of getting swept away by the theology of the day, perhaps we should concentrate on the mystery of this Trinity Sunday. What do we learn when we hear the story of creation?

          We hear over and over again that God believes creation is good. God loves creation. And above all, God loves humans. When we look through the mystery of creation, what do we see? We see God’s love for us and God’s desire to provide for us and be with us.

          Perhaps a visual depiction of the Trinity would help more than complicated theological concepts.

          There is one classic image called “Trinity” by Andrei Rublev, a Russian artist, who painted it in 1425.

          Through his praying with Scripture, Rublev began to understand the three messengers who visited Abraham and Sarah and announced the future birth of a child to this aged couple as precursors of the Holy Trinity of the New Testament. In the icon depicting that scene, he draws three figures seated around three sides of a square table. There is an opening on the fourth side immediately in front of the viewer.

          As one gazes on this image, one is aware of the vast silence that surrounds the three figures. They seem to be looking into each other with an unqualified dignity, respect and loving gaze – three distinct persons, three yet one. The fourth side to the table is left open intentionally by Rublev, signaling an invitation for the person viewing the image to draw near, even to sit at the table and join in the intimate conversation taking place. In a profound sense the person viewing the icon completes the image by joining the divine circle of the Sacred Three.(3)

          The concept of the Trinity then becomes an invitation to sit with God, known in three different ways, and experience the love of God.

          Another very different understanding of the Trinity comes from Meister Eckhart, a 14th century German mystic. His take may be a bit unusual, but it is one of my favorites. He wrote that God the Father laughed, and the Son was born. Then the two of them laughed, and the Spirit was born. When all of them laughed, the human being was born. For Eckhart, the mystery of the Trinity was surrounded by peals of golden laughter at the heart of the universe.(4) The Trinity becomes an expression of God’s joy.

          The Trinity may be a confusing and mysterious concept, but at the center of the mystery is God who created the world good – whose crowning achievement was the creation of human beings, all human beings. So let us come to the table and celebrate the gifts of God.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Carole Crumley, Feasting on the World, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p26.

2.    Lynn Japinga, Connections, Westminster John Knox Press, 2020, p3.

3.    Carole Crumley, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p28, 30.

4.    Ibid… p30.

5-31-2020 Winds of the Spirit

Thomas J Parlette

“Winds of the Spirit”

Acts 2: 1-21

5/31/20, Pentecost 

          “I know it when I see it.”

          That’s what Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said back in 1964. He was trying to get a handle on one of the trickiest issues faced by the court in decades – the definition of obscenity. About the best he could do, in an attempt to nail down a very slippery concept, was to say, “I know it when I see it.”(1)

          We can certainly sympathize with Justice Stewart. There are so many powerful forces in our lives, both positive and negative, that are difficult to measure. Think about trying to measure quality, or goodness, or kindness. Then think about how to measure Envy or lust. Not easy, but we know it when we see it. Think about how to measure the beauty of a sunrise, the gracefulness of a robin, or even, the strength of the wind.

          The question of wind comes up today because it’s Pentecost, and we re-visit the story of how the Holy Spirit came upon the first disciples. Wind is an invisible but powerful force. We know it when we feel it, but how can we describe it, or measure it?

          “The wind blows where it chooses,” said Jesus, “and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it goes.” He goes on to say, “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

          For thousands of years, no one thought that the wind could be measured. But then, in the late 1700’s, cabin boy in the British Navy began to keep a meteorological journal so he could stay on top of the weather conditions. His name was Francis Beaufort, and he went on to become a Rear Admiral, serving the Navy for 68 years. Over the course of his career, he developed a method for describing the wind that became known as “The Beaufort Scale.”

          According to Beaufort, you’ve got your “calm.” You’ve got your “light breeze.” And then a “moderate breeze”, then a “strong breeze.” As the wind gets stronger, he refers to a “gale”, then a “storm,” and finally a “hurricane.” As we know, the scale was expanded to include, I think, five categories of hurricanes, defined by wind speed.

          Beaufort didn’t have wind speeds at the time, so he wrote rather poetic descriptions of the categories, based on what the wind did to the sea.

          Calm winds resulted in “sea like a mirror.”

          When a light breeze is blowing, you see small wavelets on the water, and the crests don’t break. It looks like ripples.

          A “moderate breeze” creates small waves, while a “strong generates large waves, with white foam crests and probably spray.

          When a “gale” is beginning to blow, you see moderately high waves and crests that begin to break into sea spray.

          A “storm” is defined by very high waves with long, overhanging crests. The surface of the sea takes a white appearance, and the tumbling of the sea becomes heavy.

          And at the top of the scale is a “hurricane” – a wind condition you don’t want to see firsthand, if you can help it. ‘The air is filled with foam and spray,” says Beaufort, and the sea is “completely white with driving spray.”

          With his descriptions of every condition from calm to hurricane, Francis Beaufort created a way to describe wind – a scale that is still in use today.(2)

          Well, it was a windy day in Jerusalem, or at least it sounded windy, when the disciples gathered to celebrate the harvest festival known as Pentecost. Acts tells us that there came a sound like the rushing of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where the apostles were sitting. Firelike tongues rested on each of them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit – they began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Suddenly, the international crowd that had gathered in Jerusalem could hear the apostles speaking about God’s deeds of power – they could understand what the apostles were saying, because they were speaking the native language of each and every person.

          But the force of the wind did not end there. It inspired the apostle Peter, who had acted like such a coward just a few months earlier, denying that he even knew Jesus, to stand in front of a mob of mockers and shout, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem…listen to what I say.” Peter proclaimed that the coming of the Holy Spirit matched the words of the prophet Joel – words that told of how God would pour out his Spirit upon all people. Your “sons and daughters shall prophesy,” said Peter to the crowd, and “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

          What a mighty wind it was, whipping through Jerusalem and blowing away the everyday expectations of everyone who was gathered there. People were impacted, lives were changed, and it was, for the apostles and members of the crowd alike, the storm of the century.

          But how can we measure the force of this holy wind?

          If we were to apply the Beaufort scale to the winds of the Spirit, what would that look like? How do we experience the Holy Spirit in our lives today?

          First of all, the scale starts with Calm. This is the condition we experience when the Spirit leads us, equips us, and gives us serenity and peace. When the scale read calm, we are given peace and a sense of purpose – we know that we belong to God, and that we now possess a sense of direction.

          This Spirit-scale calm is something we feel even thought our lives may be buffeted by hurricane force winds. Whatever that nature of the external wind that is assailing us, the calm of the Spirit keeps us on mission, on point, and on message. We are unmoved. We are unfazed. We are experiencing the “calm” of the Holy Spirit.

          At other time, the Holy Spirit comes as a “strong breeze,” a Spirit-wind that has a creative quality to it and leads to surprising improvements and new directions in our lives. In the Bible, this is seen in the “wind of God” that swept over the face of the waters” at the moment of creation. This is the Spirit-wind that came upon the anointed figures of the Old Testament when they were empowered for specific tasks and missions.

          This is the Spirit that came upon the 70 elders in the Book of Numbers.

          This is the Spirit that came upon Balaam when he uttered his oracle.

          This is the Spirit that rested upon Gideon and Samson, that fell upon Saul and David.

          When we head into a situation where new directions, fresh opportunities and unlimited possibilities face us, we look to the Holy Spirit for the “strong breeze” to empower us according to the will of God.

          Higher up the scale is the Spirit as a “gale,” a force that breaks unhealthy patterns and shakes up the status quo. In a world that so often fights fire with fire and responds to violence with even more violence, we are given the power we need to go in a different direction. “Evil is not effectively resisted with hatred and with guns” observes Jeffrey Burton Russel in his book The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History. “The only response to evil that has ever worked is the response of Jesus… and that is to lead a life of love. That means what it has always meant: visting the sick, giving to the poor and helping those in need.”(3)

          This is a powerful wind, one that can knock us off balance and push us out of our comfort zones. We need to ask ourselves: Are we willing to be blown in this direction?

          Finally, at the top of the scale is the Spirit as a “hurricane.” This is what hit Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, turning the lives of the apostles completely upside down. They were reoriented from looking inward at themselves to looking outward toward a world in desperate need of the gospel. They were changed from fearful disciples into fearless evangelists, and they headed off into the mission field with a powerful sense of purpose.

          We used to call this revival. When hurricane force Spirit-winds blow across the landscape of our souls and our common life together, nothing is ever the same.

          When you look at the movement of the Spirit on Pentecost, you see the power of Almighty God at work. You see the breaking down of language and culture barriers… the empowering of frightened disciples… the courageous sharing of Jesus Christ with the world. After the winds of the spirit, the disciples learn how much more they are capable of.

          Robert Brow has written a kind of parable for Pentecost. There was once a couple from a jungle in Africa who arrived in Kingston, Ontario to study, and were given a fully equipped home to live in. They were handed the keys, but no thought to explain about the electrical appliances, or how the house worked. During the month of July, they went to bed when it got dark and rose with the sun, just as they always had. They collected wood and were able to cook in the fireplace. They found water came from the taps, and they did their washing in the kitchen, and dried their clothes on the line.

          But by November, they were cold, miserable and very frightened. Happily, some friends came to visit, found the house in darkness and they flicked on the lights. They showed the couple how they could set the thermostat to heat the house and how to use the electric stove for cooking.

          The next week they learned about the washer and dryer, the vacuum cleaner, how to use the phone and get in touch with their friends. The television helped them learn more about Canada, and how people survived the Canadian winter.(4)

          That story illustrates the huge change that took place on the Day of  Pentecost. “Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a mighty wind and it filled the entire house.” The couple from Africa discovered that they were living in a house in which they were free to enjoy light, and heat, and the many appliances needed for the Canadian winter. But in the days before Jesus, the Pharisees and other religious leaders of the day had never told the people all that God had for them. On the Day of Pentecost, the early Christians began to experience the light and power available to them through the winds of the Spirit.

          May it be so for us. And may we know it when we see it.

          May God be praised, Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved May 18th, 2020.

2.    Ibid…

3.    Ibid…

4.    Ibid…

5-24-2020 Castaway Anxiety

Castaway Anxiety 

Acts 1:6-14 / 1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11

Rev. Jay Rowland

The account of Jesus' ascension in Acts chapter 1 probably sounds outlandish to those who are unfamiliar--and maybe even to those who are. Perhaps this is why we don’t think or talk much about the ascension other than when we recite the Apostles Creed together. Perhaps many prefer to quietly ignore this passage and any consideration of the ascension.

Not me. I believe it’s essential.

Because until Jesus ascends it appears he can only be in one place at a time. After he ascends, Jesus can be anywhere and everywhere at once.

So, no. I’m not willing to skip over the ascension.

The disciples clearly did not see it coming. After it happens they’re clearly shaken. They were still trying to make sense of everything that was changing right in front of them. Above all, they were hoping Jesus’ Resurrection meant an end to living under the stress and anxiety and heavy hand of Roman occupation. That’s why they asked him what they did. They are understandably stunned, even discouraged by the ascension of Jesus. The world in front of them and all around them was still as dangerous and prone to evil as it was before. When Jesus is taken up and out of their sight, it hits them just how much they relied on him to keep their fear in check.

We do too whether or not we say it out loud.

Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will come upon them to liberate them from the prison of their fears and anxiety. Through them, God’s ways of love and life will reach all who are near and all who are far off.

Remember before the COVID19 menace arrived, there was a great deal of concern and preoccupation about why people aren’t coming to church anymore like they used to back in the “good old days.” Back in the day when church attendance was robust and church-influence upon culture and government was the norm. Sounds like the disciples asking Jesus if all this means that Israel will be restored to its former glory—the good old days.

Jesus replies, basically, that’s none of your business. It is not for us to know the whys and the wherefores. Instead of wondering why people are not coming to church or how to bring the church back from obscurity, Jill Duffield notes that Jesus suggests in Acts 1 that we “exercise the power of the Holy Spirit and be His witnesses: show the Lord’s grace, compassion, and mercy wherever we are.

Go to the places where others are afraid to go and feed His sheep.

Bear witness to the abundant and eternal life Jesus brings.

Be generous.

Be welcoming.

Work for reconciliation.

Be forgiving.

Do justice. Love kindness.

Use all our Spirit-powered intelligence to light up the ends of the earth with the love of Jesus Christ. God will take care of the rest.” (Jill Duffield)

Henri Nouwen, in Making All Things New, writes about preoccupation: " … (it) means to fill our time and place long before we are there. So much of our [anxiety] is connected with [such] preoccupations… Always preparing for eventualities, we seldom fully trust the moment."

Our negative preoccupations—about the “success” of our church or our kids or who/whatever— provokes anxiety. And in my experience, such anxiety displaces hope and depletes our spirit. This kind of anxiety turns us into castaways, isolating us on an island of discouragement. Such anxiety tries to convince us that the love and care of God for God’s people is non-existent.

The community to which Peter writes was longing to trust in God in spite of the persecution, suffering and anxiety they were experiencing. Their unanswered questions tormented them. Rather than furnish answers, Peter instead encourages them to endure and to persist, mindful that they are God’s beloved. Peter offers one of my favorite verses in all of scripture: “cast all your anxiety upon him, because he cares for you.”

The pandemic has rendered our previous preoccupation with church attendance irrelevant. People are suffering and struggling in a myriad of ways. The world is longing to trust in God despite what’s happening. We are all tormented by unanswered questions.

When will this pandemic end?

When will our life be restored?

When will it be safe to gather in person again?

How long, O Lord, will COVID-19 remain?

How will people ever recover from the economic catastrophe?

In the absence of answers and certainty, our mission becomes clear and simple: Seek and discern the Holy Spirit in the midst of the present chaos and change. The Holy Spirit will show us how to faithfully bear witness to the life and love of God embodied in Jesus Christ. As we learn and practice new ways of being church, the Holy Spirit is already helping us: We are now reaching people we may have previously overlooked or unintentionally excluded. We are learning there is more we can and will learn. The Holy Spirit is already working.

And so, praise God we shall continue to grow together spiritually as we continue to worship and gather together digitally. And so,

We shall call upon the power of the Holy Spirit.

We shall seek to love God and neighbor in all we do and strive to do.

We shall follow the well-trod path of the first disciples and apostles, who agreed they were in this for the duration, completely together in prayer, casting away anxiety everywhere they went by bearing witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ.

5-17-2020 If You Love Me

Thomas J Parlette

“If You Love Me”

John 14: 15-21

5/17/20

          Here are two statements about the world – see if they ring true for you. The first is this – “The World is a beautiful place.” And here’s the second – “The World is a terrible and dangerous place.”

          Both statements are true, don’t you think. It’s too bad that most of us are spending more of our time and energy lately thinking of the world as a terrible, dangerous and highly contagious place – but there is still beauty to be found. Both statements are true. And yet they seem to say the exact opposite thing.

          The world is a beautiful place – most of us can say that with no difficulty at all. The miracle of a baby’s birth, the splendor of a spectacular sunset, the wonder of music, poetry, art and drama – all of these affirm the beauty of the world in which we live.

          For years, Joseph Sittler taught theology at the University of Chicago. Late in his life, he slowly began to lose his eyesight. One of his friends asked him, “Joe, if you had your full sight back for just one afternoon, what would you go and see?” Without a moment’s hesitation he said, “The Chartres Cathedral in France. The glories of the blues in the Cathedral windows are so beautiful.”

          If you have ever beheld the beauty of the trees when they are ablaze in their fall foliage, then you can identify with Edna St. Vincent Millay when she wrote:

          “Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

          And but cry with color!

          …Lord, I do fear

          Thou hast made the world too beautiful this year.”

          If you have ever looked into the nighttime sky at the moon and the planets and the shimmering stars which hang down like lovely lanterns in God’s cosmic cathedral, then you know firsthand that the world is a beautiful place.

          But the world is also a terrible and dangerous place as well. Every earthquake, every tornado, every hurricane, every deadly virus, every bomb, every gunshot, every random act of violence, every life that is lost – all remind us that the world can be a terrible and dangerous place.

          If only we could choose one over the other, then we’d know how to live. If the world is beautiful, then we could embrace it. But if the world is terrible and dangerous, then we’d better fear it and guard ourselves against it.

          Like us, the Gospel of John struggles to make sense of the world. On the one hand, John affirms that the world is good and worthy of God’s love. After all, way back at the time of creation, God pronounced the world “good.” And in the fullness of time, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save it.” John wants us to know that the world is deeply loved by God.

          But the world is also a dangerous place. For one thing, the world is a dark place, which needs the light of Christ to shine in it. “The light shines in the darkness,” wrote John, “and the darkness did not overcome it.” For another thing, the world has rejected Christ. “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.” Can you see John’s struggle to make sense of the world? The world is not just a beautiful place, deeply loved by God; it is also a “God-less world” which has turned it’s back on Christ.

          You might say that John had a lover’s quarrel with the world. Robert Frost, the American poet, once said that about himself. One day Frost was walking through a cemetery looking at the tombstones. He grew interested in the words inscribed on each stone, which attempted to sum up the person’s life. Frost found himself wondering, “What epitaph would I choose for my own tombstone?” I don’t know how long he thought about it, but he came up with a good one. Written on his tombstone are the words – “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

          And so it was for the author of the Gospel of John. He too had a lover’s quarrel with the world. He knew that the early Christians should be engaged in the world through mission because, after all, this is God’s world, the world God loves, the world God sent Christ to save. But John also feared the corrupting influence of the world. He must have wondered, as many have wondered since – how can we Christians be IN the world without being OF the world? How can we live in the world without being swallowed up by the world? How can we live in different realms at once – the beautiful and the terrible – the godly and the ungodly.

          Of course, the early Christians were not the first ever to face such a problem. Hundreds of years before, the people of ancient Israel faced a similar struggle during what we’ve come to call the Babylonian Captivity, or Babylonian Exile. They had been dragged away from their homeland and forced to live as prisoners of war in far off Babylon. A beautiful poem from the Psalms recalls their ordeal:

          “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

          And I’m pretty sure you remember how they responded. “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” Indeed, how can anyone sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? How can we live in this beautiful but terrible world and still hold on to what is spiritual and sacred?

          Jesus knew that his disciples would face this very struggle in the world. So he gathered them in the Upper Room to prepare them. He knew that his time with them was winding down. Soon, he would go to the cross. Soon he would be put to death. Soon he would leave them all alone, alone in a terrible and dangerous world that would swallow them alive unless they could define themselves in terms that were distinct from the world around them. So there, in the Upper Room, he spoke to them tenderly, like they were children. He put before them both a challenge and a promise. The challenge was both simple and demanding. He stated the whole thing in just nine words: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

          Of course, not everybody likes the idea of commandments, or rules and regulations. Ever since Adam and Eve, we have struggled to decide – should we live by what God tells us to do, by the commandments God set before us? Or should we do our own thing and hope nobody is watching?

          Yet, as we mature, most of us begin to realize that the commandments are not just rigid rules to obey. They are also good and gracious gifts from God to order and regulate our lives and which help to shape our identity and define who we are and how we might live. Someone once said to Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment is the greatest? And Jesus answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest commandment, it comes first. The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On another occasion, Jesus said to his disciples, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.”

          Don’t you find it interesting that when Jesus spoke about obeying the commandments, he almost always spoke in terms of love. “If you love me, he said, “you will keep my commandments” – not out of obligation, not out of guilt, not out of fear, not even out of a desire to get to heaven – but out of love. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” That’s the challenge Jesus puts before – a demanding challenge to be sure.

          But the challenge is made easier because of the promise that comes with it. Listen closely, because it’s easy to miss. Jesus says, “You will not be left alone.” That’s the promise! Jesus doesn’t just leave us to our own devices to try to meet this outrageous challenge. No – “You are part of my family,” says Jesus. “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper, who will stay with you forever.” 

          There was once a young man who was asked to speak at his grandfather’s funeral. He told the congregation that even though he was adopted, he had always sensed that his grandfather loved him as much as the other grandkids, none of whom were adopted. To illustrate, the young man told of a time that he, his grandfather and his father all went to a baseball game together. Between innings, they bumped into a man who had been the grandfather’s business associate some years before. The man, not knowing that the grandson was adopted, looked at the three generations and said, “Wow, I can sure see the family resemblance. All of you look so much alike.” With that, the grandfather put his arm on his grandson’s shoulder and said simply, “Yes, we all do look alike, don’t we?”

          “At that moment,” recalled the young man, “I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my grandfather loved me unconditionally and that I was a part of the family.”

          As disciples, we are part of the family of Jesus Christ. He has adopted us into his family. He has given us the promise of his presence to guide us and sustain us as we venture out into the world – which we know is a beautiful yet dangerous place. He challenges us to live lives that give glory to the family name, the name of Christ, not by defining ourselves according to the world’s standards, but according to the standards of Christ. He challenges us to stand apart from the world and try to transform it.

          “If you love me,” says Jesus, “you will show that love by keeping my commandments.”

          May God be praised. Amen.

5-10-2020 What is Truth

Thomas J Parlette
“What is Truth”

John 14: 1-14

5/10/20 

          Believe it or not, there used to be a theological debate that raged in our society. And it played out in a most unusual arena. This debate was not in some ivy-covered institution of theological learning; nor was it a subject for the television pundits. No, the debate occured on the backs of people’s cars.

          It all began some years ago when people began to put a small fish symbol on the back of their cars. As you all know from our baptism ritual, the early Christians used the sign of the fish as a secret mark to identify their meeting places. Those early Christians were living in a time of great persecution and they needed to identify each other without giving themselves away. The fish symbol served that purpose perfectly, because the spelling of the Greek word for fish, “ichthus”, also formed an anagram which means “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” So every time those early christians used the fish symbol, they were making a statement of faith – Jesus Christ is God’s Son and my Savior.

          A few years back, a number of Christians started putting the fish symbol on the backs of their cars. Nothing very controversial about that, hardly the basis for a heated debate – although it did give rise to a pretty good “Seinfeld” episode where Elaine yanks the fish symbol off her boyfriend David Putty’s car. But the story didn’t stop there. The bumper stickers evolved. Some Christians began to display fish symbols, not with the word “ichthus” inside, but with the word “truth” instead. Often, these were the same Christians who appeared before local school boards insisting that creationism be taught in school, side by side with the theory of evolution. And suddenly the bumper sticker debate swung into high gear. That initial non-controversial fish spawned an entire school of fish. One of them featured a similar looking fish, but this fish had little feet and inside the fish was the word “Darwin.” Still another fish had a little dome over it’s head and inside this fish was the word “Alien.” That, it seems, was someone’s humorous suggestion of how human beings first came to Earth. Even our Jewish brothers and sisters got into the act. Some bumper stickers appeared in the shape of a fish and inside was the word “Gefilte”, as in gefilte fish.(1)

          But the bumper stick debate went to new level when one appeared which featured two fish, a big fish with the word “Truth” in it, and a small fish with the word “Darwin” in it. The big fish was devouring the small fish. In other words Truth- as faith defined it - was devouring science. In the great battle of the bumper stickers, biblical truth went head to head with scientific fact, and in the end one claim would devour the other. But does it really have to come to that.

          Rev. Albert Butzer, once wrote that if he were in the bumper sticker business, he would design one with two fish of equal size. One would have the word “ichthus” and the other would have the word “Darwin.” But he would have these fish facing each other, maybe even kissing – not devouring one another. For the truth claims of the Bible and the truth claims of science need not be mutually exclusive. Rather, they can co-exist, side by side, because the truths they proclaim are not contradictory, but rather, complementary.(2)

          While there lots of Christians who argue that the Bible is historically and scientifically accurate to every last detail, there are many other Christians, including most mainline Protestants, who believe that the Bible is not a scientific text at all. For example, Walter Brueggemann has written - “Creation, as understood in the Bible, seeks to explain nothing. Creation faith is rather a doxological response, a hymn of praise, to the wonder that I, that we, that the world exists.”(3)

          The point of the creation story is not to explain HOW God did it – but to simply point out that it was done. God created all that is – the world and everything in it, including us. Science tries to figure out the recipe and the sequence. But religion identifies the Source – God.

          Joseph Sittler, a prominent professor of Theology who used to teach at the University of Chicago, was both utterly serious and wonderfully whimsical when he wrote- “In the creation story we are told who we are. We are given our identity, and if we could understand that, we would stop worrying about whether the antelopes or the cantaloupes came in a certain order.”(4)

          The problem for many people, Christians included, is what do we do with the other truth claims in the Bible. If, as some conservatives believe, we are going to disregard the facts of the Creation story – how are we going to stand by the other claims the Bible makes, claims about how we should live, how we should treat one another and whether Jesus was the Son of God, our savior, risen from the dead? If we don’t take the first story in the Bible as the literal, scientific truth, where do we go from there? How should we understand the rest of the truth claims in the Bible? Doesn’t Pontius Pilate speak for many of us when he asks, “What is truth?” How should we reply?

          In one of his books, Canadian theologian Douglass John Hall offers this helpful distinction. He says that the essence of our Christian belief is not that the words of the Bible are true in and of themselves. Rather, what is true is that to which the Bible points.(5) In it’s own way, the Gospel of John – the book of the New Testament that has the most to say about truth – draws the same distinction.

          The sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of John affirms that the “Holy Spirit will guide us into all truth.” Notice that the text does not say that we have all of the truth already in the Bible or elsewhere. Nor does it claim to be the truth itself. Rather, the text affirms that the Spirit will lead us or guide us into the truth.

          Certainly we have seen this principle at work in the world of science. For centuries humans believed that the sun revolved around the earth. But in the 16th century, a polish astronomer named Copernicus said just the opposite – the earth actually revolved around the sun, the earth was not the center of things. Less than 100 years later the Italian scientist and inventor Galileo supported the Copernican view of the universe, a position that earned him the wrath of the Roman Catholic church. Although Galileo considered himself a loyal catholic, the church did not. They tried him, found him guilty of heresy, and confined him to house arrest. It took the church some 350 years to repent of it’s mistake and restore Galileo to his position as one of the pioneers of modern science. For years the church had clung to a truth claim that turned out to be false, and ultimately the Spirit led Galileo, and later the church into truth.

          We can see that in the life of faith as well. On more than one occasion, we Christians have changed our minds as the Spirit has led us to discover some deeper dimension of the truth. Consider for example, the issue of slavery. For hundreds of years many Christians believed that slavery was a God-given and biblically justified right – says so right in the Bible, “Slaves be subject to your masters.” But we’ve changed our minds about that as the Spirit has guided us into truth.

          For hundreds of years, Christians believed that women should not have any leadership roles in the church – some denominations still believe that. But many have changed their minds about this too as the Spirit has led them into truth, and as a result our denomination, the PCUSA has a great many ordained women as pastors and elders and deacons.

          All of this by way of saying that the Bible continues to point us towards the truth that is still our ahead of us in the future. That truth is bigger, more complex and more mysterious than any book – yes, even the Bible – can contain. There are some Christians who worship the Bible. We Presbyterians and most mainline Protestants do not worship the Bible. Rather, we worship the One to whom the Bible points. And that leads us to the other claim that the Gospel of John makes about the truth.

          In this passage from John 14, we have a conversation between Jesus and the disciples, in which Jesus says he is the truth. He doesn’t say that he points to the truth, although his life may be the most truthful life ever lived; nor that his teachings sound like the truth, although many of them do. Rather, the scripture makes the staggering claim that Jesus himself IS the truth. Do you remember the setting for this claim? Jesus is preparing the disciples for his departure. Soon he will go to the cross. He tells them he is going to prepare a place for them in one of the rooms of God’s house. He assures them they know the way. Thomas pipes up “Lord we don’t know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus says to him, “I am the way, and the truth and the life; no one goes to the Father except by me.”

          What are we to do with that claim, particularly in these pluralistic times of tolerance in which we live? After all, many of the people we encounter in daily life don’t identify God with Jesus as we do, but with Buddha or Mohammed or the God of Abraham or someone else. Can we continue to believe that Jesus is the truth, especially in a world of many legitimate religions?

          As we saw with the debate about the fish bumper stickers, people tend to take sides and fall into one category or the other. On one side of the debate will be those who insist that Jesus is the truth and that he is the only way to God. They will point to the words of this text and insist that all other religious truth claims are false. Follow Jesus or risk eternal damnation, they say, because he is the only way to God. While there is a great deal in that position that may be true, if we allow that belief to turn into arrogance, the result might just be the perversion of the very Gospel we proclaim. In the past, such a triumphant, exclusive approach launched the Crusades, burned heretics at the stake, and oppressed religious minorities – none of which seems consistent with the Jesus the New Testament proclaims as the truth.

          The other side of the debate insists that Jesus was but one prophet among many, that ultimately all religions lead down the same path, that in the name of tolerance and inclusivity, we must never insist that Jesus is the only truth. But as Douglass John Hall asks, are these the only choices available to us – on the one hand to extol Jesus by excluding everybody who doesn’t name that name; and on the other hand – to minimize Jesus’ place in the Christian faith in order to appear more accepting and inclusive?(6) Are those the only choices?

          Leslie Newbiggin was a minister of the United Reformed Church of the United Kingdom who spent many years as a missionary in South India. Listen to what he has to say about Jesus and truth:

          “The Church proclaims that Jesus is Lord. He is Lord not only of the Church but of the world, not only in the religious life, but in all of life, not merely over some people but over all peoples… And yet, we do not know all that it means to say that Jesus is Lord. We still have to learn as we go along… We are missionaries, but we are also learners. We do not have all the truth, but we know the way along which truth is to be sought and found.”(7) For us, that way is Jesus.

          So what is truth? What is the truth about Jesus? For Christians, it is that Jesus himself is the truth. He lived the truth. Jesus is the way. He lived the way. And Jesus is the life. He lived the life God intended. We don’t for sure everything that means yet, especially as it pertains to other religions with valid faith claims.

          But we do know that if we follow the way in which Jesus guides us and live the way Jesus taught us – we will be led by the Spirit into the truth, and eventually to our place in God’s heavenly mansion.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved April 24th, 2020.

2.    Ibid…

3.    Ibid…

4.    Ibid…

5.    Ibid…

6.    Ibid…

7.    Ibid…

5-3-2020 The Best Revenge

Thomas J Parlette

“The Best Revenge”

1 Peter 2: 18-25

5/3/20

          There’s a good chance this has happened to you. You’re having dinner in a nice quiet restaurant, or enjoying a movie on the big screen (back in the days when we could do things like that), or maybe just sitting quietly in the doctor’s office reading a magazine – when the silence is shattered by some inconsiderate individual nearby carrying on a long cell phone conversation at a volume level that nobody within 50 feet can ignore. And you are irritated.

          Now, you’re not the type to make a scene and get into a public altercation – but wouldn’t it be cool if you had in your pocket some sort of electronic jamming device that would allow you to shut down that cell phone with a touch of a button?

          Well, if you’d like to be able to do that, and I know I’m not alone in that desire, I’ve got good news for you. You may soon be able to get online and buy such a gadget for a few bucks on Amazon.

          According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Revenge by Gadget”, there’s an emerging subcategory in the electronics world that is churning out little gizmos designed to neutralize annoying behavior. Here’s just a sampling of things now available:

1.    A $50 device that quiets other people’s dogs by answering their barks with an electronic squeal that humans can’t hear. And it’s disguised as a birdhouse so the dog’s owners won’t know that you are the culprit.

2.    You can also get a luminescent screen that fits in your vehicle’s rear window that, at the touch of a button, will flash any one of 5 messages, along with a computer generated face to match, kind of like an emoji. I will leave it to your imagination to figure out what some of the messages say. Word is that the company has received many requests to add images of certain hand gestures to their options as well.

3.    There is also a jacket that, when activated with a controller, delivers an electric shock to anyone who touches the person wearing it. These jackets have drawn some strong interest from women who wish to send a message to certain men with wandering hands.

That all sounds nice, doesn’t it? I bet you heard at least gadget on that list that piqued your interest. Revenge can be sweet – but it can also be costly.

          There’s an old fable about two merchants who were fierce competitors and had grown to hate each other.

          One day, the Lord sent an angel to one of the merchants with a remarkable offer. “The Lord God has chosen to give you a great gift,” said the angel. “Whatever you desire, you will receive. Ask for riches, a long life, healthy children, whatever you want – and the wish will be granted.”

          “But there is one catch. Whatever you receive, your competitor will get twice as much. If you ask for a thousand gold coins – he will receive two thousand. If you ask for fame – he will twice as famous as you. This is God’s way of teaching you a lesson – you ought not hate one another.”

          The merchant thought about the angel’s offer for a minute. “You will give me anything I request?” he asked.

          “Yes,” said the angel.

          “And my competitor will receive twice as much?”

“Yes.”

The merchants face grew hard and he said, “Then I ask that you strike me blind in one eye.”

                   Revenge often sounds sweet, but it’s cost can be high.

          All of which leads us to this passage for today, for revenge would seem to be at the center of these verses from 1st Peter.

          This is a difficult piece of scripture we have here. It’s one of those passages that scholars call “a problem text” or “a hard sayings passage – for obvious reasons. In fact, if I were following the lectionary to the letter this morning, we would not have heard verse 18, the part about “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters…”

          The problem arises because this passage has been used to justify oppression – oppression of slaves, oppression of women, oppression of anyone in an abusive situation.

          But that’s not really the point here. To say this passage encourages or condones submission in situations we CAN and SHOULD do something about, is to misread and misuse the scripture.

          These words from Peter are first and foremost practical advice as to how Christians should live in an alien and often hostile culture. What we have this morning is NOT and ideal we should aspire to, but rather a nuts and bolts analysis of how to get along in a situation you can not control – something all of us are struggling with right now.

          Keep in mind, in the ancient world, it was not a question of whether slavery was right or wrong – it simply was. It was a fact of life.

          In our modern context, it is almost universally accepted that forced servitude is wrong – submission to abusive behavior is wrong. As Christians, we need to speak out against injustice, abuse and oppression whenever we see it. That is true. It is biblical and it is right.

          But here in 1st Peter this morning, Peter is writing to Christian slaves – there’s no getting around it. In the late first century AD, when the Christian church spread from Palestine into the larger Roman Empire – a greater and greater percentage of the church were slaves. In the ancient world slaves could be anybody. Slaves were a legal commodity, bought and sold. Some were born into slavery, others were captured in war, and some even sold themselves into slavery to pay off their debts. In the first century AD, when Peter writes, about a quarter of the people in the Roman Empire were slaves. Such slaves could be doctors, building contractors or business managers, having great responsibilities but receiving little money and almost no rights.

          One of the big questions the church faced was the problem of how Christian slaves were to live. Were the supposed to go about their daily life of service, or did their faith teach them to revolt? At the same time, the church was beginning to face quite a bit of persecution. So Peter’s instructions walk the line between staying faithful to the Gospel and gaining acceptance and legitimacy for the young faith community. To revolt would mean an end to the church. But the faith also taught that God was the Master. “What do we do? How do we live?” was the question of the day.

          And for Peter, the best thing to do was to use Jesus as a model. Follow Jesus’ example, and you’ll be fine.

          That has always been the basic message of this passage. In whatever situation you find yourself, be imitators of Christ. Acknowledge the legitimate authority over you, do your duties, follow the stay at home orders and social distancing policies in place – but be imitators of Christ.  Participate in things that bring healing, rather than things that cause disease. As Peter says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”

          One of the things that brought that view sharply into focus more than a century ago was a novel by Charles Sheldon called “In His Steps.” In fact, the book begins with the pastor of a fictional congregation working on a sermon from these verses here today. Sheldon’s book was written in 1897, and it became a blockbuster, selling over 8 million copies – and it never has really gone out of print since.

          The book tells the story of what happened in the lives of members of a church after they committed themselves to approach the decisions in their workplaces and other arenas of life by asking themselves what Jesus would do and then trying to follow his example. The results were life-changing for the members of that congregation and their community.

          That was only a story, of course, but the spark for the book came from the author’s own experience. At the time, Sheldon was a minister in Topeka, Kansas – but before that, he had been in social work. As an experiment, he once disguised himself as an unemployed printer. He then walked the streets of Topeka to see what would happen. What he discovered was indifference among many professing Christians toward someone in need. That shocked and saddened him, but it also led him to start imagining what it would be like if Christians did not compartmentalize their lives and allowed their Christianity to be equally applied in all situations. And his book, In His Steps, was born.

          You probably remember the WWJD campaign that was all the rage a number of years ago. It swept through the culture so completely that it quickly became the subject of ridicule – and honestly, that’s too bad. It stood for “What Would Jesus Do,” and it was an outgrowth of “In His Steps, and this passage from Peter, “you should follow in his steps.”

          The real subject, then, of this passage is not turning the other Cheech or submitting in all situations. The subject isn’t even saying “NO” to vengeful acts, by word or gadget. No, the real subject here is following Jesus – for real. It means looking at his footsteps, recorded in the stories of scripture, and doing our best to put our feet where Jesus’ have been. It means modelling our lives after his, and doing what Jesus would have done.

          So the best revenge is actually no revenge at all.

          The best revenge is following Jesus for real.

          May that be the model for our lives.

          May God be praised. Amen.

4-27-2020 Home and Emmaus

Luke 24:13-35

Rev. Jay Rowland

Sunday April 26, 2020

Many folks these days are doing a lot more walking. Springtime always has this effect on us. But ever since the stay-at-home restriction was issued a couple weeks ago I’ve seen many more people walking in my neighborhood. The image and activity of walking is a wonderful touch-stone for today’s story from Luke’s gospel--often referred to as the Walk to Emmaus. Peter Hanson provides a wonderful entre to this story, helping us enter into this story given the current global crisis (from the d365 daily devotional for Wed 4/22/20 d365.org):

Imagine you’re walking with a friend, keeping your “social distance,” comparing thoughts about our current situation, sort of like Cleopus, when suddenly, someone interrupts your conversation to ask what you’re talking about. But when you tell him, he honestly replies,

“Kah … Kah-row... kah-what-now?”

“How do you not know about this?” you ask. “This world-stopping virus that has millions of people very sick--and killed thousands; closed restaurants and schools, the reason why there’s so much space between us as we walk along--uh, by the way, would you please back up a few steps?---any of this sound familiar ??? No????”

We’d probably be rolling our eyes and biting our tongues with such a stranger at this point. And that’s Cleopas’ strong reaction to the stranger who intrudes upon his conversation with his companion. But he quickly settles down and treats the stranger with compassion rather than contempt, patiently sharing what he knows--including their devastation, their dashed hopes and the equally-hard-to-comprehend news from the women at the tomb.

We may perhaps be in different “places” from one another in our response to and our coping with this pandemic. The walk to Emmaus is a vivid reminder of the importance of talking to each other, sharing our own stories of sorrow, unmet expectations, and dashed hopes; our sense of loss, our stresses, our fears and apprehension. Sharing and talking it out is a way for us to keep watch together for hope and for new beginnings as we walk this walk together. For the Lord surely blesses such conversations, using them to awaken our compassion and deepen our connection with each other--at a time when this is what we most need to keep our hope and our humanity alive.

That’s what I see happening between the two companions on the walk to Emmaus. They’re processing everything that’s just happened--the awful death of Jesus on Friday, his public assassination/crucifixion by the State, but also the perplexing account of the women at the tomb that Jesus is … alive(!?????) It’s all just too much to take in. So they’re walking … and talking … with plenty of long pauses in between. Richard Swanson points out the significance of the distance between Jerusalem to Emmaus Luke identifies for us: it’s a two-hour walk; then another two-hour walk back to Jerusalem. Many folks appreciate how therapeutic a good walk can be. It helps clear the cluttered mind. Therapeutic but also sacred. There’s something sacred about the walk Cleopas and his companion are on. Just like any and every walk we’ve taken together or alone since the invasion of COVID-19.

As the two companions walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they are walking toward someplace like home, and if not home, then perhaps at least some distance between themselves and the place their hope turned to despair, the place where the world came crashing down on them, and also, strangely, the place where they were told something too-good-to-be-true (rationally speaking), too good to let themselves hope … All of this swirling in their heads and in their conversation as their feet take step after step forward. They are moving toward some “place” of stability, someplace familiar where they might recognize life the way it used to be, some “place” where they might at least be recognized or better, recognizable to themselves--a very human response to the trauma and the powerlessness they have experienced.

In The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner identifies Emmaus as the place to run to when we have lost hope or don’t know what to do, a place of escape, of forgetting, of giving up, of deadening our senses and our minds and maybe our hearts, too. For some that may be home. For others, it may simply be any place which offers relief from the burdens of life. Buechner even asserts that for some, Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday.1

Wherever that “place” may be for any of us, it’s a deeply human response to trauma and danger--this impulse to move, to get to our Emmaus. And if our Emmaus is church then praise God! For at its best, faith community, it seems to me, is that rare place where we truly experience that we are life companions. Fun fact: the word “companion” is rooted in the Latin words “with” (com) and “bread” (panis).2

The resurrection appearances of Jesus are, above all, powerful glimpses into faith community, that is, our community of believers, doubters, and struggle-ers gathering and breaking apart, and gathering again, coming together to share experiences, memories, difficulties and hope. Most importantly, faith community is the place where we are gathered and claimed by the promises and actions of Jesus. Whenever we gather together to worship we seek and shine the light of Scripture on our struggles in order to find new, deeper understandings about what’s going on in our lives.

And so, after spending considerable time ... and miles … and words … seeking some intellectual understanding of all that has happened, when at last Cleopas and his unnamed “companion” sit down together at table and break bread with the stranger, at last they come to see with their hearts what (Who) was with them all along.

Next time we share communion together, remember, the word companion literally means, “with bread.” We are companions, we are a faith community whose main identity is “with bread”—Bread of Life. Without this identity established deep in our “dna,” in our very marrow, there’s nothing to distinguish us from any other community group no matter how wonderful or helpful such groups can be. Our community was formed and fashioned in and around a particular community narrative.

First the disciples’ world is turned upside down by the life of Jesus. Then their re-oriented world is suddenly obliterated by his death. None of them has had time to absorb it all. Think about that. The first days after the death of someone close to us, the first days are a blur, a haze, an effort to simply function—to get through the day. Others need us or expect us to be functional. That’s where all the disciples are after Jesus is assassinated. They are living in that blurry haze when the strange, new stories of Jesus’ appearance begin to spread among them.

There are times in our lives when we are shaken to the core of our foundation—what we believe in, what we count on—too fast to process and integrate. This leaves us disoriented. Lost. Faith community, even a couple of companions, helps re-gather us, re-orient us, helping us move toward some peace and balance, which then helps us begin to re-build a new foundation, together.

This is one of those times. This is partly why the pandemic is causing so much wide-spread anxiety and stress previously unimagined. The lethal threat of this lurking virus has shaken our foundation--our orientation to life and the world around us. It has challenged our presumptions about safety and security and justice, and mortality.

Like the disciples long ago, our world has been flipped upside-down. We’re suddenly trying to integrate new information and experience. Like the disciples after Jesus’ death, many of us feel especially anxious and uncertain about the future. COVID-19 is an invisible enemy, impossible to ignore or flee or combat. And so in the midst of all the anxiety, stress, and fear, we’re not sure what to believe, or what to do, or think, or expect, or even hope for. And so we find ourselves today on that road to Emmaus with two disciple-companions who were themselves trying to make sense of their world after following the One who had brought new meaning, new hope, new trust to their lives.

In the end, their experience of the Risen Christ was fleeting (“and suddenly their eyes were opened and they recognized him. Then he vanished from their sight”). Ours tends to be fleeting too. But perhaps that’s by design. Perhaps it is only afterwards, looking through the rear-view mirror that we are able to recognize and integrate the sacred and the holy better than we can in the moment. I am convinced that God is speaking to us today, in the midst of this global crisis, in the midst of our collective disorientation, through the encounter of Cleopas and the earliest Christians with the Risen Jesus, but also through our own fleeting encounters with Him too, in the breaking of bread, in the sharing of our stories, in our study of Scripture.

Because Scripture tells us more than something that happened to other people, long ago and far away. Scripture actually opens us to the amazing somethings, the wonderful appearings, the Life-sustaining Presence of God happening here, today, in our lives, too. If we can allow our eyes to be opened, then maybe our hearts, too, will burn within us. As we continue to struggle with questions we just can’t answer on our own, let alone understand, when we are shaken to our core by what’s happening around us, Scripture tells us we will find restoration and life together, often walking among us, as together we walk and talk and work our way with Jesus toward home and Emmaus.

 _______________________

Notes:

1 This sermon integrates material by Kathryn Matthews, www.ucc.org/worship_samuel_sermon_seeds/

2 companion root words, Latin, com- (“with”) and panis (“bread, food”), www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/companion

4-12-2020 He is Not Here

Thomas J Parlette

“He is not here”

Mark 16: 1-8

4/12/20, Easter

Dr. John Trent tells about a wedding video he once saw. The video was shot from the back of the church looking up the aisle toward the bride and groom. Because of the camera angle, you could see several members of the congregation. Suddenly, during the vows, a man jumped up out of his pew and yelled “Yes, Yes, Yes!”, as he pumped his fist in the air. Then he froze, realized where he was and slid down in his seat – and then very slowly pulled some ear phones out of his ears. It turns out he had been listening to the Vikings/Packers football game, and the Vikings had just scored a touchdown.

Easter is that kind of day for us, isn’t it? A day to pump our fists in the air and “Yes, Yes, Yes!” Yes is what Easter is all about. God’s yes to humanity. God’s yes to Jesus and all Jesus taught us about the meaning of life. God’s yes to the victory of life over death, of love over hate, of faith over fear, of hope over despair. Everything about Easter says, “Yes, Yes, Yes.” We are filled with joy, and we can’t hold back the rejoicing.

Eugene Smith was a minister who never sang much because he didn’t have much of a voice and couldn’t read music. But one year, on Easter Sunday, his daughter persuaded him to sing along with the choir when it came time for the Hallelujah Chorus. And he got really caught up in the last part, when they were singing all those hallelujahs. He got so caught up and wasn’t paying attention when the director stopped, the choir stopped and organ went silent. And he let out one final, solo “Hallelujah.” Afterwards he said, “They stopped too soon. Since that Easter Sunday I’ve been going around with a couple of Hallelujah’s stuck inside me just waiting to get out.”

That’s Easter for us. A time to celebrate Christ’s victory over death. God’s “Yes” to life fills us with so many Hallelujahs that we have no room for them all. Christ is Risen – He is not here – Yes!- Hallelujah!

But then we turn to Mark, and we find something very different. There’s not much Easter joy in Mark, is there? There’s not a lot of celebration going on in this text. Most New Testament scholars agree that Mark ended his Gospel right there at verse 8. If you were following along in your own Bible, you may have noticed that there are 2 different ending provided in most translations – a shorter ending, and a longer ending. These two different endings are found in some, but not all ancient manuscripts of Mark, some of which are considered to be reliable copies, and others somewhat less reliable. They represent an attempt by the early church to give proper closure to Mark’s gospel. It does just seem to end too abruptly, doesn’t it?

The women come to the tomb, hoping to anoint Jesus’ body with spices and they come upon a mysterious young man, dressed in a white robe, who announces the resurrection.

“He is not here. Don’t worry. He has gone ahead of you, to Galilee, just as he told you.”

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” And that’s it. That’s all Mark wrote.

Not a very satisfying ending, is it? You can understand why scribes may have tried to add a sentence or two, just to round off the story. Tom Long has written that “Mark’s ending not only fails to provide a proper narrative closure, it also lurches to an awkward grammatical stop. A more literal translation would read, “To no one anything they said; afraid they were for…” and it trails off there in mid-sentence. It’s as if Mark, sounding remarkably like Yoda – “to no one they spoke… afraid they were…” – it’s as if he were dragged away from his writing desk while trying to finish the story.

An unsatisfying ending, badly written. A lot less joy in Mark than we might expect. Not much celebration here either. The fist pumping “Yes” just isn’t there, and in it’s place is a sense of discomfort and uncertainty.

In his commentary on Mark, Donald Juel tells the story of one of his students who had memorized the whole of the Gospel of Mark for a dramatic staged reading for a live audience. After careful study, the student had decided to go with the scholarly consensus regarding the ending. At his first performance, however, after he spoke that ambiguous last verse, he stood there awkwardly shifting from one foot to other, the audience waiting for more, waiting for closure, waiting for a proper ending. Finally, after several anxious seconds, he said, “Amen” – and made his exit. The relieved audience applauded loudly and appreciatively. Upon reflection though, the student realized that by providing the audience a satisfying conclusion, his “Amen” had actually betrayed the dramatic intention of the text. So at the next performance, when he reached to final verse, he simply paused for a half a beat – and left the stage in silence. “The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience was obvious,” said Juel, “and as people exited… the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the non-ending.”

Instead joy and celebration, Mark leaves us with discomfort and uncertainty. And that exactly what he wants. After the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection, we are left wondering, “Ok, now what? What do we do now?” So why does Mark do this? What’s he up to with this non-ending?

Well, let’s look for a clue in Mark’s story. What does Jesus do after his resurrection? Where does he go?

Interestingly, he doesn’t go right back into Jerusalem. Doesn’t that strike you as a bit odd? Wouldn’t you expect that Jesus would go back to Jerusalem, the major city in the region, the site of his humiliation and disgrace, to celebrate his resurrection? Wouldn’t you think that Jesus would go right back to Pontius Pilate and show him what a mistake he’d made? But he doesn’t do that. Mark tells us that “He is not here. Jesus goes ahead of you – back to Galilee.”

Mark isn’t concerned with giving us a happy ending. He doesn’t seem to care about wrapping up his loose ends into a nice, neat package. Mark isn’t interested in a celebration – at least not the kind of celebration we expect. Instead, Mark is looking to leave us with something else. Mark wants to leave us with a charge. By saying, “He is not here. He goes ahead of you to Galilee.” – Mark wants to leave us with a challenge and a mission.

First of all, consider that phrase “Jesus goes ahead of you.” In his death and resurrection, Jesus goes ahead of us into the great unknown of death and conquers it’s power. Every once in awhile, someone asks me, “Why do we say that Jesus descended into Hell in the Apostles Creed. Why did Jesus go to hell. It’s a good question. For many years the church has believed in an idea called “the harrowing of hell.” It’s the idea that in the three days that Jesus was dead, between his crucifixion and his resurrection – he went to the place of the dead, preached to the spirits entombed there, and led them out. That way, everyone who had ever lived had the opportunity to hear the Gospel. That idea found it’s way into our theology in the Apostle’s Creed, where we affirm our belief that Jesus descended into hell – the very depth of human pain and suffering and sin. Thus the church affirmed that there is no corner of creation, no forgotten part, no over-looked person. Jesus is going on before us – even to the depths of hell, to conquer the power of sin and death. He goes there before us to save us.

And now consider where Jesus goes after his resurrection – He goes back to Galilee. Why? What’s in Galilee? What’s so special about Galilee?

Well, to be honest – there’s not much in Galilee. There’s nothing particularly special in Galilee. It’s just a place where regular people make their living – fishing, farming or herding sheep – making their own clothes, preparing their own meals, just going about the daily routine of life. There’s nothing special about Galilee.

And maybe that’s precisely the point!

On the first day of his eternal life, Jesus goes back to sight of his early ministry, he goes back to the beginning. Jesus goes back to the place where his disciples were just learning the ropes, where he taught and healed and traveled the countryside, preaching about God’s Kingdom. He goes back to Galilee.

And that’s where the disciples were supposed to meet him. “There you will see him, just as he told you,” says Mark. It’s as if Mark’s gospel story is on a loop, repeating itself over and over and over again. I

n the first chapter, Mark wrote “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the Good News of God.” Now, after the resurrection, instead of celebrating Jesus’ triumph over the grave – Mark starts the story over again. He drops us off right at the beginning. In other words, reader, listener – this story isn’t over. Leave the tomb, he is not here. Leave the tomb and go back and read it again, listen to it again. In fact, live it again! Now that you have been to the cross and to the tomb – Live the Gospel. Start over again, in your own Galilee. Live the Gospel again in your own time, in your own place, in your own hometown. Live the Gospel again – for he is not here.

Confronted with the announcement of the resurrection, the women and the disciples didn’t know what to do. They were amazed – but they were also terrified. They didn’t immediately understand that Jesus’ resurrection was really the beginning of life of discipleship – not merely a celebration of eternal life.

It’s like something that Max Otto once wrote. He says, “Along the upper reaches of the Ohio River, where the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains hem in one of America’s most beautiful streams, you sometimes awake at daybreak to find that a heavy mist has blotted out the landscape, leaving only a narrow circle of visibility. When this happens, you resign yourself to the weather and wait for a change – or you may do the work that you have on hand, with the best cheer you can muster, calling out to the neighbor whose shadowy form you can just barely see. If you keep busy, the mist rises. You see the River rolling on toward the mighty Mississippi. Then you see the opposite shore, the houses of the city, the taller buildings, the towers of schools, the steeples of the churches. Slowly the mist climbs the hills, hangs for a little while, like a veil on the summit, then vanishes, disclosing a blue sky. And the work you began in the fog, you continue in the sunlight.”

The disciples were in a fog following the crucifixion and death of Jesus – even after his resurrection, the fog lingered. The fear and the terror, the discomfort and the uncertainty still hung about them like a mist.

But back in Galilee, things cleared up. The fog lifted to reveal the light of a beautiful new day. What they began in the fog, they continued in the sunlight. The fog has lifted – a new day has begun.

For today we celebrate the resurrection of our savior, Jesus Christ – the one who has gone before us and conquered the power of sin and death. We pump our fists in the air and shout “Yes!” as the Hallelujahs come spilling out!

But we are also given a challenge, we are given a mission – for Jesus also went before us back to Galilee. We are called to go back to everyday life. Go back to the beginning, says Mark. Easter is more than a celebration of eternal life. Easter is the celebration of a new life – of discipleship. Not the celebration we might expect – but a celebration all the same.

Read the story one more time, my friends. Better yet – live the story. Live the story of the man from Galilee. For hew is not here. He goes before us, back into life. Come, live as a disciple of our Risen Lord, Jesus Christ. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen.

4-5-2020 The Public Language of our God

Thomas J Parlette

“The Public Language of our God

Mark 11: 1-11

4/5/20, Palm Sunday 

“We’re good at planning!

Give us a task force

And a project

And we’re off and running!

No trouble at all!

Going to the village and finding the colt,

Even negotiating with the owners

Is right down our alley.

And how we love a parade!

In a frenzy of celebration

We gladly focus on Jesus

And generously throw our coats

And palms in his path.

And we can shout praise

Loudly enough

To make the Pharisees complain.

It’s all so good!

It’s in between parades that

We don’t do so well.

From Sunday to Sunday

We forget our Hosannas.

Between parades

The stones will have to shout

Because we don’t.

          Ann Weems wrote those words in her book “Kneeling in Jerusalem.” Between the parades, we don’t do so well. Between this triumphant parade into Jerusalem and the somber parade – the walk of shame down the Via Dolorosa on Good Friday – we don’t do so well. Somewhere along the way our Hosannas are forgotten.

                Today we jump into the story of Holy Week as we find it in the Gospel of Mark. Mark is the earliest of the 4 Gospels – the one that all the other writers seemed to have available to them as a reference. It’s also the shortest, the most “bare bones” retelling of the Gospel. Things happen very quickly in Mark. The language is simple – direct – sparse. There is not as much literary flair in Mark, and some of the most beloved Gospel stories are nowhere to be found. There is no birth narrative, no Good Samaritan, no Prodigal Son. There are bits and pieces of the Sermon on the Mount – but nothing like what Matthew gives us. In Mark, we don’t find the expressive language of Luke, the Old Testament references of Matthew, or the other-worldly imagery of John. Mark just gives us the facts of Jesus’ life, simple and direct – from his baptism to his death – and he does it in half the time that Matthew, Luke and John need to tell the story.

          As a result, many scholars over the years have thought of Mark’s gospel as rather simplistic. Mark earned the reputation of being a bit of a “theological lightweight” compared with it’s 3 cousins. For many years, biblical scholars have gravitated to the longer, more complex gospels as their area of concentration. Mark just seemed to simple.

          But sometimes, simple is best. Sometimes the best stories are the shortest ones. Mark packs a lot into every word he writes. He is sparse – yes. But Mark is still quite profound.

          For instance, this morning’s passage – the triumphal entry into Jerusalem – has two features that we shouldn’t overlook. According to Ched Myers: This procession is the opening round of the struggle over the character of messianic politics.”

          First of all, the people went ahead of Jesus and shouted out their belief that this ancestor of David would restore the temple, the Romans were history and the Lord’s Kingdom was coming. Then parade went first. We have no idea how long after, but Mark uses the word “then” – as if Jesus was separated from the crowd, riding by himself, keeping some distance between himself and the crowd’s expectations. Just one word – but it’s packed with meaning.

          Secondly, Jesus’ next stop is the temple itself. When John tells this story, he has Jesus clear out the moneychangers at this point – but not Mark. We can still hear the crowd chanting “Hosanna” in the background, believing that Jesus – as the Messiah – will use force to take back the temple and establish God’s reign. But that’s not what Mark tells us. Here – Jesus goes to the temple, he looks around a bit… and does nothing. Nothing Happens. He just looks around and heads back to Bethany. Again, just a few words – but they are packed with meaning.

          As Ched Myers points out, “Many have puzzled over this verse, complaining that it adds nothing to the narrative; but this is precisely it’s power – Nothing Happens. Mark has drawn the reader into traditional messianic symbols, only to suddenly abort the mission. This prepares us for the shock when Jesus does intervene in the temple – not to restore, but to disrupt it’s operations.”

          Perhaps that’s why we don’t do so well between parades. It’s too hard to deal with the shock and disappointment over the public language of God. We expect Jesus to come and solve everything. We expect Jesus to come and put everything right that is wrong. We expect Jesus to come and throw out the Roman armies and the corrupt politicians, heal the sick, wire out cancer and the coronavirus, cure Aids, alleviate our sorrows, eliminate our griefs, and stomp out all the sufferings and pains of life. We stand with the crowd and we expect that Jesus will ACT like the Messiah we EXPECT.

          The story is told that when Queen Victoria lived in Balmoral Castle in Scotland, she sometimes liked to walk through the surrounding countryside incognito – no guards, no ladies-in-waiting, just John Brown, her faithful servant, following at a discreet distance. One day, while on one of her walkabouts, the Queen came across a flock of sheep being driven by a young boy. The Queen accidentally got in the way, and the boy shouted, “Hey, old lady, get out of the way!”

          The Queen smiled, said nothing, and moved on. But her servant, John Brown, hurried up to the boy and scolded him, “How dare you, you just insulted the Queen.”

          To which the boy responded, “Well if she expects to be treated like a Queen, she ought to dress like a Queen!”

          That’s how the crowd in Jerusalem felt. Perhaps that’s what we all feel sometimes. “Jesus, if you want to us to treat you like God, then act like God. Let’s see some of that righteous power and glory we’ve heard so much about. Come wipe out this pandemic and heal those who are suffering.”

          But Jesus gives us a very different demonstration of the public language of God. Indeed Jesus himself is the public language of our God. In Jesus – his life, his ministry, his actions and his attitude – God speaks to us. As William Willimon says:

“We wanted Jesus to come into town on a warhorse – but Jesus rode a donkey.

 We wanted Jesus to go up to Capitol Hill and fix all the political problems – but he went to the Temple to pray instead.

We wanted Jesus to get organized, mobilize his forces, get the revolution going and set things right – but Jesus gathered with his friends in a quiet upper room, broke bread and drank wine.

We wanted Jesus to go head-to-head with the powers that be – but he just hung there, on a Friday from noon till three, with hardly a word.

It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t do anything; it was that Jesus didn’t do the things we wanted him to do. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t intervene; it was that Jesus rode in on a donkey.”

          It’s not that nothing happens here in Mark. It’s just that what happens is different from what we might expect, it’s different from what we are prepared for.

          Back in the 1990’s, a couple of filmmakers went over to East Germany to make a documentary about the Berlin Wall. The filmmaker asked many of the government officials how it had all happened – this seemingly spontaneous movement of the people that in a few short weeks led to the demise of the Berlin Wall and the eventual collapse of East Germany’s once invincible security apparatus.

          What the filmmakers heard was that it began, oddly enough, in the church. In St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, worshippers had been quietly praying for freedom for over 40 years. Their prayer meeting ultimately grew so large that on October 8th, 1989, over 70,000 people filled the streets. A former security officer spoke about his desire to use force to put down the rebellion, but how, in the end, all he could do was stare in amazement at the vast crowd in front of his headquarters. He said, “We were prepared for everything – everything except candles and prayers.”

          The people spoke in a language that the government didn’t expect. The public language of God is not what we expect either. The public language of God, expressed in Jesus, is all about showing power in a different way, it’s about showing power by sharing the suffering of his people – not simply wiping it away.

          As Paul Claudel says, “Jesus did not come to explain suffering or take it away. He came to fill it with his presence.”

          He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, suffering humiliation and torture, and died on a cross as the public language of a God who suffers with us.

          As Robert Capon says, “God is not like an over-eager car mechanic who roams about night and day ready to pounce upon us motorists in distress, fix the transmission, and send us on our way. God id more like the hitchhiker who comes upon us on the side of the road and sits in the car with us through the night, weeping with us, and showing empathy for our plight.”

          Jesus is the living expression of a God who cares so much about us that he would suffer right alongside us. It would be too easy to do what the world expects – fix us up and send us on our way, to wipe away all suffering and make us immune from the hardships of life.

          It is a far harder thing to sit in the car through the night, suffering right along with us.

          But as Ann Weems says – we don’t do so well between the parades. We have a hard time with this unexpected public language of God.

          The question for this Palm Sunday, for this Passion week is…

-         Will we worship a God who speaks to us like that?

-         Will we lay our lives before one who speaks not in strength, but in weakness, who acts not with power but with obedience and suffering.

Can you follow the narrow way that God in Jesus, walks this week?

How will you do between the parades?

May God be praised. Amen.

3-29-2020 Because I Said I Would

Thomas J Parlette

“Because I Said I Would”

Ezekiel 37: 1-14

3/29/20 

          What would be your dream job? If you could pick any job, what would it be? Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

          How about this one – would you like to work for the Queen of England? In February 2018, Britain’s royal family posted a want ad for a digital communications officer to manage the social media account for the Queen. For about $38,000 a year, the digital communications officer would post articles, videos and photos about the Queen’s state visits and royal business on You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

          The Queen has a worldwide following on social media. And she has a certain image to maintain. It would be a huge responsibility to be the spokesperson for the Queen, or for any major public figure for that matter. In addition to social media experience and a college degree, the royal want ad said the Queen was looking for someone “Innovative and with creative flair” who would do their job as part of a “fast-paced and dynamic team.”(1) For some people that would be a dream job, especially if you’re a fan of the royals.

          But there are some jobs that you just wouldn’t to have under any circumstances. For instance, the job of a prophet. It’s a tough and thank-less job to be a spokesperson for God. No one wants to hear hard truths. No one wants to be told that they are sinful and rebellious and on the wrong side of God’s will. It’s a tough life being a prophet.

          There’s an old story about a medieval Jewish astrologer named Moishe who prophesied that the king’s favorite horse would die soon. Sure enough the horse died a short time later. The king got angry at Moishe, certain that his prophecy had brought about the horse’s death. So he summoned Moishe and commanded him, “Ok prophet, tell me when you will die!”

          Moishe could see that the king was plotting to kill him immediately no matter what answer he gave, so he had to proceed with caution. “I do not know when I will die, your highness. I only know that whenever I do die, the king will die three days later.” Moishe went on to live a long and happy life.(2) It’s a tough job being a prophet, and sometimes dangerous as well.

          Prophets have one job- to speak for God. And sometimes God has some uncomfortable things to say to us. Pastor John Ritenbaugh says, “When a person is freezing to death, he feels a pleasant numbness that he does not want to end. He just goes to sleep as he is freezing to death. But when heat is applied, and the blood begins rushing into the affected areas, pain immediately occurs. Though it hurts, the pain is indicative of healing. God sends a prophet to people who are cold in their relationship with God – spiritually freezing to death – though the people may want to stay just as they are. The prophet turns the heat on, and they become angry when the prophet is actually working to make them better.”(3)

          So instead of viewing prophets as killjoys, what if we should view them as symbols of hope. Because if God had given up on his people, God wouldn’t have bothered to send a prophet. God wouldn’t send anyone. If God sends a prophet, that means there is still hope.

          Ezekiel faced a difficult task because he was called to prophesy to the Jewish people at one of the lowest points in their history. The small nation of Israel had been under siege and finally conquered by the mighty army of Babylonia. Jerusalem was in ruins, the Temple was destroyed. Ezekiel, along with thousands of other Jews, was forced into exile to the capitol city of Babylon, in modern day Iraq.

          Things were looking bleak. The center of worship destroyed, the community scattered, families separated. How do you rebuild your life when everything has been taken away from you? Their life was in their worship, in their identity as God’s chosen people. Did this mean that had ended his covenant with the nation of Israel? Had the people lost their identity as the people of the One, True God? God sent Ezekiel to these desperate and broken people to answer that very question.

          Ezekiel says, “The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I said, Lord, only you know.”

          The he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say, Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Lord says to these bones; I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.”

          So I prophesied as I was commanded. And suddenly there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and the tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

          Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, This is what the Lord says: come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.”

          So I prophesied as the Lord commanded, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood on their feet – a vast army.

          Then the Lord said: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them “This is what the Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done it declares the Lord.” Ezekiel brought a word of hope in a hopeless time. A word of hope I think we need to hear right now.

          In 1665, the bubonic plague swept through the city of London. In his book A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe described the devastation we would have seen if we walked the streets of London back then. People who had the means to escape the city, did so. Others barricaded themselves in their houses. More than 1500 died each day. Bodies were piled up in open pits because there wasn’t enough ground or enough grave diggers to give the dead a proper burial. Defoe writes that men roamed the streets, prophesying God’s coming destruction on the city. One prophet wandered naked through the streets chanting “Oh, the great and dreadful God. Oh, the great and dreadful God…”(4) I don’t mean to scare anybody, but I admit that hits a little too close to home these days. Thankfully we’re not there yet.

          God begins the exchange with a strange question: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Why even ask that question at this point? Why does God try to interject hope in our most hopeless times? When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden and hid themselves from God, God made clothes for them. When Abram and Sarai had reached their golden years without having children, God promised them a son and gave them Isaac. When Esther was a teenage bride in a foreign kingdom, God gave her the courage to stand up to a heartless king and save her people. In hopeless situations, God keeps giving people hope.

          So where is the hope in the Valley of Dry Bones? We find our hope in this: God always keeps promises. If God tells you that things are going to turn out alright, trust that God always keeps promises. God explains to Ezekiel that this valley of dry bones represents the nation of Israel. They were dead, hopeless and cut off from the power of God. But they will not remain that way. No matter how circumstances look now, no matter what the history books or the politicians or the pundits say – listen to what God says: “My people, I will bring you back. Know that I am God. I will put my Spirit in you, and I will settle you in your own land.” God keeps promises.

          Way back in Genesis 12, God told an old, childless man named Abram to leave his country and his people and go to a land that the Lord would show him. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.” That was God’s promise.

          When God sent Jesus, through the lineage of Abraham and the nation of Israel, to make a new covenant in his blood that would offer salvation and new life to all people on earth, that promise to Abram was kept. God always keeps promises.

On September 4th, 2012, Alex Sheen’s father died. Most people would describe Alex’s father as an average man. But Alex describes him as a man of his word. At his father’s funeral, Alex passed out small cards to everyone in attendance. He called them Promise Cards. At the bottom of each card were the words “Because I said I would.” His father lived by those words. He could always be counted on to keep his promises. In honor of his father, Alex challenged those in attendance at the funeral to write a promise on their card and to make a steadfast commitment to keep that promise.

The people at Mr. Sheen’s funeral were so inspired by Alex’s Promise Cards that he began printing more and sending them for free to anyone who requested them. Today, Alex Sheen runs a nonprofit that does character education programming in schools, colleges and prisons. He teaches about integrity and honor and character and keeping your promises. His organization has sent more than 11 million Promise Cards to people in over 150 countries.

Alex also has a website, Because I Said I would.Com, where people who have received a Promise Card can post their stories of the promises they have made and kept. Here’s one of the stories that was shared from Elizabeth, a 26 year old nurse in the U.K.

Elizabeth works at an assisted living facility. She eats lunch every day with a particular resident who has dementia. Every day, at the end of lunch, the woman would become afraid that Elizabeth wouldn’t come back to visit her. Her dementia made her forget how faithful Elizabeth was to her. So Elizabeth took a Promise Card and wrote on it – “I promise I will come and have lunch with you tomorrow.” And at the bottom of the card were the words “Because I Said I Would.”

The next day, when Elizabeth showed up for lunch, she found her friend clutching the Promise Card. She looked and smiled and said, “You remembered…”(5)

God will never forget his promises. God will never forget his people. Across every page of the Bible, God writes those promises and signs them with “Because I Said I Would.” In Romans, Paul asks the rhetorical question, who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress or persecution? We could add, Will corona virus, self- isolation or quarantine? And the answer is No. Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That’s a promise, says God. And I will keep my promise, because I said I would.

May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol.XXXVI, No.1, p72.

2.    Ibid… p72.

3.    Ibid… p72-73.

4.    Ibid… p74.

5.    Ibid… p75-76.

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.