05-07-2023 Unafraid

Thomas J Parlette
“Unafraid”
John 14: 1-14
5/7/23

          Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.”

          Since everything that follows for the rest of this passage for today is commentary on that thought – we need to hear it clearly, before we hear anything else.

          This is the closest English we can get to the Greek of John’s Gospel – “Let not be troubled of you in heart; Believe in God, also in me believe.” (1)

          Other translations put the Greek in slightly different ways, although they maintain the integrity of the meaning.

          The Contemporary English Version says, “Don’t be worried! Have faith in God and have faith in me.”

          The Jerusalem Bible says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me.”

          Or, maybe you’d like to turn to the New English version, “Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God always; trust also in me.”

          Perhaps you would prefer Today’s English Version, also known as the Good News Bible, “Do not be worried and upset,’ Jesus told them. “Believe in God and believe also in me.”

          And it’s always interesting to see how Eugene Peterson puts it in his paraphrase, The Message, “Don’t let this throw you. You trust God, don’t you? Trust me.”

          What follows in this passage is part of Jesus’ farewell discourse to his disciples as he prepares to enter his final days in Jerusalem. Jesus is saying to us, have faith and trust, in the face of uncertainty about death, uncertainty about life, and uncertainty about whether anything is to be done about either of them anyway. That’s a whole lot of uncertainty.

          I’ve often talked about the old homiletical model of sermons having three points and poem. This isn’t exactly a three-point sermon this morning. It’s really three short sermons, with one point. As Jesus puts it a little later in this chapter, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

          In the face of death, there is a future for you – it’s with me, said Jesus.

          In the face of life, there’s way for you – and it’s with me, said Jesus.

          In the face of uncertainty about whether it’s worth trying at all, you have my promise. “If in my name you ask ne for anything, I will do it.” Said Jesus.

          Die unafraid. Live unafraid. Ask unafraid. That’s it!

          What God wants for us is to quit being fearful people and start being faithful people. A faithful person meaning not just somebody who believes a lot of doctrine about God, but rather a person whose trust is in God in the uncertainties of life and death.

          Believing, as we Presbyterians put it in our Brief Statement of Faith, “That in life and death we belong to God… and with believers in every time and place, we rejoice that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

          Let me underscore one word in there – “Nothing.” Nothing can separate us.

          But in spite of that affirmation, drawn from Paul’s letter to the Romans, we’ve all got a secret list of things we think might separate us or others from God’s love.

          Clarence Macartney catalogued some of our problems in a Memorial Day address given 96 years ago: Widespread murder, rampant divorce, the decline of family religion, rising hemlines, blatant hedonism, and apostate preachers all signal a seriously diseased society.” (2)

          He’s right – pretty much. As right now as he was on Memorial Day, 1927. There’s a lot about the way we live and the way we die that would lead one to wonder whether there is any hope, for here or in the hereafter. There is a lot to be uncertain about.

           But when our wondering hearts become worrying hearts, Jesus says, “Don’t worry. God is still God. I am still with you. Do not be afraid.”

          Jesus didn’t say, “don’t be concerned.”

 He didn’t say, “Don’t try to do anything about it.”

On the contrary, Jesus said, “Do something about your concerns without fear. I am with you all the way!”

           Three points about what that means:

1.    In death, there is a place for you.

2.    In life, there is a way for you.

3.    In uncertainty, we’ll find a way together.

 First sermon – In death, there is a place for us. Jesus assures us that in my Father’s house are many dwelling places. The United Bible Society handbook on John says, “My Father’s house is best taken as a phrase descriptive of heaven as a place having many rooms (that is, room enough for all). (3)

When death is what scares you, be that the death of someone you love, the death of hopes and dreams, the death of some fondly-held belief, or the death that comes to us all – find security in me, says Jesus, In death, there is a place for you, there is room for you.

 Amen to sermon #1.

 On to sermon #2. Jesus said, “In life there is a way for you.” In other words, there is w way to live life that is worth living. What Jesus offers is a place for you at the end of life, but there is also a way for you in this life.

Jesus says here, “I am the way and the truth and the life.” That might sound a little arrogant, unless you understand that what is being offered is the truth about life and a way to live it. The truth, life is worth living. It’s worth living well. And Jesus shows us the way to do that.

Too often, I think, these words get coupled with “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Taken together, some have misused Jesus words to say there is only a place for those who believe as we do, who walk the way we walk and believe as we do. Other times, it’s a blatant attempt to end every conversation about religion by having the last word for ourselves “We know the way, and everybody else better get with it, or God will get them.” That is just not the way of God as we see it in Jesus Christ.

          Jesus said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” That’s a clear warning not to misunderstand God’s relationship to us as some kind of “good cop/bad cop” game, with Jesus as the “good cop”, reassuring us that God loves us, and God as the “bad cop” threatening us if we don’t love him back.

It’s one thing to say, “If you want to see God, look at Jesus.”

It’s another to say, “You’re going to hell, if you don’t see it.”

          And that is not the way of Jesus Christ. The way Jesus summed up elsewhere in response to those who asked him what was most important about the way we live is that he didn’t say we should try to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong, but simply live together as Jesus did. Follow the simple maxim: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength – and love your neighbor as yourself.” That is the way Jesus is talking about.

          Someone once said that contrary to what would seem to be true, Christianity has not failed as a way to live – it’s simply that so few have ever tried it. Whatever else this passage may mean, some kindness and love along the way are clearly what Jesus intends for us to try, even when things are at such a point that we longer want to try at all.

          Amen to sermon #2.

           So, now for sermon #3.

          In uncertainty we’ll find our way together. If there is anything that we in the 21st century are looking for, it is a sense that something is certain: and if there is anything we can assume, it is uncertainty.

          That, in fact, sometimes seems like the only thing that is certain – uncertainty. But Jesus said we should be certain about this – “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”

          I know that’s a verse that lots of people raise their eyebrows over. We can all recall times we’ve prayed for something and it appears we get no answer. We hear Jesus’ words here and we think they mean “whatever you want, you’ll get, if you ask.” But that isn’t really what Jesus means – his words do not mean that we have a right to whatever we want.

          The biblical scholar, Charles Cousar, writes, “Jesus makes the pledge to the disciples, repeatedly, that their prayers will be answered. The text makes clear, however, that this pledge is not a willy-nilly commitment to give to overly indulgent children whatever their hearts fancy. Prayers are to be made “in Jesus name”, that is, they are to be made out of the disciples’ relationship established with and by Jesus. The answering of the requests does not serve those who pray, but is to the end “that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” These are prayers offered on behalf of the community and the community’s mission. They undergird the “greater works” that the church is to perform.” (4)

          Right prayer, says Jesus, is for God’s glory, not just self-aggrandizement. And right prayer is prayed not only with our words, but with our lives.

          I’m sure you’ve heard a version of this story. Once upon a time there was this guy who really needed some money – so he got on his knees and he prayed that the Lord would bless him by winning the lottery. After the prayer, he got up and went about his business. The next day he was on his knees again praying, “Lord, you know I really need this money and to win the lottery would be such a great blessing. Think of all the people I could help with the money. I thought for sure I’d win it yesterday, but I didn’t. Please Lord, I’m begging you.” And off he went.

          The next day, he was back at prayer again. “Please Lord, I need this money! Is something wrong, God? Why don’t you answer my prayer?” Suddenly a voice from heaven calls out, “Look, you’ve got to meet me halfway! Go buy a ticket?”

           Now, I’m not saying God wants you to stop off at Kwik Trip on the way home today to buy a lottery ticket. The point is that what we pray for we need to be willing to work for as well. The only answer to prayer we need to hear is “Well done! You’ve done what God wants you to do.” Does that get you everything you want? No. But can we be certain of everything we need? As they say in Minnesota – You betcha!

          Amen to sermon #3

          So live unafraid! In the uncertainties of life and death, this is certain. “We belong to God… and nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” who calls us together to face life, death and uncertainty together with him.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    The Zondervan Parallel New Testament in Greek and English Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1980.
2.    Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy: Fundamentalists, Modernists and Moderates, Oxford University Press, November 1st, 1993, p 118.
3.    Barclay M. Newman and Eugene A. Nida, A Handbook on The Gospel of John, UBS Handbook Series, United Bible Societies, 1980, p 455.
4.    C. Cousar, et al. Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV – Year A, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995.

05-21-2023 Invisible Influences

Thomas J Parlette
“Invisible Influences”
Acts 1: 6-14
5/21/23

          Although the first astronauts were all men, crews going into the skies these days often include both men and women. In fact, the Space X Crew 5, which launched to the International Space Station on October 6, 2022, consisted of two men and two women, and one of the women was the commander of the flight.(1)

          It is, of course, a good thing that such opportunities and responsibilities are open to both sexes, but historically speaking, it has taken a long time to get there.

          That seems especially clear in another “going into the sky” moment we have in our text for this morning. Today we celebrate the Ascension, the moment when Jesus was taken up through a cloud into the heavens. As though who witnessed this phenomenon stood by dumbstruck, staring into the sky – two heavenly messengers, specifically identified as “men”, spoke to them saying, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” The original Greek underlying “Men of Galilee” is andres Galilaioi, literally, “men, Galileans.” Unlike the Greek word anthropos, which is usually translated as “people”, andres denotes males only.(2)

          So, is the text telling us that there were only men present at the Ascension of Jesus? Is that true? It’s possible of course, but not likely. We know from several biblical sources that there were women who followed Jesus, and some who traveled with Jesus and the Twelve and provided material support for them.

          For example, Luke 8 reports that “Jesus went through one town and village after another, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene… and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susannna, and many others, who ministered to them out of their own resources.”

          What’s more, our reading from Acts goes through verse 14, which plainly states that as the apostles devoted themselves to prayer, they were, “together with certain women, including Mary, the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”(3)

          So, there’s a reasonable likelihood that there were also women disciples who witnessed the Ascension, but if so, why didn’t the angels include them in their instruction to stop staring into the heavens? Is it possible that maybe the women were already moving on?

          We can’t for certain, but the contemporary Israeli-born historian Tal Ilan points out that according to sociologists, young, revolutionary movements often attract women because they are anti-establishment, and that these movements search for and accept followers wherever they can find them. Ilan says that the Jesus movement fits that definition. But she adds that as these movements transition to established religions, they “often shed either their female following or at least leadership roles accorded to women, in favor of becoming more acceptable to the ruling patriarchal ethos of the broader society.”(4)

          If that’s the case, the implication is that this Acts passage may have been masculinized sometime after its original composition. It’s certainly possible because the oldest manuscripts of Acts known to exist date back only to the fourth century, and textual fragments only to the third century. We don’t have the original manuscript at all.

          So, there is room to consider whether or not that masculinizing occurred in other places in the New testament as well. Bible scholar Amy – Jill Levine, who is a Jewish professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, says that when reading the New Testament, we sometimes need to read the women back into the story. As an example, she tells of reading the gospel of Mark and getting all the way to chapter 15, with one chapter left to go, before finding an explicit statement about women following Jesus. She’s referring to Mark 15: 40-41, which reads, “There were many women looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who followed him when he was in Galilee and ministered to him, and there many other women who had come with him to Jerusalem.”

          Did you catch that? There were women who had followed him since early in his ministry – “back when he was in Galilee”- and many other women had come up with him to Jerusalem. There were women the whole time, but Levine notes that the way Mark says it – and says it so late in his Gospel – gives the statement an offhand feel, as in, “Oh, by the way, there were women who followed Jesus, too.” That led Levine to go back through Mark and “fill in” where these women might have come from. Some of her educated guesses include:

          -In chapter 1, verse 21, when Jesus entered the synagogue and taught, there would have been women in the congregation.

          - In verse 34, when Jesus cured many who were sick with various diseases, some of those healed would have been women.

          - In Chapter 6, verse 44, after the miraculous feeding of a large crowd, Mark says, “Those who had eaten the loaves numbered 5,000 men.” Matthew elaborates on Mark and says, “those who ate were 5,000 men, besides the women and children.”(5)

          And this unfortunate situation of overlooking the women of the Gospel isn’t limited to Mark.

          In Luke, we learn about Anna, a prophet who with the four daughters of Phillip also prophesied. She gets just a quick mention, but she is a truth-teller delivering God’s message to the world – on other words, a preacher who packed a punch. Then there’s Phoebe, who gets a quick mention in Romans, who was a deacon in the Roman church and Junia, who the Bible describes not only as an apostle, but an outstanding one at that.

          A woman named Priscilla, along with her husband, is someone Paul names as a “co-worker” in Christ, and in Acts 18, Priscilla teaches Apollos, “a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of scripture.” Despite his considerable expertise, Priscilla is able to explain “the way of God more adequately” to him, and he expresses no dismay at her gender. In many of the passages where she is mentioned, Priscilla’s name is listed before her husband’s, which is significant in a culture that usually placed the husband’s name first, suggesting Priscilla, rather than Aquila, was the leader of this particular couple. It’s getting harder and harder to overlook the women in scripture.

          Did you know the very first Christian preachers were all women? In all four gospels, women are the first to learn of Christ’s resurrection when he appears to them, and they are the very first people to share this news with others. Depending on which gospel you read, the first proclaimer is either Mary Magdalene, the other Mary or Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and others. Mary Magdalene is noted in all three synoptics. So, if women had kept silent in church, there wouldn’t be a church.(6)

          And this tendency to overlook the women isn’t limited to the New Testament. There is no absence of strong women in the Hebrew scriptures – if you look closely enough. For instance, Deborah is named in the Hebrew scriptures as both a prophetess and a judge. The people came to her for a word from God; she leads, directs, and guides them, and no one seems to bat an eye that she’s a woman.

          And there’s a woman named Huldah. She shows up in 2nd Kings, chapter 22, and in 2nd Chronicles, chapter 34. We overlook her these days – but she was far from invisible in her own time. As the story goes, King Josiah’s men were cleaning out the temple when they discovered a scroll of the Book of the Law given by Moses. Josiah asked several men, including the high priest, to go inquire of the Lord about the contents of the scroll. Who did they go to seeking answers from God? They went to Huldah.(7)

          Ok – so there have been women in the Bible all along. So it seems increasingly likely that both men and women were present at the Ascension. And the lift-off of Jesus was so mid-blowing that we suspect everyone – men and women alike – were looking skyward.

          But why is this so important. Why do we continue to set this story aside as a milestone in the story of Jesus and a festival day in the church calendar?

          Well, for one thing, most good things do rise. Preacher and Professor Theodore Parker Ferris wrote, “The heavens always fascinate people… The early Christians looked toward heaven because they believed Jesus was there. Though their sight might have been inaccurate according to our standards, their insight was sound. They knew all good things go up, not down. Prayer is good, and we always speak of prayers going up to God, like smoke rising from bowls of incense. Jesus was good –radically and wonderfully good. When he no longer went about his accustomed ways, they knew that he had gone up, that he had ascended, because he was supremely good.”(8)

          But what these witnesses to the Ascension were about to discover was that Jesus may have left – but Jesus’ mission hadn’t. When the angels asked the witnesses why they continued to stand there looking toward heaven, they were speaking rhetorically. What they are saying is really – “Why are just standing here? Let’s get going. We’ve got work to do before Jesus comes back.”

          We know from the rest of the book of Acts and from Paul’s letters, that the mission was indeed launched. And the mission was crewed by both men and women. For instance, in Romans 16, Paul mentions 29 people who have been workers for Christ in the church in Rome. More than a third of those people were women, and one of them, Junia, is even described as an apostle.

          And as our theology continued to evolve, women were there all along, working as invisible influencers, informing the thought of some of our most impactful Christian thinkers.

          For instance, around the time of Emperor Constantine’s conversion, perhaps the two most important theologians in the development of Western and Eastern Christianity were influenced by the women in their lives. Without the prayers and encouragement of his mother Monica, Augustine of Hippo’s life might have continued on a wayward track. Augustine’s impact on Christian thought and theology can hardly be overestimated, and yet his mother’s name is not nearly as recognized as his own. Still, she is acclaimed as a saint, and those who read Augustine’s Confessions are familiar with her steadfast faith and her role in Augustine’s conversion to orthodoxy.

          For Gregory of Nyssa, another important theological figure, it was the influence of his sister, Macrina the Younger, that made him into one of the most renowned theologians of the Eastern Orthodox Church. She helped educate Gregory and the others in her family. Gregory most directly credits Macrina with his work titled Life of Macrina, in which he praises her asceticism and devotion to prayer and spiritual education.(9)

          So – bottom line – on this day when we celebrate Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, let us acknowledge that women were right there beside the “Men of Galilee”, staring into the heavens with them.

          The important thing to remember is that we are all called to carry on Jesus’ mission, even though he is not physically with us. We shouldn’t get bogged down on things we can’t know, and aren’t meant to know, like the time or manner of Jesus’ return or why it remains in a  future we cannot see, but in which we must simply trust.

          In the meantime, let’s read the women back in to the Gospel story and remember their invisible influence on the faith.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved 5/1/23.
2.    Ibid…
3.    Ibid…
4.    Ibid…
5.    Ibid…
6.    Ibid…
7.    Ibid…
8.    Ibid…
9.    Ibid…

04-23-2023 Divine Reverse Psychology

Thomas J Parlette
“Divine Reverse Psychology”
1st Peter 1: 17-23
4/23/23

          On a clear spring day, near an airport north of Madison, Wisconsin, Alan Klapmeier almost met his maker.

          He was taking an advanced flying lesson, with an instructor sitting right next to him, when his plane suddenly collided with another one. Klapmeier’s wing sliced through the strut that supported the other plan’s wing, and that aircraft quickly spun into the ground, killing the pilot.

          Alan Klapmeier had to ram the control yoke hard to the left to keep his plane – now missing part of its right wing – on course back toward the runway. As he neared a landing, he realized that he had pushed the yoke as far as it would go. In moments. He was going to begin rolling over to the right. Then his disabled wing would strike the ground, sending the plane into a cart-wheeling crash.

          But death took a holiday. With a second to spare, Klapmeier felt the wheels touch the runway. He was born anew.

          Now you might think that Alan Klapmeier would walk away from such a harrowing experience determined to never fly again. But you’d be wrong. Realizing that existing small planes were too risky, he committed himself to making them safer.

          He decided to start building planes with parachutes. He and his brother Dale developed the Cirrus SRT20 – a four – person aircraft that contains, as standard equipment, a parachute for the whole plane.

          This is one solution to the long-standing question of how best to protect pilots and passengers. Fired out by a rocket, this strong Kevlar parachute enables a plane to drift safely down to Earth, saving the lives of everyone on board. It’s speed at impact is still violent – rough enough to jar the passengers and total the plane – but the landing is controlled enough to prevent massive injury and destruction. (1)

          Like the Klapmeiers, we too can think of ourselves as parachute people. The apostle Peter reminds us that we “were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ…”

          Peter isn’t talking about a Kevlar parachute, of course, but the blood shed by Christ on the cross as a sacrifice on our behalf. Ransomed, restored and spared, we have been saved by the “precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish.” The blood of Christ, shed on the cross, is our parachute of salvation. With it, our feet touch down on solid ground, and we are “born anew.”

          The important thing about parachutes is that you have to trust them. You can’t always see them, packed and strapped to your back. You can’t fuss over them or fiddle with them when they’re lodged deep within a Cirrus SR20. You can’t test them in the safety of your home. You can’t control them as they deploy in a mighty rush of wind. You simply have to trust them, rely on them and have complete faith in them, as they blossom above you in the sky and save your life.

          Charles Plum, a U.S. Naval academy graduate, was a jet fighter pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plum ejected and parachuted into enemy territory. He was captured and spent 6 years in a prison cell. He survived that ordeal and now lectures about lessons learned from that experience.

          One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”

          “How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb.

          “I packed your parachute,” the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, “I guess it worked!”

          It sure did,” said Plumb. “If that chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”

          Plumb couldn’t sleep that night, thinking about that man. Says Plumb, “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a navy uniform. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said “Good morning, how are you,” or anything because I was a fighter pilot and he was a sailor.”

          Plumb thought of the many hours that sailor had spent on a long wooden table in the bowels of the ship carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn’t even know.

          Now, when he gives a speech, he asks his audience, “Who is packing your parachute? Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day.” (2)

          Peter’s point is clear – God has packed our parachute, but it requires an element of trust. God destined Jesus to save us “before the foundation of the world.” God’s divine research and development plan put Jesus in place long before we began to spin out of control and plummet headfirst toward destruction. Just before impact, Jesus “was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake,” announces Peter; he popped suddenly into view and slowed – if not stopped altogether – our descent into a life of meaninglessness, “quiet desperation,” sin, rebellion and disobedience.

          Because of this, “you have come to trust in God,” concludes the apostle, “who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” The point of Christ’s sacrifice is not to give us a pleasant little parachute ride, but rather to save us so that we will live a new and more abundant life; a life in which we trust in God and set our faith and hope in the Lord.

          In other words, the point of Christ’s parachute is to send us soaring again – like parasailing behind a speed boat. It’s to get us in the air and flying right – maybe for the first time.

          What does such a life look like? According to Peter, it involves the purification of our souls by obedience to the truth. Simply put, it’s about a deep, heartfelt connection to the one person who was sent by God to show us the way to live and save us from death and despair. When we are obedient to Jesus, we are tied tightly to the parachute that can hold us when we begin to plummet and deliver us to safety.

          Peter wraps it up by saying that the purpose of all this is so that we might have “genuine, mutual love.” And as if that were not clear enough he adds: “Love one another deeply from the heart.” Benjamin Franklin put it another way to John Hancock: “We must indeed all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

          Barbara Brown Taylor tells the story of her nephew Will’s first birthday party. The little boy was the center of everyone’s attention, and so he happily did a little dance – until a jealous 7-year-old named Jason charged over, put both his hands on Will’s chest and shoved. Will fell hard, right on his butt, and then his head smacked the ground.

          He looked utterly surprised at first. No one had ever hurt him before, and he didn’t know what to make of it. Then he opened up his mouth and howled - but not for long. His mother hugged him and helped him to his feet, and the first thing Will did was to totter over to Jason. He knew that Jason was at the bottom of this thing, but since such meanness was new to him he didn’t know what to do. So he did what he had always done. He put his arms around Jason and laid his head against his chest.

          “What Will did to Jason put an end to the meanness in that room,” observes Taylor. “That is what love is… not a warm feeling between like-minded friends, but plain old imitation of Christ, who took all the meanness of the world and ran it through the filter of his own body, repaying evil with good, blame with pardon, death with life. Call it divine reverse psychology. It worked once, and it can work again – whenever God can find someone else willing to give it a try.”(3)

          That’s what we are called to do – practice a little divine reverse psychology, by showing genuine mutual affection, loving one another deeply from the heart. We are called to set our faith and hope on God, who raised Jesus from the dead and gave him glory – even when the world shoved him to the ground.

          Divine reverse psychology, loving one another – that’s how we will be born anew. That’s how we will be saved from destruction and sail smoothly on the wind of God’s Holy Spirit.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved 4/3/23.
2.    Ibid…
3. Ibid…

04-09-2023 A New Level of Life

Thomas J Parlette
“A New Level of Life”
Colossians 3: 1-4
4/9/23, Easter

          “If I go down – I’m taking you with me.” How many times have you heard that line? We’ve all heard it, many, many times. We’ve heard in dozens of movies and TV shows and maybe in some real life news stories. Maybe someone has actually said it to you personally. Somebody finds themselves in big trouble, and they have no intention of facing the punishment alone – so they threaten to bring someone else along in their suffering.

          Sometimes there’s even a line that follows: “That’s not just a threat; it’s a promise,” just to let you know that they aren’t bluffing. If they are going to bear the guilt, they are not going to bear it alone.

          It’s human nature not to want to take the blame for something, even if we are guilty of doing something wrong. At precisely such moments of confrontation, of being caught and being held accountable – we turn to our natural defenses. The number one of which is passing the buck, shifting the blame.

          All we have to do to find historical evidence of this type of behavior is to flip to the beginning of the Bible. In Genesis chapter 3, when God asked Adam if he indeed disobey and eat the fruit that he was told not to eat, Adam tries to blame it on Eve. “Well… yeah, I did – but it was the woman, that you gave to me, who handed me the fruit, and I ate. She’s to blame, not me.” Adam is implying that he would never have done such a thing if Eve hadn’t given him the fruit. In essence, Adan was saying, “If I’m going down, I’m taking Eve with me.”

          Anyone who has ever spent time with children, whether they are your own or someone else’s, has seen this tendency in action. You’ve heard a response like – “It wasn’t my fault. It was my sister / I didn’t do it. It was my brother / Julie pushed her down, not me / I did it… but Billy made me do it.”

          It’s our human nature to place blame somewhere else. We don’t want to face the punishment. But to accept blame willingly or even take on the guilt of others – that’s not our standard operating procedure. It’s just against our DNA.

          So when Jesus comes along and accepts not only the blame for the things we have done, but also the blame for the things we have left undone – it’s hard for us to comprehend. Instead of hearing what we are used to hearing from other people, instead of being treated the way we have come to expect other people to treat us, Jesus says, “When I go up, I’m taking you with me – to a whole new level of life.” Then he adds, “That’s not a threat; that’s a promise.” And when Jesus makes a promise, you can count on it.

          Perhaps you’ve used those words yourself. Again, talking to children, we will often us the threat/promise approach. “If you don’t finish your homework, I’m going to take away your phone – and no video games.” / “If you touch those cookies in the cookie jar, you are going to bed without any TV.” / If you don’t sit still in church, I’m going to spank you when we get home.” Oh, that one is always a good way to make small children feel good about going to church. And then we often add the finishing touch, “That’s not a threat – that’s a promise.” So there.

          Unfortunately, the Christian church has taken the threat/promise approach far too often in its history. Some churches say, “If you don’t change your ways, you are going to hell.” / “If you are not actively involved in the worship and ministry of this congregation, you are not a Christian.” / “If your lifestyle does not conform to the standards we have set, you are outside the Kingdom of God.”

          But Jesus did not die on the cross to “take us down” with him. He died on the cross to go down for us. He went down in our place. If we are being truly honest, we would all admit that, in the eyes of justice, humanity should have been on that cross. If the guilty are punished for their sins, then we deserve the punishment. If an eternity with God is dependent upon our worthiness to stand in the presence of God – then we’d never make it.

          Jesus went down. He didn’t take anyone down with him. Not the soldiers who drove the nails into his hands. Not the crowd who gave him up and jeered at him. Not Pilate who washed his hands of the whole business. Not even Judas, the one who betrayed him.

          He went down without a fight. He went down without a complaint. Jesus didn’t whine or try to place the blame on anyone else. But when he came up from the realm of death, he offered to take everyone along – even those who took him down.

          That’s what Easter is all about, Charlie Brown. It’s not just an empty tomb announcing that Jesus defeated death. It’s not about Jesus showing the world he couldn’t be put out of business. It’s not even about Jesus wanting to give his followers proof of who he was. None of that mattered of people didn’t understand the significance of the resurrection for their own lives. Jesus already knew what he was capable of doing – he never felt compelled to prove it or give any demonstrations. But if people didn’t personally connect with Jesus’ death and resurrection in their own lives – then none of what happened on Good Friday and Easter morning meant anything.

          Before his death on the cross, Jesus told his disciples that he was going to prepare a place for them. He shared with his followers the teachings of a better life here on earth. And he promised then that wherever they went and whatever they would be doing in the future – he would be with them.

          That was his promise. He didn’t threaten them. He promised. And to this day, he has kept his promise, among his new disciples, you and me, and all who continue to put their trust and hope in him.

          The resurrection finalized our ultimate connection to Jesus Christ. Because he went down for us, he came up with us, and takes us along with him. He has taken our lives with him to the next step, the next level of life. Through the resurrection, our lives have been “kicked up a notch.” We’re not on the same level anymore. It’s impossible for us to be connected with the resurrected Lord and still consider ourselves bottom-dwellers.

          On Easter, we’re used to hearing the story of Easter, with Mary and the empty tomb. We expect to hear how Jesus died, was buried, and especially the ending where he rose again from the grave. On this Easter, from what has written in Colossians, we are also hearing how intimately our lives as Christians are tied into Jesus resurrection. We have been raised with him to a new level of life. That’s not some future event. That’s now, that’s here, where we are and where we live. And Paul; tells us to seek and to love things that are above. He implores us to focus, to set our minds on those things, things at a higher level of existence, because that is where Christ has taken us.

          Our lives have been changed, not because of anything in particular we have done or will do – our lives have been changed because Jesus has changed them. And because we are eternally connected to his life, we have the power the change the lives of others. When others view in us our “resurrected” lives, they are able to see Jesus.

          Once upon a time, there was a six- year- old boy named Joey. Joey desperately wanted to meet God, but he knew it was a long trip to where God lived. So Joey packed a suitcase with some of his mom’s chocolate-chip cookies and a few juice boxes, and he set out on his journey.

          He hadn’t gotten very far from home when he met an old man sitting in a park, staring at some birds playing in a fountain. Joey sat down next to him and opened his suitcase. He was about to pop a straw into his juice box, when he remembered his manners – it would be rude to eat in front of someone else. So Joey offered to old man one of his chocolate chips cookies. The man gratefully accepted it and smiled at Joey. His smile was pleasant and inviting that Joey wanted to see it again – so he offered him one of his juice boxes as well. Again the man smiled at him, and Joey was delighted! The two of them sat there all afternoon eating cookies and smiling back and forth, but they never said a word.

          It began to get dark, and Joey realized how tired he was and he got up to leave – but before he had gone more than a few steps, he turned around, ran back to his new friend, and gave him a hug. The old man gave him his biggest smile yet.

          When Joey got home, his mother was surprised by the look of joy on her son’s face, and she asked him, “Joey, what did you do today that made you so happy?

          “I had lunch with God – and you know what, God has the most beautiful smile I’ve seen!”

          Meanwhile, the old man returned to his home, where he lived with his son. His son was puzzled by the look of utter peace on his Dad’s face, and he asked, “Dad, what did you do today that made you so happy?”

          “I ate cookies in the park with God – and you know, God is much younger than I expected.”(1)

          The world can be a scary, sad and lonely place in which to live. We might not always like what life dishes out. We might not always like the problems and difficulties that we have to face. Sometimes we get tired and worm out. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been robbed of all hope. We may even question the meaning and purpose of life itself.

          That’s why God has given us each other in communion with Christ Jesus. Together, we can see above the pain, the hatred, the mistrust and the violence that goes on all around us. Together, we can reach up to find the strength to endure and the spirit to persevere. Together, we can find the joy in living that intended for us.

          Together, Jesus has taken us all to whole new level of life. Not down – but up. Life is good, when we connect with Jesus. Life is joyous, when we keep ourselves focused on things above. Life is all about being taken up with Jesus. Meaning in life, fulfillment in life and happiness in life come from those simple things that Jesus taught.

          Like sharing cookies and juice with God on a sunny spring day – so it is on the next level of life, which Jesus’ resurrection makes possible.

          May God be praised.

          Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen.

 
1.    Richard W. Ferris, “Taking You Up With Him”, Sermons on the Second Readings: Series I, Cycle A, CSS Publishing, 2004,       p. 184-185.

04-02-2023 Give It Up for Jesus

Thomas J Parlette
Give it Up for Jesus”
Philippians 2: 5-11
4/2/23, Palm Sunday

          I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase “Give it up.” It’s been around for awhile now. To show that you like someone who is being introduced or a song that’s about to be played, the person giving the introduction will instruct you to “Give it up for…” Whoever it happens to be. And that’s your cue to applaud and cheer and jump up and down, if that’s your thing. You do whatever it takes to show that you are really excited to see that person or hear that song or whatever. Go ahead and give it up.

          Now if that phrase had been around a couple of thousand years ago in Jerusalem, someone might well have instructed the crowd to “give it up for Jesus” as he rode into town on the back of a donkey. Along with the waving leafy branches and throwing down garments, the hosannas and alleluias of the assembled admirers could definitely have been construed as “giving it up for Jesus.”

          After all, this was an exciting time. Jesus of Nazareth was an exciting guy. He had the gumption to stand up to those self-righteous Pharisees. He made the little people feel just as important as the powerful and the wealthy. He spoke with such authority that even the Roman soldiers seemed to listen to him. He befriended everybody, saint and sinner alike. And all those stories about him – wonderous!

          It was said that he healed the sick. That he gave sight to the blind. That he could touch someone’s crippled limb and make it healthy again. There were even stories of how he made dead people come back to life.

          Some people went so far as to say that Jesus was the promised Messiah – the long-awaited Savior of the people; the one who would lead Israel back to the greatness it had known under kings such as David and Solomon.

          So why not “give it up” for Jesus? If all this was true – the stories, the speculation, the rumors, the miraculous abilities – then Jesus deserved complete devotion and loyalty. This was Jesus’ day, and this crowd was Jesus greatest fan club. Jesus deserved a welcome fit for a king, and more. For Jesus was truly sent by God.

          Or so it seemed… for the moment at least.

          And this is precisely the temptation that Jesus faced on that triumphant day of palms and hosannas – to be who people wanted him to be – instead of who he really was.

          The temptation to give in to the desires of the crowd; to be worshiped and lifted up as a great charismatic leader; to fulfill the political agenda that others had in mind; to free the people from the Romans, and not from their own sinfulness. That is the temptation for Jesus on this day. The temptation to exploit his equality with God for his own, personal gain.

          It was at this point in his ministry, and in his life, that Jesus had to “give it up” for the people. He had to empty himself, as Paul puts it, and become their servant – not their King. He had to humble himself completely, and walk through the next 6 days not only as one of them, but as one who would be thoroughly humiliated, condemned, and executed as a criminal. Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, handled like a piece of human garbage, so the powers that be might prove him weak and ineffective.

          Those people standing along the roadside on Palm Sunday were willing to give it up for Jesus – but only if they got something in return. They would cheer Jesus on, as long he took them where they wanted to go. They would support Jesus, as long as he fulfilled the role they had picked out for him. But let Jesus waver from the path they wanted him to walk, and suddenly he was walking alone.

          We human beings are a fickle lot. We listen to speakers to hear what they have to say to us, not about anybody else. We want politicians to tell us things that are going to make our lives better, not necessarily the things that will improve the world. We want instructors to teach us things we want to learn, not necessarily the things they want to teach us. We want preachers to tell us we’re doing good things and that we’re headed in the right direction that will ultimate lead us to heaven. We don’t necessarily want to hear the truth. If a speaker doesn’t have something to say to us, something that will directly benefit our lives in the way we want – we have a habit of tuning them out.

          As a speaker, Jesus was no exception. As long as he kept the people entertained, and amazed – they were happy. As long as he promised them a better life – they were impressed. As long as it appeared he might be the One to set them free from the dreadful Romans who occupied their land – they followed him. But as soon as he was tested, and failed their test, they abandoned him.

          How many times have we said, “Jesus could have…”

          How many times have we asked, “Why didn’t Jesus just….?”

          We think that if we were writing the script, we could have done a much better job. That’s what some of Jesus followers thought. One of them, Judas, even tried to rewrite the ending by forcing Jesus’ hand. But it didn’t work.

          Jesus didn’t give in to the temptation of Palm Sunday. He didn’t budge an inch off the course that God had set for him. Yes, he could have. He could have done a lot of things, and in our imaginations we can conjure up all kinds of alternate ending to Jesus’ story.

          Yes, Jesus could have accepted the throne that the Palm Sunday crowd wanted to put him on. He could have led Israel to worldly domination by crushing the Roman empire with the mighty hand of God. He could have healed the nation of pestilence and disease. He could have fed all the hungry of the world with a bumper crop of manna from heaven like Israel had never seen before. He could have eradicated evil from the face of the earth and set up his kingdom right then and there.

          He could have done all that – Yes. But he didn’t. He didn’t because he was Jesus. And that wasn’t what Jesus was about. That was what those people were about. They celebrated him one day and condemned him the next. That’s what we’re about. We’re like that when we try to make Jesus into something that he was never meant to be. We’re like that when we still try to tempt Jesus by waving palms and carrying a banner that makes Jesus out to be a leader who exemplifies our politics and our expectations for the future.

          Jesus was never what people expected him to be. Jesus was always obedient. But he wasn’t obedient to the passing whims and aspirations of the crowds. He was obedient only to God, even to the point of death… death on a cross.

          In our human fickleness, we are also controlling. We have even been taught that we should be able to control our own destinies and who we want to be. Hidden behind the Palm Sunday crowd’s exuberance, was a controlling people. They were a people willing to manipulate the events at hand in order to determine a future that would be beneficial for them.

          But is that any different than we do today? Individuals use other individuals to get what they want. Governments use other governments and even their own citizens to get what they want. And we have adopted the philosophy that the ends do indeed justify the means, as long as the ends are in our favor.

          But Jesus didn’t give in to that philosophy… or did he? For Jesus, the means to the end that he wanted to achieve was the path to Calvary – a road less-traveled. For Jesus, it was a trail of complete denial and sacrifice. To us, it was a mysterious walk that took Jesus from the adulation of the crowds to the glorification of God.

          When you look at it that way, perhaps the temptation of Palm Sunday was not that great. If you have a choice between being revered by the people or applauded by God – which would you choose? Of course the choice is not easy if you consider that the cross stood between you and the glory that would come from God.

          But Jesus resisted the temptation. And because he was able to overcome any inkling to give in to this ego and self-interest, he was able to fulfill his purpose on earth. As a lamb sacrificed on the altar, Jesus was given over to the enemy and died for our sins – crucified for us that we might have everlasting life.

          And God exulted him. God – not the people in the crowd – gave him a name that is above every other name. He made it so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bend, not just on earth, but under the earth and in heaven as well; and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.

          We always have to be cautious not to be lured in by the temptation of Palm Sunday. It’s tempting to jump on the bandwagon and join the cheerleading squad that puts Jesus on a pedestal and hails him as the driving force behind whatever cause the crowds have determined him to be “for” or “against.”

          Jesus’ ministry was a demanding one. His mission was urgent. He could not be side-tracked by every diversion that he faced. He had to keep focused, always, on his ultimate goal. He came into our world for one purpose. He achieved that purpose by “giving it up” – giving it up…for all of us. “Though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as a thing to be exploited.” Instead – he emptied himself.

          So, on this Palm Sunday – let’s “give it up” for Jesus. And the way to do that is not by being in the cheering section, not by lining the streets and not by getting caught up in the hysterical crowds. To give it up for Jesus, we have to focus on the same mission that Jesus came to accomplish – the salvation of all humankind. Starting with our own circle of family and friends, and venturing out into the world around us, we give it up for Jesus by professing the name that causes every knee to bow and every tongue to confess – and by living a life that screams and shouts the name of Jesus in every kind act we do, and every caring word we speak.

          We “give it up for Jesus” – because he “gave it up for us.”

          We give it for Jesus… by giving up ourselves.

          May God guide our feet as we travel the roads of this Holy Week.

          Amen.

03-26-2023 The Law of Holes

Thomas J Parlette
“The Law of Holes”
Psalm 130
3/26/23

           On August 29th, 1973, Pisces III, a small Canadian deep-sea submersible, sank to the floor of the Irish Sea at a depth of nearly 1600 feet. Two men were inside this capsule; former British Royal navy officer Roger Mallinson and engineer Roger Chapman. When a rear hatch was accidentally opened, sea water rushed in, causing the tiny sub to plummet like a rock to the bottom of the sea.

          It took more than three days to rescue the pair, and when they were finally reached, the two men had only 12 minutes of oxygen left – talk about cutting it close! They’d been trapped in the crushing depths of the sea for 84 hours.

          Or, consider an even deeper hole – the Kola Superdeep Borehole. It is the most jaw-dropping, radical, human-made hole on the planet, and the deepest artificial point on Earth. This shaft was built by the Soviets during the Cold War and it is 40,230 feet deep. It is so deep that locals call it the “well to hell,” and swear they can hear the screams of souls writhing in hell.(1)

          It was at the bottom of such an abyss that the writer of Psalm 130 was writing about, and he or she was just about to lose all hope of ever seeing the light of day.

          It’s quite likely that the holes in which we find ourselves are figurative ones, but real, nonetheless. Even in the face of rescue, we instinctively panic, like a drowning victim trying to climb out of the water on top of a lifeguard. We tend to escalate, rather than deescalate, defuse, calm down or lighten up. We are experts at making bad situations worse.

          As a recent blogpost acknowledged, there a few sure-fire ways to make a bad situation worse. For instance:

1.    Get visibly angry.

2.    Raise your voice.

3.    Be “Problem Oriented.”

4.    Use a lot of “You” statements.

5.    Keep saying “Calm Down.”

6.    Make sure you get the last word.(2)

All these reactions will make the hole you find yourself in even deeper.

The most pertinent advice for people in situations like this has been attributed to many different people over the years, from Will Rogers to Bill Clinton, from Warren Buffet to Pat Robertson – all of whom knew what they were talking about when they referred to the First Law of Holes, “The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.”(3)

That makes sense. Unfortunately, most people only stop digging in order to find a bigger shovel.

The saying can be traced back to October 25th, 1911 – on page 6 of  The Washington Post: “Nor would a wise man, seeing that he was in a hole, go to work and blindly dig it deeper.”(4)

We have other idioms similar to this First Law of Holes, such as adding fuel to the fire, pouring gasoline on the fire, adding insult to injury, and so on.

The Second Law of Holes is “Don’t dig a hole for others.” This is a biblical principle derived from Proverbs 26:27, which I admit sounds best in Elizabethan English: “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.” In other words, “Don’t lay traps for your enemies, because you’re likely to fall in the hole you dug. Consider the biblical story of Ruth. Haman meet his unfortunate end when he died on the very gallows he had built for Mordecai. The writer of Psalm 7 had a similar thought: “Whoever digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit they have made.”

The author of today’s Psalm is in a hole of his own. The psalm begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!” Obviously, the scene is of a person in a pit from which escape seems impossible. From the bottom of this pit, the writer is now hollering for help. “Lord, hear my voice.” So the Third Law of Holes, is to cry for help.

That, too, might seem obvious – but in a culture where independence and “rugged individualism” are seen as virtues, crying out in any way, shape or form just isn’t tolerated. It’s more often seen as a sign of weakness.

Asking for help might be okay if it is the government we’re hitting up. But polite, intelligent, wise people with strong emotional IQ’s do not ask others for help. I can find what I want on my own in Hyvee or the Home Depot, thank you very much. I mean many of us balk at asking for any sort of directions – although GPS has almost wiped out the need to ask for directions at the gas station anymore. God forbid we should think of asking for help.

But the Bible teaches us that it’s okay to ask for help. It’s especially okay to cry out to God for help – in fact, it’s almost required if we hope to dig ourselves OUT of holes instead of INTO them.

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” So begins psalm 130, one of the seven penitential psalms known as De Profundis, and also the psalm famously referenced by Oscar Wilde in his letter while he was serving a prison sentence in Reading Gaol. The psalm-writer, probably a poet languishing in despair during the Babylonian exile, describes his location and situation. He calls it the “depths.” We might say, the “pits.”

We may not know the full extent of the author’s distress, but we can be sure it was considerable. It has the tone of a person who has lost everything in life. It has the sound of a parent who has suddenly lost a child. It feels like the anguish of someone whose life and reputation have been destroyed and who now feels there is nowhere to turn.

This is a person at a crossroads. Maybe you’ve been there – standing alone at an intersection in the middle of nowhere, realizing the choices you are facing have been reduced to two. “I either end it all now and forever – or I cry out of the depths of my despair to God. I die – or I ask for help. There are no other options. “To be, or not to be – that is the question” as Hamlet put it. I hope you’ve never been in such a deep, profound, dark place, but many people have.

That is where this psalm-writer is – in the depths.

What’s worse, he is not only in the pit of despair, but it is a pit of his own making. How often has that happened I our lives? It’s bad enough to be in extremis, worse if it is self-inflicted. The psalmist readily admits the audacity and borderline hypocrisy. He wants help from the very source against whom he has sinned. “If you, O Lord, should mark my iniquities, Lord, who could stand?” He doesn’t identify his mistakes, but if we were to take a candid inventory of our own choices, decisions, behaviors and ill-chosen words that have landed us in hot water, we’d probably not have too much difficulty determining where we went wrong.

Would you like it if God kept track of your sins? Of course not – nobody would. Most of us don’t like it when our spouse or our children keep bringing up our short-comings or past mistakes. How enjoyable would it be if someone were keeping a file filled with your mistakes or wrote you up for bad behavior – not very enjoyable at all.

Yet, even when we’re staring at the ceiling at zer-dark-30 in the morning, while cursing our stubborn, intrangient nature – we know the one thing we need to do. “I need to ask God to save me from myself.” We know that God alone can lift us out of the depths. How do we know this? Because we agree with the Psalmist: “There is forgiveness with you.”

Forgiveness, that most gracious of words. There is a repairing and healing balm in forgiveness. We know this from experience. That’s why it is god-like to offer forgiveness when we have been wronged. C.S Lewis once noted that “to be Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”(5) There is perhaps no greater attribute of God’s essential nature than God’s willingness, even eagerness, to forgive the repentant and brokenhearted. Perhaps that is why Martin Luther called Psalm 130, along with the other penitential psalms, the Pauline Psalms – because of their emphasis on faith and forgiveness.(6) This amazing God is one” who forgives all your iniquities… for… as far as the east is from the west, so far does God remove our transgressions from us,” as Psalm 103 puts it.

Human beings may take longer to forgive than God, and perhaps some will never forgive or forget. But, after exhausting all our options, we have to leave it, and be all the more thankful for the amazing grace that God extends toward us in the saving work of Jesus Christ.

So, the writer, in a deep hole, with full knowledge of his culpability, obeys the Third Law of Holes, as should we. The Psalmist asks for help.

Having stopped the digging and having sent up a cry for help, one must then follow the Fourth Law of Holes – wait with hope. “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”

Wait with hope. Sound so easy. But it is incredibly hard to wait. But if you can’t wait, you can’t hope – for one is inextricably tied to the other. Only those who wait upon the Lord, can hope in the Lord. So how do we do that. Well, I’m glad you asked, here are a couple of suggestions:

1.    We wait by staying in the “now”. Going over problems, reliving old mistakes, or getting a case of the “shoulda, woulda, coulda’s” is not very helpful. Rather, we focus on the tasks at hand, the next steps and what positive actions we can take moving ahead. In a hole, there is no way to go but up, and that is not going to happen without waiting with a clear mind and heart.

2.    We also wait with confidence in the One on whom we have called for help. We put in a call to God – we must let God answer. We reached out to the Creator of the Universe. We have to let God be God and do what God does – on God’s schedule, not ours.

3.    We wait with courage. This is the advice of the Psalmist: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.” John Wayne reportedly said that “courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”(7) Or, perhaps a climbing metaphor would also work: “Courage is being scared to death, but strapping on a harness, snapping in a carabiner and having faith that the rope won’t break.”

4.    And finally, we wait with contentment. We do not wait as though we’re standing in front of an elevator door, punching the “UP” button again and again as if it will make the elevator arrive faster. The elevator will come when it comes. We learn to practice peace; we learn to be content with God’s timing. As Paul wrote to the Romans, “But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Corrie ten Boom once wrote: “There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.”(8) When God’s forgiving love reaches down to the depths of our soul, it lifts us up to a new place, a fresh start, and it is then that we realize that when we are forgiven, we indeed have a future. That is what the Psalmist wanted; it’s what we all want. We all want to be forgiven with a future.

Through Jesus Christ – that’s exactly what we have – forgiveness, with a future waiting for us.

May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline.com, retrieved 3/2/23.
2.    Ibid…
3.    Ibid…
4.    Ibid…
5.    Ibid…
6.    Ibid…
7.    Ibid…
8.    Ibid…

03-19-2023 Here's Mud in Your Eye

Thomas J Parlette
“Here’s Mud in Your Eye”
John 9: 1-41
3/19/23

          “Here’s mud in your eye.” We know it as a toast now-a-days, but where does it come from. I love looking into the origins of well-known words and phrases and seeing how they come about. This particular phrase has a couple of different origin stories, depending on what source you look up. Some say it originated as toast among farmers celebrating a plentiful crop – the mud in your eye was hoping you spent a lot of time in your field gathering in your harvest. Other sources claim it originated from the mud found in the trenches during World War 1. And still others look to the horse racing world where jockeys often wear multiple pairs of goggles to shield themselves from the mud thrown up by the horse’s hooves. So “here mud in your eye” was a toast meaning – I hope you come in second place, behind me, my friend. But most sources agree, this story from the Gospel of John is probably where that idea of mud in your eye comes from. This biblical image of mud in the blind man’s eyes became a toast to healing and good health.

          In the passage for today, Jesus is walking down the road with his disciples. They come across a man blind from birth. Seeing him, the disciples ask their master a theological question – “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

          So, let’s pause here for a moment and take note of the human factor. This man is more than a theological case study. He’s a human being, with hopes and feelings and dreams. Because he has been blind from birth, his hearing is probably very acute (as is true of most blind people). Very likely, the man heard them talking to Jesus about him.

          How do you suppose the disciples’ question makes him feel? No doubt it’s a question he has heard many times before. Most people assumed, in those days, that any serious health problem or disability was a punishment from God. Blaming the victim was all too common. This man has grown up with all the world telling him he is cursed.

          For a great many Rabbis of that time, the answer to the disciples’ question is easy. The man has been born blind from birth, so it couldn’t possibly be his own sins that made him blind. It can only be the sins of his ancestors.

          But Jesus doesn’t provide the typical response, the one the blind man is expecting to hear and that gives him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he hears it. Surprisingly, Jesus answers, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned.”

          That’s a break from tradition. The man’s all ears. Then, Rabbi Jesus goes on to say, “He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

          Now, we shouldn’t read too much into that. Jesus isn’t saying that God is some sort of monster, visiting blindness upon babies just to create a teaching moment. It’s more like he’s saying, “Don’t even ask that question: just wait and see what happens next.”

          So, now we come to the part of the story you might call “the ick factor”- the particular means Jesus chooses to restore the man’s sight. Jesus spits on the ground and makes a little mud pie, then spreads it on the man’s eyes. A little gross, I know. It’s a little like the medical advice I got when I was playing little league baseball – “just rub some dirt on it, you’ll be fine.”

          In the Gospels, Jesus uses a variety of methods to heal people. Sometimes it’s a touch. Other times, it’s just a word. In Mark, Jesus heals a blind man named Bartimaeus simply by saying, “Your faith has made you well.”

          So, what’s with the spit and mud? Why does he choose such a primitive medical treatment?

          The answer may have something to do with the disciples’ question. Sure, they’re voicing the prevailing wisdom of their age, but they’re also incredibly insensitive to the feelings of the man before them. There he is in the all-encompassing darkness that is his life. He’s never known anything different. He’s acutely aware of the footfalls of everyone coming up to him. The voices he hears may be mocking or – if he’s lucky – kind. But it’s not unusual for passersby to spit on him – cursed as he surely is – on account of his disability.

          So, when he hears Jesus drawing up a great wad of spit, he’s expecting the worst. Maybe he cringes, waiting for the insult about to come.

          But this teacher does something different. Something unexpected. Jesus uses the spit to make that mudpie and gently spreads it over the man’s eyes. Then he tells him to go wash it off, in the Pool of Siloam.

          Let’s pause again to consider the story being told. At this point, the story continues for a while without Jesus in it. That’s unusual for John’s Gospel. The second half of this story is the longest stretch in the entire Gospel when Jesus isn’t at center stage. John tracks Jesus’ story very closely, but the action shifts in this part of the story. It follows the blind man and what happens to him.

          John tells us the man does as Jesus instructs, washing his face in the Pool of Siloam. Once he’s done, it’s as though he has new eyes. For the first time in his life, he can see!

          Wouldn’t you expect this miraculous news would set off general rejoicing in the land? Not so. Quite the opposite happens.

          One feature of most human communities – and not a very positive one – is that they don’t adapt especially well to change. In that community, there’s a well-established protocol or pecking order, and Jesus has turned it on its head. Anchoring the bottom of that pecking order, for all his life, has been this man blind from birth. If you wanted someone to spit on, he was your man!

          But suddenly, Jesus’ miracle has changed all that. And those at the top of the religious pecking order – the Pharisees – are not too happy about it.

          Again, we should pause here and recognize the language John uses. Throughout this passage – and others like it – he freely names “the Jews” as the bad guys. He says in verse 18, “The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and received his sight.” A little later, in verse 22, he says the blind man’s parents “were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.”

          This makes no sense at all, and here’s why: Jesus and his disciples are Jews. So are the blind man and his parents. What sense does it make for Jews to fear Jews?

          John was writing at a troubled time. His audience was an early Christian church striving mightily to distance itself from Judaism. Not long before, the Romans had brutally put down a revolution in Jerusalem. They destroyed the Temple. Those who persisted in the Jewish faith – the second generation following Jesus’ resurrection – are facing all sorts of persecutions. John wants to keep the Romans off the backs of his own Christian people, so, at many points in his narrative, he identifies the Jews as villains who did all sorts of terrible things, including killing Jesus.

          The consequences of his choice of words have been tragic ever since. Later generations of Christians – overlooking the fact that Jesus and his disciples were Jews – practiced anti-Semitic persecutions, citing passages like these as justification. Passages like this one were used to justify anti-Semitic demonstrations year after in Czarist Russia, and even the Nazi Holocaust. The Oberammergau Passion Play continues to try and revamp the more anti-semitic passages of their famous play. And, of course, we’ve seen it during the rallies in Charlottesville Virginia, when we heard chants of “Jews will not replace us.” Christians have a moral obligation to own that terrible part of our history and to be careful about our language as we talk about how Jesus died.

          What John is really saying is that a certain faction within Judaism – a certain party within the religious leadership – opposed Jesus. For that reason, you may want to try a little experiment. Every time you read the Gospel of John and come across the words “the Jews,” consider doing a little translation in your mind. Replace “the Jews” with “the religious leaders.” That’s what John is really trying to say here.

          OK- back to the story. These Pharisees are alarmed at Jesus. They’re suspicious of his religious reform movement. It’s growing bigger by the day. So, they haul the formerly blind man before them for a courtroom – style cross-examination, right out of an episode of Law and Order.

          The Pharisees have heard how Jesus performed this miracle on the Sabbath. All they need now is a little evidence to prove it.

          Now, if Jesus had simply said to the man, “Your faith has made you well,” there would have been no problem. But there was this little matter of the spit and mud thing. When Jesus made that little mudpie, he was working. On the Sabbath. Gotcha, Jesus!

          At least that’s what some of the Pharisees think. How could a man who worked on the Sabbath be God’s instrument? But other Pharisees looked at what he’d just done and said, “How could he not be God’s instrument?”

          “There was division among them,” says John. Maybe that’s why Jesus made the mudpie to begin with, rather than just say “Your faith has made you well.” Maybe he did it just to confound and confuse the Pharisees!

          But the Religious hardliners won’t let it rest. Maybe the whole miracle was a hoax. Maybe the man wasn’t really blind at all. They pepper the formerly blind man with questions. They ask him who he thinks Jesus is.

          “He is a prophet.”

          That’s a powerful claim, linking Jesus with the likes of Elijah and Moses. The Pharisees aren’t too happy about that and switch to a new approach. They try to undermine the man’s testimony. They call in his parents.

          “Is this your son?”

          “Yes, it is.”

          “Tell us how it is he’s no longer blind.”

          “We have no idea. Why don’t you ask him?”

          They call the man in a second time.

          “Tell us this man who healed you is a sinner!”

          “Is he? How would I know? All I know is I once was blind, but now I see!”

          They start to question him again about how, exactly, Jesus healed him. But he says, “I already told you. Why are you asking again? Do you want to become his disciples?”

          It’s kind of a snarky answer, but you can’t really blame the guy. He has had enough of this. The greatest thing in his life has just happened, and these people are more concerned with a handful of mud than a pair of blind eyes that can now see! So he tells them – “If this man were not from God, he could do nothing!”

          At which point the drive him out of the courtroom, condemning him as a sinner.

          And now, Jesus comes back onstage. Having heard what the Pharisees did to the man he healed, Jesus seeks him out. Most of the time in the Bible, people come to Jesus for healing, but this time the doctor goes out searching for his patient. When he finds him, he asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

          Who is he? Tell me, so I can believe in him.”

          Jesus says, “You have seen him, and the one speaking to you is he.”

          Under the circumstanced, I wonder, which is more remarkable – the first half of that sentence, “you (the formerly blind man) have seen him, or “the one speaking to you is he”? they’re both miraculous, two sides of the same coin.

          The man says: “Lord, I believe,” then falls down and worships Jesus.

          New Eyes. That’s what this man gets from his encounter with Jesus. New eyes in the physical sense, and new eyes in the spiritual sense as well.

          And what about us? What sort of new eyes do we need?

          We’re not talking, of course, about bifocals or cataract surgery. We’re talking about our outlook on life, the ways we see with the eyes of the soul.

          When we look at the people around us, those we encounter every day, do we see them as they’ve always been… small-minded, petty or otherwise-flawed? Or do we see them as God sees them… human children with infinite potential?

          When we look at people different from ourselves – people who come from another ethnic heritage, or another religion, or a different sort of community – do we assume certain things about them based on old prejudices? Or do we approach each encounter open to whatever God is ready to show us?

          When we look at the physical world around us, do we see it only as a scientist or engineer is taught to see it… a place governed by physical laws alone? Or do we see it as the place where God rules, a place where miracles happen? Do we hear in a bird’s song a hymn of praise, and see a benediction in a sunset?

          When we call Jesus Christ to mind. Do we see him only as a historical figure, a wise teacher, an ethical example, or a superstar who had a ton of fans in his day? Or do we see him as the risen Lord who walks beside us, who speaks to us of love and compassion, and who guides us in the way we should go?

          I think the best news of this passage from John is the very end. When Jesus seeks out the one he has healed. If you only take one part of this story home with you today – make it that. Jesus will seek you out. Jesus will seek out all of us.

          So, here’s mud in your eye!

          And may you see the world and the people around you with new eyes, given to you by Jesus, the one who seeks us out, and enables us to see all people as children of God.

          May God be praised. Amen.

03-05-2023 Sequence Matters

Thomas J Parlette
“Sequence Maters”
Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17
3/5/23

           I am a child of the suburbs. Most of my childhood was spent moving around to various middle class neighborhoods within 20-30 minutes of whatever General Electric Plant my dad was working at. It wasn’t until I was called to my first church as a solo pastor that I lived in a predominantly rural area.

          It’s kinda’ hard to think of the Hamptons as a rural area. After all, it’s only about 90 minutes into New York city and it’s famous around the world as a vacation spot for the wealthy. All that is true. But the people who have spent their lives there, generation after generation, still think of it as farmland. Most of the members of the Congregation I served in Bridgehampton, Long Island, were too far removed from farming and agriculture. Many still actively worked the land, selling their produce from farm stands or concentrating on horticulture or vineyards or fruit orchards. So while I was a pastor in that community, I learned a lot.

          For instance, I learned the difference between soil and dirt. Dirt was basically dead. You couldn’t grow anything in dirt. But soil is alive. It is full of nutrients. So you grow things in soil, not dirt. That had never occurred to me growing up in suburban USA.

          I also learned some economics lessons as well. Like whatever the estimate for a project is – double it for the actual cost.

          And then, I’ll never forget one particular lesson I learned when I sat in on a meeting with our Trustees – who functioned like our building and grounds committee. A local farm equipment salesman had been particularly aggressive in wanting to sell us a new mower. He kept calling wanting to set up an appointment and I finally referred him to our Trustees. The elder statesman of the group, an older farmer named John, hemmed and hawed a bit, but finally agreed to talk to the salesman. The Trustees were notified, our custodian Harry was invited, and a date was set.

          We gathered at the church and listened to the sales presentation, passed around the brochures, the glossy fact sheets and the pricing guide. After an hour, the salesman asked for any questions. The room was silent. Finally, John spoke up, “We’ll get back to you.” It was clear the meeting was over. They thanked the salesman, everybody shook hands and he left. The Trustees sat down again. After a bit of silence, John asked Harry, “How’s your mower?”

          “It’s fine.”

          “It’s working ok?”

          “Sure is.”

          They sat around in their jeans and Carhart jackets for another minute, until John broke the silence. “Well, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

          And that was that.

          If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Paul was dealing with that same kind of logic back in his day. That’s what a lot of folks were saying about good works back in the first century. Within the Jewish faith, there was a long tradition of people being justified by works. They would study the laws of the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, and then do their best to follow the law by remembering the Sabbath, honoring their father and mother, and refraining from murder, adultery and stealing. When they did these good works, they would be justified – meaning that they would be put back into a right relationship with God and their neighbors.

          The model for being justified was Abraham, a righteous man who was the father of every Jew. He was held up as the symbol of Jewish righteousness. Those who followed Abraham saw him as the finest example of being justified by works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

          But then Paul came along and saw something that needed to be fixed.

          Paul made an important discovery when he studied the story of Abraham. He realized that it was simply not true that Abraham was justified by his works. “What does the scripture say? He asked in his letter to the Romans. “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

          Yes, Abraham was made righteous by believing God, not by following the law. He was made righteous by his faith, not by his good works.

          That was a radical innovation. That we are put right with God through grace, not good deeds. Frederick Buechner writes, “Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.”

          “A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?”

          “A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do.”

          “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.”

          “There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”(1)

          And that’s what Abraham did. He reached out and seized God’s grace. He believed and then did what God told him to do. He believed in “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” He believed in the same God who raised Jesus from death to new life, and who calls into existence what may seem to be impossible. In Abraham’s life, that meant he trusted God to give him a child, even though his body was as good as dead. He believed in the promises of God and was “fully persuaded that God had power to do what God had promised.”

          Abraham had faith in the God who gives life to the dead. He trusted God. He believed in the promises of God and that God had the power to fulfill those promises. And because of that faith, he was credited as righteous.

          According to Paul in this passage, sequence matters. Just ask any elementary school teaching kids to read. Ask anyone involved in the construction industry. Or in my case, I could ask any of three members of my family who teach kids to swim. They would all agree – sequence matters. For Paul it starts with belief. Abraham believed in God. Then Abraham acted on God’s instructions. Then good things happened. And Abraham became known as righteous. The sequence matters.

          Next in the sequence is trust. Trust God. Trust that God will do what has been promised. This passage from Romans makes it clear that the best thing Abraham ever did was to trust God. Abraham was righteous by trusting God, not trusted by God because he was righteous.

          Finally, we can rest assured that grace is guaranteed. Grace is not earned like wages and cannot be lost like squandered wages. Abraham didn’t receive God’s grace for being a good person, or even for trusting God. He received God’s grace as we all do – as a gift. He received grace because God is God – and that’s what God does. God’s economy does not resemble a market economy, where earnings and expenditures come as a result of effort. Grace, God’s currency distributed with abundance, does not follow predictable human rules, which it means it can’t be fully understood – and usually comes as a surprise.

          Anne LaMotte tells a story about a time she was surprised by grace. In the days after the war in Iraq broke out, she was particularly agonized to see the results of war – especially as it effected the children of Iraq. She prayed constantly for the war to end – but she became frustrated that it just dragged on and on. As she writes, “The problem with God – or at any rate, one of the top five most annoying things about God – is that God rarely answers right away. It can days, weeks. Some people seem to understand that life and change take time. I, on the other hand, am an instant-message type.” But she continued to pray – simply, God, help me.

          On her 49th birthday, she drove to the store to buy herself a birthday dinner. She says, “I flirted with everyone in the store, especially the old people, and I lightened up. When the checker finished ringing up my items, she looked at my receipt and cried, “Hey, you won a ham!”

          “I felt blind-sided by the news. I had asked God for help – not a ham. This was very disturbing. What on earth was I going to do with ten pounds of salty, pink eraser? I rarely eat ham – it makes you bloat.”

          “Wow,” I said. The checker was so excited about giving it to me that I pretended I was, too.”

          “A bagger was dispatched to the back of the store to fetch my ham. I stood waiting anxiously. I just wanted to go home. I almost suggested that the checker award the ham to the next family who paid by food stamps. But for some reason I don’t understand, I waited. If God was going to give me a ham, I’d be crazy not to receive it. Maybe it was the ham of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

          I waited ten minutes, and finally the bag boy handed me a parcel the size of a cat. I put it with feigned cheer into my grocery cart and walked to the car, trying to figure out who might need it. I thought about chucking the ham out the window near a field. I was so distracted that I crashed smack into a slow moving car in the parking lot.”

          “I started to apologize, when I noticed that the car was a rusty wreck, and that an old friend was at the wheel. We had gotten sober together a long time ago, and each of us had a son at the same time.”

          “She opened her window. “Hey,” I said. “How are you – it’s my birthday!”

          “Happy Birthday,” she said, and started crying. After a moment, she pointed to her gas gauge. “I don’t have any money for gas or food. I’ve never asked for help from a friend since I got sober, but I’m asking you to help me.”

          “I’ve got money,” I said.

          “No, no, I just need gas. I’ve never asked someone for a handout.”

          “It’s not a handout,” I said. “It’s my birthday present. I thrust a bunch of money into her hand. Then I reached into my shopping cart and held out the ham to her like a clown offering flowers. “Hey,” I said. “Do you and your kids like ham?”

          “We love it,” she said.

          She put it in the seat beside her, firmly, lovingly, as if she were about to strap it in. And then she cried some more and we kissed good-bye through her window.”(2)

          Sometimes grace comes like that – unexpected as winning a ham you don’t want and running into an old friend in the parking lot who really needs it.

          Paul reminds us today that sequence matters. First believe. Then obey. And God’s grace is guaranteed.

          May God be praised for that. Amen.

References:

1.    Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, HarperSanFrancisco, 1993, p 38-39.
2.    Anne LaMotte, Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace, Riverhead Books. 2014, p 255-257.

02-26-2023 The One About the Apple

Thomas J Parlette
“The One About the Apple”
Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-7
2/26/23

          Dear Adam,
          Eve here.
          Well here it is, Lent, again. Folks are going to read a story about us from the Book of Genesis. You know the one – the one about the apple. That story, like some of other ones about us, really get under my skin. Most of them make you and all the other guys at your end of the gene pool look pretty good. But not so much for the women. And let’s not even get started with what it’s done to the reputation of snakes all over the world. But I have a hard time empathizing with snakes – so I’ll let that go.
          I know it’s been awhile, and we kind of drifted apart after God kicked us out of the Garden and we had all that trouble with the boys. But I wanted to write to you to set the record straight. I know I haven’t written in ages. But life has worn me pretty thin. Still, I’ve had a couple of nice jobs along the way. Maybe you’ve seen me around – Mother Earth, Lady Wisdom, Dame Fortune. Maybe you saw me in that series of commercials for margarine back in the 1970’s – “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” That was fun.
          Well, enough about me. Let’s get down to it. There are a lot of things about that apple story that I think people overlook or misinterpret.
          First of all, let’s start with why you, and then I, were put in the Garden in the first place. It’s right there in verse 15, the very beginning of the story people read on this Sunday. We were put there “to till and keep” the garden. In that other creation story, the one about the six days of creation and on the seventh, God rested, it says that God gave us “dominion” over creation, that we were to bring it under control and that we were in charge. Since that story comes first in the Bible, that’s the one people tend to remember. And they come away thinking, “The earth is here for us to use as we see fit. Creation serves us.” But in our story, we are put in creation “to till it and keep it.” Our story makes it clear that we are here to serve and care for the world. Our first job is to care for God’s creation. I think people forget that sometimes.
          Next, most people forget, that my conversation with the snake is actually the first theological conversation recorded in the Bible.(1) The snake asked me, “Did God say, “you shall not eat from any tree in the Garden?” I told the snake “No – we are allowed to eat from the trees, just not the one in the middle of the Garden.”
          Then, I became the first biblical interpreter when I added, “God said you shall not eat of it, or even touch it, or you shall die.”(2) That touching part was all me. I mean, when you think about it, how are you going eat from the tree unless you touch the fruit. It would be too hard to jump and take a bite, and I don’t ever remember any fruit falling on the ground, so you’d have to touch it. Pretty smart, huh. That’s biblical interpretation right there. But nobody remembers that about this story.
          So let’s get to the big one – the point everybody remembers and talks about even today. Original Sin.
          I’m really kind of fed up with taking all the blame for what happened in the Garden. First of all, I wasn’t alone. I think people have a picture in their head about this story and they see only the snake talking to me. As if I’m there all by myself. But if you remember Adam, you were there with me. You didn’t say anything – but you were there. In case you forgot, it says so right there in verse 6, “…she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” And yet somehow, I take all the blame. The way the story gets spun, I end up taking the fall – or causing The Fall, I should say. I’m the Temptress, the Weaker Sex who gives in to temptation, bested by the snake, the Little Woman. All those images I think find their way back to this story about the apple.
          Let’s take a closer look at what the snake was doing in that conversation with us – yes, as I said, you were there, you heard the same things I did, you just didn’t say anything.
          What that snake did was to cause us to question God. He made us suspicious of God’s intentions. He made us wonder “Why weren’t we allowed to know the difference between Good and Evil?” Why would God do that? And then that wriggly serpent planted an idea in our head that we could be “like God.”
          I admit, that’s what got me. To be like God. Who wouldn’t want that. It occurred to me that the snake might have a point. After all:
          1.    The fruit was good for food.
          2.    It was nice to look at.
          3.    And it offered wisdom, the knowledge of Good and Evil.
          I remember shooting you a look at this point, a look that meant “What do you think?” But you just shrugged and didn’t say anything. So I handed you a piece of fruit and we ate. And that how I came to be responsible for sin coming into the world, as some people think. Like I said, I got all the blame.
     One more thing I’d like to clear up. People often ask me about why we didn’t die. God said quite explicitly, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” But then we ate the fruit and we didn’t die. What happened.
     Well, true. God did say that and we didn’t die. True.
But not entirely true. Some things in us did die after we ate that  apple.
          1.    Our innocence died. We ate that apple and realized we were naked. We realized we were different. We were no longer two care-free beings living in the garden, taking care of the plants and happily enjoying our time in God’s presence.
          2.    Our child-like trust in God also died. We depended on God for everything and we didn’t even realize it – till after we ate that apple. We never used to worry about a thing. Everything was provided for us. Suddenly we were more suspicious, less trusting, we asked more questions, considered more possibilities, both and bad and started to worry about the future for the first time ever.
          3.    And then our humility died. We no longer thought of God as something beyond us. We thought we could put ourselves on equal footing with God. If we had the knowledge of good and evil, we would be like God – that’s what the snake told us. And we – that’s right we – fell for it hook, line and sinker.
          So, we didn’t die physically, but some of our attributes and ways of approaching life did die. And suddenly we were farther from God than we had ever been. And God sent us out of the Garden.
          I’m sure you remember the hard times that came after that – I sure do. The hard work to get the land to yield any food at all. And of course the pain of childbirth – I don’t even want to talk about that. But the biggest heartbreak of all was what became of our boys, Cain and Abel. You just don’t recover from one son killing the other.
          I wonder if two daughters would have been different?
          We’ll never know.
          These days, I take some solace in the fact that the same God that sent us out of the Garden, sent his own Son, Jesus, to provide a way back in to God’s good graces. I was amazed that Jesus faced temptations even greater than ours – but he was able to resist.
          I don’t know if you’ve read any of the writings of the one they call Paul, but he wrote to a Christian church in Rome and he nicely reframed our story about the apple. He said:
          “Sin came into the world through one man, and his sin brought death with it. As a result, death has spread to the whole human race because everyone has sinned… So then, as the one sin condemned all humankind, in the same way the one righteous act sets all humankind free and gives them life. And just as all people were made sinners as a result of the disobedience of one man, in the same way they will all be put right with God as the result of the obedience of the one man.”
          Don’t know if you caught that Adam – but Paul didn’t mention me once, only you. Just saying. Oh, and he mentions you by name three times. Uh Huh.
          Well , thank you for letting me straighten some things out about our infamous apple story. I do wish you well. And I’ll try not to let too much time go by before I write again.
          Peace be with you, Eve.
 

1.    David G. Garber Jr., Connections, Westminster John Knox Press, 2019, p 25.
2.    Ibid… p 25.

02-19-2023 Mountains Left Unclimbed

Thomas J Parlette
“Mountains Left Unclimbed”
Matthew 17: 1-9
2/19/23

          There is an old joke that circulates among preachers. It is the description of the ideal sermon model as “Three points and a poem.” It’s a model that was employed in an earlier generation of preachers – but you can still see it today. I’ve done it myself. Three points and a poem may be a little old-fashioned – but it can still be effective.
          But today we’re going to change things up. Today we’re going to start with a poem, not end with one. This poem, called “The Mountain”, is by Robert Frost and it was published in 1915 in his book of poetry North of Boston. It tells of a chance encounter between Frost and an old New England farmer. It’s a little long, but I think it’s worth hearing on this Transfiguration Sunday.

(Read Poem)

          The heart of that poem is an ordinary conversation between two people that somehow manages to traffic in the profound: “It doesn’t seem so much to climb a mountain you’ve worked around the foot of all your life.
          There’s something a little sad about this farmer who has spent his whole life staring up at the mountain’s looming form, but never once venturing to the summit. All he knows about it – and about the mysterious spring near the top – he learned secondhand. There it has been, all along. He could have set out upon the climb and discover for himself what was up there – but somehow he never did. Life got in the way.
          Is that how it is for us when it comes to the most essential and enduring feature of our lives – our knowledge and experience of God? Does all we know of God depend on secondhand accounts from someone else who has ventured up the mountain? Or do we have an experience of the Divine that we can call our own? If someone were to ask you “What’s it like to have a mountaintop experience? – what would you say.
          That’s a question that Peter, James and John might have had a hard time – until that day they followed Jesus up the side of a mountain and witnessed him being transfigured.
          All in all, it was a fleeting experience. It didn’t last long – just long enough for Peter to offer to build three dwellings just before they heard the voice of God. But the experience sure left an impression. Peter talks about it in our other reading for today, saying “We were eyewitnesses… We heard this voice from heaven, while we were with Jesus on the holy mountain.” Peter was left with no doubt about who Jesus was, I’m sure James and John probably felt the same way.
          No one can say for sure what exactly happened on that mountain, but it certainly was some kind of vision. Peter, as he usually does, stands in for us all in these stories as he says, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Like so many of us, Peter is overworking, over-functioning, barely taking a second to stop, catch his breath and behold the wonder unfolding before him.
          Novelist E.M. Forster once wrote, “Ecstasy doesn’t last. But it cuts a channel for something lasting.”(1) Some moments are simply meant to be savored for what they are, not preserved for posterity. Some moments just cut a channel for something lasting.
          Have you ever visited a popular tourist sight like Mount Rushmore or the Grand Canyon and all the people around you are consumed with taking pictures and selfies, and videos with their smartphones? They’re so desperate to preserve what they’re seeing that they barely even see it, not firsthand anyway. Standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, but only seeing it through that tiny screen – what a shame. If Peter, James and John had had cell phones, they probably would have been doing the same thing as those tourists. Come on, Peter, forget the lean-to shelters. Stop doing, for once. Just concentrate on being, on gratefully receiving the wonder that’s before your eyes!
          So where are the mountaintops in our lives? Where do we go to have a better than average chance of encountering the living God?
          No one, of course, can dictate where or when God is going to show up. It’s not something you can schedule. The “Spirit-wind blows where it chooses” as Jesus taught Nicodemus. And while that is true, there are certain things we can do to position ourselves in the right place at the right time. Today – here on the threshold of Lent – is a good time to remind ourselves about what we might do to position ourselves for a mountaintop experience.
          To begin with, we can pray. This is more than the hurried grace we say before dinner, the sleepy-eyed bedtime prayer, or the swift request called up to God in a moment of panic. The only way to truly ascend to the mountaintop in prayer is to practice a patient, contemplative kind of prayer. Such prayer is more watchful waiting than conscious thought, more silence than speech. And yes, it takes a block of time. That is what can be scheduled, carved out of our frantic lives.
          Another way of ascending the mountain is to read the Bible. This too, we take a chunk of time to read and let the words sink in. But it will pay dividends as you look for experience of the Divine.
          And still another way of opening ourselves to God’s presence is by simply attending worship regularly. Sounds obvious coming from the preacher, but coming to church to pray and sing and hear the Word of God is the best way to position yourself for a mountaintop experience.
          Take the experience of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. He was a priest in the Church of England, who thought his spiritual life was just fine until he accepted an invitation to attend a worship service. In Wesley’s own words:
          “I went very unwilling to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while the leader was describing the change God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”(2)
          John Wesley had a mountaintop experience there at Aldersgate because he had positioned himself at the right time and place.
          Through prayer, study and worship – the spiritual disciplines we are called to practice during Lent – we, too, can ascend the mountain. We can open ourselves up to whatever God is ready to do with us. You can’t make yourself have a spiritual experience. Only God can see to that. Yet, as the old lottery slogan used to say – “You can’t win if you don’t play.”
          It’s always a sad thing when a mountain is left unclimbed. Like the farmer in Robert Frosts poem, the mountain is always there, looming familiar and serene, but it’s summit is never attempted. Is there a spring at the top, is there life-giving water up there? Will the Lord appear, shining brightly as the sun – or must the waiting continue?
          Who can know? But one thing is for sure. If you never begin to climb, you’ll never know the glories of the summit.
         That is what we are called to do in the season of Lent that is just three days away.
May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved Jan. 15th, 2023.
2.    Ibid…

02-12-2023 The Commencement Address of Moses

Thomas J Parlette
“The Commencement Address of Moses”
Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
2/12/23
 

          On June 4th, 1977, Dr. Seuss gave the commencement address to the graduating class of Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois. It was titled, “My Uncle Terwilliger on the Art of Eating Popovers” And of course, it was written in Dr. Seuss’s signature style:

          “My uncle ordered popovers
          From the restaurant’s bill of fare,
          And, when they were served, he regarded them
          With a penetrating stare…
          Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom
          As he sat there on that chair:
          “To eat these things,” said my uncle,
          “You must exercise great care.
          You may swallow down what’s solid…
          BUT… you must spit out the air!”
          And… as you partake of the world’s bill of fare,
          That’s darned good advice to follow.
          Do a lot of spitting out the hot air.
          And be careful what you swallow.”(1)
 

         That’s great advice for those graduates as they left the world of academia to find their place in the real world.

         You know, whenever one of our sons leaves the security and safety of our house to go out into the world to school, or work, or swim practice or whatever it is, I say one of two things to them:
         “Have fun… storming the castle,” from The Princess Bride.
         Or, “Make good choices,” from the movie Pitch Perfect.

          But Dr. Seuss’s, “Spit out the hot air, and be careful what you swallow” just might make the rotation now.
Good commencement addresses usually share some characteristics.
First, they spend some time recalling the great events and achievements of the graduates lives, congratulating them on reaching this milestone.
 Second, they review some of the great life lessons learned, either in the process of their own education or the lessons learned by the speaker as they pursued their careers.
And then commencement speeches remind the new graduates not to forget the important lessons they have learned as they venture forth into the real world.
Recall. Review. Remind. All the great commencement speeches do that somehow.
And that’s exactly what Moses does here in this passage from Deuteronomy. This text reads like a commencement address as Moses prepares for his coming death and sends the Israelites into the Promised land without him.
Indeed, the whole book of Deuteronomy is organized as a collection of speeches and addresses that Moses gives as the people wandered in the desert for 40 years. Throughout its 34 chapters, Moses recalls the great events of their desert adventure and appeals to the people to remember how God has led them through the wilderness.
Moses also reviews the important things they have learned. He reviews the Ten Commandments, especially the importance of the First commandment, “Worship no other God but me.” He also reviews one of the key verses in the book, the Shema, as it is known in Hebrew – “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”
Then Moses reminds the people of the meaning of God’s covenant with them. Basically – I will be your God and you will be my people. Obey my commandments.
So, in our passage for today, Moses lays out two choices for God’s people. In his opinion, it’s not complicated. Obey God. Keep God’s laws. Turn your hearts to God. You know it, you can quote it, so now obey it.
I have set before you today life and prosperity on the one hand. Or death and adversity on the other. That’s the choice. One or the other. Life or death. I urge you – choose life.
That phrase “Choose Life” can mean different things to different people, depending on your age. For movie buffs, they probably recall “Choose life” from the 1996 movie Trainspotting, in which the main character rather sarcastically uses it as launching point for a long monologue about the societal pressure to choose various products in a culture dominated by consumerism.
For me, having grown up with the music from the 80’s, “Choose Life” brings to mind the joyous music video that went along with Wham’s hit song “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” The words had been printed in block letters on T-shirts in 1983 by a fashion designer named Katharine Hamnett to preach against suicide as well as drugs. She, in turn, had been inspired by Buddhist thinking, exemplified by nuclear disarmament advocate Daisaku Ikeda in his “choose life” dialogues with British historian Arnold Toynbee in the 1970’s.(2) Then along came Wham!, with that infectious tune and in the video they were all wearing “Choose Life” T-shirts. I like them so much, I went out and bought one. That challenge, that call to action can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. For Moses, it clearly means choose to obey the Lord and follow God’s commandments – that is the way to life.
Moses commencement address reminds us that we still have this choice to make today as well. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “We are our choices.” The Headmaster of Hogwarts would agree. Dumbledore once famously said to Harry Potter, “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
Choosing life can take many forms. Loving God with all your heart, mind and strength can be done in many different ways.
Learn things you have told yourself you would never learn.
Enjoy simple things. Play with children. Learn a new game.
Laugh often, long and loud. Cry when it is time to cry.
Be patient with your own imperfections as well as the imperfections of others.
Surround yourself with what you love – whether it is family, friends, pets, music, nature, or silence.
This is choosing life.
Walk around the block. Turn off the television Read a book of poetry. Quit doing what is not worth your t time. Do something so someone else won’t have to do it. Be the first to stop arguing.
Apologize, even if it was mostly their fault.
Forgive someone, even if they don’t deserve it.
Believe that God loves you. See Christ in the people around you.
Open your heart to the Spirit. Search for something beyond your own comfort.(3)
Find the wonderful in today. It is then that you have “Chosen Life”.

Many of you probably remember the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It’s the story of an adventurous archeologist, who goes on a search for the Holy Grail with his father. The Holy Grail is the cup that Christ drank from during the Last Supper, and people have been searching for it for centuries, but it remains a mystery. The Grail was rumored to have supernatural powers so that a person could live forever if they drank from it.
Toward the end of the movie, Indiana Jones finds a secret chamber, guarded by an ancient knight, containing a variety of chalices and cups – some made of gold and precious jewels, and some rather less impressive. The ancient knight offers Indiana a choice. If he chooses the correct chalice, he will live and he can use it to heal his father who was dying just outside the chamber. But if he chose the wrong cup, he, and his father, would die. It was literally a choice between life and death.
Indy weighs his options – and makes his choice. He chooses an ordinary wooden cup, because it looks like a cup that would belong to a carpenter. And the ancient knight guarding the grail says, “You have chosen…. Wisely.”
I think I see a glimmer of Moses reflected in that ancient knight’s face. Both presented a choice between life and death. You must choose. Moses himself is waiting and praying for the people of God, then and now, to choose wisely. Choose life.
May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dr. Seuss, “My Uncle Terwilliger On the Art of Eating Popovers”, Hold Fast Your Dreams, edited by Carrie Boyko and Kimberly Colen, Scholastic Inc. 1996, p199.
2.    Patricia K. Tull, Connections, Westminster John Knox Press, 2019, p242.
3.    Brett Younger, Feasting on the Word, Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p343.

02-05-2023 For Those Who Love God

Jay Rowland

“For Those Who Love God”

1 Corinthians 2:1-12

Whenever we encounter the Apostle Paul it’s helpful to first determine the specific situation Paul is addressing. In all of his writings and letters, Paul covers a variety of issues depending upon where he is and the situation there..

In 1 Corinthians Paul is addressing a community of “newbies” -- beginners in the faith -- people learning how to be a faith community, what it means, how it’s different from other communities.

Most communities have some natural amount of diversity--a diversity of personalities certainly, but also socio-economic, ethnic, racial, gender and other identifiers which naturally exist among any community in almost any era.

It’s safe to say that this community of Christians, the church planted by the Apostle Paul in Corinth, bears some of these characteristics. But what makes it fascinating is that this is a community that is new to faith---faith in God, faith in Jesus--and what it means to live together as a community of faith. Perhaps this is why Paul’s letters remain so instructive and applicable today. And now, given the significant societal and cultural shifts impacting faith communities in this generation, sweeping changes are making all churches newbies again.

Now we know from experience that there are wonderful benefits that come from belonging to a community, and there are challenges. Faith communities are no different in that regard. But what makes faith communities unique is that the main “reason” for involvement is … GOD! And a person’s relationship with God. And so whatever people may love or loathe about their church is secondary to the calling of the Lord, right?

What makes church unique is that its existence and survival depend upon God. But God also depends upon God’s people to care for and tend to this community. That ongoing tension plays out in every church and faith community ever since Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt. Every faith community must continually learn and evolve in how to live out their relationship with God, together with their community with its diverse range of human commitment, faith, conviction, experience, knowledge and … problems!

Back to those early Christians in Corinth: one of the thornier problems was that some members of the community considered themselves wiser and more spiritually gifted and knowledgeable than all of the others. So, naturally, these folks decided they were supposed to drive the life of the community. Every community has to be organized in order to make decisions and attend to the natural issues and needs of that community. But in Corinth, the folks who self-identified as the most spiritually gifted assumed their role as authority figures in this new community.

But the thing is, that’s a worldly way of determining organization. And so Paul’s response, as it often is in his letters is, “not so fast!” Paul said that for Christians and Jews, at least, wisdom and leadership aren’t about knowledge—not even “special” spiritual knowledge—it’s about love.

It’s not about self-appointed leaders who say or think they know all the answers. On the contrary, Paul says, for Christian communities, it’s all about being open to the wisdom of God as it manifests among God’s people. It’s not about knowing the answers, it’s more about the shared struggle and about the questions unique to the time and place. The wisdom God gives is not about establishing worldly certainty or political mechanisms. What makes Christian community different from other organizations is (or is supposed to be) an alternative understanding of human authority. How do we decide who “we” are? Who gets to decide? It’s a shared, organic process unlike all other worldly models and hierarchies and political machinations driven by prejudice, competition, and judgment.

But this is also what makes Christian community incredibly complex and difficult. It’s so much simpler and quicker and predictable to simply do as the world does and follow the conventional methods of authority. But faith communities are not faith communities if they derive their authority from government and business models. So perhaps that’s what Paul means when he says that God’s wisdom can seem hidden … even secret! It isn’t as obvious as we might all prefer it to be.

Because: how are faith communities supposed to benefit from God’s wisdom if it’s … hidden? Secret?!

Paul’s answer, his message to the newbies in Corinth and to you and I today has to do with identity. From where do we derive our identity? With whom do we identify? Where do we as Christians look for wisdom and authority?

Paul declares that for Christians—individuals and communities—identity must be found in Jesus Christ, specifically in “Christ crucified”.

And that’s a deal-breaker for many – even entire Christian communities and churches.

Oh I’m not saying it’s explicit. No church worth its mettle would explicitly distance itself from Christ crucified. I mean, we all get it; we all certainly know about Christ crucified. But Paul says it’s not enough to know about Christ crucified, it’s more about love. It’s all about moving toward Christ crucified, entering into the mystery of the crucified Christ such that it becomes the formative, foundational identity of communal life. Not in a way that obsesses about certain aspects of it. It’s not about the macabre details of Jesus’ physical death. It’s not about embracing a victim-mentality or messiah-complex. It’s not about strict dogmatism that God “sent Jesus to die” … no no no no!

NO! not that, but this:

The deep and profound LOVE of Jesus Christ, God-with-us, God-IN-US, God-for-us … the LOVE OF CHRIST that willingly entered in to our experience. Even death--a public torture, humiliating death. I guess in God’s wisdom, nothing else out there compares to a love that would go that far to show us the limitless depth of God’s LOVE

“The ordinary route to wisdom is through knowledge, Paul insists the point of entry for us is LOVE.” 1

The wisdom God gives is not so much for those who KNOW God, or say they know God, but for those who quietly LOVE God ... and struggle to love and live in a world with so much suffering.

Perhaps that’s what Paul means when he describes God’s “wisdom” as something that almost everyone misses.

Look, the resurrection of Jesus is clearly foundational to our faith. But Paul implies that we all seem to tolerate the crucified Christ as we rush to embrace his resurrection. We all love resolution. We all love a happy ending. But in the meantime, there’s … life. Crucifixion. The distinction is critical to understanding Paul’s message.

Paul suggests that our authenticity as Christians, our resilience as a people of faith, our daily existence in the midst of human violence and war, the outrageous tolerance of gun violence, the ongoing murder of African Americans by police departments, and now even the survival of Creation itself, is all critically connected to our willingness to commune with the crucified Christ. Or in the very least an understanding of God’s wisdom revealed in the crucified Christ.

“When Paul summarizes the content (meaning) of the gospel as “Christ crucified,” he is identifying Jesus Christ as the one whose identity remains stamped by the cross. The cross has not been canceled out by the resurrection; rather, to know even the risen Jesus is to know him precisely as the crucified one. Any other account of Jesus’ identity is not the gospel.” 2

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you like I was an expert in speech or wisdom. I made up my mind not to think about anything while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and to preach him as crucified. … My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but … I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God.

Notice Paul does not bring up blood atonement or dogmatic requirements about how to be saved. “Rather, the cross marks God’s intervention”3, God’s protest (as TJ said last week), and I would say, God’s rejection of normative human practices and assumptions of community, justice, law, and authority.

Because remember: God entered into the human condition in Jesus Christ. And when Jesus was confronted by the most influential power-centers of human life--religion & government--Jesus was unflinchingly rejected. Arrested. Interrogated. Beaten. Tried. Assassinated. Crucified.

All of this is critically important for faith communities as we navigate this vastly changing world. Following in the Way of Christ feels inadequate. Following Christ crucified collides with the gravitational pull of the predominant way(s) of the world. But Paul is adamant: following the crucified Christ is the key to growing in wisdom--wisdom which advances the “kin’dom of God” on earth as it is in heaven.

“Comprehending what God reveals through the Spirit (and Christ) involves a distinctive form of discourse, a kind of spiritual grammar, a language that makes sense only in the world of faith.” 4

Paul’s emphasis on the crucified Christ is not a comforting or cheerful message. But it is 100% REALITY. Maybe it’s too real for most people. Clearly it’s not “the opiate of the masses” Marx once suggested. The crucified Christ “takes into account the full measure of human depravity in order to meditate deeply and focus our attention of the radical character of God’s solution.” 5

This is not about personal philosophy. It’s not about being an optimist vs a pessimist. It’s about hearing God’s still, small voice of wisdom amid the daily barrage of noise and subterfuge and deception being mass-communicated every waking hour of our lives and spouted by once-trusted institutions and elected leaders.

The crucified Christ cuts through all that other noise as nothing else can.

In an age of continual public-relations hype, ego-inflation and self-aggrandizment dressed up as leadership in the public and political arena, the cross stands over it all, silent, unheeded, un-noticed. Rejected as readily as the one who was nailed to it.

But when life and people disappoint us and when life drives us to our knees, no other can meet us in that place of darkness as intimately as Christ crucified.

As individuals, as families, as communities who endure suffering, we all deep down long to face the truth together about our desperate situation and our common hope–a loving God who stops at nothing to show how much LOVE can do. We can keep our ties to our nation, our tribe, our ethnicity, and our culture—all important facets of our identity until they divide us. When “religion” fails to unite amid diversity, when religion abandons the uniting love of God in Christ crucified, it becomes just another shout clamoring for attention and allegiance among all the other noise and subterfuge and deception and calls for action.

Because only when the desperation of our situation is recognized and accepted can the depth of God’s grace, and the power of God’s LOVE be fully accepted and shared in the world that God made and loves, by those who love God.

Notes/Sources:

1 Carl R. Holladay. Preaching through the Christian Year. Year A. Craddock et. al. p.106

2 Richard B. Hays. First Corinthians - Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. p.35

3 Hays, p.36

4 Holladay, p.106

5. Hays, p37

1 Corinthians 2:1-12

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you like I was an expert in speech or wisdom. 2 I had made up my mind not to think about anything while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and to preach him as crucified. 3 I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. 4 My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 5 I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God.

6 What we say is wisdom to people who are mature. It isn’t a wisdom that comes from the present day or from today’s leaders who are being reduced to nothing. 7 We talk about God’s wisdom, which has been hidden as a secret. God determined this wisdom in advance, before time began, for our glory. 8 It is a wisdom that none of the present-day rulers have understood, because if they did understand it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory! 9 But this is precisely what is written:

God has prepared things for those who love him

that no eye has seen, or ear has heard,

or that haven’t crossed the mind of any human being.[a]

10 God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depths of God. 11 Who knows a person’s depths except their own spirit that lives in them? In the same way, no one has known the depths of God except God’s Spirit. 12 We haven’t received the world’s spirit but God’s Spirit so that we can know the things given to us by God.

 [a] Isa. 64:4

01-29-2023 A Cross-Shaped Life

Thomas J Parlette

“A Cross-Shaped Life”

1st Cor. 1:18-31

1/29/23

          Some say that we are living in a golden age of protest.

Case in point. Between 202-2022, polls have estimated that between 15 million and 26 million people have participated at some point in demonstrations in the U.S., making that the largest protests in United States history. It’s also estimated that 93% of those protests were “peaceful and non-destructive.”(1)

That’s probably a higher percentage of the population than the number of people who protested the war in Vietnam. Since 2017, protests have occurred in all 50 states, including many places where marches and rallies have rarely been seen before.

But I wonder, will these protests do anything? Will all this protesting and demonstrating and marching actually have an impact?

Only time will tell, I suppose.

What we do know is a number of protest movements have changed history. For instance:

Martin Luther’s 95 Theses nailed to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, began the protest movement known as the Reformation, of which the Presbyterian Church is a part.

The protests against the Stamp Act of 1765, eventually led to the creation of the United States.

In the 1930’s, thousands of Muslim women and men formed an “army of peace” to protest England’s oppressive occupation of what is now Pakistan.

Rosa Park’s refusal to move to the back of a segregated bus in 1955 Alabama ignited the civil rights movement.

And even The Beatles were known for some protest. In 1964, the rock stars refused to play for segregated audiences in Jacksonville, Florida. “We never play to segregated audiences and we aren’t going to start now,” said John Lennon. The struggle for racial equality in America inspired Paul McCartney to write the song, “Blackbird.”(2)

I could go on. Matches, rallies, vigils, protests – they can have an impact. They can change the world.

In a similar manner, the cross of Christ is a protest of sorts. The Cross is a protest against those who demand signs and wisdom.

In this morning’s passage from 1st Corinthians, Paul writes to the church in Corinth that “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Protesting the necessity of signs and wisdom as some sort of proof of God’s divine power is part of what it means to live a cross-shaped life.

When you think about, signs are not always what they seem. For instance, there were once two guys who got into a really bad car accident. Both of their cars were totaled, but fortunately no one was hurt.

After they crawled out of their cars and called the police, one guy  said, “Wow, just look at our cars! They’re destroyed, but we aren’t hurt. This must be a sign from God that we should meet and be friends for the rest of our lives.”

The other guy said, “I agree with you completely. This has to be a sign from God!”

The first guy continued, “And look at this, here’s another miracle… My car is completely totaled but this bottle of wine I bought didn’t break. It’s a sign that God wants us to drink this wine and celebrate our good fortune.”

The other guy agreed, opened the bottle, and drank half the bottle and handed it back. The first guy put the cork back in and handed it back.

“Aren’t you having any?

“No, I think I’ll just wait for the police.”(3)

Sometimes signs are not all they are cracked up to be. Sometimes signs don’t mean what we think they mean.

But why is Paul so upset about signs and wisdom? Is wisdom such a bad thing? To set the stage a bit, Paul is writing to the people of the powerful and wealthy Greek city of Corinth. He is addressing men and women who know quite a bit about the “the wisdom of the world.” Paul is well aware that in this educated and sophisticated society, “Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom.” Signs and wonders are part of their religious culture, and at first glance they don’t seem to be such bad things. After all, God has shown great signs over the years, and wisdom is a quality that is praised throughout the Bible.

Signs and wisdom don’t seem to be deserving of marches, rallies, vigils and protests.

But here’s the thing: Paulo has discovered that “the world did not know God through wisdom.” Yes, it would be nice if Greeks came to know God through wisdom. And it would be great if the Jews of his day entered into a relationship with God through powerful signs from above. But they didn’t.

Signs and wisdom are not enough, says Paul, himself, a “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” and a Roman citizen with a Greek education. Paul realizes that something is needed – the Cross. Paul believes that the surprising and shameful death of Jesus on a cross is what enables people to finally know God.

Why? Because that shameful and surprising death on the cross is a message writ large of love and forgiveness. That is, after all, the message of the cross – grace, love, mercy and forgiveness.

The Cross is God’s protest movement. And it changes the world forever.

We need to be part of this movement even today, because many us still demand signs and wisdom. Many Christians will ask God to give them a sign that tells them what to do, what kind of work they should do, or what kind of personal relationships they should pursue. Some even pray for something as simple as a parking space, and then when one appears, they’ll say, “It’s a sign!”

For instance, in Germany, a driver was going almost twice the speed limit and was caught on camera. But he was spared the fine of nearly $120 because a white bird obscured his face when the picture was taken. The police couldn’t prove for certain that he was the driver.

So the police issued a rather light-hearted statement. “We have understood the sign and leave the speeder in peace.”(4)

Nice thought – But I’m not sure God works that way.

God is not a cosmic GPS, working to move us quickly and painlessly from Point A to Point B. “God is more interested in developing a loving relationship with us,” says author Vanessa Pizzuto. Discovering God’s plans for our lives “is a natural result of a vibrant relationship with God, not it’s substitute. Otherwise, Christianity becomes a superstitious and shallow practice.”(5)

In place of signs from above, God gives us the message of the cross. Loud and clear, the cross tells us that Jesus loves us so much that he would sacrifice himself to us forgiveness and new life. The cross sends the message that, as John puts it, “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.”

God give us the cross because God wants to have a relationship with us – one that is based on a loving sacrifice from below, not a powerful sign from above. The cross is a mighty act of protest, one that turns the world upside down.

When we live a life shaped by the cross and its message, we join this protest movement. We love as Jesus did, reaching out with compassion to the poor, the sick and the strangers in our midst. We sacrifice as Jesus did, giving of our time, talents and treasures in support of God’s mission in the world. We serve others as Jesus did, remembering that “the Son if Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” We show grace and mercy and forgiveness as Jesus did when he said from the cross, “Forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

Such a life is a protest against a world in which people usually act out of their own self-interest. A decision to put the needs of others first is as radical as The Beatles’ decision to say no to the money being offered by segregated venues, and to bring their music only to places where blacks and whites could be together.

The message about the cross is a kind of foolishness to those who are perishing, says Paul. “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” In the upside down world of God’s protest movement, “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” Christians who have faith in a crucified and risen Lord know that there is nothing wiser than the teachings of Jesus, and nothing stronger than the Lord who sacrificed himself for us.

If we find these words surprising today, imagine how shocking they were to the Greeks of Corinth. After all, these men and women were part of a culture that valued the insights of the great philosophers, much as we still do today. They spent their lives searching for wisdom, and then Paul came along and said, “We proclaim Christ crucified.” This was foolishness to them, completely different from their expectations.

But Paul challenged them to look at the world through the lens of God’s protest movement. “God decided,” says Paul, “through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. Suddenly a person didn’t have to be wise to be saved. You didn’t have to be a scribe and a skilled debater. All you had to do was believe.

Of course there’s more to being a follower of Christ than just belief. But, for Paul at this point in his conversation with the church at Corinth, that’s a sermon for another day. After all, these people ae not too far along in the faith. Paul is starting them out with food they can handle, as he describes later in the letter. They aren’t ready for the meaty stuff just yet – that’ll come in the future.

The Greeks received this as good news – and so should we. Like the people of Corinth, not many of us are as wise Plato, or Socrates, or Aristotle. Most of us weren’t born into power or privilege like royalty or something. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot enjoy the rich and full life that God desires for us. In the Lord’s protest movement, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”

As Jacques Ellul has written in The Meaning of the City, “Christians were never meant to be normal. We’ve always been holy troublemakers, we’ve always been creators of uncertainty, agents of the dimension that’s incompatible with the status quo; we do not accept the world as it is, but we insist on the world becoming the way God wants it to be. And the Kingdom of God is different from the patterns of the world.”(6)

Yes, we live in a golden age of protest, but no modern rally can achieve what God accomplished through the cross. God is “the source of your life in Christ Jesus,” says Paul, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”

Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. All of these benefits are connected to Jesus, and are results of God’s mighty protest movement. They are at the center of a cross-shaped life. This cross that stands behind me, is a symbol of what we might call “foolish wisdom” which, if we embody it by living a cross-shaped life, God can change the world through us.

May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Retrieved from Wikipedia.com, January 15th, 2023.

2.    Homileticsonline, retrieved Jan 5th, 2023.

3.    Ibid…

4.    Ibid…

5.    Ibid…

6.    Ibid…

01-22-2023 Words for a Tired People

Thomas J Parlette

“Words for a Tired People”

Isaiah 9: 1-4

1/22/23

          Once upon a time, there was a multi-millionaire who built a new home and filled it with only the best. Fine antique furniture, the newest and best appliances, smart technology everywhere. He even bought a $200,000 grand piano. One day, his brother came to visit and brought his 3 year- old daughter with him. And when this little girl saw the brand new, shiny people – her eyes lit up and she did what most children with a piano. She started banging away on the keys. Needless to say, her father and he millionaire uncle quickly put an end to her musical expression. Only a master should play such a precious instrument, right?

          Or consider the friend of mine who recently inherited a 250 year-old grandfather clock, handcrafted in England. Unfortunately, every once in awhile, it stops ticking. Well, what do you do when a priceless heirloom is broken? Do you call the local handyman and hope for the best? Do you channel your inner Arthur Fonzarelli from “Happy Days,” slap the side of the clock and hope it starts ticking again? Probably not. No, you call the best clock repair shop you can find and bring in the experts.

          Or, let’s suppose your spouse is ill. He or she needs a delicate open-heart surgery. Maybe you made “A’s” all the way through high school biology, you successfully dissected a frog, and you’ve keep up on all the latest advances watching reruns of ER and Grey’s Anatomy. Do you go ahead and try to do the operation yourself. No- of course not. You come to the World Famous Mayo Clinic and see a specialist. You’d only take your loved one to the best.

          Now, how about us? How about you? When something goes wrong with our lives, where do we go for help? Do we seek out a professional, a specialist. Maybe. But how often do you call a friend, or stop by a neighbor’s place for advice. How often do you look up old Dear Abby columns, or turn on Dr. Phil or just start Googling. Maybe too often.

          But remember what Jesus said, “Come to me.” Come to me all you who labor and are heavily burdened – I will give you rest. When we depend on an organization, we get what an organization can do. When we depend on psychiatrists and doctors, we get the best medicine can do. When we depend on government, we get the best the government can do – which sometimes isn’t much. But when we come to Jesus – well, we get the best that God can do!

          You know, every so often people stop by my office to talk about some problem they have or some situation they are facing. Sometimes they’re a member of the church – I know them and they know me. But sometimes people stop by who aren’t members and who have little or no religious affiliation at all. One of the big tip-offs is when they call or ring the doorbell and ask to talk to the Father. Only two people would call me that, and they usually just say Dad. One of the things that I hear very often is where they’ve already been for help. “I’ve talked to my mother. I’ve listened to my friends. I’ve been to the Salvation Army. I’ve tried Family Services. I’ve seen a therapist.” It seems that God gets put on the list as kind of a last resort. “Nothing else has worked – I guess it’s time to try God.”

          But Jesus says, “Come to me.” Maybe he means “Start with Me.” When your life is broken, when you are weary and run down, when you are hurting or in need of repair – come to Jesus. He is not called the Divine Healer for nothing. You could also think of Jesus as our Spiritual Manufacturer’s Rep – the one who is licensed to fix you. Jesus can look at your life, diagnose the problem and put it right. “Come to me,” says Jesus. Not as a last resort, start with me. Those are the words that a tired people need to hear. And I think all of us feel tired – body and soul – now and again.

          There was once a German tourist who was asked, “What impresses you most about the United States.” He answered, “I wouldn’t say impressed, but I am struck by the fact that you are a tired people. Clerks, wives, husbands, friends, teachers, young people, leaders, institutions – you are all so tired!” Could it be that he was right? Is America tired? Have we worked and toiled to win a badge of deep mental, physical and spiritual fatigue? May be.

          Just look at our homes – count the divorced or separated people you know. In many cases, their relationships just wore them out. How many parents are too tired to really raise their children. How many homes are more like a laundry, hotel and diner. We are a tired nation. We could all do with some rest. Did you know that it takes about 18 million sleeping pills to put America to sleep each night?

          Even our institutions are tired. Churches are lukewarm. Our government is facing crisis after crisis and nobody trusts anybody anymore. It feels like we may have more than one military crisis on our hands with Russia, Ukraine and maybe now China as well. The law is tired and seemingly lax and nobody is happy with Congress. Even our money is tired – for we all know that a dollar doesn’t buy what it used to.

          A more affluent society has never before existed. A healthier people has never lived. And yet there has never been a more worn out people.

          Could we really be that tired? Maybe. If so, Jesus invites you, “Come to me all who are tired and heavy lade. I will give you rest.”

          You know, the Greek word for rest is actually best translated as “relief.” I will give you relief. The Christian life is not a rest from any and all struggle, work, engagement or involvement. It is a gift, a relief, so one may devote their energies constructively.

          In our passage for today, Isaiah was speaking to a tired people. Just two verses before, in Chapter 8, v.21 and 22, we hear that people were discouraged, hungry and angry. They were worn out and tired. Yet Isaiah brings hopeful words. Words that we believe speak about Jesus. “You have given the tired, hungry nations great joy, Lord. You have broken the yoke that burdened them and defeated their oppression.”

          Yes, America does seem tired. We all seem worn out. We are a tired people. We fit very well into Isaiah’s description I think. And that’s why Jesus’ words are so relevant. But Jesus isn’t for everyone. Jesus doesn’t call everyone to follow him. He calls people like James and John and the other fishermen. Jesus calls the tired and the heavy laden. Jesus doesn’t call for the self-sufficient, for those who can “take care of myself, thanks very much.” Jesus only calls to those who feel a need. Those like James and John, who feel they need something more. “Come to me all who are tired and heavy laden,” he says, “and I will give you relief.”

          Jesus also says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

          Notice that Jesus gives two commands and a promise. The commands – “Come to me” – and- “Take my Yoke” – are what make the promise “I will give you rest and relief” come true.

          Also notice that Jesus says that we must be saved from something- to something. This should not surprise us. God saved Israel from Egypt -to the promised land. God saves us from the flesh – to the spirit. Jesus says we need to be saved from our weariness – to his yoke.

          Now when Jesus spoke of his yoke, he was speaking from the perspective of a skilled tradesman. He was flashing back to his boyhood days. You remember, Jesus was a carpenter for 20 years or so before he turned into a preacher. His father Joseph taught him the trade. Together they ran a little shop in Nazareth. I imagine it may have been located in the poor side of town, down some inconspicuous, dusty little street. But it was a pleasant shop, well-kept and nestled beneath the shade of some olive trees. I imagine you could hear frequent laughing, maybe some whistling or singing mixed in with the sounds of hammering and sawing. The smell of freshly cut lumber would fill your nostrils as you entered the shop. And out front, legend has it, there was sign which read, “Our Yokes Fit Well.”

          According to tradition, Joseph and Jesus, and probably at least some of his brothers, made the best oxen yokes money could buy. People would come from all over the region to have their yokes made by Joseph and Sons. Jesus would take very detailed measurements, select the finest pieces of wood, cut it, shape it and sand it down until the yoke fit each animal like a second skin. Every yoke made by Joseph and Sons fit perfectly.

          And now, some years later, Jesus no longer makes yokes for oxen. Now he makes yokes for people. And these yokes fit just as well. They are smooth, light-weight and tailor-made. God gives us each a tailor-made yoke, so to speak. God has a plan for everybody’s life. God has a job for you to do. And better than anyone else, you are qualified to do it.

          So what is your yoke in life? What is your calling? What is your ministry? Ask God. If you really want to know God’s will, then the Lord will find a way to show it to you. Seek the advice of the best, seek out the specialist, and you will get an answer.

          I wonder how many of you have heard the story about the puppy who was spinning around and around in circles? An old dog sauntered up to watch, and after a few minutes he asked, “What are doing?”

          “I’m chasing my tail,” panted the puppy. “You see happiness is in my tail. When it wags, I’m happy. When it droops, I’m sad. Happiness is in my tail. So, if I can catch it, I will always be happy.”

          After he had his breath, the puppy went back to spinning around and around, trying to catch his tail. Finally, he dropped to the ground, all out of breath, worn out and tired. The old dog, still watching all this, said wisely, “You know, I used to chase my tail. But one day I found that if I just went about my business, happiness followed along right behind.”

          Today, Jesus’ invitation goes out to any of you who’ve been chasing your tails, searching for happiness and are just as worn out and tired as the people Isaiah was speaking to you way back when. The word for you is come to Jesus. He will give you rest. He will save you from your sins and give you a well-fitted yoke, whatever that may be. And when you go about the Lord’s business, happiness is sure to follow right behind.

          May God be praised. Amen.

01-15-2023 What's in a Greeting!

Thomas J Parlette
“What’s in a Greeting?”
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
1/15/23
 

          When I was in college, way back in the mid-80’s, I had a fraternity brother named Dale who had a particularly annoying habit. Our house had about 20 guys living there, so the mailman would just bring in a big box with all our mail in it. Sometimes it would be bundled with a rubber band – but not always. Sometimes we had to rummage around in the box and find what belonged to us on our own.
          Well, Dale thought that meant that he was entitled to read whatever mail he came across. If it looked interesting, Dale would help himself. Magazines were his favorite. Sometimes I got to read my Sports Illustrated two weeks late when I dug it out of Dale’s room. If there was a post card in the mail – well, forget about it, Dale would read it. A shoebox with cookies from home was of course half-eaten by the time I got back from class. Just part of living in a fraternity house I guess.
          Well, it’s been said that whenever we read one of Paul’s letters, we too are reading somebody else’s mail (1).
          Paul always wrote to particular churches with particular problems and unique situations. And it seems the church in Corinth had quite a few problems they were wrestling with.
          Evidently there were some in the church who were feeling pretty full of themselves, as Paul warns against boasting. There were social and economic divisions within the church as well, as some members were of an upper-middle class background and were quite wealthy, while others were former slaves who were struggling to get a foothold in the bustling Corinthian economy.
          There were questions coming up about marriage, sex, lawsuits between church members, whether they could take part in the city’s festivals and even what kind of hairstyles were appropriate for church. Let’s be honest – the Corinthians had a lot of questions.
          They also had a lot of money. The church in Corinth had ample resources. They had some members in the church with some pretty deep pockets. And that fact was not lost on Paul. He needed to give the young Corinthian church some answers, maybe some answers they didn’t really want to hear. He needed to remind them that they were part of the larger Christian movement – but he needed to do so tactfully, because frankly – Paul needed their financial support.
          It’s tempting to skip over the first part of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. It would be easy to sum these verses up as quick “Hello. How are you. Good to hear from you,” and move on to the meat of Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians.
          But let’s not move past Paul’s greeting too quickly. For right here at the beginning of his letter, Paul is laying the groundwork for everything he is going to say later. In these words of greeting, Paul is introducing the concept of being “called.”
          He reminds the Corinthians that he himself has been “called” by God to be an apostle. And the church at Corinth are a community – also “called” by God for special service.
          So, as we go about opening someone else’s mail this morning, we can learn some things from Paul’s greeting to the Corinthians…
-         We are called to be part of the story of God’s redemptive work in creation.
-         We are called to be in fellowship with each other, as the church, for that is how God’s work gets done.
-         And, we are called to be thankful for each other and for the church, for although we are imperfect – the church is God’s vehicle for the salvation of this world.
First, we are called to be a part of God’s story. We are not just observers, sitting here passively watching as the world rolls by. We are participants, called to actors in God’s redemptive drama.
         Woody Allen once made a movie called “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” The story follows an unhappy waitress named Celia who finds an escape from her abusive husband in her local movie theater. She has seen one particular movie, “The Purple Rose of Cairo,” so many times that she knows every line by heart. One day though, something unusual happens – her favorite character in the movie looks directly at her sitting in the audience and says, “You must really like this movie…”, then he steps off the screen and persuades a stunned Celia to show him around her world.
         After a few very odd days, he returns the favor and invites Celia to join him in the movie onscreen – and the two of them step into the world of “The Purple Rose of Cairo.” Celia becomes a participant in the story she knows so well. She is no longer sitting in a dark theater, all be herself, munching her popcorn and mouthing the words. Now she is involved. She is part of the action. She is part of the story.
         God calls us to do the same thing. Get out of our seats and step into the action. “Called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” says Paul. We are called to be a part of God’s story.
         We are also called to fellowship. We are not meant to pursue this life of Christian faith on our own. God’s church, as we know it through Jesus Christ, is not set up for Lone Rangers. We are meant to be in this together. We are meant to be part of a team.
         For instance, Jenny Thompson is the most decorated American woman in Olympic swimming history. If you count World Championships – Katie Ledecky takes the crown, but for Olympic swimming, it’s still Jenny Thompson. Over the course of four different Olympics, Jenny Thompson won 8 gold medals – but interestingly, she won only one medal, a bronze, in an individual event. All of her medals came as a part of a relay team. Her greatest success came as part of a team.
         That’s how the church works too. Our greatest success occurs when we participate as part of a fellowship, as part of a team. God wants us to be in fellowship with each other, for that is how God’s work gets done.
         We are called to be part of the story, we are called to be in fellowship with each other, and we are called to be thankful for each other, thankful for the church – for although we are imperfect, the church is God’s vehicle for the salvation of the world.
         Two decades ago now, Jesse Ventura was the Governor of Minnesota – remember him? I remember when He made national headlines when he said something to the effect of “Religion is for the weak. Religion is a crutch.” It’s not a new idea – people have been saying that for years. I have always liked the answer William Sloane Coffin gave when he said, “Some say religion is a crutch. Well, of course it’s a crutch. What makes you think you don’t limp?”(2)
         Sure, everything the critics say about churches is true to some extent. Our pews are filled with people who say one thing and do another. We have our share of hypocrites, we often fall short of what Jesus taught us to be. We are weak, we do fight, we squabble and we disagree. We are often guilty of having small minds and closed hearts. All of that is sometimes true – but only sometimes.
         Not all the time – and not for every one of us. And that’s the important thing. We don’t ALL fall short at the same time. Whatever our problems might be in the church, Paul is right to point out that the church is the work of God in this world. God has called the church to do specific work – not to be a perfect community. And that is reason enough to be thankful. We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to be faithful. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, “Life Together” –
         “If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even when there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”
         “What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God… the more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more sure and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”
         “The Christian community is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”(3)
         So, as we sit here this morning, reading someone else’s mail – what can we find in this greeting from Paul?
         Well, we find nothing less than a blueprint for the life to which we have been called.
         We are called to be part of the story of God’s redemptive work in creation.
         We are called to be in fellowship with each other as the church, for that is how God’s work gets done.
         And we are called to be thankful – for although the church is imperfect, the church is God’s vehicle for bringing about the salvation of this world.
         May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Homileticsonline, retrieved Dec. 27th, 2022.
2.    Ibid…
3.    Ibid…
 

01-08-2023 Jesus, John & Baptism

Jesus, John and Baptism

Rev. Jay Rowland

Matthew 3:13-17

January 8, 2023

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

[a] Or my beloved Son

For many people, including John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus is … puzzling.  

In spite of what we know about Jesus it’s not obvious why Jesus chooses to be baptized.

On the surface, it seems sort of redundant.  Even the expert on baptism, John the Baptist asks Jesus, “Why have you come to me? It is I who should be baptized by you.”  

Jesus’ response to John is somewhat vague—basically: “because it’s the right thing to do.” And apparently that’s a good enough reply for John to set aside his immediate hesitation and baptize Jesus. 

But ever since Jesus came up from the water of the Jordan, Christians have continued to wonder, why?    Why does Jesus get himself baptized? 

Given that John asks the question first, let’s start with him.

To summarize: John the Baptist burst onto the religious scene calling all Believers to repent and be baptized--essentially declaring everyone ritually unclean according to Jewish Law. Translation: everyone who can hear my voice is an enemy of God. But God wants you back! Come on: Confess. Be baptized. Come back over to God’s side of the river.”  

The basic idea of religious, ritual cleansing with water is nothing new to Judaism but what was unprecedented was John’s direct and very public confrontation with human sin and his particular method of reconciliation.  

We are so familiar with this story and the setting that we don’t blink at the fact that John’s method of reconciliation takes place outdoors and in a river—the River Jordan to be precise. We don’t realize that according to the Jewish religious authorities & tradition of the time, any religious rite or practice happening outside of the Temple building was unthinkable. Religious ceremony NEVER occurred outside the Temple—let alone literally outdoors.  The mere idea of any religious ceremony being conducted outdoors would be considered at best improper, inappropriate & perhaps worst of all: unimportant.

So: everything about John’s repent and be baptized campaign was unconventional & unorthodox--like John himself.

But equally suspect is the main element in this ritual—the water is seriously objectionable. The water John employs isn’t formally consecrated--blessed—a common element set apart for God’s divine purpose. Aside from that, understand that this water is not even contained—literally not in any kind of container or fancy water holder! What’s more, the water in John’s baptism doesn’t simply come from a river—it IS the river--the Jordan river itself. 

But wait, that’s merely the beginning of the objectionable view. Let’s now consider the main action of this baptismal rite: the one being baptized is entirely submerged—their entire body—into the current beneath the surface of the Jordan river; submerged by the baptizer, unable to breathe underwater until raised up out of the water by the baptizer.   

Modern baptism is so different. Baptism has lost its original, untamed, raw energy and power which was and is designed to give each person an experience of God’s powerfully saving power and presence. I don’t mean to throw shade upon any current baptismal practices.  It has to be the way it is now, more or less.  We cannot simply pause our worship service every time there’s a baptism so that we can hike down to the nearest entry into the Zumbro for baptisms. Even if we decided to start doing so, well, on a day like today—a typical January day in Minnesota—most bodies of water are frozen solid. But even in warmer weather, who would consent to such a disruptive act? It’s clearly impractical for us to baptize the way it was first instituted by John and vigorously practiced in the ancient church—and in some denominations still today.   

But I lament this acquiescence to convenience. Divorced from its original setting and vision, baptism does not as fully resonate or register God’s powerful saving promise. Let’s explore why I make this claim. Imagine any river: see how it is constantly moving, flowing, alive. Understand that a river is literally a source of life.  Also sense how symbolically rich it is: how life and death are literally as well as symbolically contained in the current of every river and body of water—biologically, microscopically and macroscopically. Now imagine yourself standing beside a river, preparing to wade out into it.  Feel the movement of the current wherever it contacts your body.  Imagine you are standing there with another person and are preparing to be dropped by that person underneath the water, supported but also held there by those arms under the flowing river’s current, unable to breathe until you are lifted back up into the oxygenated air and the sunlit surroundings of a river. 

We’ve lost any sense of the life-giving power of God’s love played out in the rite of baptism as it was introduced into the organized religion of his and Jesus’ time. The religious authorities and “influencers” would have been arguably justified had they run John out of town. And this might very well have happened had John not been the son of Temple Priest Zechariah, and descended from a long generational line of temple priests. 

I myself forgot all about John the Baptist’s priestly pedigree. I would never have remembered this on my own—I was reminded of this by Father Richard Rohr, catholic mystic, theologian, preacher & teacher who gets all credit. It’s easy to forget this about John because he is introduced to us & described as an unusual person. In the verses preceding this baptismal scene, Matthew informs us that John lives in the wilderness (unheard of), and relies upon God and creation for food, clothing, shelter, etc. (see also Luke 1:80).    

But John isn’t some deranged vagrant who suddenly appears for the first time. We first meet John when he leaps in Elizabeth’s womb, remember? We forget John’s father, Zechariah is a Temple Priest, who is struck mute because he doubted he and Elizabeth would conceive at their advanced age. And so John’s priestly pedigree is what makes everything about what he’s doing even more striking. John has effectively created a new religious ritual, located outdoors, outside the Temple, standing in a river, no less.  Anyone without his royal priestly lineage would have been quickly silenced and discredited. Perhaps at first the other religious authorities were so shocked by what John was doing down by the river, and by the crowds he was drawing that they didn’t know what to do with him.

But we know there was one important figure who immediately recognized a kindred spirit in John and unquestioned legitimacy.   

Jesus is intuitively drawn to John and his unprecedented and urgent methods. Like John, however, perhaps our expectation is that Jesus should be doing the baptizing.  Jesus quickly reassures John because Jesus will also spend great amounts of time outside of the Temple, revealing that God is not and cannot be housed or contained in one single place in time, or according to human volition. God is more like the wild, untamed river. So shall Jesus be after he emerges from the Jordan. And just as we know how water naturally flows to the lowest point, we know from everything in the Gospels that Jesus too shall continually move and flow to the lowest of the low, pouring out his God-essence which God first pours into Jesus.   

Back to John: in John’s eyes, everyone is captive to sin and able to benefit from repentance. Thus John makes no distinction between the devout and the righteous (e.g., Pharisees, Priests, etc.) on the one hand, and so-called riffraff on the other.  Jesus comes to be baptized by John even though he (Jesus) is without sin and has nothing to repent. In doing this, Jesus chooses to stand with all of humanity, in all of its sinful, lost, broken, belligerent, unredeemable messiness. 

Jesus stands with peasants, pagans, losers, rejects; with tax collectors and lepers; with the suffering, the diseased, the oppressed; with the self- or other-condemned: drunks, punks, derelicts and prostitutes; the dazed and confused, the addicted, and with any and every disreputable sinner of every class, race, religion, tribe, etc.   

And so when Jesus is plunged backward, submerged in the Jordan, Jesus is not merely an example for people to follow, this is not a gimmick or a publicity stunt (John suspects that’s what motivates the Pharisees and Temple Priests & other religious leaders who are coming to be baptized which he sternly condemns as a brood of vipers and hypocrites).

Jesus isn’t pretending to be “like us”, he’s not role-playing, he’s not “slumming it” and he’s not corrupting the divine nature either.  When Jesus goes under that water, he meets you and me in the depths of whatever form and guise of death which life runs through us.  There, under the water, Jesus reveals God’s unity with each one of us.  Jesus is baptized among and alongside the lowest and most common of human beings—just as he was also crucified; permitting no distinction between himself and anyone else.  His baptism is “right” because it reveals Jesus’ (God’s) choice to reside with broken humanity.  In the water, under the water, Jesus meets us most powerfully--down down down, at the lowest point of our human brokenness. 

So, yes, Jesus gets himself baptized just like you and me.  But that’s not the end of the matter, it’s merely the beginning.  From there Jesus continually goes forth with us and for us, continually invites us back from our broken-ness and sin-induced self-destructive tendencies and our life in a broken world, continually invited by him to break bread with him, to dine with him, to drink with him who transforms any table into God’s table, the only one willing and able to continually reserve a seat for you and for me at the Kingdom Table.  

Even though modern baptism has become somewhat tame it is rooted in a radical action: God rescuing us from death. This is the emergency situation that is presented in every baptism which has ever happened.  And so we are invited every time we attend a baptism to see ourselves being plunged beneath the waters of the Jordan, buried, then raised up through no effort of our own, in the arms of Another, the One who alone is able to restore our life and breath at the last possible moment—after we have breathed our last. 

And so let us revisit this emergency scene whenever bad things happen, whenever doubt creeps in and tries to convince us we have no place in God’s heart, to say nothing of God’s table. Because life in this world continually brings us to our knees, stealing God’s goodness and the reality of the God-with-us-savior Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus’ baptism boldly declares and reveals Jesus willingly giving up his own seat at the Kingdom Table for you and for me ... for anyone and everyone. No exceptions. 

But if we happen to forget or forsake any of that, no matter. One day, we shall discover there are no conditions or limits to the powerful Grace of God’s Love.   

The one in whom God is well-pleased comes up from the waters of baptism immediately shining God’s message into our eyes, “this is my beloved … YOU are my beloved child”

And so remember Jesus’ baptism. 

Remember your baptism. 

And if you haven’t been baptized, what are you waiting for?

Because every time we celebrate baptism here in this place, and whenever any baptism is celebrated in any place, at that moment our true identity is revealed, and we are again confronted by the Spirit of God through which the very Body of Christ is grafted onto you and me, sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever.   

And so you and I we are now, already were, and forever shall be

God’s beloved in whom God is well pleased.

 No exceptions.   

 Forever.

12/11/22 The Gap Between Our Expectations and Reality

Matthew 11: 2-11, Third Advent

12/11/22 

          When was the last time you had to show some proof of your identity? Maybe you used your library card to check out books from the library. Maybe you used your student ID to get discounted tickets to a basketball game. Maybe you showed your driver’s license to proof you were 21 years old. Most adults have some form of ID to proof that we are who we say we are. But if you don’t have any physical proof – how can you convince people of your identity? 

          I once read a story about Johnny Weissmuller, the 5- time Olympic gold medalist who starred in 38 movies and TV series from 1929 to 1976. He is best known as the original Tarzan. He starred in 12 Tarzan movies from 1932 – 1946. He’s the one who came up with that famous move where he beats his fists on his chest and shouts this loud cross between a yodel and a shriek. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it. I think you’d be better off looking it up on You Tube. In one interview, he was quoted as saying, “Tarzan was right up my alley. It was like stealing money… How can a guy climb trees, say “Me Tarzan, You Jane” and make a million dollars?” 

          Many years ago, Weissmuller’s son, Johnny Jr., wrote a book about his father’s time in Hollywood titled Tarzan, My Father. In it, he tells the story of his father’s visit to Cuba in 1958. Weissmuller was very popular in Cuba, and he and his friends went there for a golf vacation. This was during the time of the Cuban Revolution, when Fidel Castro and his revolutionary army was trying to take over the government of the country. 

          One day, Weissmuller and his buddies were driving through Havana when they were surrounded by a group of Castro’s soldiers. The soldiers thought these wealthy Americans were supporters of the current government, so they intended to kidnap them and hold them for ransom. Weissmuller and his friends couldn’t convince the soldiers that they were just tourists on vacation. Until, that is, Weissmuller proved his identity by doing his famous Tarzan move – he beat his fists on his chest and let out his ear-piercing Tarzan shriek. The soldiers instantly recognized it, and let him and his friends go free. (1) 

          That’s some pretty quick thinking when you’re facing armed kidnappers in a foreign country. Fortunately, Tarzan’s signature yell was known everywhere that American movies were shown. It was proof of his identity. 

          Today’s passage once again features our friend John the Baptist, the man chosen by God to announce the coming of Jesus’ coming. Like Tarzan’s yell, John the Baptist was proof of Jesus’ identity. Last week, we looked at how John’s ministry fulfilled the promise made 400 years earlier that God would send a messenger to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. But while John was typically bold and passionate about his mission, it appears some questions had developed in his mind. Even John was starting to wonder, is Jesus the Messiah? He wasn’t fulfilling all of John’s expectations of what a Messiah would be like. In fact, Jesus didn’t fulfill anyone’s expectations completely. And John was wondering. Some doubt was creeping in. He wanted some proof, some reassurance that Jesus really was the Messiah. 

          In this season of joy, it’s hard to admit our doubts and questions about God. It’s hard to admit that God sometimes does act according to our expectations. Psychologist Edith Eva Eger writes, “When we’re angry, it’s often because there’s a gap between our expectations and reality.” (2) That’s where John the Baptist is at this point in Matthew’s gospel. Maybe that’s where you are right now. And that is a painful and isolating experience. 

          In 1789, a Scottish explorer, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, a relative of our own Ron Mackenzie, who passed away recently, led an expedition across Canada with the goal of finding a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Over the span of three months, Mackenzie and his men followed this winding river over 3,000 through the Canadian wilderness. It was dangerous, but the men were sure the end goal would be worth it. Imagine how they felt when they discovered that the river they were following led to the Arctic Ocean instead. Mackenzie’s hopes were crushed. In his diary, he referred to this great expedition as the “River of Disappointment.” (3) 

          Maybe that’s what John the Baptist feared. His expectations of the Messiah and the reality of Jesus didn’t match up. Matthew doesn’t indicate that John was angry about it. But he was surely struggling with some doubts. As part of John’s prophetic ministry of preparing people for the coming Messiah, he preached a bold message of judgement and repentance. He even went so far as to preach this message to Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, who had divorced his wife so he could marry his brother’s wife. That’s how John ended up in prison. Maybe he knew he wasn’t going to make it out of that prison alive – so he had to know. If this was the end, he had to know whether the purpose he had committed his life to – declaring that Jesus is the Messiah sent from God – was true or not. Is Jesus really who he says he is, who I say he is? 

          So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus directly, “Are you the one, or should we expect someone else?” 

          So what was John looking for in the Messiah? They were looking for someone who would be a great political and military leader who would restore the kingdom and government of Israel and rebuild the Temple.

          Notice here that Jesus doesn’t condemn John for asking the question. Instead he answers, “Go back and tell John what you hear and what you see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.” What does Jesus want John, and us, to know? Well for one thing, God isn’t just restoring the kingdom of Israel. Much more than that, In Jesus, God is establishing God’s kingdom for all people. Jesus is showing John what the world will look like when God is the Ruler over every corner of creation. There will be no sickness, no death, no injustice, and no inequality. If those are the deeds of the Messiah, the One sent from God, then what does that tell us about God? 

          Rev, Eric Ritz tells a story about Florence Nightingale, the British nurse who revolutionized nursing practices and saved thousands of soldiers lives during the Crimean War. In 1853, Great Britain and its allies went to war with Russia. The British field hospitals were filthy and poorly run, and more soldiers were dying of disease and infection than from war wounds. The British Secretary of War hired Florence Nightingale to mobilize and train nurses to improve the field hospitals in Turkey, a primary focus of the war. Nightingale worked night and day to improve the hospital’s operations, and her work reduced the death rate by two thirds. 

          She was also known for her compassion for the injured soldiers, which earned her the nickname “the Angel of Crimea.” There is an old story that one soldier, while watching her make her rounds, shouted out to her, “You look like the grace of God!” (4) 

          That’s just what Jesus looks like as well. Jesus didn’t look like a great military hero, or a political leader – he looked like the grace of God. Where John the Baptist was looking for deeds of power; Jesus pointed to his deeds of compassion. In Jesus, God isn’t just restoring the kingdom of Israel; God is establishing God’s kingdom for all people.

          Here’s another thing John needed to know about Jesus; In Christ, God is restoring our broken relationship with God. For thousands of years, the faithful prophets had tried to turn the people of God back to their covenant relationship with God. But like us, they were seduced by other priorities, by lesser gods. We are all guilty of that to one extent or another. God came in the flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ, to accept the penalty for our sins and to show us how much God loves us. By his life and death, Jesus restored our relationship with God. 

          In 2006, Dr. Samuel Weinstein, the Chief of pediatric cardio-thoracic surgery for a major hospital in New York, traveled to El Salvador to perform life-saving operations on children with severe heart problems. One of his many patients was an eight-year old boy named Francisco. During his surgery, Francisco lost too much blood. He required an immediate transfusion. But Francisco’s blood type was B-negative – a blood type shared by only 2% of the population. His chances of survival were slim.

          Until Dr. Weinstein began rolling up his own sleeve. He shared the same rare blood type as Francisco. So, Dr. Weinstein laid down his surgical tools, scrubbed his arm and let a nurse draw a pint of his own blood. When he re-started the surgery on Francisco, it was his own blood that flowed through the little boy’s veins and likely saved his life. (5) 

          That’s what God did on our behalf. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas. When our lives were at stake, when nothing else could save us, God laid down the Divine majesty and authority to come in the form of a helpless baby born to a poor family living under the control of an oppressive government. Jesus lived the life of a traveling rabbi and died a humiliating and agonizing death to save us from our sins. He gave up everything to ensure that we could live in God’s presence forever. Could there be any greater proof of God’s love for us? 

          It’s tempting to wish that this conversation between Jesus and John’s disciples had turned out differently. It’s tempting to want to hear Jesus answer the question directly. “Are you the One who is to come…? “Yes… It’s me, I am the Messiah.” That’s what we’d like to hear. Or maybe have Jesus perform some jaw dropping miracle or send an angel to bust John out of prison. But instead, Jesus pointed to God’s presence and compassion among the sick, the disabled and the poor. He gave John a glimpse of the coming kingdom of God. Even better, Jesus gave John a glimpse of God’s heart. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Can you trust that God is working all things for good, even when God doesn’t meet your expectations/” That’s a good question to ponder this Advent season. 

          Kate Bowler is a divinity professor, author and podcaster. She once closed one of her podcasts with a blessing that she says is for “when there is hope for someday, but someday is not now.” I’ve adapted it a bit, but this is the essence of what she says: 

          “Blessed are you in this terrible, wonderful now…

Blessed are you for whom prayer feels hopeless, disappointing and futile.

Blessed are you in your radical honesty, in the ways you speak of your grief…

Blessed are you as you learn to trust, trust a God who hears, who listens, who hasn’t left your side, who prays on your behalf, interpreting those deep groans you can’t put into syllables or sounds.

Blessed are you, as you settle into acceptance.

And Blessed are we who live here in the someday, but not now.”(6) 

That’s a great blessing for this Advent season.

May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, p 66.

2.    Ibid… p 66.

3.    Ibid… p 66-67.

4.    Ibid… p 67.

5.    Ibid… p 68.

6.    Ibid… p 68.

12/4/22 A Small Center of Sanity

Matthew 3: 1-12

12/4/22, 2nd Advent

          What brings you hope this Advent season? Perhaps it’s a new job, a new phase of life, and addition to the family. I pray that you’ll find this place to be a community of hope that celebrates the presence and the love of God in every season of the year. 

          Our bible passage for today is the familiar story of John the Baptist. Although it is usually read as a message of judgement, what with the axe at the foot of the tree and the chaff being burned, I think it is also a message of hope. 

          This week I stumbled upon an amusing quote from the autobiography of Robert McAfee Brown, who was a preacher and religion professor at Stanford University. Brown included in his autobiography as old family photo taken at Christmas time. He writes, “There we all are gathered around the crèche on Christmas Eve, putting animals and the wise men and the shepherds around the baby Jesus, who is a small center of sanity in a large and crazy world.” (1) 

          I think that’s a great description of Jesus in these advent days – “a small center of sanity in a large and crazy world.” That’s’ a good thought to keep in mind when things get hectic this time of year. 

          I once read about a young woman named Elizabeth who had spent many years struggling with a drug addiction. During those years, she was desperate for some words of encouragement, some signs of hope. When she got into recovery and created a new life for herself, she wanted to help others who were trapped by hopelessness. So, she started writing little notes of encouragement and sticking them on the windshields of cars around her city and posting them on telephone poles in local parks. She ended one note with the words, “Much love. Hope sent.” (2) 

          Much love. Hope sent. That’s what we celebrate during Advent and anticipate at Christmas – that Jesus, that small center of sanity – embodied the message of much love, hope sent. It’s a message of hope that God has been preparing for thousands of years. It’s been foretold by numerous prophets. And what God promised through the prophets has now been fulfilled in a person – the person of Jesus Christ. 

          In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” 

          I know, you wish all our sermons were as short as John the Baptist’s – but we need a few more words that he used. The word used here for repent means “to think differently” or to change the inner person.” So John was saying “Jesus has brought the kingdom of heaven to you. And you can receive his message when you think differently, when you change your inner person.” 

          That certainly sounds like a message of hope to me. But repentance is just the first step to receiving the kingdom of heaven. The next step is baptism, first with water, and then with the Holy Spirit. Each of those steps leads to receiving new life as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. 

          Rabbi Ari Lamm once gave a great explanation of repentance when he was interviewed on the Jane and Jesus podcast. Rabbi Lamm said that in the Jewish tradition, repentance is an example of time travel. He says that the Bible shows us that true repentance changes both your future and your past. Let that sink in – repentance changes both your future and your past. 

          Rabbi Lamm says, “If you repent properly, what God promises is that God will change who you are. It’s a question of identity.” To paraphrase, he says that in Judaism, what God promises to those who sincerely repent is the opportunity to say, “I am no longer that person who sinned… I am a fundamentally different person. It’s as if I am a newborn child, and I have a new path in life.” (3) 

          That’s the promise and the hope of Christmas. At Christmas, the kingdom of heaven came near in the person of Jesus Christ. And through Jesus, we have a new King, a new life, and a new purpose – all promised to us when we receive the kingdom of heaven. 

          The first promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have a new King. The history of humanity has been shaped by sometimes sinful and unworthy leaders. We could easily name a whole list of kings, emperors and politicians who have been greedy, power-hungry and violent. And their moral failings have been responsible for unimaginable suffering all over the world. 

          But when God wanted to show us God’s love, purposes and power in action, God came in the person of Jesus Christ. In the Advent season, we realize more than ever that the priorities of this world – greed, power and violence – are empty and contrary to God’s kingdom. That’s why Jesus came, not as a powerful military leader, but as a helpless baby born to a poor family. That’s why he didn’t seek status with the religious or political leaders of his day. He rejected wealth, power status and success. He rejected others’ attempts to make him a religious celebrity or a king. He rejected all the things we so desperately chase after because his mind was fixed on God’s will, on bringing in God’s kingdom. We can put our hope and trust fully in Jesus because he embodies the use of power in the service of love. 

          During World War II, German pastor Helmut Thielicke visited a prominent church that had been bombed by the Nazis. Thielicke understood the suffering and hopelessness the people were feeling in the midst of war. He stood in the rubble of this devastated church, and he preached these words of hope: “Where Christ is King, everything is changed. Eyes see differently and the heart no longer beats the same. And in every hard and difficult place the comforting voice is there, and the hand that will not let us go upholds us.” (4) 

          Where Christ is King, everything is changed. That’s the hope we are promised at Christmas. In Jesus, we have a new King. 

          The second promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have new life. Notice that John baptized people in the Jordan River. The Jordan was significant to the people of Israel. In the book of Deuteronomy, we are told about the Israelites wandering in the desert for forty years. The elders who had escaped slavery in Egypt had mostly died off. And God planned to lead the people into Canaan, into the Promised Land. But before God did that, God challenged the people to choose between death and life. The people of Israel chose life and followed God. When they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land, they crossed over into freedom and new life. It’s no accident that John baptized people in the Jordan. Our baptism represents our crossing over from death to new life in Jesus Christ. 

          Pastor Ben Helmer tells of a man in his congregation who, after attending a short while, approached him and asked, “What do I have to do to be baptized? This man was 57 years old. He’d spent his professional life as a counselor. But he reported that it was only in his baptism that he found the wholeness he had been seeking in life. He had always felt that something was missing – but in his baptism, he found the new life God made him for. 

          This man became a regular volunteer at the church food pantry. The following Christmas, he joined the team that cooked and served Christmas dinner at a local health clinic. His baptism marked the start of a new life of service in Jesus’ name. (5) 

          John Chrysostom was a leader of the early church in the Middle East about 1,600 years ago and the bishop of Constantinople. He once taught his church members that the best way to share their faith was through their actions. He wrote, “Let us astound them by our way of life. This is the unanswerable argument. Though we give 10,000 precepts in words, if we do not exhibit a far better life, we gain nothing. It is not what is said that draws their attention, but what we do. Let us win them therefore by our life.” (6)

          Let us astound them by our way of life. Let’s show the world what it looks like for Jesus to live through our actions, our words and our priorities. Let’s show them by our actions what it means to go from death to new life. 

          And finally, the promise and hope of Christmas is that in Jesus, we have a new purpose. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches us to “seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness.” When we have been baptized into new life with Jesus, our new purpose is to prioritize the kingdom of heaven above all else. The kingdom of heaven is the rule of God in this world. It is the what the world looks like when Jesus is living in us, and we are pursuing the priorities that Jesus sets. 

          Let me tell you about one young woman whose faith gave her a new purpose in life. When she was 28, Gertrude Dyck moved to the United Arab Emirates to serve as a medical missionary at the first hospital in Abu Dhabi. Her flight to the UAE was only the second time she had ever flown. She quickly learned the language and adopted the customs of the local people. Her compassion earned her the nickname Doctura Latifa, or Doctor of Mercy. (7) 

          When Dyck started at the hospital as a nurse and midwife, infant mortality rates were at 50% and maternal mortality rates of 35%. Half of all newborns died in childbirth or soon after, and soon after, and so did 1/3 of mothers. The staff of the new hospital were determined to change this heart-breaking reality. 

          Over the course of her nursing career, she delivered tens of thousands of babies, including the children of the Royal family. She and her colleagues introduced new medical practices that significantly reduced patient mortality rates. She served 38 years as a nurse at the hospital in Abu Dhabi – when she retired, infant and maternal mortality rates were below one percent. (8) 

          So, where do you find hope in this Advent season? Is your hope that you’ll get everything done in time for the holidays? Is your hope that next year will be better than this one? Or is your hope in knowing that the pressures and priorities of this world no longer hold you down. You follow a different King, you are living a new life, and you have found a new purpose because you have received Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God with us. So I encourage you to welcome Jesus, that small center of sanity, into your hectic holiday season.

          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, p62.

2.    Ibid… p62.

3.    Ibid… p62-63.

4.    Ibid… p63.

5.    Ibid… p63.

6.    Ibid… p64.

7.    Ibid… p64.

8.    Ibid… p64.

11-27-2022 Advent and Hope

Jay Rowland

Advent and Hope

Isaiah 2:1-5

November 27, 2022 Advent 1A

It feels like only a week ago we had just enjoyed another “Trunk or Treat” Halloween event here in our church parking lot on a beautiful warm and sunny late autumn afternoon. But it’s like I looked down for a moment to check my phone or something and when I looked up again it was Thanksgiving and now here we are on the First Sunday of Advent.

Sometimes Advent begins in November which feels “early” and sometimes it begins in December which feels more on time. Either way, this year I find myself thinking about how the month of November provides a gateway or threshold into Advent. November has some unique happenings and dates which prepare us for the unusual ritual of time known as Advent.

November begins with All Saints Day (Sunday) when we remember and honor the people in this congregation who died in the past year. As part of this ritual and liturgy, we cherish each of them by name, lighting a candle to the sound of bells.

And as it happens by the time of All Saints a celestial rite of passage has been playing out above us for many weeks as the Earth in its orbit around the sun gradually & silently changes our perception of daylight which mysteriously recedes to the encroaching darkness of the winter months.

Something about these altered patterns of daylight and darkness coming in the wake of All Saints finds purchase deep in our spirit probably beneath our conscious awareness. Meanwhile, the ever-unfolding saga of the world around us combines with our own personal lives in orbit around it all; which can bring about a shift in consciousness as Advent returns.

This shift in consciousness shows up for me in the laying bare of our basic human vulnerability … the intricate, delicate, complex interplay of life in the midst of death, and light in the midst of encroaching darkness. All of this, it seems to me is the spiritual threshold and gateway known as Advent which comes to us in four movements: Hope, Love, Joy, Peace. And begins today with hope.

The brief poem before us today from the prophet Isaiah begins with an image of a high mountain, representing the house of the Lord, rising above all other landmarks. This image echoes later in the imagery of all Creation laying down--leveling off--in anticipation of the coming Savior. Vitally connected with this imagery is human movement toward that lofty place; our ascending, going up. Which is a poetic way of saying that much our life and our faith resemble a steady uphill climb.

Especially lately. Recent years have made it fairly clear that life in this complicated world isn’t getting any easier. Significant problems cast a pall over our days. Some days are better than others, of course, but sometimes it seems like we are engaged in a steady uphill climb that is becoming steeper and downright wearying.

And so it is good that Advent begins with the movement of hope. Because hope is as indispensable today as it’s ever been for God’s people.

With the dawn of Advent here in the fading light of 2022, the enveloping darkness of late autumn and winter signals to us that God is once again drawing near. A vision from God is shared with us through the poetry of the prophet Isaiah. Woven into the images of this poem is a promise emanating from the heart and the mind of God—rising before us like a mountain:

In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

… above the hills ...

All nations will river toward it,

people from all over set out for it.

They’ll say, “Come,

let’s climb God’s Mountain,

… to the House of God …

so we can live the way we’re made.” (The Message Bible)

This whispered promise God is shouting through the prophet Isaiah is given to break through the imposing darkness surrounding God’s people.

Isaiah’s poetic voice is declaring that a time is approaching when the nations shall stream together “to learn the ways of God” and when they do God shall bring about a settlement of all disputes, resolve even the most ancient of ethnic, creedal, tribal differences among nations and families; and this shall capture the attention of all people.

What’s truly engaging about this vision is who it is that takes the decisive action toward peace (turning war equipment into farming tools). This passage is just familiar enough to remind us that we’ve heard it before, and so perhaps we don’t notice some of the words or their significance, or we’ve always heard this passage in Isaiah according to a sort of default attention which presumes that God always performs the decisive action. But look again … listen again … from verse four:

they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war anymore.

Notice the pronouns, “they” and “their”. That’s what makes this prophetic promise so intriguing: this bold, hope-filled transformation is not something God inflicts upon the nations independent of their/our actions or inclinations, but is rather a human response to the reality of God.[1] The people are not passive recipients but active participants, deciding and striving to work together to live God’s ways for the good of all--all nations, all people, all creatures all that lives and breathes and relies upon God’s Creation for sustenance--from human to mammal to animal to the most microscopic form of life.

Now this may or may not strike some of us as obvious good news. Because before this is to happen, there is much work to be done by God’s people. In other words, again, the mountain of God is an uphill climb. How could it not be?--given where we are as a people and a planet, where we all long to be and all that God longs to provide.

Herein lies a critical detail in all of this: We cannot do any of this without God, and God will not do any of this without us. But that is what makes this hope something more than a mere wish or a pithy sentiment. This vision of hope involves everyone; excludes no one. For God’s vision and peace to become reality depends upon humanity rising to the opportunity. Peace has always been much more complicated and harder work than conflict. Thus the uphill climb. But we do not embark upon the climb alone or isolated, left to our own wits or resources, but rather we do so with (and because) God who is faithful, has always been faithful, and has always shown us that God will see us to it and through it

I realize so many of us feel as if the world is in greater peril now than it’s ever been. The world certainly is in peril. But sometimes I wonder how prior generations dealt with their own perilous circumstances. Threats to human existence and to the earth itself have happened before. One example is the plague which must have appeared to everyone at the time to be the end of the world. More recently, the rise of fascism and Nazism and all the perils of WW2 clearly changed the scope of destruction to include, ultimately, total annihilation. My point is that prior generations have all faced what they thought was The End of the World. The only difference is that their experiences all reside in the past and were resolved. Whereas our experience of this threat is immediate and global but with no resolution. And so this fully captivates our attention and threatens to steal our hope.

The prophets and the Psalms wisely advise us to be leery of our human leaders no matter how dangerous or promising they may appear to be. History and the Bible show us that Israel and Judah had both disastrous and divine leader-kings, neither of which guaranteed that either good or evil would prevail. And even the destruction of Jerusalem, which was akin to the “end of the world” to the Jewish people didn’t bring about the end of God’s presence or God’s people.

And so this Advent, whether or not you’re convinced the world is spiraling toward annihilation, today’s vision from God in Isaiah reminds us of the hope that can and shall transform all of life: the hope God has in God’s people: The nations shall stream to the mountain of God.

The prophet Isaiah presents an alternative vision for the world, a vision boldly declaring God’s expectation that we learn to live in peace. A reminder that God has created this world—Creation itself for peace. And so peace shall come one day, but not without us, not without our participation, because that would be something other than a lasting peace. God’s promised peace depends upon us doing our part to keep that expectation and hope of God’s promise alive in our generation.

Eugene Peterson puts it this way:

“The impressive art of Isaiah involves taking the stuff of our ordinary and often disappointing human experience and showing us how it is the stuff that God uses to create and save and give hope. As this vast panorama opens up before us, it turns out that nothing is unusable by God. [God] uses everything and everybody as material for [God’s] work which is remaking the mess that we have made of our lives” and the world. (Eugene Peterson, “Introduction to Isaiah,” The Message Bible)

A contemporary poet/prophet, Danna Faulds[2] expresses this hope another way,

Take all the fear in the world and bring it here.

Throw it in a heap.

Now find Insecurity and Doubt

Locate Shame and Anger

Hatred and Depravity

Add them to the pile.

Find every obstacle to love.

If the whole world’s suffering can’t asphyxiate the love in you,

Then there’s hope for us.

Hold your love aloft in the gathering darkness

And watch peace spread wide it’s brightening wings

If you could keep your love alive

Then war and madness won’t have the last word.

Look

Even now the dove is flying.

Advent’s return turns us toward the hope that has always sustained God’s people in times of darkness. And so, dear friends,

come, let us walk

in the light of the Lord

Notes

[1] This idea has likely been published or expressed elsewhere. The work of Otto Kaiser in Isaiah 1-12, The Old Testament Library Series (Second Edition. pp.54-56, et al.), may even suggest as much but certainly influenced my interpretation as I express it in this sermon.

[2] read by Tara Brach during “Three Practices for Nurturing Wise Hope”, podcast 11/3/2022, https://www.tarabrach.com/three-practices-nurturing-wise-hope/

Isaiah 2:1-5

1 The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

2 In days to come

the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

3 Many peoples shall come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,

to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

and that we may walk in his paths.”

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

4 [The Lord] shall judge between the nations,

and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more.

5 O house of Jacob,

come, let us walk

in the light of the LORD!

11-13-2022 By Your Endurance

Thomas J Parlette
“By Your Endurance”
Luke 21: 5-19
11/13/22
 

          When was the last time you settled into a good disaster movie? I know it sometimes seems like watching cable news is as good as watching a disaster movie – but I mean a more traditional one like Armageddon or The Towering Inferno?
          Disaster movies tend to do pretty well at the box office, whether they feature frightened people battling floods, or volcanos, or Godzilla, or even zombies invading major cities.
          Speaking of zombies, there is a company in London called Vollebak that manufactures what they call an “Apocalypse Jacket.” The word Apocalypse generally refers to the ultimate disaster drama – the complete final destruction of the world, something like what is described in the Book of Revelation. The Apocalypse Jacket is meant to protect its wearer from such things as extreme heat and chemical attacks. They advertise it with the tagline, “Zombies will hate it” – assuming you run into any Zombies.
          The Apocalypse Jacket uses a special fiber created by NASA that is incredibly strong and has no melting point. This fiber is then blended with the cloth fibers used in “ballistic-rated body armor.” It may be the sturdiest piece of clothing on earth, nearly indestructible. It can withstand exposure to black lava from volcanoes and sulfuric acid. These jackets have 23 pockets with hidden zippers all throughout the interior jacket, so you can carry everything needed for escaping a natural disaster or even a zombie apocalypse. (1) A good Apocalypse Jacket might be just what we need after hearing this passage for today with it’s note of impending threats.
          There is something thrilling about facing down an impending threat, isn’t there? I think that’s why disaster movies do so well at the box office. We like to sit on the edge of our seat and feel our hearts pound as the hero or heroine overcome nearly impossible odds to save the world.
          The highest-grossing disaster movie in the U.S. so far is Independence Day, the movie about a worldwide alien invasion. Roland Emmerich, the director of Independence Day, claims that disaster movies are cathartic. They allow the audience to release tension over their fears of the future. As he says, “You see all this destruction and everything, but at the end, the right people save the day.”
          Wheeler Winston Dixon is the chair of the Film Studies Program at the University of Nebraska. In his book Disaster and Memory, he writes, “People go to disaster movies to prove to the themselves that they can go through the worst possible experience, but somehow they’re going to come out the other side.” (2)
          That may be the perfect summary for today’s passage from Luke 21 – people go through the worst possible experience, but somehow they’re going to be ok. And if we can really believe that – that should somehow change the way we live in these disturbing times.
          Our scripture lesson opens with Jesus and his disciples standing in the Temple in Jerusalem, admiring its strength and beauty. The Temple wasn’t just a building – the Temple courts sat on 36 acres of land. The giant stones that made up the Temple were dazzling, blinding pinkish-white marble, and over some of the stones was gold plating that reflected the sunlight. From a distance, the whole complex looked like a glowing jewel. Up close, it was one of the most impressive buildings in the Roman Empire. (3)
          And Jesus had the unenviable task of telling his disciples that one day this beautiful Temple would be destroyed – which it was in 70 AD. To make matters worse, Jesus said, “False prophets will preach in my name and turn people away from the truth. Then there will be wars and famine, earthquakes and pestilence.” And before the worst of this can happen, Jesus’ followers will be arrested, put in prison, betrayed by loved ones, and some will even be put to death. And yet, in the face of all this – all this that sounds disturbingly current in our time – Jesus promises that there is still reason to have hope.
          So, the first thing we can say in the light of this passage is that vision without hope is a dangerous thing, but with hope, all things are possible. When we envision a hopeless future, we become fearful, angry, and anxious. And these are just the opposite of the fruits of the Spirit we receive according to Paul in Galatians – the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
          Paul shares a vision of hope in his letter to the church at Ephesus. He writes, God has now revealed to us his mysterious will regarding Christ – which is to fulfill his own good plan. And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Jesus Christ – everything in heaven and on earth.” In other words, someday everything in creation will be under the authority of Jesus Christ. If we understand and believe that promise – we will view the future with hope.
          Jeff Immelt became the CEO of General Electric on September 10th, 2001. The next day, Sept. 11th, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, sending our nation reeling and causing a worldwide meltdown of financial markets. To make matters even more challenging, the World Trade Center Towers were insured by one of General Electric’s subsidiaries, GE Capital. The company experienced tremendous financial losses over the next few weeks and months. There could not have been a worse time for a new leader to take the helm of a  company.
          Looking back on his leadership during this time, Immelt said, “I think what you learn in a crisis is that good leaders absorb fear. They are not accelerators of fear – they know how to manage a sense of calm while still being really clear about the challenges ahead… You learn to hold two truths. You learn to say, “Things can always get worse, but here’s a dream that I have for the future, and I’m not going to give up on that.” (4)
          In this passage from Luke, Jesus is teaching his disciples to hold to these same two truths: Things can always get worse, but here’s a dream I have for the future, and I’m not going to give up on that dream. And so, in spite of these fearful events, Jesus can say to us, even in our own time and place – Beware that you are not led astray. Do not go after the false prophets and promises. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed by parents and brothers, by relative and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance – you will gain your souls.”
          Vision without hope is a dangerous thing, but with hope all things are possible. Another thing we can say here is that we can have hope if we make up our minds beforehand to see the future through Jesus’ eyes. Instead of dwelling solely on the problems and challenges before us, keeping our focus on God’s promises and God’s love lets us view the future with hope and courage.
          When Gwenyth Todebush’s 5 year old son, Clark, was anxious at starting kindergarten, Gwenyth taught her son to calm his nerves with daily affirmations, encouraging words to prepare him to face the day with positivity and courage. One morning on their drive to school, Gwenyth mentioned to her son that she was nervous about a meeting that day. Clark, all of 5 years old said, Mom, I’m nervous all the time, but I know what to do.”
          He said, “You gotta say your affirmations in your mouth and your heart. You say, “I am brave. I am loved and I smell good today! And you can say it three or four times – maybe even ten, until you believe.”
          But Clark wasn’t done. Clark was a big fan of Dolly Parton and Dinosaurs, so he said, “Mom, you gotta walk big. You gotta mean it. Like Dolly on a dinosaur, because you got it.” (5)
          That’s what it’s like to prepare yourself beforehand to not be afraid. Clark had hope and courage because he viewed his future through his mom’s eyes. You and I can conquer fear if we practice looking at the future through Christ’s eyes.
          Adoniram and Anne Judson sailed to Burma in 1812 to serve as missionaries there. Adoniram spent long, tiresome years translating the Bible into the Burmese language. They served in Burma for 6 years before seeing their first convert. In 1824, Adoniram was accused of spying for the British government. He was thrown into prison where he suffered frequent torture for 20 months. Shortly after his release from prison, his beloved wife Anne died. Then he contracted a lung disease that sapped what little energy he had left. He served in Burma for 37 years until his death. His dedication and joy in spite of his suffering inspired many other people to enter the mission field. He was well known for one particular saying. “The future is as bright as the promises of God.” (6)
          When we see the future through Jesus’ eyes, we can say with confidence, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.”
          Jesus also tells us that we can have hope in difficult times if we make up our minds beforehand to view hardship as an opportunity to tell about the truth of God. A faith that has been tested is a faith that can be trusted. Hard times and challenges to our faith both serve as testing grounds to dig into what we really believe, whether we truly base our hope on the character and promises of God, and whether we put we put our faith into action even when it costs us something. If our faith is not a source of hope, peace and strength in difficult times, then others have good reason to question whether Jesus is real.
          In the country of Yemen, it is a crime to convert from Islam to another religion. So when a man named Ibrahim became a follower of Jesus, he studied his Bible in secret and didn’t tell his family about his newfound faith for four years. Then one day during his prayer time, Ibrahim decided that if Jesus really was God in the flesh, then it didn’t make sense to live in fear any longer. He said, “I was tired of fear, and I asked myself a question: If I believe in Jesus and this is true and He grants me eternity – who should I fear? So if they come to kill me, I am ready to say, ‘Welcome.’”
          Ibrahim was baptized in 2002 and shared his faith with his wife and extended family. The family disowned him, Ibrahim’s wife demanded a divorce. But when she saw how Ibrahim’ behavior had become much more respectful of her, she retracted her demand.
          Ibrahim established a church in Yemen and led many others to become followers of Jesus. But when local authorities made false accusations against him, he and his family fled Yemen and settled in a  neighboring country. There they set up an outreach to Yemeni refugees and they continue to share their faith. (7)
          Ibrahim is someone who has made up his mind to use his hardships and trials as an opportunity to tell about the truth of God.
          There was once a pastor sitting at the bedside of an elderly parishioner who was dying. The man said, For 87 years, I have been feasting on the promises of God, but this morning, I woke up, and I couldn’t remember a single one of them.”
          And the Pastor said, “Don’t worry my friend, God has not forgotten.”
          In times of fear and hardship, it is easy to forget the promises of God. When our faith is shaken, when we see news reports of impending or ongoing war, or financial collapse or environmental disasters, it is easy to react with fear, anger and anxiety.
          But God has not forgotten God’s promises.
          God has not abandoned the Divine purposes.
          And God will not forsake God’s people.
          Don’t wait until difficult times come to figure out what you believe or how to respond.
          Make up your mind beforehand to view trials and hardships as an opportunity to tell about the truth of God.
          As Jesus said, “By your endurance – you will gain your souls.”
          May God be praised. Amen.

1.    Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 3, p 47.
2.    Ibid… p 47.
3.    Ibid… p 47.
4.    Ibid… p 48.
5.    Ibid… p 48-49.
6.    Ibid… p 49.
7.    Ibid… p 49.