Preached February 20, 2011 at Church of the Apostles, Seattle
Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48
Psalm 119:33-40
Jesus, heal our hearts and our eyes so that we can see the world as you do, as perfect.
Amen
"You have heard that it was said, `You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
So, let me get this straight- even if we somehow figure out how to get perfect the same rain will fall on us that falls on all those miserable sinners we are working so hard to love and the same sun will shine on us as those we killing ourselves to be polite to? That hardly seems fair-
What is the reward then?
Don’t we get something exciting in exchange for perfection?
We are asked to be perfect and promised no special treatment in return.
But what if perfection and forgiveness and love are the rewards?
What if perfection is not the command, but the gift?
What reward is it to love only our family and greet only our friends? We will have no more than the rest of the walking wounded we are surrounded by.
We don’t get rewarded for being given gifts.
What if we aren’t being called to add things to our to-do list as much as we are being given kingdom markers. We are so ready to add to our checklists. Figure out what all we are supposed to be doing:
• Clean the fridge
• Go grocery shopping
• Pay the water bill
• Love my enemies
• Be perfect.
What if this is not a list of rules but a picture a snapshot of where we are headed? This is what we will loose, the privilege of living like tax collectors and gentiles. This is like a diagnoses of a progressive ordering of our hearts. If we continue on this path we will slowly loose our ability to distinguish between our friends and our enemies.
It is a diagnoses of increasing health.
Jesus is saying: This is what justice is going to look like, this is how much deeper and broader the ocean of love is that you are being invited to dive into. These are the road signs on the highway we are being invited to step foot on. This is our compass.
You will know you are on track when you look at some one who has hurt you deeply and feel only compassion. When the person who by all the logic of the world should be your enemy is only another limping pilgrim on the journey.
This is what the kingdom is going to look like.
Watch out it could happen to you.
We may follow the law, but if we don’t let the law cut us deep enough to love our enemies, then it still isn’t the perfection we are headed towards.
we heard the law in Leviticus this morning:
“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.”
But some of us stopped there. we didn’t let it break our hearts. And who “our people” got too narrowly defined.
So Jesus comes and says
hey good news!
you will love even your enemies-
This following deep into the heart of God will cost us everything.
Even the ability to choose who we love.
Loving our neighbor as ourselves was hard enough, but now we need to shine our sun and send whatever life-giving rain we have on everyone we meet, without checking to see if they are righteous or unrighteous, good or evil.
It seems that God believe it or not, isn’t asking us who we like. God doesn’t need our judgments about who is deserving of Grace and love and forgiveness.
We aren’t being invited to give God our opinion of her children. God doesn’t need us to tell her who is good and who is evil, God sees our stories from the perspective of the sun and the rain. God sees us all from within the human heart.
And the light of God is so bright, that if we are foolish enough to make the mad choice to step into it, it will burn away all our self-righteous prejudice and we will see all people as our brothers and sisters, and maybe with those kingdom eyes so blinded by the love of God we wont be able to tell the difference, between our friends and our enemies. Or the difference between those we love and those who love us back
We are being offered those eyes- this is the gift.
Maybe God can’t tell the difference between us, maybe to God we are all so precious and so beautiful that watching us hold grudges against each other and treat each other with contempt must look so awful.
Don’t you see-
my sun shines on all of you, my rain falls on all of you,
don’t you see?
Everyone will become so beautiful to us that soon we will no longer be able to lift a hand against anyone because they will all be God. This non-violence isn’t an intellectual proposition; it is a new way of seeing. When we see with Jesus eyes, we understand why he went to the cross without fighting. He saw even the soldiers and the betrayers as brothers and sisters. We are all so precious and fragile when seen with Jesus eyes.
It would be so hard for the sun to choose who to shine on, or for the rain to aim its drops. We aren’t so different really,
the unjust and us,
the just and us.
There is no reward for living a life like this, this life is the reward. The sun will still beat down on our heads, the rain will still soak us through to the skin.
This is an invitation to a perfection we can fall back into at the end of the day, when we are wounded and tired, when we are drenched with cold rain and our faces and shoulders are sunburned.
When we have nothing left to give and even the thought of forgiveness makes us want to weep in frustration. We are invited to quit worrying about who hurt us more that day our enemies or our friends. We are invited to wrap ourselves in the love of God who sees us all from a different perspective.
This is the only promise,
this is perfect.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Stay Salty
Preached February 6, 2011 at Saint David of Wales
Isaiah 58:1-12
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20
Psalm 112:1-9
Dear Jesus,
Love into us and love through us so that we may take part in illuminating your world, and see it as you do, as the kingdom of God
Amen
–you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world, and oh by the way, you need to be even more righteous than the most law abiding religious folks you know.
how is that for good news?
we say in so many ways. “Jesus I don’t want to be the salt of the earth,
can I be the saffron, or the cumin of the world? can I be something fancier, something that will really make a difference?
Salt only highlights the flavors that are already there, and too much of us could ruin what God is cooking up.
No one is going to sit down at God’s heavenly banquet and say “ooh, is that Salt? what made you think of using it? how clever!”
God doesn’t really benefit all that much from getting people like us, and by people like us I mean struggling, demanding, imperfect, precious people who dream of being known for who we really are and loved anyway.
If there are any other kind of people here, I want to talk to you after the service.
we are salt for the benefit of the kingdom
and We are light for the benefit of the whole household.
Jesus says:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Jesus came to reveal who God has always been. The law and the prophets are just as true in Jesus’ life as they were before the incarnation. God’s heart of justice compassion and mercy are exactly the same. Jesus did not come to change anything about the law. It is the same Law. It is the law of Love.
Jesus didn't come to save us from the mean God of the Old Testament.
God is the same God who spoke the world into being with a deep longing for Justice, compassion, and revolutionary love.
God has always longed for the same thing, for us to share in the work of taking care of this unbearably beautiful world filled with unbearably beautiful people. we are not that special, and that is good news.
we are salt and we are light. salt may cease to be salty, and lights can be hidden, but God will still be God. Heaven and earth may pass away but God’s nature- God’s Law is not going to change.
God has been passing us notes all along and slipping suggestions into our bags. God has been sending her friends with maps and directions and calling us to come home into love since we started walking away.
And somehow, as smart and wonderful as we are, we didn’t get it.
Can’t you just see God, heart breaking for the world he loved into being -watching us horde and gloat. Watching some of her children starve naked on the streets while others are worried about how good they look in the eyes of their neighbors as they fast.
That was what Isaiah saw, and God speaks loud and clear through him about the true nature of fasting and the purpose of the law:
Is not this the fast that God chooses:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to let the oppressed go free,
to break every yoke?
Is it not to share our bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into our houses;
when we see the naked, to cover them?
and we still didn’t get it.
then when Jesus comes to lead the way, to take us by the hand and walk us into that promised land of self sacrificial love for our brothers and sisters, there is an expectation from the people with him then and from many of us now, saying:
“yay! Jesus has come to take us to a new place”
and Jesus says
NO I HAVEN’T-
don’t you understand??
we are going where we were always going-
deeper into the heart of love-
We do not get a change of direction but a friend on the journey
What we get is an invitation to follow Jesus all the way into the burning heart of love, all the way to the cross.
This is where we were always headed and if we don’t align our hearts with this law, Jesus says we will be some of the last to see this glorious kingdom of God shining all around us.
The good news is that if we follow the old maps, if we can hear God’s pleas for love in the law and the prophets, then we will be some of the first to see the reign of Shalom and love here on Earth.
and it’s hard because we look at the map / and we look at the world and it doesn’t seem to make sense.
How can we get to a place where:
our light shall rise in the darkness
and our gloom be like the noonday.
where The LORD will guide us continually,
and satisfy our needs in parched places,
and make our bones strong;
and we shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
our ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
we shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
this is one heck of a promise. and it’s the destination of a journey so deep and transformative that the whole world is altered.
this is God’s map. It has always been God’s map
this is the same world that Jesus is calling us into.
don’t look down on the Pharisees, their path is your path, but we have to go further, not change direction.
if you love the God go deeper into the law, Be who God made you to be and you will be transformed into your truer more salty self. the whole sermon on the mount calls us to go deeper and deeper in . these are our operating instructions, this is our map, this is the recipe we get to be salt in.
Everything we need to know about Gods love for the world is already there.
we are in the remedial class that needs help, and we just can’t get there by ourselves.
But God will use us anyway.
When we finally take that dang bushel basket of self importance off our heads, and let the light of kindness shine, we will see that we are in and have always been in a house of peace and justice and crazy, mad love. We can help illuminate it, but we didn’t invent it.
God is just inviting us back to be who we always were.
We were made by love ---
for love-----
in the image of love, -----
with a boundless capacity for love.
we don’t need to preach love to God, God is already Love.
God is inviting us, us! to help in the unfolding of this kingdom, so let’s accept the invitation.
- if God is reaching for a work light,
shine on.
- and if God is cooking up something that needs some salt,
stay salty!
Isaiah 58:1-12
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
Matthew 5:13-20
Psalm 112:1-9
Dear Jesus,
Love into us and love through us so that we may take part in illuminating your world, and see it as you do, as the kingdom of God
Amen
–you are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world, and oh by the way, you need to be even more righteous than the most law abiding religious folks you know.
how is that for good news?
we say in so many ways. “Jesus I don’t want to be the salt of the earth,
can I be the saffron, or the cumin of the world? can I be something fancier, something that will really make a difference?
Salt only highlights the flavors that are already there, and too much of us could ruin what God is cooking up.
No one is going to sit down at God’s heavenly banquet and say “ooh, is that Salt? what made you think of using it? how clever!”
God doesn’t really benefit all that much from getting people like us, and by people like us I mean struggling, demanding, imperfect, precious people who dream of being known for who we really are and loved anyway.
If there are any other kind of people here, I want to talk to you after the service.
we are salt for the benefit of the kingdom
and We are light for the benefit of the whole household.
Jesus says:
Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
Jesus came to reveal who God has always been. The law and the prophets are just as true in Jesus’ life as they were before the incarnation. God’s heart of justice compassion and mercy are exactly the same. Jesus did not come to change anything about the law. It is the same Law. It is the law of Love.
Jesus didn't come to save us from the mean God of the Old Testament.
God is the same God who spoke the world into being with a deep longing for Justice, compassion, and revolutionary love.
God has always longed for the same thing, for us to share in the work of taking care of this unbearably beautiful world filled with unbearably beautiful people. we are not that special, and that is good news.
we are salt and we are light. salt may cease to be salty, and lights can be hidden, but God will still be God. Heaven and earth may pass away but God’s nature- God’s Law is not going to change.
God has been passing us notes all along and slipping suggestions into our bags. God has been sending her friends with maps and directions and calling us to come home into love since we started walking away.
And somehow, as smart and wonderful as we are, we didn’t get it.
Can’t you just see God, heart breaking for the world he loved into being -watching us horde and gloat. Watching some of her children starve naked on the streets while others are worried about how good they look in the eyes of their neighbors as they fast.
That was what Isaiah saw, and God speaks loud and clear through him about the true nature of fasting and the purpose of the law:
Is not this the fast that God chooses:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to let the oppressed go free,
to break every yoke?
Is it not to share our bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into our houses;
when we see the naked, to cover them?
and we still didn’t get it.
then when Jesus comes to lead the way, to take us by the hand and walk us into that promised land of self sacrificial love for our brothers and sisters, there is an expectation from the people with him then and from many of us now, saying:
“yay! Jesus has come to take us to a new place”
and Jesus says
NO I HAVEN’T-
don’t you understand??
we are going where we were always going-
deeper into the heart of love-
We do not get a change of direction but a friend on the journey
What we get is an invitation to follow Jesus all the way into the burning heart of love, all the way to the cross.
This is where we were always headed and if we don’t align our hearts with this law, Jesus says we will be some of the last to see this glorious kingdom of God shining all around us.
The good news is that if we follow the old maps, if we can hear God’s pleas for love in the law and the prophets, then we will be some of the first to see the reign of Shalom and love here on Earth.
and it’s hard because we look at the map / and we look at the world and it doesn’t seem to make sense.
How can we get to a place where:
our light shall rise in the darkness
and our gloom be like the noonday.
where The LORD will guide us continually,
and satisfy our needs in parched places,
and make our bones strong;
and we shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.
our ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
we shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.
this is one heck of a promise. and it’s the destination of a journey so deep and transformative that the whole world is altered.
this is God’s map. It has always been God’s map
this is the same world that Jesus is calling us into.
don’t look down on the Pharisees, their path is your path, but we have to go further, not change direction.
if you love the God go deeper into the law, Be who God made you to be and you will be transformed into your truer more salty self. the whole sermon on the mount calls us to go deeper and deeper in . these are our operating instructions, this is our map, this is the recipe we get to be salt in.
Everything we need to know about Gods love for the world is already there.
we are in the remedial class that needs help, and we just can’t get there by ourselves.
But God will use us anyway.
When we finally take that dang bushel basket of self importance off our heads, and let the light of kindness shine, we will see that we are in and have always been in a house of peace and justice and crazy, mad love. We can help illuminate it, but we didn’t invent it.
God is just inviting us back to be who we always were.
We were made by love ---
for love-----
in the image of love, -----
with a boundless capacity for love.
we don’t need to preach love to God, God is already Love.
God is inviting us, us! to help in the unfolding of this kingdom, so let’s accept the invitation.
- if God is reaching for a work light,
shine on.
- and if God is cooking up something that needs some salt,
stay salty!
Thursday, December 16, 2010
it's him alright
Preached at St. David of Wales, December 12th
Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:4-9
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Jesus, set us free, open our eyes, and lift us up,
So that we may help set others free, open their eyes, and lift them up
its already the third Sunday in Advent. this strange darkening season that leads us gently by the hand into the deep mystery of the incarnation, and we celebrate the tipping of the world back towards the light. in this dim shadowy season, we prepare for the coming of God as a baby who turned the world upside down and then left us again, after conquering death, saying I’m coming back for you. How do you prepare for something like this?
that’s what the season of Advent tries to answer.
Isiah says:
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water
*
Jesus says:
the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them
*
but THEN James says:
*
Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.
The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth,
being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
You also must be patient.
Patient?
this is the worst good news ever-
all we be healed you will sing and dance see and hear, and be healed of everything that hurts in the new Jerusalem with the prince of peace deeply in love, drinking from desert streams-
but not yet not yet.
rejoice! its time to wait.
be patient
patient???
seriously?
we can smell the rainstorm coming in the desert and you want us to be patient?
we can feel in our bones that this world you speak of is just around the next corner.
this is the painful paradox of Advent,
the already not-yet-ness of Advent.
when Jesus who whispers to us from just beyond our reach in the gospels that the kingdom has come.
and we look around and say where Lord?
We want to see your kingdom, but we are too often blind to your love
We want to hear your gospel, but we are deaf to good news
We want to run to you, but our legs are stiff
We want to sing the glory of your truth,
but our tongues cleave to the roof of our mouths and
we stay silent.
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
John wants to know if he was right. after the amazing baptism in the Jordan River with the descending of the holy spirit- he gets thrown in jail, and is sitting there in the dark, having glimpsed Jesus’ love and power and possibility. he wonders
if he is going to miss the fulfillment of everything he hoped for and preached, at least let him have not been wrong about who Jesus is. So he sends his disciples to ask him
Are you the one?
it’s the refrain of the gospels, who are you???
who are you ?
who are you?
Jesus, as usual, does not seem as interested in the title of Messiah, as the question of what the questioner is experiencing.
"are you the one?" they ask him
are you the one?
and Jesus, as usual, answers a bit sideways –Go, tell John what you see
when they get back to John, they can say, “you were right John, this is the one we have been waiting for all along. this is the light in the darkness, the living water in the desert. You might not live to see it, but its coming John. take heart, because everything you said in the wilderness is coming true.”
~~~*~~~
If John the Baptist's followers came to Saint David’s,
what could they go back proclaiming ?
if they came and asked us if Jesus was the one, what would we show them?
what good news could we give them to carry back to a dark and lonely prison cell?
in times of darkness and fear it is beautiful and hard to imagine good things rather than destruction. that is the true boldness of the prophet Isaiah, that he can envision a world gone right. He can envision a people healed and a nation restored. how many of us can do the same.
if we find ourselves running out of hope and vision, and the world around us seems impossibly dark, and the morning feels years away
we can ask ourselves what we are forgetting?
what have we not seen?
what have we not heard?
what have we not said?
where have we not gone?
picture it a new world, like this one but healed
and whole
and just.
what will we see when we open our eyes?
what will we hear if we have the courage to listen?
where will we go when our knees are no longer feeble?
what will we say when our tongues are finally loosed from the tyranny of fear?
• we will see this wasteland world burst forth in blossom, the purple headed crocus pushing up through cracked sand, and we will see the whole world as beloved and precious. We will see the poor with the eyes of the God who loves them, and our hearts will leap to help them.
• we will hear the sound of rushing living water, bubbling up in the desert, as the burning sand becomes a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. And we will the hear the cries of those who have no water, and we will rush to get them a cool drink.
• we will dance on strong legs down the highway of God’s people, and it shall be called the Holy Way; Where no traveler, not even fools like us shall go astray. And we will go farther, on legs restored and made whole, than we ever dreamed. We will dance all the way home inviting everyone we meet on that Holy Way to dance with us.
• and We the ransomed of the LORD will come Home with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon our heads; we shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. We will rejoice and delight in strong voices and shout the truth of Love in the world. We will employ our loosened tongues to preach righteousness and sing of justice.
when they see us dancing and singing, with clear sight and sharp hearing, then they will know who Jesus is.
they can take our story back to John the Baptist and say
we saw it ourselves
the waiting is over—
its him alright
amen
Isaiah 35:1-10
Psalm 146:4-9
James 5:7-10
Matthew 11:2-11
Jesus, set us free, open our eyes, and lift us up,
So that we may help set others free, open their eyes, and lift them up
its already the third Sunday in Advent. this strange darkening season that leads us gently by the hand into the deep mystery of the incarnation, and we celebrate the tipping of the world back towards the light. in this dim shadowy season, we prepare for the coming of God as a baby who turned the world upside down and then left us again, after conquering death, saying I’m coming back for you. How do you prepare for something like this?
that’s what the season of Advent tries to answer.
Isiah says:
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water
*
Jesus says:
the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them
*
but THEN James says:
*
Be patient, therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord.
The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth,
being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
You also must be patient.
Patient?
this is the worst good news ever-
all we be healed you will sing and dance see and hear, and be healed of everything that hurts in the new Jerusalem with the prince of peace deeply in love, drinking from desert streams-
but not yet not yet.
rejoice! its time to wait.
be patient
patient???
seriously?
we can smell the rainstorm coming in the desert and you want us to be patient?
we can feel in our bones that this world you speak of is just around the next corner.
this is the painful paradox of Advent,
the already not-yet-ness of Advent.
when Jesus who whispers to us from just beyond our reach in the gospels that the kingdom has come.
and we look around and say where Lord?
We want to see your kingdom, but we are too often blind to your love
We want to hear your gospel, but we are deaf to good news
We want to run to you, but our legs are stiff
We want to sing the glory of your truth,
but our tongues cleave to the roof of our mouths and
we stay silent.
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”
John wants to know if he was right. after the amazing baptism in the Jordan River with the descending of the holy spirit- he gets thrown in jail, and is sitting there in the dark, having glimpsed Jesus’ love and power and possibility. he wonders
if he is going to miss the fulfillment of everything he hoped for and preached, at least let him have not been wrong about who Jesus is. So he sends his disciples to ask him
Are you the one?
it’s the refrain of the gospels, who are you???
who are you ?
who are you?
Jesus, as usual, does not seem as interested in the title of Messiah, as the question of what the questioner is experiencing.
"are you the one?" they ask him
are you the one?
and Jesus, as usual, answers a bit sideways –Go, tell John what you see
when they get back to John, they can say, “you were right John, this is the one we have been waiting for all along. this is the light in the darkness, the living water in the desert. You might not live to see it, but its coming John. take heart, because everything you said in the wilderness is coming true.”
~~~*~~~
If John the Baptist's followers came to Saint David’s,
what could they go back proclaiming ?
if they came and asked us if Jesus was the one, what would we show them?
what good news could we give them to carry back to a dark and lonely prison cell?
in times of darkness and fear it is beautiful and hard to imagine good things rather than destruction. that is the true boldness of the prophet Isaiah, that he can envision a world gone right. He can envision a people healed and a nation restored. how many of us can do the same.
if we find ourselves running out of hope and vision, and the world around us seems impossibly dark, and the morning feels years away
we can ask ourselves what we are forgetting?
what have we not seen?
what have we not heard?
what have we not said?
where have we not gone?
picture it a new world, like this one but healed
and whole
and just.
what will we see when we open our eyes?
what will we hear if we have the courage to listen?
where will we go when our knees are no longer feeble?
what will we say when our tongues are finally loosed from the tyranny of fear?
• we will see this wasteland world burst forth in blossom, the purple headed crocus pushing up through cracked sand, and we will see the whole world as beloved and precious. We will see the poor with the eyes of the God who loves them, and our hearts will leap to help them.
• we will hear the sound of rushing living water, bubbling up in the desert, as the burning sand becomes a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. And we will the hear the cries of those who have no water, and we will rush to get them a cool drink.
• we will dance on strong legs down the highway of God’s people, and it shall be called the Holy Way; Where no traveler, not even fools like us shall go astray. And we will go farther, on legs restored and made whole, than we ever dreamed. We will dance all the way home inviting everyone we meet on that Holy Way to dance with us.
• and We the ransomed of the LORD will come Home with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon our heads; we shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. We will rejoice and delight in strong voices and shout the truth of Love in the world. We will employ our loosened tongues to preach righteousness and sing of justice.
when they see us dancing and singing, with clear sight and sharp hearing, then they will know who Jesus is.
they can take our story back to John the Baptist and say
we saw it ourselves
the waiting is over—
its him alright
amen
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Beautiful and dedicated to God
Preached November 14, 2010 at St. David of Wales
Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
Dear Jesus
Let us be living witnesses to love, beautiful and dedicated to God, -
Amen
in the reading this morning Jesus is already in Jerusalem
in the next chapter he is breaking bread with his disciples at the last supper.
this is the very end of Luke’s telling of Jesus’ life.
and some were admiring the temple with
beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.
but God is Right there with them
even after all this time with Jesus – after the blind have seen, the lame have walked, the bread has multiplied, the hungry have been fed:
and they are staring at the stones of the temple and we do that ALL the time. look right past God at some construct of human hands and say that is nice.
Jesus says
ALL THIS WILL BE THROWN DOWN
I love it, the question they ask-
what will be the sign?
they are a couple of days away at most from Jesus’ crucifixion, and they want to know what the signs will be?
do they want to make sure they can keep enjoying everything until its time to clear out?
why do we want to know that the end is coming?
When I was 8-9 years old I loved books about children on their own. orphans or victims of war. Making their way across entire countries with a little bag of their possessions.
so far from the bamboo grove, Anne Frank to a little princess
stories of the trail of tears and Japanese internment camps.
I wanted to know : who were you when you had lost everything and everyone?
I would wonder to myself –
if they came for us right now what would I grab?
what would I have left if one by one everything I hold onto was taken from me?
But I was different from those guys with Jesus.
I didn’t want to know, not really.
I didn’t want to see it coming.
I wanted to live my life with friends and just be a kid.
Then when I was in the third grade my elementary school became a magnet for Cambodian and Laotian refugee kids.
my best friend that year was a 13 year old named Kadek. she was smart and funny she had long black hair like silk, and a snarky mischievous sense of humor. We got along great at school and eventually arranged to get together one Saturday, it took countless notes going back and forth between our mothers, by way of the school translator. finally one day my Mom dropped me off at the Archer Street housing projects.
If you can, imagine a small Cambodian village in the middle of Nashville TN. Women hung laundry up to dry outside while older girls watched the babies and the little boys sitting in the dirt started throwing rocks at me and yelling.
Kadek chased them off. I asked if I had done something to make the little boys angry and she just looked at me in this intense and slightly confused way. as if trying to understand what the question was on the planet I was coming from.
the way I frequently imagine Jesus looking at the disciples.
Kadek and her four sisters lived with their mother in a two bedroom apartment. they dressed me up in traditional Cambodian dress and fed me a lunch of a whole fish with one milky eye staring blindly at the ceiling while we scooped out his meat out with lettuce leaves.
that afternoon we walked around her neighborhood, I asked Kadek where her father was-
She stopped and looked at me as if trying to see though a thick fog. Trying to see all the way to a life not steeped in violence.
“he was shot” she said. the soldiers came and took him into the street and shot him in the head. My brothers they just took away and we never saw them again.
The end has already come.
it has come so many times, to so many people that it is sick and wrong to ask Jesus
“how will we know”?
By the time this gospel had been written the temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed. the followers of Jesus already dragged in front of governors and kings, some of the followers of Jesus had already been killed.
the Roman army was in the process of destroying Jerusalem when this was written.
Nation had already risen against nation, kingdom had already risen against kingdom.
so if anyone thought that this got them off the hook or somehow changed the nature of Jesus’ call to live all the way into the mystery of sacrificial love.
Too bad!
this is it.
this is the world we get to be followers in.
This is the call of Jesus:
we get to witness and proclaim the kingdom of God in a world in which a five year old girl could sit by the window in Cambodia and watch her father's execution.
We get to follow Jesus in a world where Hurricane Tomas just hit Haiti, making the efforts to stem the Cholera outbreak even more impossible.
We get to follow Jesus in a world in which war spending goes unchecked, and people debate with straight faces whether sick children should get medical care.
There will be earthquakes, famines, and plagues.
how will we know?!
we will know because we are awake.
we will know because we have ears to hear and hearts to break
And we better walk right past those temple stones, because there is nothing we can build with our human hands that can’t be torn down by someone.
We cannot prepare our defense for the end.
we cannot prepare for the “time of trial” except by getting so full of love, that it will spill out of us when we are wounded.
We can practice looking at everyone we meet and knowing that they are Jesus.
We can practice forgiveness and compassion, and generosity now, so that should the time come we will have treasures that do not need to be buried in the yard, and riches that cannot be taken from us.
Jesus is going to build a new temple.
Jesus is already building the new temple in the new Jerusalem with our lives, and hearts.
he is the cornerstone that the builders rejected who has become the chief cornerstone and we are the beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, lined up and oriented to that beginning.
the old temple will fall and not one stone will be left on another. All will be thrown down.
but this new temple, built of living witnesses to love will not perish.
Amen
Malachi 4:1-2a
Psalm 98
2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
Dear Jesus
Let us be living witnesses to love, beautiful and dedicated to God, -
Amen
in the reading this morning Jesus is already in Jerusalem
in the next chapter he is breaking bread with his disciples at the last supper.
this is the very end of Luke’s telling of Jesus’ life.
and some were admiring the temple with
beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.
but God is Right there with them
even after all this time with Jesus – after the blind have seen, the lame have walked, the bread has multiplied, the hungry have been fed:
and they are staring at the stones of the temple and we do that ALL the time. look right past God at some construct of human hands and say that is nice.
Jesus says
ALL THIS WILL BE THROWN DOWN
I love it, the question they ask-
what will be the sign?
they are a couple of days away at most from Jesus’ crucifixion, and they want to know what the signs will be?
do they want to make sure they can keep enjoying everything until its time to clear out?
why do we want to know that the end is coming?
When I was 8-9 years old I loved books about children on their own. orphans or victims of war. Making their way across entire countries with a little bag of their possessions.
so far from the bamboo grove, Anne Frank to a little princess
stories of the trail of tears and Japanese internment camps.
I wanted to know : who were you when you had lost everything and everyone?
I would wonder to myself –
if they came for us right now what would I grab?
what would I have left if one by one everything I hold onto was taken from me?
But I was different from those guys with Jesus.
I didn’t want to know, not really.
I didn’t want to see it coming.
I wanted to live my life with friends and just be a kid.
Then when I was in the third grade my elementary school became a magnet for Cambodian and Laotian refugee kids.
my best friend that year was a 13 year old named Kadek. she was smart and funny she had long black hair like silk, and a snarky mischievous sense of humor. We got along great at school and eventually arranged to get together one Saturday, it took countless notes going back and forth between our mothers, by way of the school translator. finally one day my Mom dropped me off at the Archer Street housing projects.
If you can, imagine a small Cambodian village in the middle of Nashville TN. Women hung laundry up to dry outside while older girls watched the babies and the little boys sitting in the dirt started throwing rocks at me and yelling.
Kadek chased them off. I asked if I had done something to make the little boys angry and she just looked at me in this intense and slightly confused way. as if trying to understand what the question was on the planet I was coming from.
the way I frequently imagine Jesus looking at the disciples.
Kadek and her four sisters lived with their mother in a two bedroom apartment. they dressed me up in traditional Cambodian dress and fed me a lunch of a whole fish with one milky eye staring blindly at the ceiling while we scooped out his meat out with lettuce leaves.
that afternoon we walked around her neighborhood, I asked Kadek where her father was-
She stopped and looked at me as if trying to see though a thick fog. Trying to see all the way to a life not steeped in violence.
“he was shot” she said. the soldiers came and took him into the street and shot him in the head. My brothers they just took away and we never saw them again.
The end has already come.
it has come so many times, to so many people that it is sick and wrong to ask Jesus
“how will we know”?
By the time this gospel had been written the temple in Jerusalem had already been destroyed. the followers of Jesus already dragged in front of governors and kings, some of the followers of Jesus had already been killed.
the Roman army was in the process of destroying Jerusalem when this was written.
Nation had already risen against nation, kingdom had already risen against kingdom.
so if anyone thought that this got them off the hook or somehow changed the nature of Jesus’ call to live all the way into the mystery of sacrificial love.
Too bad!
this is it.
this is the world we get to be followers in.
This is the call of Jesus:
we get to witness and proclaim the kingdom of God in a world in which a five year old girl could sit by the window in Cambodia and watch her father's execution.
We get to follow Jesus in a world where Hurricane Tomas just hit Haiti, making the efforts to stem the Cholera outbreak even more impossible.
We get to follow Jesus in a world in which war spending goes unchecked, and people debate with straight faces whether sick children should get medical care.
There will be earthquakes, famines, and plagues.
how will we know?!
we will know because we are awake.
we will know because we have ears to hear and hearts to break
And we better walk right past those temple stones, because there is nothing we can build with our human hands that can’t be torn down by someone.
We cannot prepare our defense for the end.
we cannot prepare for the “time of trial” except by getting so full of love, that it will spill out of us when we are wounded.
We can practice looking at everyone we meet and knowing that they are Jesus.
We can practice forgiveness and compassion, and generosity now, so that should the time come we will have treasures that do not need to be buried in the yard, and riches that cannot be taken from us.
Jesus is going to build a new temple.
Jesus is already building the new temple in the new Jerusalem with our lives, and hearts.
he is the cornerstone that the builders rejected who has become the chief cornerstone and we are the beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, lined up and oriented to that beginning.
the old temple will fall and not one stone will be left on another. All will be thrown down.
but this new temple, built of living witnesses to love will not perish.
Amen
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
your faith has made you well
Preached October 10th, 2010 at St. David of Wales
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Psalm 111
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19
Jesus grant us the gift of pain that we may feel the brokenness of your beautiful world.
-amen
nobody Wants to be in pain.
nobody Wants to feel how dark and hard the world can be.
We have lost too many beautiful children this past month. living as outcasts in a cruel world, the pain was too much for them. it can hurt to live in this world.
but the other options are worse.
leaving, or going numb.
very few of us leave the way Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas and Raymond Chase did. I think most of us just get a little or a lot numb.
Leprosy is a disease of the nervous system that keeps you from feeling pain.
Both the old and new testament readings this morning are stories of people suffering the devastating effects of numbness. –
Namaan travels all the way to see Elisha and Elisha won’t even come see him, he sends a messenger out. And Namaan doesn’t want to listen to the messenger. he has such strong expectations of what God’s healing love is going to look like that he almost walks away from chance to be whole again.
thankfully, none of us are like that.
the lepers in the gospel are sitting across the street and they call to Jesus and he calls back.
the nine are made clean through obedience but the tenth is saved though gratitude.
All through Luke’s gospel this late summer we have been hearing stories about how we have to turn our backs on everything we thought we wanted.
Family, security, safety, inclusion all those things can’t come between us and Jesus.
and then this morning we have this gorgeous image of an amazing reunion, that doesn’t happen.
this is the hardest one for me to wrap my mind around- this is worse than hate your mother, or let the dead bury their own dead.
according to Leviticus- (45-46)
“The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt,d cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp."
Who knows how long this morning’s leper has been living like this.
can you imagine?
He must have had a family. he had a life before this, but after contracting leprosy he has lost everything. no more contact no more worship.
totally cut off.
so he finds these nine friends. fellow lepers. and they sit by the side of the road all day talking about the lives they used to have, and occasionally calling out to passers by “unclean!”
this is like the untouchable caste in India except you can get flung into it without warning. and the reason for much of your isolation is that the priests are convinced that since you have leprosy God has judged you and your sins are beyond forgiveness.
so there he sits. Alone abandoned cut off from everyone and everything he ever loved, in the depths of inadequacy.
then here comes Jesus.
Have mercy on us they all cry.
no really Have Mercy!!
and he does.
“Go”, says Jesus, “to the priests. show your selves.”
be part of community again.
“go”
and they do.
as they are on their way, Maybe one notices first , then another, “my hand is whole again”, looking at his friend whose face has become whole and beautiful –
“as they walked they were made whole” they were cleansed.
can you imagine? now their whole world is countable footsteps away from being restored. everything they had lost will soon be found.
they can worship again they can hug their children again. they can come back into community life. they must have started running on their now strong legs
--and then .
one of them stops. the others turn and look at him. “what is it?”
his feet feel heavy.
they are on their way back to the most amazing reunion of their lives and he is turning back.
there it is, the life he has dreamed of night after lonely night waiting for him. the world of friends and family. the world that was ripped away from him by a cruel and devastating disease.
he must have wept a little turning his back on the city, deciding to leave voluntarily what had just been returned to him before he even had a chance to taste it again.
but as he starts walking back, it must be a new man. this is wholeness this is cleanness.
it is not for the old life. this is a life so transformed by gratitude that it becomes unrecognizable.
Jesus says as much to him
your faith has made you well.
the nine that don’t came back are fine, they are the nine unlost coins, the ninety nine unlost sheep, the older brother. their bodies were returned to a state of health. And they very well may have lived long and comfortable lives.
Oh, but that one who came back.
What a life he must have led.
healed and free in a way most of us can only dream of. he had turned his back and walked away from everything he though he wanted and ran straight into the arms of love.
he flings himself at the feet of Love.
“Get up.” says Jesus.
“your faith has made you well. “
We get to rejoice in the one who comes back. over and over, and its not always fair and it doesn’t always make sense especially when the nine did what they were supposed to do.
“go to the priest” says Jesus and they went.
Jesus is lord of special cases.
“your faith has made you well”
this is not a faith of intellectual assent.
this is not a faith that needed ecumenical councils to clarify it.
or books of theology to understand it-
this is a faith strong enough to turn your feet away from home and head back out. back away from your safety.
this is the kind of faith that can make you well.
he is now well enough to be hurt again.
this is the kind of faith that can make us well.
this is a faith that lets us feel pain again.
this is a faith that will restore our ability to weep for Tyler, Asher, Seth, Billy, Raymond and all who cannot weep for themselves.
this is a faith that will make us tender and vulnerable
thank you.
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Psalm 111
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19
Jesus grant us the gift of pain that we may feel the brokenness of your beautiful world.
-amen
nobody Wants to be in pain.
nobody Wants to feel how dark and hard the world can be.
We have lost too many beautiful children this past month. living as outcasts in a cruel world, the pain was too much for them. it can hurt to live in this world.
but the other options are worse.
leaving, or going numb.
very few of us leave the way Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas and Raymond Chase did. I think most of us just get a little or a lot numb.
Leprosy is a disease of the nervous system that keeps you from feeling pain.
Both the old and new testament readings this morning are stories of people suffering the devastating effects of numbness. –
Namaan travels all the way to see Elisha and Elisha won’t even come see him, he sends a messenger out. And Namaan doesn’t want to listen to the messenger. he has such strong expectations of what God’s healing love is going to look like that he almost walks away from chance to be whole again.
thankfully, none of us are like that.
the lepers in the gospel are sitting across the street and they call to Jesus and he calls back.
the nine are made clean through obedience but the tenth is saved though gratitude.
All through Luke’s gospel this late summer we have been hearing stories about how we have to turn our backs on everything we thought we wanted.
Family, security, safety, inclusion all those things can’t come between us and Jesus.
and then this morning we have this gorgeous image of an amazing reunion, that doesn’t happen.
this is the hardest one for me to wrap my mind around- this is worse than hate your mother, or let the dead bury their own dead.
according to Leviticus- (45-46)
“The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt,d cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp."
Who knows how long this morning’s leper has been living like this.
can you imagine?
He must have had a family. he had a life before this, but after contracting leprosy he has lost everything. no more contact no more worship.
totally cut off.
so he finds these nine friends. fellow lepers. and they sit by the side of the road all day talking about the lives they used to have, and occasionally calling out to passers by “unclean!”
this is like the untouchable caste in India except you can get flung into it without warning. and the reason for much of your isolation is that the priests are convinced that since you have leprosy God has judged you and your sins are beyond forgiveness.
so there he sits. Alone abandoned cut off from everyone and everything he ever loved, in the depths of inadequacy.
then here comes Jesus.
Have mercy on us they all cry.
no really Have Mercy!!
and he does.
“Go”, says Jesus, “to the priests. show your selves.”
be part of community again.
“go”
and they do.
as they are on their way, Maybe one notices first , then another, “my hand is whole again”, looking at his friend whose face has become whole and beautiful –
“as they walked they were made whole” they were cleansed.
can you imagine? now their whole world is countable footsteps away from being restored. everything they had lost will soon be found.
they can worship again they can hug their children again. they can come back into community life. they must have started running on their now strong legs
--and then .
one of them stops. the others turn and look at him. “what is it?”
his feet feel heavy.
they are on their way back to the most amazing reunion of their lives and he is turning back.
there it is, the life he has dreamed of night after lonely night waiting for him. the world of friends and family. the world that was ripped away from him by a cruel and devastating disease.
he must have wept a little turning his back on the city, deciding to leave voluntarily what had just been returned to him before he even had a chance to taste it again.
but as he starts walking back, it must be a new man. this is wholeness this is cleanness.
it is not for the old life. this is a life so transformed by gratitude that it becomes unrecognizable.
Jesus says as much to him
your faith has made you well.
the nine that don’t came back are fine, they are the nine unlost coins, the ninety nine unlost sheep, the older brother. their bodies were returned to a state of health. And they very well may have lived long and comfortable lives.
Oh, but that one who came back.
What a life he must have led.
healed and free in a way most of us can only dream of. he had turned his back and walked away from everything he though he wanted and ran straight into the arms of love.
he flings himself at the feet of Love.
“Get up.” says Jesus.
“your faith has made you well. “
We get to rejoice in the one who comes back. over and over, and its not always fair and it doesn’t always make sense especially when the nine did what they were supposed to do.
“go to the priest” says Jesus and they went.
Jesus is lord of special cases.
“your faith has made you well”
this is not a faith of intellectual assent.
this is not a faith that needed ecumenical councils to clarify it.
or books of theology to understand it-
this is a faith strong enough to turn your feet away from home and head back out. back away from your safety.
this is the kind of faith that can make you well.
he is now well enough to be hurt again.
this is the kind of faith that can make us well.
this is a faith that lets us feel pain again.
this is a faith that will restore our ability to weep for Tyler, Asher, Seth, Billy, Raymond and all who cannot weep for themselves.
this is a faith that will make us tender and vulnerable
thank you.
Little boats
Preached October 9th at the Academy for Formation and Mission
Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
Mark 6:45-56
God, give us courage to get into our little boats and head out into the windy wild waters, where we may meet your son our savior, Jesus.
Amen
Our dear friend in Christ and holy man for today is Wilfred Thomason Grenfell. An English doctor he became a medical missionary to north sea fishermen, and when he saw the poverty and horrid conditions in Labrador, devoted himself to the people there.
He was inspired by the notion of Muscular Christianity, in which sports and athleticism were supposed to have a masculine remedy for the protestant faith that had gotten to girly for the real men of the 1920’s.
While there is plenty to bristle at in these sorts of icky gender stereotypes, it is hard not to be impressed with the results of such a theological attitude on Wilfred. It led him into a harsh and challenging world where he spent the majority of his life doing as much as he could, to improve the lives of the hurting and neglected people he met.
We are not God’s Sunday best or Gods fine china, we are not being kept in God’s cupboard waiting to be taken out at holidays and fancy occasions. We are not God’s party dress, we are God’s grubbiest. We are the jeans she will wear to garden in. We will get torn up and worn out and beat up on this journey, but it will only make us softer. I pray to be something strong and useful for Jesus.
If the only effect of going to church is to love the church we have all failed. we need the courage to throw it all to the wind and go out in our boats fight against the high waves and strong waters that threaten to knock us off course. it will take everything we have. and then hopefully when we have gone too far, when we have sailed past our comfort zone, Jesus will walk across that rough sea, and meet us where our competencies fail us. But that also means the stronger we get the further out we can go.
Let our formation be forming us into something useful. let us be tools of God that over times have all the rough edges worn away and from years of hard use let us fit smoothly into the hand of our God. Let us take on the shape of his hand as we do his work in the world.
sometimes it is useful to imagine explaining your plans to Jesus to see how they sound.
“Jesus, I was thinking, I would like to stay here in my boat where it is safe and on shore. I am waiting for a better day, better weather, my boat isn’t quite good enough yet. I‘ve noticed that those guys over there have a much nicer boat, and I was thinking my boat should be a little more like theirs. I’m going to spend the next three years getting it really nice and then maybe you and me and some of our nice friends can all go sailing. I just need to be sure I’m ready.
What do you think of that Jesus?
Cant you just picture Jesus saying
“Oh, Honey. just GO-
get in the dang boat. Don’t you know it will never be good enough, you will never be good enough, there will never be better weather, there will never be a better time than right now. You will always be vulnerable, you will always be weak and you will always need me.
go now.
get in the boat you are in with these people already around you.
this is it
if it gets too bad if you go too far I will walk across the water to you, I will still the waves, but I can’t do that unless you strike out.
I can’t come to you until you leave.
I think most of us have made it beyond the question of how can the church serve me? but our examination of ministry should not end with how can I serve the church? but how can the church serve the world?
We should not worship the boat but simply see where it can take us.
There is no where we can go that Jesus can’t reach us.
We can head off in the darkest night in a boat miles from nowhere.
we can go off to Newfoundland
we can run into the cities or into the suburbs
and Jesus will find us, and calm us, and give us strength to do our work.
There is nothing we can devote our lives to that can’t be illuminated by the love of Jesus.
there is no water too rough for God.
because you see God and water go way back-
all the way to the beginning-
God has moved over it, rained it down, dried it up, parted it, brought it out of rocks, made it good to drink, and then walked right across it to people he loved, who were scared and confused whose hearts did not comprehend what bounty and love and plenty and safety looked like.
In the midst of their journey with Jesus they are still afraid. They don’t know what it is not be suspicious. they are straining at the oars. fighting the wind, sure of going their own way.
and Jesus walks across the water to them.
like its no big deal.
cheer comfort courage-
all the same thing.
to be brave is to be of good cheer. -
instead of constantly questioning our work, in stead of fighting the wind we should keep an eye out for Jesus.
let the church be a boat ramp where we can launch ourselves out into the world and see what’s out there.
Let’s be careful not to make idols of ourselves. We are never going to be good enough, or ready enough to serve Jesus, so waiting until we are to start is ridiculous
there is a wild hungry windy world out there and we have been invited to sail out into it.
Go.
Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
Mark 6:45-56
God, give us courage to get into our little boats and head out into the windy wild waters, where we may meet your son our savior, Jesus.
Amen
Our dear friend in Christ and holy man for today is Wilfred Thomason Grenfell. An English doctor he became a medical missionary to north sea fishermen, and when he saw the poverty and horrid conditions in Labrador, devoted himself to the people there.
He was inspired by the notion of Muscular Christianity, in which sports and athleticism were supposed to have a masculine remedy for the protestant faith that had gotten to girly for the real men of the 1920’s.
While there is plenty to bristle at in these sorts of icky gender stereotypes, it is hard not to be impressed with the results of such a theological attitude on Wilfred. It led him into a harsh and challenging world where he spent the majority of his life doing as much as he could, to improve the lives of the hurting and neglected people he met.
We are not God’s Sunday best or Gods fine china, we are not being kept in God’s cupboard waiting to be taken out at holidays and fancy occasions. We are not God’s party dress, we are God’s grubbiest. We are the jeans she will wear to garden in. We will get torn up and worn out and beat up on this journey, but it will only make us softer. I pray to be something strong and useful for Jesus.
If the only effect of going to church is to love the church we have all failed. we need the courage to throw it all to the wind and go out in our boats fight against the high waves and strong waters that threaten to knock us off course. it will take everything we have. and then hopefully when we have gone too far, when we have sailed past our comfort zone, Jesus will walk across that rough sea, and meet us where our competencies fail us. But that also means the stronger we get the further out we can go.
Let our formation be forming us into something useful. let us be tools of God that over times have all the rough edges worn away and from years of hard use let us fit smoothly into the hand of our God. Let us take on the shape of his hand as we do his work in the world.
sometimes it is useful to imagine explaining your plans to Jesus to see how they sound.
“Jesus, I was thinking, I would like to stay here in my boat where it is safe and on shore. I am waiting for a better day, better weather, my boat isn’t quite good enough yet. I‘ve noticed that those guys over there have a much nicer boat, and I was thinking my boat should be a little more like theirs. I’m going to spend the next three years getting it really nice and then maybe you and me and some of our nice friends can all go sailing. I just need to be sure I’m ready.
What do you think of that Jesus?
Cant you just picture Jesus saying
“Oh, Honey. just GO-
get in the dang boat. Don’t you know it will never be good enough, you will never be good enough, there will never be better weather, there will never be a better time than right now. You will always be vulnerable, you will always be weak and you will always need me.
go now.
get in the boat you are in with these people already around you.
this is it
if it gets too bad if you go too far I will walk across the water to you, I will still the waves, but I can’t do that unless you strike out.
I can’t come to you until you leave.
I think most of us have made it beyond the question of how can the church serve me? but our examination of ministry should not end with how can I serve the church? but how can the church serve the world?
We should not worship the boat but simply see where it can take us.
There is no where we can go that Jesus can’t reach us.
We can head off in the darkest night in a boat miles from nowhere.
we can go off to Newfoundland
we can run into the cities or into the suburbs
and Jesus will find us, and calm us, and give us strength to do our work.
There is nothing we can devote our lives to that can’t be illuminated by the love of Jesus.
there is no water too rough for God.
because you see God and water go way back-
all the way to the beginning-
God has moved over it, rained it down, dried it up, parted it, brought it out of rocks, made it good to drink, and then walked right across it to people he loved, who were scared and confused whose hearts did not comprehend what bounty and love and plenty and safety looked like.
In the midst of their journey with Jesus they are still afraid. They don’t know what it is not be suspicious. they are straining at the oars. fighting the wind, sure of going their own way.
and Jesus walks across the water to them.
like its no big deal.
cheer comfort courage-
all the same thing.
to be brave is to be of good cheer. -
instead of constantly questioning our work, in stead of fighting the wind we should keep an eye out for Jesus.
let the church be a boat ramp where we can launch ourselves out into the world and see what’s out there.
Let’s be careful not to make idols of ourselves. We are never going to be good enough, or ready enough to serve Jesus, so waiting until we are to start is ridiculous
there is a wild hungry windy world out there and we have been invited to sail out into it.
Go.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Choose Life
Preached September 5th 2010 at St. Michael and All Angels Portland
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live
~Amen
Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, a number of fairly disturbing things.
let’s start with:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?
I might disagree with Jesus a little bit here.
Can we ever truly know the cost of something before we start?
It is like a woman who wants to remodel a bathroom. and so she prices out everything gets multiple bids, and budgets out the whole project. Then halfway through when her house is a disaster and plumbing is sticking out of the floor, the contractor tucks his thumbs into his belt loops, looks at the ground and says “we found some problems in the wall behind the sink.”
Who can know when they begin a tentative walk with Jesus what the final cost will be and who could set out on a journey like this if they knew?
When I accepted that first piece of bread and sip of wine in the outstretched hand of Jesus, I was so lost and so broken, that I did not count the cost at all.
I did not stop to check the balances I was carrying. I very well may run out in this crazy following. I surely do not have enough to pay my own way.
I will end this course red faced and bankrupt.
I am sorry Jesus but do not ask me if I have what it takes because the answer is no.
I do not have what it takes to follow you.
We are stumbling along on the path panting, behind Jesus, up to our eyes in spiritual debt, with no real plan for the final cost. And I am terrified of what this tower, of what this war will cost me.
So the best we can do is send out a delegation of Peace.
We will ask the one to whom we owe everything if we can come to some kind of deal.
And now you are asking even for my family, these human treasures where I am safe and know who I am, and that I am also loved here on earth, and you want me to put even that on the line?
you are asking too much.
How do I lay down my love for the people of this world and take up the cross?
This past week Jordan and I watched as two brothers we have been friends with for some time channeled all of their family anger and dysfunction and tore down something they had both worked long and hard to build. There had been tensions for a while, but then on Thursday the dam broke and all of their fears and insecurities and resentments overflowed. Neither of them is even close to being in the right, and they are both victims of patterns that neither of them started.
In Luke Jesus has been dealing with some pretty messed up families himself. A few weeks ago we had the story of the brother who wants to make sure that he gets his fair share of the inheritance. and a few weeks before that we had the story of Mary and Martha where Martha is wanting Jesus to take sides, and get her sister to do her fair share of the work.
In both of these stories, Jesus refuses to get enmeshed in family dynamics, and fails to satisfy anyone’s sense of earthy justice.
Then we have the lovely passage this morning:
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple
It is hard to work out a warm fuzzy family values type spin on this.
As a mother, texts like this can feel like they are written in Greek. Actually they are. So I was really hoping that this was a case of bad translation and my sweet Jesus would never say such a thing.
Unfortunately, that’s pretty much what he is saying. The softest translation I found was to discount or not to prefer, but really its not that much better.
We are all formed and shaped by our families and there is no such thing as a family done perfect. But I think what Jesus may be getting at is that we are all to often defined by our families.
I learned many lessons in my upbringing about who I am and what people like us do, and do not do.
My family of origin helped shape the boundaries of what I consider possible, and impossible; what I believe I am capable of and what I ought to do.
For our friends the brothers, those family limits are still choking them.
For the world to which Jesus was speaking your family defined nearly everything about you. To disregard your family in life was to abandon your identity.
Loving your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself isn’t just about family this is your whole identity. This is what we must lay down this is what is being asked of us.
Who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?
What would you be able to do, if you had no idea where you came from?
Would you be more or less likely to follow a mad-beautiful rabbi with the eyes of God all the way to Jerusalem?
What is in the way of our following Jesus?
What excuses will we use to sidestep this radical call?
What can we use to anchor ourselves in the shallow water of merely agreeing with Jesus and keep ourselves safe from being swept out to the rough sea of true discipleship?
Jesus is saying whoever is keeping their feet on the ground; whoever is keeping land in sight; whoever is saying “but Jesus, you don’t understand how it is for me and my family.”
We may long to plunge in over our heads and strike out after this God who is calling us.
but we have to let go to swim.
We have to plunge into water deeper than feels comfortable.
Paul speaks quite eloquently of family in the letter we hear this morning.
Fellow captives and a slave have become his brothers and his son. He has forged a new family in the midst of building his tower. He knows with an odd certainty what the cost is. He is in the midst of paying it as he writes to call for freedom for the slave he considers a son, and forgiveness of all his debts.
We are in God’s family now, and this family brings with it a completely new identity. In this family, we are called to become translucent so that the light of God may shine through us and illuminate the world.
Who but a fool would set out to follow this Jesus, even if we did not count the full cost before we started we should be trembling in our socks.
What will this cost us, this life of following our brother Jesus, in which nothing that appears to be ours really is.
give up the tower
give up the war
give up where you came from
give up who you are
give up being known
give up being important
give up being loved
pick up the cross and choose life
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 1
Philemon 1-21
Luke 14:25-33
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live
~Amen
Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, a number of fairly disturbing things.
let’s start with:
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?
I might disagree with Jesus a little bit here.
Can we ever truly know the cost of something before we start?
It is like a woman who wants to remodel a bathroom. and so she prices out everything gets multiple bids, and budgets out the whole project. Then halfway through when her house is a disaster and plumbing is sticking out of the floor, the contractor tucks his thumbs into his belt loops, looks at the ground and says “we found some problems in the wall behind the sink.”
Who can know when they begin a tentative walk with Jesus what the final cost will be and who could set out on a journey like this if they knew?
When I accepted that first piece of bread and sip of wine in the outstretched hand of Jesus, I was so lost and so broken, that I did not count the cost at all.
I did not stop to check the balances I was carrying. I very well may run out in this crazy following. I surely do not have enough to pay my own way.
I will end this course red faced and bankrupt.
I am sorry Jesus but do not ask me if I have what it takes because the answer is no.
I do not have what it takes to follow you.
We are stumbling along on the path panting, behind Jesus, up to our eyes in spiritual debt, with no real plan for the final cost. And I am terrified of what this tower, of what this war will cost me.
So the best we can do is send out a delegation of Peace.
We will ask the one to whom we owe everything if we can come to some kind of deal.
And now you are asking even for my family, these human treasures where I am safe and know who I am, and that I am also loved here on earth, and you want me to put even that on the line?
you are asking too much.
How do I lay down my love for the people of this world and take up the cross?
This past week Jordan and I watched as two brothers we have been friends with for some time channeled all of their family anger and dysfunction and tore down something they had both worked long and hard to build. There had been tensions for a while, but then on Thursday the dam broke and all of their fears and insecurities and resentments overflowed. Neither of them is even close to being in the right, and they are both victims of patterns that neither of them started.
In Luke Jesus has been dealing with some pretty messed up families himself. A few weeks ago we had the story of the brother who wants to make sure that he gets his fair share of the inheritance. and a few weeks before that we had the story of Mary and Martha where Martha is wanting Jesus to take sides, and get her sister to do her fair share of the work.
In both of these stories, Jesus refuses to get enmeshed in family dynamics, and fails to satisfy anyone’s sense of earthy justice.
Then we have the lovely passage this morning:
Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple
It is hard to work out a warm fuzzy family values type spin on this.
As a mother, texts like this can feel like they are written in Greek. Actually they are. So I was really hoping that this was a case of bad translation and my sweet Jesus would never say such a thing.
Unfortunately, that’s pretty much what he is saying. The softest translation I found was to discount or not to prefer, but really its not that much better.
We are all formed and shaped by our families and there is no such thing as a family done perfect. But I think what Jesus may be getting at is that we are all to often defined by our families.
I learned many lessons in my upbringing about who I am and what people like us do, and do not do.
My family of origin helped shape the boundaries of what I consider possible, and impossible; what I believe I am capable of and what I ought to do.
For our friends the brothers, those family limits are still choking them.
For the world to which Jesus was speaking your family defined nearly everything about you. To disregard your family in life was to abandon your identity.
Loving your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself isn’t just about family this is your whole identity. This is what we must lay down this is what is being asked of us.
Who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?
What would you be able to do, if you had no idea where you came from?
Would you be more or less likely to follow a mad-beautiful rabbi with the eyes of God all the way to Jerusalem?
What is in the way of our following Jesus?
What excuses will we use to sidestep this radical call?
What can we use to anchor ourselves in the shallow water of merely agreeing with Jesus and keep ourselves safe from being swept out to the rough sea of true discipleship?
Jesus is saying whoever is keeping their feet on the ground; whoever is keeping land in sight; whoever is saying “but Jesus, you don’t understand how it is for me and my family.”
We may long to plunge in over our heads and strike out after this God who is calling us.
but we have to let go to swim.
We have to plunge into water deeper than feels comfortable.
Paul speaks quite eloquently of family in the letter we hear this morning.
Fellow captives and a slave have become his brothers and his son. He has forged a new family in the midst of building his tower. He knows with an odd certainty what the cost is. He is in the midst of paying it as he writes to call for freedom for the slave he considers a son, and forgiveness of all his debts.
We are in God’s family now, and this family brings with it a completely new identity. In this family, we are called to become translucent so that the light of God may shine through us and illuminate the world.
Who but a fool would set out to follow this Jesus, even if we did not count the full cost before we started we should be trembling in our socks.
What will this cost us, this life of following our brother Jesus, in which nothing that appears to be ours really is.
give up the tower
give up the war
give up where you came from
give up who you are
give up being known
give up being important
give up being loved
pick up the cross and choose life
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