January 31, 2009

1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

“A Place of Jubilee.”

Last week, if you remember, Jesus unrolled the scroll of Isaiah, found his place, and read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” It seems, up to that point, the people were okay with what he said. It was what had sustained them for many years. It was what they had come to expect.

So, they were good with everything he said – any way, up to the part he left out. This reading of Isaiah 61 wasn’t new to them; they had heard it many times before. But when he didn’t go on after the words, “to proclaim the Lord’s favor.” they must have thought – so where is the rest – the part about God getting even with our enemies, or about making things right for a change; or about our special place in all this? Where is our double portion? They expected to hear about their deserved prosperity and their enemies finally getting what they had coming but Jesus instead talks about God’s helping the widow in Sidon and the Syrian named Naaman. What’s this talk about the Gentiles receiving God’s favor and attention, when it should be about them?

The people thought they had God all figured out. Isaiah, according to their understanding, had promised certain things and now Jesus is saying something all together different. So they are a little more than upset when Jesus talks about God’s care for foreigners, strangers and even enemies. How can he question their understanding of God. As far as they are concerned, he can go jump off a cliff – in fact they will even help. And as they are about to do just that, Luke said, “he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

For those who heard Jesus preach his first message, Isaiah was about what God was going to do for them, someday. For Jesus though, Isaiah was about what they were going to be doing for God starting right then. There was a definite disconnect? So they missed his point entirely. Jesus talked about “the year of the Lord” as a time of Jubilee, but that is not what they had in mind – especially if he meant the inclusion of those who were outsiders.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann suggests the people’s reaction was actually "a very “dramatic resistance to Jubilee." They were upset and did not want to hear about the Jubilee that would curb their accumulation. To them, Jesus was not just talking about “a kind thought or a good intention or a religious idea. He was talking about ‘their money’ and ‘their property’ being transferred to someone else, he was talking about the redistribution of wealth – and that was threatening.

Brueggemann points out that Jubliee – the idea that everything is God’s who is its rightful owner – is “the most difficult, most demanding, and most outrageous requirement of biblical faith.” Such an idea runs counter to peoples understanding that what they have is theirs to do with what they see fit. But it is that very understanding of property and money that the Bible questions most.

What if we, as some have suggested, let this text read us as Jesus did. Would we be transformed or know ourselves better? Would we be able to see the lines and circles we create to keep the insiders in and the outsiders out? And might we discover that even in our being who we are, God loves us even though we are neither pure nor perfect or know our need of God? These are the things that can change us.

Barbara Brown Taylor says that we need to be challenged and upset by the truth, by the "people sent to yank our chains and upset our equilibrium so we do not confuse our own ideas about God with God." Yet we don’t like that, do we? No matter how hard we try, we don't like "being told that our enemies are God's friends." The people who heard Jesus’ first sermon didn’t either.

This past month, I have discovered Parker Palmer, a Quaker theologian and author. Currently I am reading his book “Let Your Life Speak,” which is all about our natural vocation. In an equally thought provoking book, The Company of Strangers, he writes: "At the heart of any authentic religious experience is recognition that God's nature is too huge, God's movement too deep, ever to be comprehended by a single conception or point of view….God's truth is singular and eternal, but the forms in which we give it expression are as finite and fragile as clay pots, and we must always be ready to break them open on behalf of a larger vision of truth."

If that is true – that our understanding and experience of God is gained bit by bit as we break open, one by one, our fragile notions of God – and if this reading of our text is true – that Jesus’ coming is about our doing for God rather than the other way around – then might it also be true that as God’s people we are called out to the edge and through this church to a ministry to and with all of God's children? If that is so then, what might that ministry look like – if not compassion on our part to the Haiti-s of this world and a greater respect for those who are different from us. How large is our view of God's nature, how deep is our understanding of God’s love, and how wide is our grasp of God's embrace? We must ask ourselves, will we throw love like that from the cliff or will we seek it with all our heart, and let it take us out to the edges, where risk, and hope, and courage are found?

It is at that edge, I believe, we will become the church God is calling us to be. Parker Palmer writes, “The mission of the church is not to enlarge its membership, not to bring outsiders to accept its terms, but simply to love the world in every possible way - to love the world as God did and does… If we are able to love the world, that will be the best demonstration of the truth that the church has been given.”

We are called to be a community "better together," than apart. Yet, sometimes we have failed to live up to Paul's ideal or Jesus' example. We have failed to love and welcome the "un-churched," those never raised in a religious tradition, as well as those who have left their childhood faith not because of intellectual doubt but because they were not loved there or they felt judged or somehow excluded. Maybe their gifts were not recognized, or they felt misunderstood. Regardless of the reason, we are called to be a place of love, a place of Jubilee, and a place of doing for God beginning now – and that, sometimes, can be very hard. May God help us be that place, a place of Jubilee.

January 24, 2009

1 Corinthians 12:12-31; Luke 4:14-21

“Blinking Church”

In the Gospel for today, Jesus preaches his first sermon. It was something that, for him, came natural – as if he were born to it. Those that knew his family said Jesus had a gift for preaching, even as a young boy; he could talk to anyone, anywhere, and they would listen to him and connect with what he was saying. What he said made people think about things, about themselves, about their faith and about God.

And yet, we are told that many of those who heard that first message did not really appreciate his gift and may even have thought, “This is only Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary. He is one of us. Where does he come off telling us that Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled - ‘our long wait is over’? This young man needs to understand “his part” in this congregation - and it is not standing up in front of all of us and talking all this nonsense!”

Looking back in hindsight, especially right after the Christmas story, we know this IS what Jesus was born to (this and a greater thing), but for the people then, in the small town of Nazareth, living in the moment, they seem to have had no idea. Just as today we may have little idea of what we (as the body of Christ) have been born to, what gifts we have been given, or what part we are to play in living out the church’s call.

  

John O'Donohue, in his book To Bless The Space Between, writes this about our call:

“We were dreamed for a long time before we were born. Our soul’s, minds and hearts fashioned in imagination. Such care and attention went into the creation of each person.... The great law of life is: be yourself. Though this axiom sounds simple, it is often a difficult task. To be yourself you have to learn how to become who you were dreamed to be. To be born is to be chosen. There is something that each of us has to do in the world. The call is to find it." 

What O’Donohue points out is of great value to us, both as a church and as individuals, in understanding what we are being called to. We are to be our self, to become who we were dreamed to be, to recognize we were chosen for something, and to discover what that something is. Imagine this church being itself – unique from all others, fulfilling God’s dream for it, and doing what it has been chosen for. Jesus knew. Do we?

Well, if we are not sure, how do we know, how do we find out? Or can we really ever know? After all unlike Jesus we are not God. And yet Paul consistently refers to the church as, ‘the body of Christ’ – which makes us like Christ, in a way. It is important to understand God becoming fully human in Jesus Christ – and perhaps equally important to realize God’s incarnation (and everything that means) in ‘the body of Christ’ as well.

If God became human in Jesus Christ, I can’t imagine Jesus naturally knowing his calling any more than you or I. We know that following his baptism, Jesus took some time to sort things out, to discover his calling and where God was calling him to go. As we would, he struggled with it. He didn’t know right away, so he prayed and he looked to scripture. It took time, forty days and nights, small step by small step, for God to lead him through the wilderness. It was not an easy journey and there was a cost (all that he had) but when all was said and done, Jesus, being human like all of us, finally knew. And with his knowing, there was a transformation – a redirection of sorts.

It is crazy to think God would have called such people as us to God’s ministry and mission, here in this place, in this community and in this world. We are a collection of people, some might say a “motley crew,” you and I – a congregation, a church – as human as human could be. We are fragile; open to the many distractions in our lives; timid and fearful of what tomorrow may bring; and confused as to what we should do. How odd it is then, that we should be the ‘body of Christ’ – and yet, how appropriate.

The Reverend Debbie Blue, House of Mercy in Saint Paul, Minnnesota, writes:

“God reveals God’s self most fully, the Christian church professes, not as a rational system or a set of ethics, not as an unchanging principle or some magisterial deity, but as a vulnerable human being. How could God so recklessly inhabit such a contingent, fragile, volatile, potentially destructive thing: a human body with teeth and tempers and some seemly useless flaps of skin.”

If this then is to be our understanding of the incarnation, what are we to believe about Paul’s statement about the church, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” – and its implication for all of us? Think about ourselves, and this church, and how we need all the parts – extroverts, introverts, doers, encouragers, cooks, and musicians – all functioning together as the body of Christ. Think also about what it would mean if a few necessary parts were lacking or not functioning properly?

Paul said, God chose what is foolish in the world, what is weak. God chose what is low and despised. God chose all of us: sick and beautiful and broken people. God chose even me. We are all chosen to love God and each other, even when we don’t always agree. Yet love in the “real world” can be hard. Dostoevsky’s father, in Brothers Karamazov, says, “Love in reality is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.” To be our selves is not easy. To be the church, in love, can be hard. To be the church, God is calling us to will no doubt be difficult because we are human.

We have been chosen by God, Paul says, not because of how good or perfect we are, but because of God’s great mercy and because God is God. And Paul says there is absolutely no reason to think because of it we are somehow better than everyone else, because we are not. We are just a church of human beings, shinning its light and love into the world like a neon sign with half its letters burnt out, as Rev. Blue points out, and blinking: “hurch…urch…hurch…urch.” It may be broken, its light dimmed as it witnesses to the need for God’s grace… but there IS hope it may someday blink, “Church.”

January 17, 2009

1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

“The Miracle of Change”

Now if we take things literally when we read the Bible, this is an account of a time, early on in Jesus’ ministry, when Jesus and his disciples are at a wedding party. They are invited guests, the couple has exchanged vows or whatever they would have done at that time and now everyone, including Jesus and the disciples (who have only been with him a short time), are celebrating the wedding feast. Everyone is having a great time, there has been plenty of food and wine, and no one is about to leave.

But then, the “wine gave out” – it was gone. Jesus’ mother, Mary, sees what has happened and tells her son, “They have run out of wine.” To which Jesus replies, “So?” “What’s that have anything to do with us?” But Mary has the last word. As she walks off, she tells the servants, “Do whatever he says.” She knows full well her son will take care of things.

And he does. Jesus first tells the servants to fill the six stone water jars (used for rites of purification) with water. Then after they have filled them all, he says, “Okay, now take some out and take it to the chief steward.” When the chief steward tastes the wine Jesus has ‘made’ he tells the bridegroom, “Wow, you have kept the good wine until last.”

This, John says, is the first of the ‘signs’ that reveal Jesus’ glory and help his disciples to believe.

So, if we take things literally in the Bible, we are going to read or hear this and think, ‘Jesus could turn water into wine, very good wine – and that is a miracle, the first of many during his ministry. And we would be right. But we might also think, “So?” “What’s that have anything to do with us?” And in that question and its answer lies perhaps an even larger miracle for the church.

This past week, I had the privilege of hearing Bishop Sally Dyck of our Minnesota Conference speak at length to a gathering of Iowa clergy about the current state of the church and our preoccupation with trying to figure out why things are as they are and what now must be done. She put it all in perspective by relating it to scripture – taking us through the story of Job – to apply its lessons to the dilemma a declining church is facing. At the end of his story, Bishop Dyck reminded us Job was called to a new time - “a return to a wonderment and amazement of all God has done” - and was given a “new family.” Relating that to today’s church, she asked, “What is God calling us to?”

Perhaps there is a hint of the answer in hearing the wedding story John retells in a different way. It has been a long and tiring day of walking, teaching and meeting with people. Jesus and his followers are gathered around the fire, as is their custom after the evening meal, and the disciples are talking about how tired they are. Their enthusiasm is gone. They have done so much and now they have run out of energy.  Some are even questioning if they should go on. Having heard all this, Jesus begins to reminisce: “Remember when we first started out and went to that wedding party and the wine ran out – what were the bride and groom’s names anyway? Oh well - I want you all to know this: the kingdom (and your part in it) is like that. The good times, the successes - when everything is as it should be, will run out. But the party won’t be over. Just as I did then, I will provide more “wine” for celebrating – even better than before. Remember those empty stone jars once used for purification sitting over in corner and how I used them? All of you will be like those stone jars – and when the time comes  – I will use you in a whole new way, a miraculous way, so that God’s kingdom will come. You are those jars. Always remember that”

The apostle Paul said it a little differently, writing, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”         1 Corinthians 12: 4-6. These, now, are my words: there are different ministries, different people, different churches yet to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, the love of the Lord and the grace of God – each and every one, jars to be used in a new way.

There are different ministries – we celebrate today the ministries God has called us to, past and present, and look forward to the new ministries awaiting us in the future.

There are different people – we celebrate today those who make those ministries - past, present and future - possible.

There are different churches – we celebrate today the church we have been, the church we are, and the church we are yet to become.

And yet the same Spirit, Lord, and God in all – we give our thanks and praise to God. What else can we say other than, WOW!

Our own Bishop Trimble also spoke on Monday. While Bishop Dyck challenged us to ReThink church and what it means to be the church and a follower of Jesus Christ; Bishop Trimble talked about Re-Wiring our thinking about the church so that it’s not so much all about us but, instead, all about God’s ministry. He said, “Jesus came to do what we could not do for ourselves, and then left us (the church) to continue the ministry he began.” “Yet,” he said, “sometimes our thinking gets in the way of our belief. Too often, we think there is not enough (time or resources or money or whatever).” I think today’s scripture gives us reason to think differently - with the Lord involved, there will be enough – even when it seems we have run out!

The party is not over. It is not time to pack it up and go home but to follow his lead and “do what he says.” There is celebrating yet to do, because the Lord continues the miracle of using “empty jars” for turning the water we have into “new wine.” God promises to provide the power, the love and the grace needed. Maybe not in the same ways God has before, but provided nevertheless. Things will be different, for sure. There will be change, no doubt. And yet the story tells us the wine gets better for those who remain. That is the promise - and the good news for today.

January 10, 2009

Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-22

“Having Only Been…”

In our readings for today, Luke writes of Jesus’ baptism. He also writes about baptism taking place in the very early church. Jesus’ baptism serves as a model for all who later are baptized in his name. There is water; there is prayer; there is the presence of the Holy Spirit (God’s spirit); and there is God’s claim on the one baptized (as God’s own). And, there is the community of faith to which the one baptized is now a part.

Baptism is part of what Jesus’ disciples were suppose to do when, before his ascension, he told the eleven to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

It appears Phillip did just that, and did it very well. Fleeing Jerusalem, he went to Samaria and started a revival of sorts, doing the same sort of thing Jesus had done, preaching the good news of God’s kingdom and performing miracles of healing. His mission to Samaria was so successful that the church back home took notice.

The apostles in Jerusalem, hearing about Phillip’s revival in Samaria, felt a responsibility for some oversight in the matter even though they hadn’t initiated it, and so they sent Peter and John to Samaria to check things out. When they got there, Peter and John probably talked not only to Phillip but also to all the new believers. They found out the new “saints” all believed in Jesus as the promised Messiah - there was no question about that. But they also learned that Phillip had baptized them only in Jesus’ name.

The church in Samaria had not received the Holy Spirit, as had the church in Jerusalem. Their baptism, having only been in Jesus’ name was not enough and somehow lacking. Things were not quite right. More was needed. So Peter and John fixed everything and through the laying on of their hands and their prayers, the Holy Spirit came upon the church in Samaria.

Which raises the question, did Peter, John and the other apostles in Jerusalem believe baptism required a certain recipe be followed? Is Luke suggesting that the Spirit needs to be conveyed by the right people in a certain way? Philip was not good enough? Is that what we believe, that certain things are necessary and have to happen in order to become a ‘real’ Christian?

Luke says these new Christians in Samaria, “having only” been baptized in the name of Jesus, lacked something needed to be “real Christians.” They hadn’t received the Holy Spirit until Peter and John placed their hands on them and prayed. In Paul's writings, baptism and the receiving of the Spirit go hand-in-hand. And yet in Luke's stories of the early church we find them separated sometimes with baptism first and sometimes with baptism after. So, what’s going on? What are we to believe?

Does the Holy Spirit come upon us before, during or after our baptism? Is it only after a “laying on of hands” and prayer or can it happen unexpectedly and without prompting? Because of the importance of the Holy Spirit to the living out of our faith, we want to think it matters. When does the Holy Spirit come to us and do we really have anything to do with it?

William Loader, a professor at Murdock University in Perth Australia, writes, “For the early Christians three things happened very close together: coming to faith, being baptized, and receiving the Holy Spirit and so, all three were seen as aspects of one total event, even though the sequence may have varied.” Faith was primary, usually followed by Baptism. Receiving the Spirit could happen before, during, or after baptism. The sequence did not really matter. The three were so closely connected that Paul often used one of the three to stand for the whole event (such as our being baptized into Christ - Rom 6:3), which was his shorthand for the whole event.

Today, some fellow Christians suggest there are two steps to becoming a believer: first, conversion (with baptism in water) and then second blessing or being baptized in the Spirit. That belief, however, runs counter to our relational understanding of faith according to which we enter a relationship with God and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, engage daily in the process of deepening it.

For many Christians (modern, ancient, and all the generations in-between) baptism takes place before a conscious faith ever develops and celebrates the movement of the Holy Spirit in their life. There is nothing automatic or magical about it. Most often I think we are even aware of it. Loader says Baptism is actually celebrating the baptized child “being placed in the stream (community) in which the Spirit flows and that this happens, and will continue to happen, as long as they participate in that stream.” Why then would some say their baptism is somehow less than real “having only been…?” I thank God, that in my twenties, I was placed in that very stream among children, much wiser than I.

The Rev. Kate Huey writes, “Today, in churches around the world, people are still being baptized, still thirsting for God's grace, still waiting to be included, still longing for the chance to start their life over.” She says, “Baptism is a blessing that doesn’t make us or our lives sacred but recognizes that we are filled with grace… when a voice from heaven says, "You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

So what would Jesus’ reaction to Phillip’s baptism of the Samarians have been? Would he have thought something more was needed for a baptism in his name to be …a baptism in his name? What was his expectation of this baptism he instructed his disciples to do - or that of his own baptism? Was he surprised to find a dove diving at him as he stood in the Jordan River, shaking water from his eyes? And concerning water, would he have been any less beloved if those few drops of water were all there were? What is necessary for God to do something so great …other than being God? The good news for those who would follow Christ is that it is never a matter of Phillip, or me, or anyone else for that matter, having only been… it’s only a matter of God being God.  And that I can live with!

January 3, 2009

Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

“Another Way”

This Wednesday, January 6, is an important day in the church year. It is the day of Epiphany, when we celebrate the 12^th and final day of Christmas – the coming of the wise men into the Christmas story. When you think of ‘epiphany’, think of “appearing” in the same way that stars appear in the sky or “of God’s face shinning on us in blessing.” Although we often call the wise men “kings” – as the song goes – they were probably not kings at all, but astrologers who studied the stars – considered wise because of their skills in and knowledge of science and philosophy. When they saw a new star in the sky, they were excited – because someone really important had been born. The thing to note here - the sign came to them where they were. God got their attention in a way that they understood and in the place where they were at, far from God’s people.

In ancient mythology a star would rise to its highest point to reveal the presence of a divine hero. In astrology, this particular rising star (that ‘our’ wise men saw and followed) represented the rising of Capricorn, Judea’s sign in the zodiac – thus signaling the birth of that nation’s new ruler. These wise men (or magi as some called them) traveled from an area believed to be the present day Iraq and Iran to first Jerusalem, and then to the house where Jesus and his family lived. We don’t know, but this trip may have taken as long as two years, which would explain Herod’s order after the wise men tricked him.

They brought gifts with them for this child so important to the world – gold, frankincense and myrrh. The gift of gold honored Jesus as a king. Frankincense was incense used in worship and prayer. Myrrh was a perfume used in embalming, which some believe foretold Jesus’ death. The focus of these gifts is Jesus, the Christ child. The focus of the story of the wise men today is on the one who would change the world. During Epiphany, we celebrate that Jesus, God’s Son, came to bring the light of God’s love and blessing to the whole world.

Matthew's Gospel is the sole record of these “wise men” from the east. So, why does Matthew include this story when the other gospels don’t? Some says Matthew was all about ‘connecting the dots’ for the Jewish people of his day. Thus, his account fulfilled the prophecies made in the Books of Numbers, Isaiah, and the Psalms – that the whole world would pay homage to the God of Israel. The “wise men” from the east represented this whole world idea and symbolized God’s inclusiveness of all people, Jew and Gentile alike – in God’s revelation in the person of Jesus Christ.

These wise men or “star gassers” from the east, were looking for a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. They hoped to find the one who had been talked about all these years, the one mentioned in all the ancient Hebrew writings. They were searching for the truth. They wanted to know what others could only dream of. And yet, they shouldn’t have been there. They were outsiders who followed stars in the sky, no less – not God. They were the wrong people and the wrong religion. They shouldn’t be there, but they were. If only it had been someone else.

Matthew’s message may have become distorted by our attachment to a song. In our Christmas programs we make these travelers from the east out to be three kings, with crowns on their heads. Yet Matthew says they were wise men, not kings - and there is no mention of how many, only that they brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Sometimes we get it all wrong when our focus is on the wrong things? Perhaps it isn’t the gifts they brought, or where they came from, or how many arrived that matters.

What if the focus IS TO BE the star they followed and what happened when that “Shinning Star” stopped in the sky. Matthew says, “When they saw that the star had stopped, they were over-whelmed with joy.” (2:10) The lesson for us in Matthew then might have little to do with who we are or where we come from, the journey we have made to get here, or the gifts we bring – but a whole lot to do with the joy we feel having arrived when for us the “star stops.” That is when for us – in our great joy – we are wise. It is then we have hope. And it is then, we find ourselves face to face with God.

Discovering God IS WITH US leads to discovering life! And discovering life, we learn what it means to be human, as God created us to be. This is the ultimate quest for people everywhere  – to be like the men from the east in Matthew’s story, who were drawn by Bethlehem’s star to a place where they found God ‘right there’ before them. Isn’t that what we want as well – to find a “newborn king” right here in our lives? Isn't that why we continue to follow the One to whom the Bethlehem star has led? But the journey doesn’t end there. Like the wise men, we have to go back.

Ann Weems, in a poem “Holding” from her book Kneeling in Bethlehem, writes:

On our way back from Bethlehem,

sometimes we forget

what we’ve been warned about in a dream: 

to return another way.

Advent is about making our way toward Christmas and having Immanuel come into our life. It can be a hectic time, filled with stressful and tiring preparation. But like the wise men, we, all of us, are to return… another way. As we journey now on the other side of Christmas, we have to go back to our lives… another way.

If the lesson for us today is that having experienced the Christ child, God with us, Emmanuel, we are now “to go another way” then what does this say to the church? Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians that, “through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known…” We, who are the church, have that same responsibility – to go and share what we have found.

God calls us to do what the wise men did - to seek Christ, to follow the star and to be overwhelmed with joy. Meaning is found in pursuing the Messiah. Purpose is discovered in the quest for the Son of God. Stopping to honor the One who has come looking for us is the key to finding true meaning and purpose in life.

As today’s wise men and women – those who have discovered God’s truth, life and love by following Bethlehem's star and the Star Child it welcomed into the world, we (the church) must now “go another way” to “make the gospel known” to those who are yet to be wise; “go another way” to offer a ministry of light and a message of illumination to those in the darkness; “go another way” as we follow our “Shinning Star.”