January 17, 2010 2nd Sunday After Epiphany John 2:1-11

Our gospel reading is one of the Bible stories that I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to have fun with.  I’ve preached a couple weeks ago about many Bible passages being lighthearted and some outright funny.  Well this is certainly a lighthearted one.  I mean, Jesus turns water into wine.  You do the math.  There’s six stone water jars, 20-30 gallons each.  That’s something like 180 gallons of fine wine!  I know wedding receptions can get pretty big.  Sometimes lots of alcohol gets consumed, but 180 gallons of wine?!?  Can you imagine the looks you’d get if you went into a liquor store and attempted to buy 180 gallons of fine wine?  And through it’s lightheartedness, this Bible passage is also teaching us some big things about God.

It starts off by introducing the scene – a wedding in Galilee.  Among the guests are Jesus’ mother and his disciples.  This is a big wedding of someone quite well-to-do.  Typically these wedding celebrations would go on for several days.  The wine gives out, and now the situation could get embarrassing.  Mary, being a good Jewish mother volunteer’s her son’s services.  Jesus replies, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?”  Jesus isn’t being derogatory here to call his mother “woman”.  True, it is unusual, but it isn’t rude or hostile.  Jesus frequently addressed women with this greeting.  Some have suggested that by Jesus calling Mary “woman” he is signifying that she is somehow a new Eve, but this isn’t so.  What he is basically saying is, “Mom, who cares?  It’s not my problem, nor is it yours.”

But like any good Jewish mother she ignores him and says, “Do whatever he tells you.”  It’s kind of funny to think of Jesus as a grown man being ordered around by his mother, while he can rebuke demons and refuse all sort of other demands placed upon him.  I think the image is supposed to be a bit comic, but it sets up the stage for this big teaching.  Mary continues to trust in Jesus’ ability to act, but still respects his freedom.  That’s a big thing for all of us to remember when asking God for things – trust God’s ability to act, but still accept God’s freedom for how and when to act.

The second part of Jesus’ reply here is really significant.  He says, “My hour has not yet come.”  When will be that hour?  At the crucifixion.  In a way, this joy filled scene at the beginning of the gospel is intended to be a bookend to the sorrow filled scene at the cross.  And to prove that John intended us to connect this with the cross, consider that Mary only appears twice in John’s gospel.  Once is here.  Jesus says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?  My hour has not yet come.”  And what does John record him saying from the cross?  John 19:26 says, “When Jesus saw that his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.”  Then he said to the disciples, “Here is your mother.”

Just as a new family is created in a marriage, and just as Mary shows up only at the wedding in Cana and at the crucifixion, so too a new family is born here at Jesus’ true hour of glory – the hour of the cross.

Returning to the wedding at Cana, John’s gospel says, “Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.  Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them to the brim.  Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.  So they took it.  When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk.  But you have kept the good wine until now.”

There are several things to note about this.  First about these jars.  These are not ordinary earthen vessels.  Clay pots were regularly made, used, and then broken.  Clay pots were the Styrofoam cups of the day.  But these weren’t clay pots.  These were stone jars.  Someone had spent a lot of time carving these things.  They were valuable, and they had a clear and specific purpose – for holding water for the rites of purification.  These valuable stone jars, once used to hold water for purification before God are now used by God to supply an overabundance of blessings to people; 180 gallons of wine.  A new reality has dawned.  These stone vessels are doing new work – holding abundant blessings.

A second thing to note is this – God has saved the best for last.  God hasn’t served the good wine first and left us with the leftovers.  No, God has an abundance of good things for us too.  The steward of the reception has made a mistake.  He thinks the good wine is the gift of the bridegroom, when in fact the wine comes as a gift from Jesus, the ultimate bridegroom as we learn about in 3:29.

Mixed with this story is God’s ability to provide, and not provide scantily.  God didn’t provide enough bottles of wine for the family to save face from the lack of wine.  God provided to excess.  And God’s providence is complete; everything from basic nourishment, the wine, to all the way to emotional health, saving embarrassment from running out of wine.

The message for us is clear – God will provide.  Life is filled with good things, and not things as in “stuff” you buy at a store.  Good things like wholeness, happiness, joy, love, peace, fullness of life, etc.

And before we leave this text, we have to remember that part of its point is it’s unpredictability.  Commentator Gail O’Day notes, in the typical dry fashion of biblical commentators, “…the miracle challenges conventional assumptions about order and control, about what is possible, about where God is found and where God is known.  Indeed, the impact of the miracle is lost if one does not entertain these and similar questions, because the force of the miracle derives precisely from its extraordinariness, from the dissonance it creates…. It is a miracle of abundance, of extravagance, of transformation and new possibilities.  The grace the miracle offers and the glimpse of Jesus glory it provides run outside conventional expectations and place the reader at with how he or she thought the world was ordered.”  (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, pg. 540)

It certainly does.  In the midst of what we think of as the serious work of God’s kingdom; in the midst of a world of limited resources, scarcity, and hunger; in the midst of our lives which we run with good stewardship of time, talents, and possessions; comes this miracle of abundance with no deep purpose, at least according to our standards.  Who cares if they run short on wine?  It wasn’t really that important.  And how on earth could they responsibly consume 180 gallons of fine wine?  You can’t.

I believe this miracle invites us into God’s life of unexpected surprises, unconventional logic, and a glimpse into God’s joyous nature.  God smiles.  God has fun, simply because it is fun to have fun.

God was at hand, first hand meeting people.  And God was having fun with them.  God wants to have fun with you, in you, and through you too.  Sure, there is serious work to do.  But we are encouraged to embark upon that serious and important work with a deep joy, inspired by our God’s miracles.  Amen

January 10, 2010 Baptism of Our Lord Luke 3:15-21

I like the saying, “Before you tell me how to solve the world’s problems, why don’t you clean up the mess in your office?”  I suppose that’s why I feel inclined to keep some order in my office.  I think we’d all agree that we like things to be clean and tidy.  What do you think if you walk into a motel room and find it an untidy mess from the previous occupant?  You’re not happy.  When you walk in you want to see it all clean and orderly – the traces of any previous occupant completely erased.

Clean and orderly things are also healthier and easier to manage.  Everything just goes more smoothly.

If only life were tidy.  And, if only faith were tidy too.   Many try to make it that way, but I think we’d all agree that we have to live with some untidiness in our faith.  For example, in last week’s sermon I talked about Jesus being the truth, and the ultimate Truth; making everything else a lie or at least second rate.  But I know I’m on thin ice when saying such things.  We have all been brought up in a society that values religious diversity.  Every major religion in the world claims to have absolute truth.  We can’t all be right.  Religious beliefs get messy.

There’s always the problem of why some faithless people seem to be very loving and giving and yet some devout Christians are the most hate-filled selfish people you’ll ever meet.  Biblical authority is similar.  I know that some of you believe the Bible is the Word of God and if it says it then it’s so.  There’s no point discussing the matter further.  For others of you the Bible isn’t such an authority.  I know that when preaching and interpreting I cannot just say, “The Bible says so.”  You subconsciously question it; maybe even thinking, “Prove it.”  And so I often find myself investing a good deal of time proving the validity of scripture before I can even speak to the truth it is trying to convey.

This “messiness” of faith is not new or unique to us.  It goes for all time and peoples too.  It even goes for the biblical writers and those who first read their writings.  I think it is easy to oversimplify the Bible’s teachings and believe the writers had perfect faith, or that the answers were somehow more clear to them.

Our gospel reading gives witness to two “messy” areas of Christian faith the earliest Christians struggled with.  I want to look at them because by showing their struggles we can also understand our own.

The first struggle is John the Baptist.  Who was he?  What was his purpose?  How does he fit in with Jesus?  Now don’t let your mind jump to answers.  You’ll probably spout out that he was Elijah returning and fulfilling the prophesy of Isaiah, and preparing the way for Jesus.  But that is an answer Christians developed over time.  It wasn’t so clear to them originally.

I believe it is safe to say that early in the first century there were at least two marginal Jewish movements afoot, and they were in competition with each other.  One of them was the followers of John the Baptist.  The other was the followers of Jesus of Nazareth.  Let’s start with John.

John was more than just a side show in the wilderness that people came out to see.  He had disciples of his own.  We see that in John 1.  And some of those disciples left him to follow Jesus, like the apostle Andrew.  Others disciples stayed with John and didn’t follow Jesus.  John’s ministry was in the wilderness – the middle of nowhere.  John’s teachings show strong influence from the Essenes – a Jewish sect from the middle second century BC to about AD 70.  They had withdrawn from mainstream Judaism and active participation in the temple system.  The “Dead Sea Scrolls” are an Essene library.  John was ultimately executed – beheaded.

Now for Jesus, also from nowhere – Nazareth, later moving to Capernaum.  Jesus also had his own followers.  Jesus knew John. The Bible tells us they were cousins.  Some suggest Jesus had even been a supporter of John for a while.  Jesus’ teachings show heavy influence by the Essenes.  And of course, like John, Jesus was also executed.

If you really want to know how confusing the two movements were, consider that there were suggestions that John the Baptist had also been raised from the dead.  As proof, look at King Herod’s response when he hears about Jesus.

The four gospels that we have in our Bibles show how early Christians were struggling to understand John and his relationship to Jesus.  Each gospel gives a slightly different answer about him.  Ultimately of course John’s movement died out or was assumed into Christianity.  The general answer to John became that he was appointed by God to be the forerunner for Jesus.

But that gets at the second really messy faith part.  Why was Jesus baptized by John?  If John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and if Jesus was sin-free, then why was Jesus baptized?  Again, don’t jump to answers.  If you look carefully you see the gospel writers really struggling with this one.  There are four gospels and we get four different answers.  Matthew says it was God’s plan to fulfill all righteousness; but he doesn’t say why.  Mark’s gospel, perhaps the most disconcerting, suggests that before Jesus’ baptism he wasn’t special at all.  John’s gospel skirts by the point and never says Jesus was actually baptized.  And notice what Luke’s gospel that we read today does.  Read very carefully.  Verse 21, “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.”

When did the Holy Spirit descend?  When he was baptized?  Remember, I said to read very carefully.  The answer is No.  Sometime later when Jesus was praying the Holy Spirit descended.  Luke does not outright deny the connection between Jesus’ baptism and the Spirit, but he doesn’t specifically link them either.

Maybe you think that’s too subtle to point out.  Maybe it indeed is.  My point is that Jesus’ baptism was a confusing thing that the early Christians didn’t understand.  In the gospels you can see their struggles to come up with an answer.

Are their answers right?  Orthodox Christian teachings have long been that John was the forerunner of Jesus preparing the way for him.  And, that Jesus’ baptism by John was not a baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  It was not a baptism in the same sense we do baptisms.  Our baptisms are for the forgiveness of sins, but they are also the initiation rite into the Church.  Orthodox teaching has become that Jesus’ baptism was the divine sign to begin his public ministry.  John’s arrest by Herod further removed him from the scene and cleared the field for Jesus.

As Christians of today we can easily accept these answers into our faith.  But it wasn’t the case then.

Life is messy.  Faith gets messy too.  Remember, when you read the Bible, you are reading the faith struggles of other people too.  Yes, we believe their writings were inspired by God, but that does not make them sterile, removed, or somehow superior to ourselves.  The authors were not people who walked around doubt free with perfect faith, absolutely knowing all the answers.  Luke’s gospel even tells us he discerned and struggled “to write and orderly account” about Jesus.

I don’t find the Bible’s deep power coming from pretending to be a holier-than-though answer book to all of humanity’s problems.  It is the account of Spirit inspired struggles of centuries of people.

Right?

True?

Yes, of course.

But also real.  Real words of real people meeting us in our own struggles to live by faith.

That’s no surprise.  The reason we claim the truth is because God worked so hard to be real to us; a real human being.  Why would his written Word be any less?  Amen

January 3, 2010 Christmas 2 John 1:1-18

We are at the second week of Christmas and so I’ll commend all of you who still have your Christmas tree and decorations up because Christmas isn’t a day but a 12 day season.  I’ll doubly commend you if you’ve deliberately kept your decorations up, and the real reason why they are still up is not because you have been too lazy to take them down.

The gospel reading for the second Sunday after Christmas is always John 1:1-18.  It fits well as a message for late in the Christmas season.  The fourth Sunday of Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas day and the first Sunday of Christmas all focus on the birth stories of Jesus.  They try to tell us who, what, where, and when.  John’s gospel now picks up and tells us why, and what it means.

If these words sound familiar, they should.  We do also read them on Christmas Eve as part of the candle lighting; giving us a bit of the ‘Why?’ answer at that point.  But we don’t focus on the whole ‘Why?’ answer.

Perhaps the best way to get at this “Why?’ answer is through the conflicting views of two great theologians – Rudolf Bultmann and his student, Ernst Kasemann.  Old Rudolf Bultmann, in reading the line, “The Word became flesh…”  saw an affirmation of the full humanity of Jesus.  He said it was precisely because God became human that Jesus was the ultimate Revealer of God’s nature.  For Bultmann, the birth of Jesus was a significant paradox because the glory of God could only be fully understood by humans in the form of Jesus as “flesh” and that the ultimate expression of God’s glory was the crucifixion.

Bultmann’s student, Ernst Kasemann disagreed about John’s gospel (but he probably only dared to do so after he got his doctorate degree).  Kasemann said that the gospel of John did not portray Jesus as a real human being, but rather as “God striding across the earth.”  To Kasemann’s point, Jesus doesn’t even say “ouch” in John’s description of the crucifixion.

You see the contrast.  In studying John, Bultmann ssaw that Jesus as “God with us” was fully and deeply a human being, and that was essential.  Kasemann suggests that while Jesus was God in human form, he wasn’t truly a full human.

I’m hardly in the academic league of Bultmann and Kasemann (of course I’m not; they’re both dead!), but if I dare to critique them, Bultmann got it right about John’s gospel.  Kasemann got it wrong.  I bring up the contrast between Bultmann and Kasemann to make this point.  I experience many people believing like Kasemann suggests about John’s gospel  – that Jesus wasn’t fully human.  Yes, he was God who entered the world of createdness.  Yes, he taught people about God first hand.  Yes, he had emotions and could feel pain.  But he was not fully and completely human.  He was still in some way significantly different.

These beliefs aren’t accurate.  They are a light form of old Gnostic heresies.  Orthodox Christian beliefs have always insisted that Jesus was fully and completely human.  That is more than just a theological construction.  Consider what it means.  It means that God, the creator, sees glory in being a human.  It means that your nature is important enough to God that He would take it on for himself.  It means that your life and your life’s experiences are so special in God’s eyes that He will experience them too – even to death.  And perhaps most amazing of them all is Mark’s portrayal of the crucifixion.  There Jesus expresses even what it feels like to be abandoned by God when you are in your darkest time and deepest need.

The introduction to John’s gospel that we read today tells us the “Why?” behind the birth stories that we find in Matthew’s gospel and Luke’s gospel.  And it sets up the important and irreconcilable contrast about Jesus’ nature.  He was fully human, while at the same time being fully divine.  Verse 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Verse 14 says, “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory…”

Commentator Gail O’Day notes about these verses, “The story of the Word, of God’s self-expression, does not remain outside human experience but belongs to that experience.”  She also says, “The story of Jesus is not about Jesus; it is in fact, the story of God.”   When we say, “God with us” it means that part of being a human is living the truth that God who created the universe and given it life has spent time as a human too.

John’s gospel now brings us to the question, “So what?”  For John, the coming of God into human form was the center point of all history.  It redefines life, creation, and salvation.  It invites you to live in response to that joyous new reality.

But John knows that many people will reject this truth.  John knows that people will reject Jesus.  They will reject his teachings.  They will reject his death and resurrection as salvific acts.  What then does this mean?  The gospel of John says that they are rejecting joy, hope, peace, grace, and ultimately the truth.

Why would someone do this?  As if John knows that question is coming, we get an answer, “they loved darkness rather than light.”  That is a puzzling answer.  Why would someone reject light in favor of darkness?  Why would someone reject joy and happiness and stay in fear and sadness?  Why would someone reject the Truth in favor of lies?

These are all good questions.  And from our Christian perspective our answer to God is pretty obvious – accept Christ.  But many do not.  Pride, arrogance, denial, and self-satisfaction seem to be the reasons why people would rather live in the dark.  That is their choice.  They then accept the consequences.

I know, this is silly.  But as you live every day with people who choose to stay in the dark, I hope you can understand their choices, not as an alternate or different view of life, but rather as foolishness.  Now don’t think less of them.  Christian faith is always expressed in humility.  But never stop praying for these people.  Never stop witnessing to the Truth that you live.

Let me end with this little parable of life.  Life is like traveling across the United States.  Two travelers sought to make the journey.  The first traveler was smart.  She bought an airplane ticket.  It wasn’t cheap.  Luggage was limited, and there wasn’t even a bag of peanuts.  But she made the journey effortlessly.  The airplane did the work.  The other traveler was a fool.  She, in her pride insisted on making the journey under her own power, without help.  She decided to walk.  Not being able to carry enough food for such a great journey, she loaded herself down with hunting and fishing gear, to provide food along the way.  It took her a long time.  She finally arrived exhausted, dirty, and near starvation.  In the end her cost of equipment, clothing, and medical bills were more than an airplane ticket.  And for all her pride, she had nothing to show for it.

Be a smart traveler through life.  Live in the truth, because then God incarnate will do the work.  Amen

December 27, 2009 St. John, Apostle & Evangelist John 21:20-25

You’re all familiar with the picture of Jesus we have hanging in the gathering area.  It’s is called, “The Risen Christ by the Seashore.”  And it is one of the rare depictions of Jesus that has him grinning and showing joy.  I think it’s funny that the kids in the before school YMCA child care program have asked, “Why does the church have a picture of Christopher Columbus hanging up?”

Actually, that’s quite sad.  It is sad because Jesus is usually depicted as stern, solemn, or reverent.  About the only popular art that depicts Jesus smiling are the drawings with Jesus and little children.  If I had to make an educated guess as to which depiction of Jesus was the most historically accurate representation of his attitude I think “The Risen Christ by the Seashore” gets pretty close.  I don’t know why artists like to portray him as so stern.  The Bible doesn’t.

I think Jesus as –God with us- was joy-filled and loved having fun.  That’s probably what got him in trouble with the religious leaders all the time.  If when Jesus was hanging out with the “sinners” of his day he was stern and condemning of them, I doubt the religious leaders would have objected.  They would have applauded his efforts at reforming those “bad people.”

But I think Jesus had fun with them.  He laughed, joked, and rejoiced in them.  And lets look at the disciples.  It is easy to imagine them as puzzled by his deep theological teachings, and seriously wresting with their own troubles and doubts.

I doubt that’s the case.  I think they, especially the 12 disciples, were everything you’d expect from a group of young men.  That laughed, they joked, they played pranks on each other.  They surely talked about lots of stuff that isn’t recorded in the gospels.  Jesus gave Simon the nickname of “Peter” or “Rock”.  Perhaps a better connotation would be to call him “Rocky”.  Jesus nicknamed James and John the “Sons of Thunder,” probably because of their short tempers.

Jesus teachings were not as severe as we often depict them.  The Sermon on the Mount is strong, but loving.  The parable of the Prodigal Son probably had its original hearers guffawing with laughter.  Many of the parables are funny.  The subtle humor gets lost in thousands of years of cultural differences.

And Jesus was often playful with people.  Look at Zacchaeus.  Look at the “Woman at the Well.”  Jesus toys with them playfully, and he brings great joy to their broken lives.

We usually start church council meetings with Holy Communion.  Council members may turn red in the face when I say this, but at the last council meeting Communion was anything but reverent.  I’ve never heard so many snickers and giggles from adults.  I won’t embarrass anyone with the details, but I did say this is probably a lot like the real Last Supper.  It wasn’t a formal affair.  We imagine this great room like the one depicted by Leonardo da Vinci.  It is a grand colorful scene with Jesus seated powerfully in the center.  Historically it was more likely to be what our church council meeting was – a small group of people in an ordinary room sharing a holiday meal.  There were jokes and laughter.  Yes, Jesus gave them last minute teachings before he left, but the disciples certainly didn’t get what was happening.  It was all too ordinary.

This is all a very long introduction to what I want to get to, and that is St. John; the man for whom this church is named.  I think you’ll find that despite the fact that his symbol is an eagle, and he is associated with the writing of the Gospel of John, among the most astoundingly deep pieces of theology ever written, and he is credited with writing 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd John in the Bible, plus sometimes Revelation (though I doubt it), the historical man John was somebody a lot like you.

The Bible gives us very few details about him but we can learn a lot from them.  He and James were called the “Sons of Thunder” and so we assume they had hot tempers.  We know that he and his brother James and their father Zebedee ran a successful fishing business.  And the fact that they had hired hands showed they were more than just the Peter and Andrew one-man operations.  This was a commercial enterprise.  John was probably a middle-class businessman with an above average education.

We know he had a measure of boldness because he asked Jesus for a seat of power when he came into his kingdom.  He had courage because he dared to follow Jesus closely through his arrest, trial, and maybe even present at the crucifixion.  Still, he watched it all happen.  He didn’t step in or help Jesus.  He wasn’t putting his neck on the line.  When push came to shove he failed.  He had plenty of struggles and doubts and failures.

He saw the Transfiguration first hand.  And unlike Peter, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and therefore didn’t prove how clueless he was.  John, along with Peter and James, was chosen by Jesus to be with him when he prayed in Gethsemane.  Again though, another special insider look didn’t make his faith perfect.

In time John came to understand it all.  And he could put lots of pieces together.  Look at the Gospel of John.  It starts off, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  John began to see how all of life and all of creation and all of history come together in this man Jesus.  If John was on a quest to find the meaning of life, he found it!

Based on the Gospel of John, he also knew that not everyone would agree about Jesus.  Some would.  Some would not.  And John recognized that faith is not something to be grasped by the intellect.  It is not a mental pursuit.  It is a matter of the soul.  The Holy Spirit was also at work creating and strengthening faith.  And the Holy Spirit is not something you can control.

I think we too, whose church is named for this man, find the same things.  Some believe.  Some do not.  Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason.  Sometimes you feel strong in faith.  Sometimes you feel weak.  Sometimes faith creates painful challenges and arouses guilt you’d rather avoid.  And sometimes faith brings about peace and joy beyond understanding.

John was an ordinary man who discovered an extraordinary truth.  I’ve quoted the beginning of the gospel.  Here’s the end, “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.  But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

John discovered the extraordinary truth of how big and wonderful God is – too big and wonderful to capture in the pages of any number of books.  May you live in the same wonder, and find the same hope in Christ that St. John did.  Amen

December 13, 2009 Advent 3 Luke 3:7-18

The individual confession service at a church had gotten on a roll.  One many stood up and said, “I’ve been smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, and I’m going to quit.”  Another man chimed in, “I’ve been getting drunk every weekend and I’m going to quit.”  Yet another parishioner confessed, “I’ve been cursing a lot lately and I’m going to quit.”  Caught in the exhilaration of the moment a little old lady stood up and said, “I haven’t been doing anything, and I’m going to quit.”

Hmm, there’s layers of meaning there if you think about it.  This gets at a refrain that we find in Luke’s gospel and in its companion volume, Acts.  The refrain is, “What then should we do?”  The first time we find it is today as people respond to John the Baptist.  John is preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  Repentance of course means a complete turn around from old and sinful practices.  In response to John’s words the crowds ask him in verse 10, “What then should we do?”  Tax collectors ask in verse 12 “What should we do?”  Soldiers ask in verse 14, “What should we do?”  And a lawyer in 20:25, a ruler in 18:18, a Jerusalem crowd in Acts 3:17, a jailer in Acts 16:30 and a zealous Jew in Acts 22:10 all ask, “What should we do?”

We’ve probably all asked ourselves that question at some point or another.  What should we do?  In Luke and Acts not only do a variety of people ask, “What should we do?”  There is a variety of people who are asked that question.  In Acts it is the apostles or Paul.  In much of Luke it is Jesus.  In our gospel reading it is John the Baptist.  Their answers vary.

In our gospel reading the answers are pretty straightforward:  share, be honest and fair, don’t lie, cheat, or steal, and don’t exploit others.  Jesus himself gave more challenging answers.  We aren’t going to look at his answers now.  We will focus on John’s because when we look at them we think, “Sure, but that’s just being a decent person.  Is that what God wants us to do, just be good people?”

That is a tempting answer.  And many people take it.  I don’t want to say it is a wrong or bad answer, but it misses the whole answer.  What we should ask ourselves is, “Why?  Why should I be a good person?”  And that actually takes us to Jesus’ type of answers as well.

John’s message starts in an interesting way.  He says, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”  As I’m here close to Christmas with all the shopping and buying I tend to think, “John, you’re a bit of an odd-ball in the first place.  I mean, the camel’s hair, eating bugs and honey, living in the wilderness.  You’re not exactly a handsome stud in the public spotlight.  These people have gone out of their way to see you, and all you can say is, ‘You brood of vipers!’  I think you’re in need of a marketing expert, not to mention an image consultant.”

John didn’t seem to be worried about popularity.  He didn’t seem to worried about keeping his head attached to his shoulders either.  But he did know a thing or two about how people think.  He goes on to say, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

That’s a bizarre statement if ever there was one.  Here’s what John is getting at.  Vipers were thought to eat their way out of their mother’s womb.  It’s not a scientifically accurate thought, but it was a common thought in that day.  John is saying the Jews have eaten their way out of a special covenant relationship with God.  Why?  How?  Because John knows that the temptation for self-justification is universal.

I think you all know that if you think about something long and hard enough you can invent an excuse or justification for it; anything at all.  Failed dieters know full well how many excuses and justifications they make.  Almost anyone with an addiction does it all the time.  And we can do it with our faith as well, offering God justifications for dismissing His call to us.

Here are some major categories of rationalizations that Christians give to God.  The civil-religion rationalization claims that God needs us because we are a Christian nation.  The pietistic rationalization offers individual piety as a substitute for genuine commitment, while limiting religion to matters of the heart and one’s private relationship with God. The universalist rationalization says that one’s response to God doesn’t really matter because ultimately all will be saved by God’s grace anyway.  Whatever our modern equivalent to the appeal to Abraham, John’s call comes to us, “From these very stones…”

And so when we return to our original question, “What then shall we do?”  We know that when we hear God’s answer the sinner in all of us is going to try to rationalize it away.  But of course, don’t let that happen.  Let the stronger part of yourself, the saint that God is at work in, respond, “Yes, Lord.  I will do it.”

You see, the sinner in you is scared.  It is small.  It is always fearful.  It is always full of needs.  It’s worried about how it will work.  It is worried about the safety of your image and ego.  It is worried about being loved and accepted.  It’s going to say to God, “Why should I do it?  What’s in it for me?”

But the saint in you is big and powerful.  The saint in you knows that all of the sinner’s worries have already been answered by God.  It knows that God will provide for your basic needs.  It knows that God will take care of your image and ego.  And it knows that you are loved and accepted by God without merit.  In other words, it is in tune to God’s grace.  And it doesn’t have to ask “Why should I do it?” as a demand for justification.  It already knows the answer: because it is God’s will.  It is confident that God will provide.

Don’t ever let the scared little sinner in you bully around the big saint who is strong and confident and secure.  When that happens it’s like a little cat chasing a big dog.  It’s pretty silly.  Sure, the two will conflict, like an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.  But the angel’s voice is stronger.  It is stronger because it is rooted in the inexhaustible supply of God’s gracious love.

It may seem like it is weakness to admit that you need God’s love and favor, and not be a totally self-made, and self-sustaining person, but it is actually strength.  In knowing its need it connects to true strength.  Having God’s favor, and knowing you have it without merit – in other words having God’s grace – is to be truly powerful.

Let me conclude with this little English table prayer:

Lord, give me grace to feel my need of grace; and give me grace to ask for grace; and give me grace to receive grace; and O Lord, when grace is given, give me grace to use it.  Amen

December 6, 2009 Advent 2 Philippians 1:3-11

Are you a person who has created a life list?  A list of things you want to do before you die, or perhaps before you turn a certain age: climb a mountain, drive a racecar, travel to a certain country, see a landmark.  Perhaps they are big things or just small things.  I remember a woman when I was in high school whose life goal had become living long enough to see her daughter graduate from high school.  Some people write out formal lists and then check things off when they’ve accomplished them.  Other people may have less formal lists or just a vague sense of what they’d like to accomplish in life.

I wonder what St. Paul would think about life lists.  Such lists certainly challenge us and help us strive to meet our goals.  If they were religious goals Paul might be all for it.  In many places he talks about pressing on toward a goal, like a runner in a race or an athlete in a contest.  In Philippians 3:13 he says, “… forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

But then also in Philippians we have a verse from our second reading, “I am confident of this, that He who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”  Here Paul is totally confident that any good work begun is guaranteed completion.  You don’t have to strive and struggle and worry about not getting a project done in your lifetime.  God will make sure it is brought to completion.

Of course these ideas are not mutually exclusive; both straining forward with all our might and living in perfect confidence of a task’s completion.  But we are wise to focus on God’s promises to bring things to completion.

Life is full of risks.  And often times people and personalities become a major part of what makes something successful.  When they leave or change things fall apart.  When Martin Luther died the Lutheran reformers were thrown into chaos.  They started fighting with each other, when they had gotten along previously.  Their cooperation stopped and it looked like they would splinter to pieces.  Luther held them together.  Or think of a business that comes to be under new management.  Sometimes new management turns around a failing enterprise.  And sometimes it ruins what was once a perfectly good enterprise.   If you’re an employee of a company that was bought out and you realize the new management doesn’t know what they’re doing you start to get scared.  With good reason we often connect people and personalities with the success or failure of an endeavor.

When it comes to matters of faith, and doing work for God, Paul would have us not believe any of it.  He is confident that any good work begun in faith is a good work begun by God.  Therefore it will be completed on time and properly.

Let’s step away from the idea of the projects we can accomplish ourselves to ourselves actually being a project – a project of God.  Let’s interpret Paul’s words when he says, “I am confident of this, that He who began a good work among you will bring it so completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” To mean, “I am confident that the work God is up to in making and growing you will be brought to completion.”

We live with what I think is a highly logical but completely wrong understanding of life.  I’ve shared this thought before.  We often think of life like a bell curve.  You are born.  And as an infant you’re not good for much, outside of eating, burping, and creating messy diapers.  But as you grow you learn to do more and more.  You become more and more capable.  It is as if your life is growing and improving.  I think one of the biggest goals of what we give our children is the education and experiences they need to be the most productive citizens they can.  And so we rise in strength and quality.

At some point however, aging starts to catch up with you.  You reach the peak, plateau, and then everything starts to decline.  We are “over the hill.”   Sadly, you decline until you die.  Some people hope for a sudden death because they dread having to be in a nursing home or have a drawn-out terminal illness.  I myself, if I could have my life end the way I want it to, it would be to be able to work up until the day I die.  I don’t want to fade away, become a useless burden, and slowly decline into death.

But here I am wrong.  And so is anyone who thinks this way.  St. Paul certainly didn’t see life this way.  Let’s look at his circumstances as he writes the letter to the Philippians.  The letter is upbeat, confident, thankful, and overflowing with joy.  Based on the tone of Philippians you’d never guess that Paul was actually in jail when he wrote it.  His one associate just narrowly escaped death.  The church in Philippi was at risk for falling apart in heresy.  And, he’s awaiting trial – with the fairly likely outcome that he will be found guilty.  And with that likely guilty verdict comes the equally likely sentence that the Romans are going to chop his head off.

That’s Paul’s reality.  That’s not his tone at all.  Paul would never accept seeing life as a bell curve.  He might be in jail.  He might be facing death.  His life’s work make all come to ruin.  But he is unquestioningly confident that despite all this, his effectiveness as a Christian is in no way shape or form compromised.  He knows God’s work will be accomplished no matter what.

Paul would see life this way.  When you are baptized you become a child of God.  There your real life begins.  And as you grow and age you also grow and mature in faith – in the Holy Spirit.  And so you become more and more effective.  Paul never saw a top to that.  Each new day meant more growth and greater effectiveness.  Failing physical health, incarceration, pain, and loss do not diminish your effectiveness as a witness to God’s love.

Paul wants you to do this.  See the future, going on into eternal life, as a completion of what God has started in you here and now.  You don’t live an allotted number of years and then die into something different.  You are in partnership with God beginning now, progressive through life, and being brought to completion in God’s future.

People sometimes ask, “What will I look like when I’m in heaven?  Will I look like my 20 something self at the peak of my body’s strength?”  I say, who knows?  You’re still living.  You haven’t yet lived into the fullness of what God is making you for eternal life.

God is at work in you.  A project he is sure to complete.  You can be confident in that.  And whenever you aren’t confident, learn a lesson from verse 9 of our second reading, “And this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.”

What brings about knowledge and depth of insight?  Is it book learning?  Is it going to school?  Is it years of experience?  No.  (Although I say that knowing I’m giving every school age child an excuse to stop doing homework.)  It is love that brings about knowledge and depth of insight.  Paul goes on, “to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

May God’s love dwell in you forever and may God complete in you all that he begins.  Amen

November 29, 2009 Advent 1 Luke 21:25-36

If you’re familiar with the Harry Potter book series you’ll know the character Mad Eye Moody.  Mad Eye Moody of course gets his name from his one magical eye which can see through solid things.  When his character comes on the scene in the fourth book of the series he’s respected but also a bit of a joke.  After a career of catching evil wizards he’s jumpy and obsessed with safety.  When absolutely no threat is visible and everyone else is having a good time enjoying life, Moody is cautious – afraid of getting poisoned, cursed or killed.  He cries out over and over again, “Constant vigilance!” even when no threat is showing itself on the farthest horizon.

 

Were we as Christians to take the attitude of Mad Eye Moody into our lives in respect to the coming of Jesus, we’d be similarly labeled a bit of a joke.  What do you mean, “Constant vigilance?”  Jesus isn’t returning.  That’s old hokey talk from the past.  The Enlightenment has happened.  We aren’t superstitious people anymore.  We know there aren’t little demons hiding out in the woods waiting to catch people who wander by at night.  We know the universe isn’t three stories with the heavens literally above.  The earth here, and the realm of the dead literally beneath us.

I think without realizing it, we accommodate this jarring contrast in world views, holding onto some scraps of the Spirit in our faith but really living in the present, which ignores the idea of a grand divine plan for the world.  Let’s look closely at our gospel reading.

 

Luke is up to a little literary trick that we need to be aware of.  Luke’s gospel was probably written sometime late in the first century, say about 80 A.D.  The Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 A.D.  Here’s what’s happening.  Jesus predicted this destruction back around the year 30.  Mark’s gospel, the first one written, records this.  Mark’s gospel was written around the year 60, ten years before the Roman destruction.  If you read Mark’s gospel, as we’ve just spent much of the last year reading from it, you notice the apocalyptic teachings are about how to live in the present before the destruction of Jerusalem, and what to do when that happens.  The apocalyptic teachings go on after that, but they are mostly focused on the predictions regarding Jerusalem.

 

Now we are reading from Luke’s gospel, after Jerusalem has been destroyed.  What Luke is doing literarily is saying: Look, Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem.  It came true.  We’re living in the time between the destruction of Jerusalem and the return of Christ.  We don’t know how long this will be, but we have to live faithfully – constant vigilance.

 

How important was the destruction of Jerusalem?  Consider this.  Assume Jesus was around here today and he predicted the complete destruction of Rochester.  Yeah, right we’d say.  But, about 40 years after he says it, it comes true.  Think of how life would be different around here if Rochester was completely destroyed.  Life would be totally different.  That’s what it was like for people in Palestine regarding Jerusalem.  And, if someone predicted it 40 years in advance, and more of what would happen afterward you’d suddenly be interested in what they had to say.

 

What Luke is trying to do is to make us realize we are living in a kind of in-between time.  Some of the prophesy has come true.  But more is left.  Who knows how long it will be, but until it does, constant vigilance.  Don’t go back to a “business as usual” approach to your life.  The world’s “business as usual” ways won’t have you ready and won’t build your faith.

 

Some churches and many Christians build their whole lives on readiness for Christ’s coming.  As you know, in my opinion the end results of their efforts often comes off looking like foolishness.  In efforts of readiness they lose the ability to be effective evangelists in our secular world.  The readiness Jesus has in mind isn’t this type of readiness.  He’s up to something else.

 

Consider verses 25-28 in the gospel reading.  There Jesus talks about signs in the sun, the moon and the stars.  He talks about distress among nations and fear and his return.  I’m not going to look at them image by image, but Jesus is picking up on what were standard apocalyptic teachings of the time.  He mixes images from several Old Testament prophets.  Specifically Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Daniel, and Jonah.  Let’s not dismiss these images, but I don’t think Jesus is trying to make any specific new teachings.  What he is doing is broadly affirming the expectations of his hearers.  Basically saying, “Yes, the end of time will involve the whole cosmos.  The fundamental order of things will be rearranged.

 

Then he goes on to say something that is on the surface puzzling and self-contradicting.  He gives the little parable of a fig tree.  Like any deciduous tree it loses its leaves for the winter and grows new ones for the spring.  You could tell the seasons by it.  When the leaves fell, winter was coming.  When the new spouts began to appear spring was coming.  He says, “So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

 

Okay, fine we think.  There will be clear obvious signs to get ready.  But then in verses 34 and 35 he says, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”  This sounds like you still don’t know.  The signs won’t be obvious or even existent.

 

Well, which is it Jesus?  Your teachings are hard enough to understand at the best of times.  What’s this about directly contradicting yourself in the next breath?

 

Let’s sum it up this way.  Jesus changes tone from ‘prophetic discourse’ to ‘pastoral exhortation’.  Prophetic discourse is challenging and holding to account.  Pastoral exhortation is still very firm but caring.  Jesus is not as concerned with proper discernment of signs in the heavens as he is people maintaining faithful living.

 

As Luke presents it in his gospel Jesus wants his followers to know that the end may be a long way off – but, but – live in expectation of it.  Do not live a “business-as-usual” life along with everyone else around.  Heaven is your home.  Heaven is your future.  You are living a part of God’s own timetable.  It isn’t yours to understand.  It is yours to live.

 

Jesus says, “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”  What do you think will take the most “strength to escape”?  It is simply the wait itself.  It is being faithful and engaged in faith even as the rest of the world is doing its own thing.

 

God works in his own way at his own time.  And if you don’t like the delay, remember this: if God had acted sooner you never would have been born, and never would have had a chance at life or having God’s love.  The delay is a delay of grace.  It is a delay of love and mercy.

 

Let’s conclude with one final point.  Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  Now that’s a pretty definite time frame which would prove that Jesus’ words here are wrong.  That generation did pass away.  But don’t fall victim to a trap of your own mind.  Using the phrase “pass away” as a nice euphemism for death is more recent than Jesus.  He didn’t use it like that.  Plus, all four gospels record Jesus using the phrase “this generation” when he was exasperated by the hopelessness of humanity.  “This generation” refers to the broken state of the world, not the people alive at the time.

 

So, constant vigilance, as the character Mad Eye Moody would say.  Be alert.  Be faithful.  Don’t slack.  Don’t fall into the ways of “this generation.”  Instead, always live toward the fulfillment of history.  God will take you there, whether it happens in your lifetime or not.  Amen

November 22, 2009 Bread for the World Sunday Matthew 25:31-46

As Christians we are to be thankful people.  Thanksgiving is a secular holiday that is right up our alley.  We’ve received a lot from God and we are richly blessed.  It is good to think, “Give thanks always.”  But this may not always be appropriate.  Consider the old story of the brother and sister who were playing in the cow pasture one sunny afternoon.  For some unknown reason the old milk cow lost her temper and dashed for the two children.  Because she was older and bigger, the sister was able to climb the nearest tree, but Johnny ran for the fence.  Perched on a limb, the sister screamed out her advice, “Run, Johnny! Run!”  As he neared the fence, she yelled, “Slide, Johnny!  Slide!”  He did, but his pants became caught in the barbed wire.  Her last bit of advice was, “Pray, Johnny!  Pray!”  The only prayer Johnny had ever heard was his father repeating grace at mealtime, but the old cow was closing in fast and he needed to do something, so he used daddy’s prayer: “Lord, we thank thee for that which we are about to receive.”

 

Yes, thankfulness may not always be appropriate, but it is something we need to be mindful of much of the time.  In last week’s sermon I had a long depressing list of the troubles the future holds for us.  Indeed there will be no shortage of challenges, but on the whole we need to also remember the basics.  The folks from Bread for the World help to remind us of that.

 

Do we have an adequate, safe, stable food supply?  Yes, very much so.  When was the last time you went to a grocery store that was empty?  When was the last time a farmers’ market had nothing to offer?  And when was the last time you bought something and wondered, “Has it been poisoned?”  These are daily realities for billions of people in the world.

 

We need to be thankful for a safe, stable food supply.  We need to be thankful that we have choices.  Sometimes I look in the cupboard or refrigerator and say, “There’s nothing to eat,” and of course they are full of food.  I just don’t like the choices that are before me.  But at least I have choices to grumble about.  I wouldn’t want to live with rice for every meal every day until the day I die.

 

We also have great medical care, though we complain about it.  When was the last time you had a major infection or a loved one died because of a lack of basic first aid?  When did someone die simply because no medicine was available?

 

I don’t remember the story well, but it is a true one, of an African mother who waited in line all day at a medical aid tent in order to get medicine for her young child, who she was holding.  The hours wore on and she approached the front of the line.  But before she reached it the aid workers ran out of medicine.  She begged and pleaded with the aid workers for medicine.  If she didn’t get it, and soon, her son would die.  “Sorry,” they said, “There simply is no more medicine.  We can’t help you.”

 

After a while the mother lowered her child and laid him on the ground.  Then she and other mothers who had been waiting gathered around the boy in a circle and began to sing and to dance around him, for indeed he was dying.   Round and round they went, and on and on and on for quite some time.  The aid workers asked, “What are you doing?”  To which she replied, “I cannot save my child, but as he dies the last things he hears will be a song of hope and joy.”

 

I don’t think any of us have ever been in that situation.  The amazing thing is this woman’s hopefulness and even thanksgiving in the midst of being helpless to save her child.

 

Yes, we have food and we have good medicine, and even though we complain about our government and our crooked politicians, for the most part it isn’t that bad – at least not compared to many other nations.  We have rights and privileges and they’re pretty well protected.  No police force is out to assassinate us or harm us.  And we don’t have to bribe our way through daily life.

 

If you’re like me you groan every time you have to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles.  You know you’ll have to wait in long lines, then you’ll finally get there and discover that some piece of paperwork is missing or filled out wrong.  So then you have to start all over again.  You can spend half a day or a whole day just running around.

 

But of course this is nothing compared to many other countries, where similar things can take many days, or even weeks, and lots of bribe money changes hands.

 

We are wise when we remember the many blessings that we have and that we live in safety.  And we are also wise to remember that thankfulness is linked to happiness.  You’ll never be happy if you aren’t thankful, no matter how much you have and how great your life is.  Yet you’ll always be happy when you are thankful no matter how bad life is.

 

And really, all that I’ve talked about being thankful for so far is just surface stuff.  The real root of thankfulness we find in what we will sing as our offertory song today – For the Fruit of All Creation.  The final verse concludes, “… most of all, that love has found us, thanks be to God.”

 

What are we most thankful for?  God’s love.  It has found us.  And Romans 8 tells us that nothing will ever take that away.  Thankfulness for God’s love will flow out from the center of ourselves and into every part of our lives and into everything we do.

 

I am always amazed at how so much in life comes together when you realize that love has found you.  That means that you are valued and valuable no matter what happens and what other people say.  It means that you have a purpose.  It means that you have dignity.  It means that you are important.  Nothing can take that from you because it is God’s free gift to you, for simply being you.

 

If you don’t recognize that love or aren’t thankful for it, then all of life will be a burden.  You won’t be happy.  And you won’t be willing to give or share either.  You’ll hoard and scheme and calculate every thing every day.

 

Thankfulness, happiness and giving all go together.  We celebrate Bread for the World Sunday because we know that from our abundance and with the security of God’s love we can give generously of ourselves to others.

 

Bread for the World reminds us of the truth of our gospel reading – where small acts of giving to people of no significance are actually big service to God.  I like the Bread for the World organization.  They are effective with both Democrats and Republicans.  They do well-informed good work.  They teach people how to fish, rather than just giving them fish.  And, they aren’t always asking for money – guilting people into giving.  They recognize that throwing ever more money at problems doesn’t solve everything.  Money helps, but it is a tool among many to making sure people have their needs met.

Unless an angry cow is charging you down, always be thankful.  You have a lot to be thankful for.  And give of yourself as you have been freely given so that all may have and have in abundance.  Amen

November 15, 2009 Pentecost 24 Mark 13:1-8

I believe it was Ross Poroit(sp?) in the 1992 presidential election who popularized the phrase, “a giant sucking sound,” to refer to American jobs heading to Mexico if the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed.  I can’t comment on the affect of NAFTA on American jobs, but the idea of a giant suction drawing jobs to Mexico gives us a great theological image.

 

I think it’s easy to get our sense of time all mixed up.  If you’re like me, it often feels like the future looms ahead.  There are many wonderful possibilities, but there are also many burdens, fears, and uncertainties.  I think we develop them when we’re quite young.  Adolescents can dread school, social cliques, college placement, even passing a drivers test.  Young adults have stresses of relationships, in this economy –getting a job, paying student loans, and trying to establish a stable happy life.  Parents worry about children, and they worry about caring for their parents; sandwiched between the two.  The older you get there are health concerns and pains.

 

While we live in great safety there is also a lot of anxiety in our culture.  No one is foolish enough to believe that our government can forever fend off recessions with massive overspending.  Our country is losing its world leading role in many places.  And then there is my favorite quirky statistic:  in terms of dollar value, America’s highest value agricultural crop may very well be marijuana; and our largest export by volume is garbage.  While we’re depressing ourselves lets add on: global warming, ozone depletion, wide-spread habitat destruction, obesity, poverty, hunger, crime, corruption, and erosion of morals.  To put a cherry on the top of that sundae of depression lets add the widespread decline of Christianity in our country.  Is that a future to look forward too?

 

At its best it looks like an awful lot of work.  You almost have to be shoved into it kicking and screaming.  I think God would have us take a very different approach to the future.  In our gospel reading Jesus is acknowledging that the future isn’t something to necessarily look forward to.  The disciples are looking at the temple in Jerusalem.  This would be the second temple.  The first one had been built by Solomon maybe around the year 1000 BC.  That temple was destroyed in 587 BC by the Babylonians.  A second temple was built between 520 and 515 BC when the Jews were allowed to return from the Babylonian exile.  Changes and additions were made over the years, but King Herod launched a gigantic expansion project in Jesus’ day, taking 40 years.  If ever there was something permanent in the disciples’ eyes it was that temple.  At that time it was 500 years old. Gigantic and elaborate, it looked like it would last forever.  And there was more than just its longevity to back that up.  There was also theological surety that it would be there forever too.

 

While the Jews didn’t like the Roman occupation of their land, they were used to it.  Empires came and went, sort of like Presidents of the United States.  If you didn’t like the current president you knew to just hunker down and bear it until the next one, which might be better.  The Jews knew their temple was forever.  God had promised it.

 

Or so they thought.  And just like today, there’s lots that looks permanent in our world that isn’t really so.  In the year 70 the Romans destroyed that temple, and all of Jerusalem; making Jesus’ predictions true.  Apparently empires didn’t just come and go.  And by Jesus’ words, that’s only the beginning.

 

Jesus’ apocalyptic imagery goes on beyond our gospel reading for all of Chapter 13… 29 more verses.  It’s doom and gloom, destruction and woe.  It’s about as depressing as the future may look to us some days.  But in it all, let’s not forget a tiny but important sentence.  It’s the end of verse 8, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

 

Women tell me giving birth tends to hurt a bit.  I wouldn’t know, but at the risk of them all violently ganging up against me and making my future look bleak, I’ll not dispute that.

Giving birth hurts!  It hurts a lot.  But what’s at the end of it?  A baby; something new, a fresh new life with hope and potential and joy.

 

Jesus wants his apocalyptic words to be understood as the backdrop of a birth story.  Hard times?  Yes.  But something new and great is happening.  This new and great thing is bigger than any of the other difficult and disastrous things that will happen.  It is God’s work.  It is unavoidable.  Jesus invites us to see the difficult future, and not see hopeless burdens too big to be endured.  But, like a giant sucking sound, God’s love and goodness draws us irresistibly forward into His future.

 

We are people of the future.  The future has almost always looked rough.  It does for us today.  It did for people in Jesus’ day.  It does not frighten us.

 

Now, we do not believe, as the secular humanists do, that somehow with enough education and self-confidence that we humans can on our own be good and solve these great problems.   If history is any indication, we humans don’t do such a good job of fixing the messes we make.  Generally our solutions make bigger messes than we started with.

 

We do believe that God will fulfill His promises.  Right now God is drawing the whole creation, ourselves included, toward its ultimate fulfillment.  When will that be complete?  I don’t presume to know.  But I do know that it will be done.

 

As you see the future do not see it as full of uncertainties.  See it as a safe and secure time reaching out to you and draw you into it.  The future is bright.  Let your life be driven by what you are looking forward to.  If your model of life is this, life is all hard work and worry and then you die, change it to excitement and wonder at what God is up to.

 

Maybe you know clearly what God has in store for your future.  If you do, then consider yourself deeply blessed.  Most people don’t know.  And if you do know, constantly re-evaluate what you think you know, lest what you think you know turn out to be wrong.  It is easy to put your personal agenda into God’s hands and believe that what you want is what God wants.  Not true.

 

And if you don’t know clearly what God has in store for your future, don’t worry.  You don’t have to have a grand plan in mind.  You have lots of choices and options every day.  Simply make those choices in light of God’s promises for the future.  You’ll discover pretty soon that those little choices add up to big effects.  And a little bit every day adds up to a whole lot.

 

The future is sucking you into itself.  It is God’s future.  It is our future.  And it is good.  Amen

November 8, 2009 Pentecost 23 Mark 12:38-44

The young couples’ Sunday School class was studying the story of Abraham and Sarah, who in their 90’s were blessed with their first child – Isaac.  “What lesson,” the teacher asked, “do we learn from this story?”  A young mother blurted out, “They waited until they could afford it before having kids!”

 

I like this little joke because it opens our eyes to the background of the poor widow woman we meet in our gospel reading.  On one hand we know almost nothing about her.  She gets all of five seconds of “air time” in Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus has sat down opposite the treasury in the temple in Jerusalem.  He’s watching people put money in.  Among the wealthy donors in steps this poor widow who puts in two small copper coins.  They’re basically worthless.  But Jesus calls his disciples and says to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.”  And then she’s gone from the scene.  That’s it.  The Bible never records whether Jesus actually spoke to her or anything else.

 

But she is far more than just a cameo appearance in the gospel about Jesus.  We actually know a great deal about her.  She was a widow and was poor.  That means that she had been married and her husband has died.  I immediately imagine her as being old, but that may not be the case.  She was just as likely young; and given life expectancies, maybe even in her twenties or thirties.  If this is the case, then for some reason none her husband’s brothers are interested in her.  Remember, if a brother died another brother was expected to marry her.  If he refused then she was out of luck.  Maybe her husband had no other brothers.

 

She’s out alone.  That means that if she is young she has had no children – or they have died.  Without children there will be no one to care for her when she is old.

 

Or perhaps she was elderly and her husband had died.  None of her children were caring for her, if she had children.  And if she didn’t she’s doubly looked down upon.  She is a woman without a man – so she has no status.  And, if she couldn’t have children even the other women around would look at her with disdain, for a woman’s value was measured by how many sons she bore.  No children at all meant that something was fundamentally wrong with a woman.

 

Whatever her case may be, she is living a hard life caused by circumstances that were probably out of her control.  She’s a victim of social and economic structures.  Yet, she takes the two pennies that she has and gives them to the temple treasury.  Why? I wonder.  Was she hoping for a miracle?  Did she think it would buy God’s favor?  She certainly didn’t think it would do anything of significance.  What are two cents compared to the annual budget of that temple?  Nothing.  What are two cents compared to the $200,000 budget of this church?  Nothing.

 

If you filled out your pledge card and said you’d give even two cents per week I think I’d take you aside and say, “Look, thanks for the offering.  The gesture is wonderful.  However, two cents per week at 52 weeks only comes out to $1.04.  Your offering envelops cost $2 in and of themselves plus there’s all the work to record, deposit and process that gift.  We’d be better off if you just kept it.”

 

It hasn’t happened for several years, but there have been times when we’ve gotten memorial gifts from people that were so small that it cost us more to send the thank you than we actually received.  It doesn’t happen with a single donation, but I remember a couple times getting checks for $10 and then a note attached, “In memory of [so and so], please send thank you’s to the following four families…”  I appreciate what they were trying to do, but letterhead, envelops, and postage alone cost the value of the gift; even forgetting the time involved to write the thank yous and prepare the mailings.

 

I don’t want to mock anyone’s giving, but I think we need to remember that; because from all measures of value, this widow’s offering… was a joke.

 

Jesus praises her.  It has nothing to do with the amount; obviously.  Why she gave it we don’t know.  But she did.  She, who had been caught in all the unfairness her world could throw at her; she who had no hope for a happy future; she who had nothing and no one to go home to; she gives both of her insignificant copper coins to the treasury.

 

Where was her supper going to come from?  Who knows?  That doesn’t matter really.  What would two cents buy you?  You’d have to run to 98 other stores with those little “Take a penny, leave a penny,” containers in order to buy something from the dollar menu at McDonalds.  No, worse, she’d have to come up with several cents more to pay the tax too.

 

Jesus points her out because she gave all she had to God and it still added up to nothing.  Have you ever felt like a nobody?  Have you ever felt worthless?  Have you ever felt that you had nothing worth giving?  I hope not.  But this widow certainly was a worthless nobody to anyone with a social measuring stick.

 

This woman’s action was praiseworthy because out of her poverty and without reservation she gave her whole living to God.  That’s real trust!  That’s real confidence!  But even more is meant here.

 

We are at the end of Mark 12.  Remember, Mark’s gospel is short.  It only has 16 chapters, and chapter 16 is so short it’s hardly worth counting.  So, we’re getting to the end of Jesus’ ministry.  In fact, this widow marks the end of Jesus’ public ministry.  Everything else in the gospel isn’t said in public.  It is private conversations with the disciples.  Her gift, the end of Jesus’ public ministry foreshadows what’s going to happen just a few days later – the crucifixion.  There the Son of God will be strung up, also helpless, without money, without friends, and with no status measurable by anyone who has a social measuring stick.  God does amazing things with nothing.

 

That brings me to conclude with an aside, but something very relevant.  The gospel of Mark puts the cross central.  Mark sees the crucifixion as the ultimate expression of the ultimate power in the universe – Love.  We need to remember that and keep that at the core of our faith.  I remind you of that because of our second reading from Hebrews.  There’s nothing in and of itself that stands out, but it does raise the idea of Christ’s second coming.

 

I’m sure you’re aware of many churches who build their entire belief system around preparing for Christ’s return.  They talk about it all the time.  I don’t want to minimize that at all, it’s just that churches like that tend to get a lot of press coverage, and in our culture which is subtly growing ever more anti-Christian every day these teachings become a real mocking point.  Christians are portrayed as ignorant simpletons with far fetched and fantastic beliefs.

 

Again, I don’t mean to minimize or belittle them, but the truth is, you don’t need elaborate teachings about “the second coming” for solid working Christian faith that will carry you every day and through every thing.  The truth is the Bible’s teaching about Christ’s return is thin.  There isn’t much of it; and that’s for good reason.  Because it isn’t all that important when compared to the message of the cross.  Proclaim Christ and him crucified.  Live Christ and him crucified.  Be Love as the ultimate power in the universe, expressed in its ultimate form on the cross and you will have faith to move mountains.  You will have faith for every situation.  Don’t worry about it.  Let God take care of the details.  You worry about what you are doing with God’s help today for people now.  That is certainly what the widow was doing.  And though she had nothing she had everything.  Amen