Who gets the blessing?

I'm reading a book by Sarah Bessey ("Jesus Feminist"), and in that book she talks about preaching every sermon so that it is for every person in every corner of the globe. That resonated with me as I was getting this message ready for my beloveds at the Springmoor Stewart Health Center. Some of the people who will read this on this blog have wildly different lives than that congregation and this time I was keenly aware of those differences. Would these words speak to every person? Can I offer the same words to the people with health problems typical of aging and to the young, vibrant, healthy people in other parts of my world?

I don't know. I hope so. Fortunately Jesus - the Resurrection - and the unfailing love of God in Jesus is for everyone. Every single person. And that's the bottom line. You can listen to the delivered message here.

The texts for this week are:
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Come Holy Spirit. Break up our fear and open our eyes and hearts to know love as you offer it: with complete generosity.  Amen

Abraham is all over today’s lessons but there isn’t a whole lot of context. The reading from Genesis is about Abraham being called by God. The reading from Romans is about how that call from God to Abraham might inform our faith lives (according to Paul, writing to the Jesus-followers in Rome). It seems like there might be a whole lot more story there, though, doesn’t it?

Nothing in the story before the Genesis lesson makes Abram seem remarkable. Why Abram? Why not one of Abram’s brothers, Nahor or Haran? Why did Abram take Haran’s son Lot, but none of Nahor’s children? WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT ABRAM?

Based on scriptural evidence, the answer to that question has to be … nothing. Abram was just one of many.

And that turns out to be kind of good, because if God can choose Abram, then maybe God can choose ordinary me (and maybe ordinary you, too).

Before naming Abram as entirely ordinary, though, let’s see if there is something else that shows something special about Abram:

First of all, he’s 75 when God calls him. Sure, people lived a lot longer then, but 75 is no spring chicken even by standards of that day. In the genealogy before Abram’s call, the babies were being born when the daddies were in their 20s and 30s, so by this point Abram could have had a bunch of children. But he didn’t. Maybe that’s why he took his nephew Lot along?!?

Abram did have a wife – Sarai – and they took Lot and went off to where God sent. And what is the first thing they did? They lied about being married. Because Abram was scared. It doesn’t seem like a very believing thing to do, though.

And how did God respond to that lying disrespect of marriage?

God blessed Abram! No punishment from Pharaoh… just take your wife and go. And here, take all your stuff, too. JUST GO AWAY. Safely.

And prosperity came upon Abram, who then rescued Lot from warring tribes. Melchizadek blessed Abram. Things were going GREAT!

So what did Abram do?

Instead of clinging to God’s promise of blessing and children, he thought maybe God was confused so he went to Hagar and had a child. It was Sarai’s idea, not God’s, but Abram had no problem hopping on board. Once again Abram tripped up…

And what happened?  Did God say “that’s enough, I’m done with you Abram!”?

Nope.

God made ANOTHER covenant with Abram. God changed their names and said “let me be clear… I am going to give YOU a son, and here, you and Sarai will now be Abraham and Sarah. Don’t worry that you are 100 years old and Sarah is 90. You will have a child.

And they did! Baby Isaac was born. God picked Abram – now Abraham – again. Not because he was so good, though. Because those covenants kept coming after Abraham showed some pretty vivid and gross disrespect for what God had promised.

It was a start of a pattern throughout the Old Testament:  God would say

I PICK YOU!

And the people would say YAY! And then go off and act as if they had never heard the promise.

So God would say… ok… I forgive you and I am crazy in love with you so I will PICK YOU EVEN MORE!

Over and over.

The big covenants always came after the egregious indicators of disbelief (at least by our way of seeing things). The things we see as the worst behavior were always followed by an even bigger promise of goodness, love, and grace from God.

Like the man who would later tell Jesus “I believe… help my unbelief” I believe God was looking at something else. I believe that God understood how our brokenness and small capacity to understand exactly what is happening around us made us step away.

I think God also saw the belief underneath. The yearning for something better. The hope that this was the right thing instead of actual willful disobedience.

God knows that love is always a better motivator than anger or punishment. God did get angry… but never as a motivator. For God, love is the only motivation worth offering to people.



And I think that is what God responded to…

I KNOW YOU WANT TO DO BETTER, BELOVED! HERE, LET ME HELP!



In fact, what I take from all of this is stuff like
* God is really confusing and hard to understand
* It is really hard to figure out how God is working in and through other people (not to mention my own self)
* God is not doing God’s things based on anything I can see or comprehend

And the most encouraging thing of all:

God is completely ok with me not knowing and getting it all wrong with surprising regularity.

In other words… God loves me! And if God loves me then God can love anybody!

God loves each of us.  Period. Even if all we can muster is wanting to try. Even if we can’t even manage that.

God knows each of us is doing the best we can – and the best we can do is always going to be riddled with misconceptions, missteps, and even willful error, when we really should know better.

But God also doesn’t leave us in our own muck of brokenness, disability, inability, and fatigue (all things that often seem to be behind my most unloving behaviors.) Just like God didn’t abandon Abraham.

God came to love us firsthand in Jesus. It’s like God said “SO… y’all can’t quite figure out how who I am can fit with who you are, so I will take on your form. I will show you. This is the best way to love you yet, because you will see! You will see what it looks like to be God and to also be in human form. I will show you how my image is actualized in human form.

And what did Jesus do?

Jesus fed and healed, walked outside the rules and laws and customs of human power systems, told stories about humanity that gave a peek into the image of God in each of us. Jesus did not mete out punishment, Jesus just slathered love everywhere. On everyone. Even if they couldn’t receive it.

Jesus highlighted what it looks like when we see each other as God sees us.



Of course, God knew we weren’t really going to be very good at it, this slathering of love. There was such a long history to show that we just can’t get it right. We are hard-wired to be skeptical, to dismiss anything that shows all the ways that we are not being our best selves.

In our broken human state we are more likely to kill Jesus than follow him… and that is exactly what happened.

The people with the most human-granted power could not fathom that God would love them anyway, even if they did not have that power over others.

The men with human-granted power could not accept that Jesus’s inclusion of all the people could possibly be (and indeed was always) enough. Jesus loved everybody equally and completely: women and children, widows and prostitutes, people with mental illness, physical illness, dead people, up-and-coming rulers in the rigidly patriarchal system and old Temple leaders who had been around a long time.

And as a result – because not loving power is the most dangerous thing in our broken world – Jesus died. He absorbed the wrath that the powerful people saved for those most outside of their prevailing systems. They killed him dead in a most horrific manner.

AND IT WAS NOT ENOUGH.

The way of God was stronger and Jesus did not stay dead. We were given the ultimate gift – Resurrection – as the final and greatest indicator that even death cannot overcome love.



I do not know all the ways you might fear or welcome, understand or be puzzled by death. But I do know this:

Jesus loved.

Jesus was a human person like you and me.

Jesus was killed for it and the worst that humanity had to offer did not overcome the love that Jesus demonstrated so perfectly.

And for me, that is enough.

It is enough for me to keep on trying to love more.

It is enough for me to stay focused on Jesus to see that love looks like in action.

It is enough for me to believe… and in that belief to find righteousness that cannot be found in any other way.

AMEN.

Believe or Do, Is That The Question?

This was a wild and unruly message to write. I didn't mean for it to be - I thought it would be a tidy little thing to share with my friends at Be Church in Alamance County, NC. I know many of the Be Church people from FaithWalk UMC (The Walk), where I did my first field education at Duke Divinity. It's the place where I got connected to Peacehaven Community Farm. It's the place I first had an inkling that preaching might be something I could do. It was very important to my formation! The Walk is closed now but I was thrilled to visit Be Church and see all those wonderful people again.

But there were other wonderful people this week, too. Lisa, Jenny, and Holly especially. I was sick with pneumonia all week and these people filled my thoughts and my computer screen. Their fingerprints are all over this message. It grew and grew and as I write this on Saturday night I am wondering how it will come out tomorrow morning. Hopefully I will get a good recording so you can compare the text below with what I actually said.

The lectionary texts for the week are:
Exodus 24:12-18
Psalm 2 (or you might prefer Psalm 99?)
2 Peter 1:16-21
Matthew 17:1-9 (the Transfiguration story, and the basis for the message below)

Come Holy Spirit. Transform us from believers to doers, from doers to believers. Tickle our ears, touch our hearts, and make us more like you. Amen.

TRANSFIGURATION.

What a word. I told someone who is not real big on church that I was working on a Transfiguration Sunday message and she sent me a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon… about transmogrification. Another word tossed into the bin of long words best used in special situations like cartoons. And church.

But this is Transfiguration Sunday, and that is a big deal because it is the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, and Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, and Lent is a very big deal in the church year. So…

What on earth is Transfiguration?

Is it the same as transmogrification? Or the more familiar transformation?

Well, first of all, transmogrification is transformation IN A SURPRISING MANNER. So if we know what transformation is, then we can know what transmogrification is… same thing, just in a surprising way.

But transformation is something you probably kind of know about. Take a moment… think about it. What is transformation? Turn to somebody near you and tell them what you think it is.

And transfiguration. I will put aside the coyness and tell you that transfiguration is a change in form - in the figure - but not in the actual thing. It’s like taking off a mask. When Jesus was transfigured in today’s Gospel lesson he showed something real about himself that he had not shown routinely. Jesus did not become a different person or thing, Jesus just showed all the way who he really is – something he could not do before because people would be too weirded out.

And it freaked Peter, James, and John right out – even though they were the three that Jesus thought MIGHT be able to handle it:  his best friends.

And it transformed them! Proof?  Jesus said “don’t tell anybody” and even Peter, who could never stay quiet about anything – DID NOT TELL. At least not until a long time later.

Transformation. Changing. Becoming another thing – not just a revision, but a change in who we actually are in some way.

And that made me think of Creation. And The Fall. God created us in some way. You might say God DEEMED that we be a certain thing. But then The Fall came. The brokenness of the world. Regardless of the details, somehow we went from being good and in close relationship with God to being broken, and in broken relationship with God.

The same, but not.

But something else keeps happening, too. God does not leave us broken. God comes and DEEMS us again.

You might say, God REdeems us. Declares that we are another new thing.

So there is something constant in us, and for today’s purposes I’m going to say it is the image of God. If God is constant, and if we are the image of God, then that image in us must also be constant.

But everything else? Everything else is up for transformation.

The whole world – constantly being transformed.
                Constantly breaking – abuse, political games, sex trafficking, homelessness
                                 Constantly being redeemed – healed relationships, new loves, creative arts

Everything looks different from moment to moment, day to day, week to week.

But in people, the image of God is constant. We might bury it. We might decline to look for it. We might do everything we can to deny it in others. But it is there, and it is constant because God always stays the same.

*****

But what happens when churches forget that God – and the image of God in us – is the only thing that doesn’t change?

I’ll tell you what happens. People get very scared. They worry about losing the transformations they’ve already experienced – often in beautiful meaningful ways. And I can’t be certain, but I suspect that sometimes people like the way they’ve been transformed and they are afraid that God cannot love them as much if things change. That maybe somebody else will get loved better in that new system.

So they work hard to keep the shell constant and forget to notice the ways that we are all the same in the image of God. That God’s image can stay constant in us even if everything external changes.

And when that fear takes over, and a group feels things have to stay the same (in any way!) then that congregation stops living the transformation. The lose out on the gifts that a loving God shares with a much beloved people.

HERE’S AN EXAMPLE of how that can happen:

Before World War II there was a movement in Christianity called Liberal Christianity. It was very modern, very up-to-date. The leaders, like the Niebuhrs and a dude called Harnack were all about social justice, loving each other, getting to the KERNEL of God’s will in the world. Sounds great, right? But they went a little too far. They essentially opened the door to rejecting Jesus entirely.

They were convinced that humanity was evolving. That The War To End All Wars had, in fact, ended war. That people were going to just keep getting better and better.

But then… World War II. The Holocaust. Hitler’s people experimenting in horrific ways on human beings that it had deemed less than human. Rationing. Shortages and orphaned children. Horrors so terrible they were unimaginable, and in some people not imagining them, other people were exterminated in the most thoughtless and careless ways.

So much for human beings getting better and better.

So the fashions of theology shifted. A different group of European men, the most famous of whom was Karl Barth, called people to a deep sense of repentance. A move away from the agency of human beings to the complete sovereign nature of God. A move to God being the one who was important, and human beings always being in need of God’s love and grace.

As time passed, though… the wounds and horrors of WWII because less raw, less painful. But that idea of “it’s all God!” turned out to be kind of handy. “It’s all God, so I’m off the hook!” “It’s all God, so there really isn’t anything I can do.” Or my most un-favorite… “It’s all God, so go read the Bible and leave me alone.”

Younger people would come along with questions but the questions went unanswered. One of my friends, I’ll call her Holly, tells a story that she went to a church and was INTO it. But she became a teenager and had questions. Nobody seemed interested in engaging with her but they said “Go read the Bible!” So she did. But it didn’t help. For lot of reasons, reading the Bible on her own just wasn’t enough.

In fact, she realized at some point that Google had more answers to her questions than the people at her church. So she decided that what the people at her church called God was actually just people being kind, and that the God of the church was not interesting to her. She would go straight to people and skip all the inconveniences that God brought.

She also told me that she wondered what might have happened if somebody HAD answered her questions and engaged with her. But it seemed, at least when we talked, that the time for those conversations was over.

For Holly, the church was a place that had forgotten that it was being transformed. It got stuck. In not allowing the church to transform with the people, some people like Holly were left out.

The thing is, Holly HAD actually read the Bible. She had been faithful to her congregation until they stopped being faithful to her. So all the things that church offered – the history and community, the opportunity for repentance and forgiveness – was lost to Holly and to many others of Holly’s generation.

Holly and many others in her generation decided they were atheists. That the God of those churches was not really relevant. That the God they were supposed to “believe” wasn’t doing the things Jesus modeled (they read the Bible, remember? Knew all about Jesus.) That was being done by people. And if people are the ones doing it, why put up with church?

But I wonder… are the folks who agree with Holly God atheists? Or church atheists? Did the church have such a tightly sealed grip on God that the people could not see God’s transforming work? What Holly and her friends will tell you is that they were suspicious of a church that would not be in relationship with them, that did not act like Jesus acted, that did not wander around in the community loving whomever they bumped into. They didn't understand how a church could only be for themselves when Jesus was so generously attendant to the people around him.

The people whose faith had started in a deep belief and repentance that God can always REdeem us had forgotten that Jesus also did a lot of things. That Jesus didn’t only believe - although he did, in fact, believe. He prayed. He spent time alone with God. He knew God intimately.

Jesus lived a faith by raising people from the dead, feeding hungry people, crying, being available to poor people, and meeting every need – physical, psychological, emotional, mental – EVERY NEED that people had.

Similar to the way years before when people had thought so much of what Jesus did that they forgot that Jesus was the only human being who was not broken apart by the Fall.

*****

Here's the thing: this dichotomy between BELIEVE and DO is going to continue to be with us. And no matter how edgy and exhilarating it is to be in our cool new ministries (Be Church… South Durham Connections… Emmaus Walk… Farm Church… I could go on!) we live in the same danger of forgetting that we too will be transformed and REdeemed.

We will always be broken and in need of God’s love, love that was brought, demonstrated, and slathered all over everyone by Jesus.

Our broken selves can never completely and rightly hold the image of God.

We will never be who Jesus revealed during his Transfiguration.

So the question is not… IS IT BELIEVE OR DO?

What it is, is GOD. It’s both. It’s neither. IT’S GOD.

God is not limited to BELIEVE or DO. To say God prefers one or the other is like saying that a single piece of paper can accurately represent this huge beautiful three (or more) dimensional universe.

And it was all made possible when Jesus went down from that mountain and walked to his death on the cross.

It was made possible because the Transfigured Jesus who needed no more transformation could not be held by death… because death is only for people who are broken, who need transformation (or even transmogrification), who cannot live up to the high standards of who and how we were originally deemed to be at the Creation.

And because Jesus COULD live up to that standard, the Resurrection happened. Jesus did not stay dead, and now invites us into that life.

As we follow Jesus, BELIEVING that Jesus is the one, and DOING the things to show love in the way that Jesus showed us to be – we will get it wrong. We will make all the mistakes. But because of the Resurrection we are REdeemed. Deemed anew in every moment of faith.

In every moment of every day, in the wake of the Resurrection, we are called to be believers instead of doers, doers instead of believers, being transformed and shaped, REdeemed and renewed…

Until one day when Jesus brings us home to where no more transformation is needed.  Where we can live bathed in the eternity of God’s infinite love, finally and fully who we were created to be.

AMEN.

Justice

My friends at Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren asked if I would preach on February 2. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea but then I looked up the texts, and I would have gladly written three messages from those texts. Then I realized that the date - 02-02-2020 - is a palindrome and somehow that seemed to clinch the deal. I was in.

The congregation is discussing some weighty topics and I thought I would address those in the message but it kept veering off. I suppose I addressed the same underlying concepts but all I could think about is how, if everyone had gotten even a little closer to God's justice the people of McDougald Terrace would be in their own decent homes tonight. But they aren't, and they won't be for another month. And bizarrely enough, God still loves us and encourages us to keep going, to do a little better. To live out God's particular love-centered brand of justice.

There was a recording but it will need some editing to make it online. If it does make it online it will be on SoundCloud here.

The texts for this week (some beautiful ones for sure!) are:
Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

Come, Lord Jesus. Speak your riches and goodness into our lives and our hearts. Encourage and love us. Amen.

In today’s revised common lectionary, one of the passages that we did not read is that much-beloved passage from Micah 6:

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

    and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

    and to walk humbly with your God?

I have a sense that this congregation has a deep and ongoing relationship with this passage so I am not going to preach about it directly, but I can’t let it go entirely, either, because there is a bit of a conundrum in those words for me. Let me give you an example:

My brother is an attorney. When he was still young in his career and before I had any notion of becoming a pastor, he and I had an exchange that has stuck with me. He said that he was seeking justice. I envisioned his privileged, high-income life and thought …. Oh …. No … I don’t think justice would work out well for you.

I was taken with the thought that justice would mean I would have to give up a lot: my access to top educational institutions, my financial stability, even my privilege to decide where I would live and do pretty much anything I wanted. I claimed that I did not want justice, because justice would not be good for me. I wanted grace.

But now I *am* a pastor and things seem less clear. And here’s Micah saying “oh, yes, definitely do justice.”

I realize that I was afraid of justice because of how it would affect me personally. I wanted grace so maybe I did not have to suffer from the justice that would surely not improve my lot in life. Sure I wanted others to have nice lives… but I was afraid that justice meant I would have to live the not-so-nice lives of people who do not have my privilege and access to resources.

It’s hard to figure this stuff out, y’know? So today I have turned to Matthew’s Beatitudes.

****

Let me begin by saying the Beatitudes certainly do not seem to point to a Me-First kind of justice.  Not an America-First justice. Not a European-First justice. Not any justice that puts anyone or anything other than God first.

The justice of the Beatitudes appears to be about something else entirely. It isn’t just a shift of who is in charge. It is a completely different thing than our human structures with their hierarchies and winners and losers. There is no unevenness in God’s justice because it is a completely flat hierarchy:  God above, everyone else exactly equally not-God.

In God’s justice there is no space for suffering among some so others can accumulate more. In fact, God’s goodness and grace and riches go to people who seem to be suffering by worldly standards.

If God’s justice was our justice, there would be no McDougald Terrace situation. Because in God’s justice it is not possible that maintenance would be delayed in a way that leads to sickness and death. Because God’s way never leads to sickness and death. The McDougald Terrace is a situation of suffering for all of us, regardless of whether we have ever lived in a carbon monoxide tainted home.

The effort to have financial savings deferring maintenance over the last six decades are now resulting in massive outlays of money, time, and energy.

As a beneficiary of the lower taxes, and the luxury of not thinking about the lives of people in public housing, and the privilege of thinking that my life among people who are educated and comfortable in material things is reasonable and fair, I find myself in the position of some discomfort:
* Working longer than usual hours
* Carrying in my body the frustration and sorrow of so much pain and clear injustice
* Struggling to distinguish between a cry for help and a scarcity-bred greed
* Trying to determine what is reasonable to ask of others

For example, some of the women at one of the hotels suggested they might like to learn to knit or crochet. I know of a group and thought perhaps they could meet at the hotel and include McDougald Terrace residents in their group, and somehow build some relationships in that way.

As I was wondering whether they would be open to that potentially inconvenient change to their routine I realized that nobody had asked the residents of McDougald Terrace about their routine change. And then I realized that if there had been something like God’s justice many decades ago, we would not be thinking about the inconvenience to a knitting group now.

Even if taxes had been higher.
Even if some comfortably wealthy people had less wealth.
Because other people would be living in decent circumstances and there would be no need for inconvenience for anybody now.

***

We are so accustomed to thinking primarily of our own little sections of humanity that we miss how our “normal”, how our “reasonable expectations” cause harm to those outside of our own communities.

So much so that when a McDougald Terrace situation invades our community we are shocked. We are outraged. We are surprised to find out that this situation has been growing for decades. We cannot stand it. We want to give food and toiletries, diapers and plastic bins. Maybe even show up with a hot meal. Anything to fix it.

But we are less likely to dig deeply into how this happened, how we are complicit, how a 400+ year history of enslaving and disrespecting some groups of people has led to this moment.

How this situation cannot be fixed by donations, or new stoves, and certainly not in two months, even if that is when the residents will be able to start going back home.

How the need is on every level: individual relationship, small- and mid-scale relief efforts, local, state, and federal political levels, spiritual, emotional, mental, physical levels. Need upon need upon need.

And we certainly are not eager to consider what it would take for the problems to actually be fixed. That it would require something of us and not just of the people who – even in their particular kind of brokenness – are not the only ones responsible for their situations.

We have created human systems built on a redefinition of justice, a devaluing of kindness, and no place at all for walking humbly with or without God.

***

Given all that what does Micah 6:8 even mean? What hope do we have?

Well, I have an answer. We have exactly one hope:  GOD

I believe that in the Beatitudes Jesus is saying “God will have it ALL – justice and kindness, richness and life for everyone.” And in order for us to stop being complicit in all this pain, in order for us to walk humbly with God, for us to participate in those riches we will need to

* Mourn our complicity in creating this situation
* Meekly realize that what we consider power is not
* Hunger and thirst for righteousness so strongly that we admit and redefine our own relationship with what is righteous –
* And in so doing… with each other.

It will mean taking the deep dive

* Into mercy for the evils our eyes are opened to see
* Into not beating up ourselves OR blaming others

Into the reality that when we try to walk humbly with God some people will be threatened and outraged.

That those who perceive they have the most to lose will take big steps to squash that threat.

There will be sanctions and rumors.

We may not fit the mold of denomination or political party.

And we will not be able to declare our innocence, because none of us are ever innocent, never completely right.

AND YET…

In seeking the universal richness of God’s justice you will find yourself rejoicing and being glad because you will be living God’s call for your beautiful life.

You will no longer be bound to earthly patterns and structures and organizations that diverge from God’s patterns.

You will be freed to encourage others to seek God’s riches for their own beautiful lives.

Because once you have God’s richness
Once you have embraced God’s justice and kindness
Even if there is persecution and mourning, meekness and mercy
     Recognition of your own spiritual poverty

ALL WILL BE WELL.

Because you are truly and infinitely blessed.

AMEN

Bruised and dimly burning

The week before I delivered this message (and all the weeks since) were hard weeks for Durham, North Carolina. A large public housing complex called McDougald Terrace has been neglected for years and all that neglect came to a head when people got very sick from carbon monoxide poisoning and other serious health concerns. Over 300 families were moved out of those apartments into hotels all around Durham. People who were already in difficult conditions were thrust into situations in which every aspect of their lives has been disrupted.

In my work at the Parktown Food Hub we jumped into the relief efforts and quickly learned exactly how large these problems are. We have had to make hard decisions about what we can and cannot do, and we have spent much energy helping well-meaning people understand that when the problem is massive, the place to start is a tiny corner with actual people, building relationships and finding out how to meet specific needs one at a time.

This message was delivered in Vespers at the Stewart Health Center of Springmoor Retirement Village but the people of McDougald Terrace were heavy on my mind in the writing of it. I am immeasurably grateful for the grace that placed this particular text in my path at this particular time.

A bruised reed will not be broken, and a dimly burning wick will not be quenched. This is the drumbeat that has been in my head this week and the reason that I will keep on going. Because I know that in following God, the bruised are healed and the dimly burning are fanned into flame.

You can listen to the message as delivered here.

The texts for today are:
Isaiah 42:1-9 (this passage includes the part about the bruised reed)
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

Come Holy Spirit. Take us by the hand and lead us to your vision of how our lives should be. May these words and our meditations bring us closer to you. Amen.

Y’all, I am feeling kind of bruised these days. Wars and rumors of wars. People put out of their apartments because staying in their apartments is killing them or at least making them really sick. My 56 year old body doesn’t want to do the things that my mind thinks would be fun and when I sneeze sometimes it hurts like my insides are exploding!

Bruised.

And all those things make it hard to stay cheerful and faithful. Now, I know this is not a permanent thing, and as soon as I get a little rested up I feel better. But this week as I was driving around, getting to know people who are having some pretty bad situations in their lives, taking food to people who have been put out of their apartments for health and safety reasons… well… it wore me down a little.

And it’s not just me. I hear it has been a hard weekend here at Springmoor. The people who were here just a week or two ago are now gone. It’s a hard time. It’s the kind of time that might make somebody say… 

are we SURE that this God thing is real?

And so what a wonderful time to read the texts we have today. The gospel lesson, in which Jesus is baptized - over John’s protests, I would like to note. But John went along with it because Jesus said it was necessary “to fulfill all righteous.” Or put another way, to “fulfill God’s justice.” Or “because God’s work is coming together right now.”

Jesus is being so fully human that he was requesting baptism, just like we are baptized. But what is this justice? What is God’s righteousness?

I think the answer to that question is in the first reading today, from Isaiah. Isaiah is telling the exiled people of Israel what God’s chosen will do:  Bring forth justice to the nations

Isaiah says God’s chosen will “not cry or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street”… and what did Jesus do? Instead of going through the existing power structures, Jesus walked and worked one on one. He built relationships. Oh, sure, he talked to (and fed) huge groups, but the work that became the gospels was always with a few friends, with individuals.

Isaiah says God’s chosen will not break a bruised reed, will not quench a dimly burning wick, but will faithfully bring forth justice. And that is just how Jesus acted:

* People who were bruised: sick in body or sick in mind, sick with grief or sick in spirit – Jesus did not cast them aside or push them to further brokenness. Jesus healed and revived and loved them: the demoniac in the tombs, the grieving mother of a dead child, the lame man lowered through the roof while he was teaching… they were bruised and hurting and ignored or punished by society - but Jesus loved them.

* Jesus did not put out dimly burning wicks, either. When the daddy in Mark 9 was so, so sad but asked Jesus to heal his little boy “if he was able.” Jesus questioned his belief and that man answered with such honesty:  “I believe! Help my unbelief!” His faith was dimmed by grief and fear but Jesus did not point out his error or fault. Jesus met that man right where he was and loved him… healed his son… and rather than quench his dim wick of faith he loved it into greater flame.

* And Jesus faithfully brought forth justice: the justice of comforting the people who were socially disadvantaged while making people of power and privilege uncomfortable. 

All those things from Isaiah, talking about how God’s chosen one would be on the earth, would not grow faith or be crushed (and would not crush anyone else) until justice was on the earth.

Of course, you might be thinking that Jesus WAS crushed. He was unjustly crucified on a cross… but it was in that death that Jesus established justice.

Not the justice of punishment and judgment but the justice of love for all

Forgiveness for all

Redemption from our brokenness

And a return to how creation was in the beginning

And how it will be one day again, when Jesus returns.

Jesus sealed the deal of justice for all in the Resurrection.

In and through Isaiah, God made promises and Jesus was the one through whom God kept those promises. And as fully human as Jesus was, the fact that he COULD keep those promises from Isaiah are a strong signal to me that Jesus must, in fact, be God. 

Because we human beings just couldn’t do it.

We tend to want to feel the power of big things instead of doing it the slow way. Like Jesus did. Through relationship.

We want it to be true that “it’s better to just tear it down and start fresh” – which might work for old buildings or broken pottery

But it never ever works that way with people.

Jesus taught us that loving and caring for bruised reeds and dim wicks is how God intends for things to be done.

When God takes us by the hand and leads us, and we go where we are led, then we will behave a little more like Jesus than like the world.

Not perfectly, of course! We just can’t ever reach perfect.

But because of Jesus’ Resurrection our blind eyes can be opened and 

* we will see a better way – a way that protects those who are bruised, who are feeling faint and depleted and dim.

* We will be brought up out of the dungeons of our sorrow and set free so that we can be with and care for others instead of only being with and for ourselves.

In Jesus and because of the Resurrection, we are freed from darkness and can walk in the light as we see where God is leading.

But what about when we fail?

Because you know we are going to fail. We just can’t manage to love perfectly. But we can remember that we can start again. That even if we find ourselves having caused more bruises than we heal, we can start over again. Because we are forgiven.

When we slip back into our dark dungeons we can know that the light is out there looking for us.

When we are tired and bruised we can live in confidence that God loves us and will not break us. We can recognize where God is because those will be places of healing, not of destruction. God may start over in our lives but it will be a fresh start for the exact person we are in that moment.

Our dim, weak moments will not lead to our destruction in God but to healing and growth and a deeper form of wholeness.

What beautiful good news this is for all of us!!

If your body is not as strong and healthy as it once was

If your mind slips a little, or even a lot

If you miss the home where you can no longer live

If you worry about your children

     If you wonder if you are slowly being forgotten

TAKE HEART.

Jesus knows what you are feeling and because of Jesus you will not be broken when you are bruised.

You will not be quenched in the moments your prospects for joy seem dim.

Instead you can rest in confidence that all over the place eyes are being opened to see your plight and help

All over the place people are shining using the light shining in themselves to brighten up the darkest dungeons.

God is constantly re-creating

Constantly re-inventing

Constantly making new

Always finding amazing, astonishing, beautiful ways to shine light and love into your life.

AMEN.

A king dies, a baby lives

Joseph, a good guy who followed his dreams. Herod, a powerful, demanding ruler. Which one protected the son of God? Which one kept the baby Jesus alive? Who succumbed to death - and who made life possible for everyone else?

This message was shared at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Center on December 29, 2019. It's unusual that I would be at Springmoor two weeks in a row, much less three times in one month, but the people at the Health Center were not going to have a worship service. I cherish the time with that congregation and am delighted to be able too spend so much time there this year.

You can listen to a recording of the sermon as delivered here.

The lessons of the day are:

Isaiah 63:7-9 

Psalm 148

Hebrews 2:10-18

Matthew 2:13-23

Triune God – Almighty Preserving Father, Redeeming Son Jesus, Everpresent Holy Spirit – reveal to us how you would have us love. Let these words touch our hearts and bring us together in you. Amen.

Well look who’s back!

It’s our stand-up guy Joseph. You might remember that last week Joseph followed God instead of the culture of the day and did what needed to be done without saying too much. He did what God asked of him in a dream and provided for Mary and her baby Jesus.

So this week Joseph is back:

* Dreaming – multiple times!

* Listening to God’s message in that dream

* Caring for the baby Jesus and his mother Mary.

In this week’s Joseph story, Joseph and his little family could be any restless immigrants, not that different than the immigrants today who are fleeing their homelands. The places that have familiar food and culture, landscape and weather. The places that look and take and sound and feel like HOME.

No matter how lovely a place, it’s hard to leave home and go be the stranger, the different one.

There is no doubt that Joseph knew what his people had experienced in Egypt centuries before – the slavery and the exodus, the 40 years of wandering and the miraculous escort into the Promised Land. 

When the Israelites had complained it was because they wanted to go back to Egypt, back to the land of fish and cucumber, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. Tasty foods. And it was relatively easy to travel to Egypt but was out of Herod’s grasp. But it was not home. 

Still, Joseph went. Once again, he did what needed to be done to protect the baby. He didn’t try to stay and demand fairness and justice, he just stepped out of the way of Herod’s wrath.

I wonder if he thought “Oh, this is the Son of God… I have to protect him!”

Maybe.

But I’m guessing that Joseph’s concern may have been more immediate than that. A little less cosmic and a lot more practical: Herod the King had ordered that all the babies the age of Jesus. Joseph was in that baby’s life since the very beginning, Joseph loved his wife Mary and her baby, and he was going to do what he could to keep them safe.

Joseph didn’t have to worry about the Son of God, it was enough that he lived in a way that protected and preserved life – a very normal thing for parents to do.

And then there’s Herod:

Herod was a very different sort of man than Joseph.

We don’t know a whole lot about Herod, but in the text today he comes across as someone for whom power is more important than thoughtfulness.

Of course, he didn’t know the WHOLE story. He didn’t know about the angels who had appeared to Mary and Elizabeth, to Joseph in a dream and to the shepherds in their fields. 

And then there were the Wise Men, or Kings, or scientists/scholars who had come by thinking that SURELY he would know about this new king that had been prophesied but Herod did not. And when he found out?

He did not take it well.

In his world, king meant only one thing: power.

And power meant exactly one thing: winning at all costs.

And Herod was not interested in being challenged. He liked his power and the most important thing to him was to keep it. To keep the power over the people – even if it meant hurting and killing some of them.

So he gave orders:

First to the visiting scientist/scholars – go find that baby and then come back and let me know what you found, ok?

But that did not work out so well either. The scientists/scholars figured out that this Herod guy was not going to be kind. They saw that baby, they saw the miracle of it. And they just wandered home another way.

In their wisdom, and like Joseph, they just stepped out of the way of Herod’s wrath.

Herod was NOT GOING TO HAVE IT though. Herod got madder – the text says INFURIATED. Did he stop to think? Did he notice how easy it was for the scientists/scholars to sidestep his order? Apparently not.

So he gave another order. This time a horrific, terrible order. He used his significant human power to kill. He ordered that all the boy babies younger than 2 should be killed. He had decided that his human power would be enough, that he could control the world, and protect himself by harming others.

Protect himself by killing babies – babies the age of Jesus. 

So many senseless deaths, and Herod still did not get what he thought he wanted. God had selected Joseph, so the baby Jesus was not among them. It was not Jesus’s time to die.

And here is the miracle of it:

Herod, the one with all the power, power to 

* Pitch a fit rather than learn about the actual promise

* Find it surprising when people did not obey him

* Take his self-centered anger out on everyone around him AND

* Demand the destruction of two whole years’ of baby boys….

That’s a lot of power, at least by human standards.

But it is nothing – absolutely nothing – compare to what God did through individuals who had little or not social or political power.

* The three kings just went home a different way, bypassing Herod completely. I wonder how long it took for Herod to realize he was being ignored?

* Joseph and Mary, young parents of a toddler, got up and took that baby out of the country to a safer place in Egypt.

* And Joseph, Mary, and Jesus went back to their homeland, having outlived that angry king, despite all his worldly power.

And in this encounter, we see the difference between God’s power and human power:

* God worked quietly, gently, through weak (by worldly standards) human beings like Mary and Joseph and the least powerful of all – a baby. God led the kings home on a different road and stymied Herod’s plan to nab the baby.

o Herod, on the other hand, was interested primarily in himself and his earthly power. He used that power to force people to obey his anger-fueled will. He relied on power, not relationship.

* God worked under the radar – first in coming as a baby, then in Egypt, and always at a straightforward human level.

o Herod wielded power on a large scale, even to the point of destruction of a whole segment of the population.

* And here is the biggest difference: Herod died. Eventually, of course, Jesus would die too, but unlike Herod, Jesus did not stay dead.

That baby who was loved and protected, spirited away as a child, 

     who lived a humble life without anything fancy

     

      who consorted with the people that were cast out of polite society

     

      who never killed anyone but did bring people back to life

     

who loved and cared so much that the power people – the Herod’s of the time – had him killed

THAT is the Jesus of the Resurrection.

And that is where the meaning lies in our story today.

In the end, human power cannot save you.

In the end, aligning with Jesus, following Jesus, 

     Following God’s call on your life 

Focusing on God’s will by being in relationship with God and in loving relationship with those around you

Those are the outward signs of a life that has been transformed and saved by Jesus, the Savior.

Loving God more than human power… Loving each other rather than harming others to accumulate human power that cannot last. Loving Jesus.

That is how we are saved.

Like Jesus -- In Jesus -- By Jesus.

Amen.

Does it really matter?

Lots of people celebrate this time of year. Some because presents are fun. Some because it's a family or cultural ritual. Some people will recite a story of a baby and his teenage mom and stepfather/protector. There are songs and traditions. But does it matter - does it REALLY MATTER - for our everyday lives? Will it matter on January 1 or January 7 or June 14?

This message combines the Gospel lessons from the last Sunday in Advent and Christmas Eve. I was speaking at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Village on Sunday, December 22 (Advent 4) and Atria Southpoint Walk on Tuesday, December 24 (Christmas Eve). Since this was the only Advent 4/Christmas Eve service that the residents would have, I combined the two Gospel lessons into one message. The theme riffs off of the message in the Old Testament reading that the Messiah would come from the stump of Jesse - not a new tree, but the roots and remains of an older one. You can listen to the message here.

The two Gospel lessons were:
Matthew 1:18-25
Luke 2:1-20

These are the two Gospels that record the story of Jesus being born.

Father who created us, baby Jesus who we celebrate in this season, Holy Spirit who lives and moves among us constantly, take these words and transform them by your love that we may know you more.  Amen.

At the tail end – ALMOST TIME!

Waiting and waiting

For restoration of creation

Short days and long nights

Seeking relief from brokennss

But this story that we heard today – does it still matter today?

I mean, there were lots of babies born and we don’t think about them. They lived and died and that was that.

But this one… was it special, aside from the poverty?  

I think that if the story is to make a difference it really does need to have some application for the lives of people today. 

Let’s start with Joseph:

* Wanted to do THE RIGHT THING

* Right according to social order

* Right by Mary

* Right according to God (in the dream)

* And he chose God

He doesn’t speak much and we really don’t hear much about Jesus, but…

* Did he build a crib for that baby?

* Took some punches – when Jesus was 12 (FATHER’S house? Ouch to step dad)

* And then we don’t hear from him again

Joseph’s legacy lives today in people who show up and go unheralded.

* The people who work in the cafeteria and make sure you have nutritious food, even on holidays.

* The people who keep the electricity going to we can all be warm.

* The nurses and medical professionals

o The people who show up at churches and missions and ministries

And then there is the story of Jesus being born. Who was part of that story?

* Not the perfect nuclear family, but a teenaged unwed mom and the man who would take care of a child that was not his

* Shepherds – scoundrels who got sent out with the sheep because they weren’t nice enough or rich enough

* The innkeeper who took in that (soon to be) family that they did not know

Angels came and sang and the glory of God broke through the very heavens. But there were no tickets, it was just for who was there.

It was a foreshadowing of what Jesus cared about: being present for the people that are not all about what the social order said was most important. In particular:

* The wicked tax collectors who oppressed the people and stole from them because they could – supported by the government that absolutely knew what they were doing. There is no mention of an “honest” tax collector.

* Mentally ill people who were relegated to tombs – people that got chained up because nobody knew what else to do with, for, or about them.

* Children, who had no standing.

* Crowds of strangers who came for the spectacle, out of curiosity

That is a life that the story of Jesus being born in a stable points to. It’s like he was born in poverty and never really saw a need to go anywhere else.

He was also setting an example for the people who would follow him. A call to

* Spend time with the scoundrels – the people who do not end up at the center of power and social importance

* Provide housing for people who are poor and in need – even if they look like a pregnant teenager and her boyfriend 

* Mentally or physically ill people who are doing the best they can and who need love more than anything else

* Children, who require so much work and have so little to give back – except for love. Most of the time.

* Strangers that seem odd for whatever reason

The birth of Jesus pointed to the life of Jesus, and to the degree that we can care for all the people, not just the ones who have something to give back to us, we are following Jesus. And I see it every day in the faces and hearts of people who have need and the people who make sacrifices to meet those needs in the ways that we can here and now.

And then there is Mary. Right in the middle of all this. After she had 

* learned she was going to have a baby – despite being a virgin

* learned that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant even though she was old

* taken the trip to Bethlehem

* found a place to stay after all  

* visited by those scoundrel shepherds who had an astonishing story of…

* ANGELS

She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

I have always wondered… WHAT DID THAT MEAN???

Until I embarked on this life of ministry. And I saw:

* There were exactly enough boxes of food for the people who came.

* There were an abundance of gifts from strangers, given to people they would never meet.

* Ministries that are touching lives despite negativity from people who think that ministry can look only one way

Daddy used to say you don’t have to believe me, just remember.

* Not disbelief; lack of understanding

* Tools before we know we need them

This pondering is our call to faith

      Notice the things that make no sense

      See how it shows up in our lives

Because that humble birth foreshadowed the REAL reason that Christmas is still important to us today.

* Jesus walked humbly

* Jesus lived so far outside of the world that valued human things, like wealth and power and privilege that

* Jesus was killed

Of course, people are killed all the time for living outside of our society’s standards.

But this is the difference with Jesus:

Jesus was resurrected. His life that started in a stable and was characterized from the beginning and all the way through by humility and caring for “the least of these” was apparently so powerful that it defeated EVEN DEATH.

And who would not want to follow that kind of life?

If we want to defeat death, then we have only one example: the Jesus who was born among strangers, announced to scoundrels watching animals out in the pasture, and cared for by his teenager mother and a man who was not his father.

The Jesus who fed everybody, gravitated to the outcasts, and turned a bunch of fishermen into people who spread a faith that we profess today.

And so yes, this story DOES still matter to us today. 

Not because a guy named Joseph did what needed to be done but because we are called to be gracious to each other and do what needs to be done. 

Not because God’s heavenly messangers, the angels, sang to shepherds in the field but because we are called as earthly messengers of God‘s will to go to the scoundrels and to give the gifts that we have been given so richly. 

Not even because a teenager named Mary was faced with confusing things and pondered them in her heart, but because we are faced with confusing things and ponder them in our hearts. 

As a result the story of that a pregnant teenager, a good guy, angels, shepherds, and a baby in a manger matters for us today. More than ever. 

So today I wish you a Merry Christmas and rejoice with you that we too will one day be resurrected. And in the meantime, we will be loved.

Amen

Stump or sapling?

It's all very upside down, this being with God. Advent in particular seems like an upside-down time. People are running around busily having parties and buying gifts and decorating and baking, or maybe working hard, wondering how they will have the resources to celebrate as it seems they are "supposed" to. But Advent in the church year is a time of waiting and wondering, which is quite the opposite of the very busy doing that consumes so many people.

That was the theme this week at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Village, where I preached to my beloved congregation of people who no longer have the capacity to run around busily. Bodies and minds that don't quite work the way they used to, and yet... each and every person is completely beloved of God and can therefore wait and wonder and rejoice. You can listen to the message, recorded live, here.

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

Come Holy Spirit. Show us who you are and how you are. Let you Word be the Word that is heard today. Amen.

I have been noticing something recently. I don’t think it’s anything new, but I have noticed that we – people in general – spend a lot of time talking about how things are supposed to be.

Take the weather – at the beginning of October it was 100 degrees, way hotter than it is supposed to be! Then at the end of the month it was in the 40s, way colder than it is supposed to be.

Then there are parents and children: are children wilder than they are supposed to be because their parents are not controlling their behavior, or are parents more protective than they are supposed to be, never allowing their kids to get in trouble or learn from their mistakes?

It comes up over and over – people aren’t supposed to be so rich, or so poor, or so sick, or have it so easy.  There are even people who might say the pastor is not supposed to wear jeans and sneakers to a worship service! And yet… here I am.

We seem to have some pretty strong ideas of how things should line up.

Which is why it is always so surprising to read passages in the Bible like the ones we heard today. Those passages seem to be exactly opposite of everything we “just know” about how things are supposed to be.

Take the first reading. Isaiah is encouraging the Israelites, who are about to have a really, really hard time in captivity… and his encouragement is that the big promise – their big redemption is going to come from a stump.

Many people would not look for something new in the leftover end of a tree that has been cut down.

Or say you are a shepherd… every shepherd knows that you do not let a wolf into the pen to sleep with sheep! And yet, in this new time that Isaiah talks about, brought on by a branch from a stump, wolves will lie down with the sheep.

Is it that the sheep will no longer be in danger, or is it that the wolves will no longer want to hurt sheep?

And then there is the one that horrifies me most: a baby playing near the hole of a snake. Who would DO that?!?! And yet… what if the pains of our world were gone? What if babies were safe everywhere, even by a snake’s hole.

What if that is how creation was meant to be, and our sense of how things are supposed to be is based not on the perfect creation of God, but of our own experience of a very broken world?

Now this is a hard thing. It’s hard to remember that God is different than most of our experiences ever… that our common sense is not God’s common sense. And yet, when we have spiritual experiences, encounter God in some way, we notice how different it is than the world around us. And it is beautiful or magical or just sticks with us in some part of our being in a way we can’t seem to shake.



I wonder if that is why, in the gospel lesson, people from all over Judea came out to see John. He certainly wasn’t wearing the finery of the priests. He ate bugs and honey, not the rich meat and bread from Temple sacrifices. But people from all over the place heard something special when he spoke. Something wild and different, but also something special. Something more like God than like the broken world they were living in.

Even the well-fed, well-dressed, religious expert Pharisees and Sadducees came out to see what was up. John was not like them, but they apparently wanted to see what was going on. Was it because they sensed God’s presence? Or were they jealous that John was drawing a crowd? We don’t really know… but what we do know is that John calls them…

VIPERS. A whole brood of vipers. The dangerous kinds of animals that we keep our babies away from.

John told them that they were looking in the wrong place for their hope – that the hope would not come from what they thought was supposed to happen.

John told them that the ax was at the root and the trees that weren’t bearing good fruit would be cut down. Into STUMPS. Like the stumps of Isaiah, maybe.

John did not say everything would be destroyed and started fresh. In fact, God had promised Noah a long time ago that everything would NOT be destroyed. But the useless trees would be cut down and something new and better would come from the stumps. That is a hopeful message! Unless you are one of the trees being cut down….


It’s true for each of us: we are in a broken world that tells us that greed is good, wealth is more important than work, poverty is a moral failing, and illness is our own fault. None of which are part of God’s original, perfect creation. And the more we look to the world the more pain we feel when we are cut back to stumps.

That is why, even in the most secular parts of our world, when individuals encounter generosity, creative work, compassionate healing, and love for all people we notice that it is different. And we like it. We long for it. Even when it comes from preachers wearing jeans and purple camo sneakers. Even when it comes from the places we least expect it.

Those encounters with God give us hope. It isn’t going to fix the brokenness of the world but it does reassure us that the brokenness has not completely won the day.

It gives us hope for things that seem out of step with “contemporary” values (which are remarkably similar to the ways the world has been broken since near the beginning.)

We hope that this goodness and compassion and love can spread and we recognize it in people who love and care without regard to the prevailing society. We notice it when someone cares about children, or eats with tax collectors or criminals. We notice when people are being fed for no other reason than that they are hungry.

We notice when people (sometimes surprisingly) do things that Jesus did consistently, all the time.


And that brings us to the good news that I bring to you again today:

If you feel more like a stump than a sapling, it’s ok. Because Jesus was the goodness that came from the Stump of Jesse that Isaiah mentioned. If you feel like a stump you can remember that Jesus was a stump, too.

If you feel a little out of step, like somehow things are not as they are supposed to be, remember today’s messages that the way things are is not the way God intends and that ultimately God will have God’s way. And when that happens you will be returned to the perfection you were created to be.

In the words of Jesus, the words we will hear again at the culmination of this Advent time of hope – Fear Not.

Jesus knows you and loves you.

Jesus lived a human life and did not fit in.

Jesus was so far from what people were supposed to be that they killed him!

Fortunately for us, Jesus was also so far from what people were supposed to be that he did not stay dead. The divine Jesus was Resurrected and because of that we too will be Resurrected someday, to be fully the people that God originally created humanity to be.

So here we are in Advent. Living in ongoing hope for a Savior to come again. A Savior who would not stay dead will certainly not be held by any broken earthly ideas of how things are supposed to be.

So be encouraged.

You are loved.

You are wonderful and marvelous and can be who you were created by God to be in every moment of your life… regardless of how the world says things are supposed to be.

Amen.