Ordinary 31A – sermon based upon Micah 3:5-12 and Matthew 23:1-12
Good morning. It is good to be with you today. I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. It’s hard not to. You’ve become so dear to me that you stay close to my heart. And I note that for two reasons. One: I believe we should all know when we’ve been valued and loved and I love and value you. And Two: It relates to the ultimate point of today’s sermon. That if we are living the love of God, then meaningful relationships, God inspired changes, and love-filled growth become a way of life.
Now you may be asking how I got that conclusion from two biblical passages about leaders who abuse their power. Well, let’s start down the trail and I promise that’s where we end.
See, today is Reformation Sunday and that’s a kind of interesting day in the church because we get to remember the past, honor change, and look to see how we’re doing today. A quick history lesson is that around the 16th and 17th centuries the church leadership, at the time primarily Roman Catholic, had become overrun with leaders who were everything that today’s scripture in Micah and Mathew say not to be.
They waged war against the most oppressed. They took bribes and acted with great injustice with their power, land, and money. They told people to follow God’s law but did as they pleased. They put heavy burdens and cast harsh judgment upon people, displaying no concept of mercy and compassion. They did religious activities for the purpose of being seen and honored personally. To say that many in religious power were corrupt would be an understatement.
For example, the church would rent out its farm land at unfair prices, control what could be grown, and take more than a fair share while leaving the families that worked the farm starving. And what’s worse, some priests would then tell families that their loved ones were spiritually condemned to hell for not giving even more to the church. For sure the church has always had people who abused power but this was just a horrible time in the history of religion!
So, an uprising of faithful people began and they started in separate places and pockets of just a few. But as the movement grew and communities caught wind of the change the Spirit was blowing in and around Europe, this movement grew into what we call the Protestant Reformation.
The Protestant Reformation brought with it some key changes and some key ideas. Part of is was a call to return to what today’s scripture says about not being in leadership roles over and above one another. We are to be in servant roles with each other. I mean that when the bible says don’t be called a Rabbi it doesn’t mean that we are not to have specialized callings. But it does for sure mean that no calling stands over another. Those religious leaders that had taken advantage of others would have and could have never done that if they started from a place of knowing that they are but mere servants in the broader, more beautiful body of Christ.
Another idea of the reformation was to recognize that God’s work is alive and well and still being revealed to us. Just as Micah proclaims that he has power and Spirit and justice and might because he possessed a living faith, we too are called to live with the movement and reflect the ongoing revelation of God in the world.
John Calvin believed that the we must have the presence of the Holy Spirit in order to approach the biblical Word of God because it is with the help of the Spirit that the Word becomes alive in our hearts and lives. He also reminds us that Jesus Christ is the Word of God and that we live and move and thrive in this ever morphing body… full of truth in this moment and always revealing more.
From Luther and Calvin and others, some important pieces of doctrine immerged that reflected this call back to a more genuine faith. If it is that we are servants together and that God is working in and amongst us then we must be both redeemed and still being further redeemed, meaning that God’s work is both sufficient in us and that we are called to be more.
Similarly, the near mantra of the Reformation emerged. In Latin it was said, “Ecclesia semper reformanda est” (Latin for "the church must always be reforming") or semper reformanda, "always reforming.” It’s not enough that we as individual people of faith grow and change. The church, both as an institution and as a body of believers, must grow and change. Complacency and denial of the Spirit’s guiding presence is what had brought the church to the problems it was having at the time.
So here was this uprising and it was at times violent, at times spirit filled debate, and at times exciting renewal. It was not just about ideas and doctrine. It was about the lived life of faith. And while we know that the Protestant Church rose out of this movement, we should also recognize that several other meaningful changes happened in other groups of Christians as well. The Catholic church did get the message and made some changes. The Anabaptists, Anglicans, Puritans, and others rose out of the movement. What could defiantly be said is that this was a time where people were in tune with the call of the Holy Spirit to not be complacent and to be open to where God led them.
So when I look back at that time, I find myself asking what was really going on in people’s lives. What did the average day in a Christian’s life look like? And this is where I come to the conclusion that I shared with you earlier.
See, everyday people were building churches… not necessarily grand cathedrals but just modest churches. They were connecting with people they would have never come in contact with before. The walls between pastor and congregation were redefined with servant leadership in mind. People were reading the bible in their own language for the first time in their lives. It was amazing!
What were my words earlier? I said that if we are living the love of God, then meaningful relationships, God inspired changes, and love-filled growth become a way of life. And that’s what that time looked like in the everyday lives of people. And it’s’ also the history of the reformation and of the Presbyterian Church. When we think we’ve got it all figured out, the Holy Spirit comes and reminds us that we are called to deeper relationships, other forms of faithful witness, and growth that reflects that love of God. We are reformed and always reforming. Both sanctified through God’s grace and always becoming more in the life of God’s ongoing revelation.
Do you like history? I do. And I’m especially fond of that history. It’s the story of us. And I don’t just mean this church. I mean it’s the story of our lives. If we are complacent and don’t listen to the leading of the Holy Spirit we fall into corrupt decay.
Look at the global economic crisis of today. How did that happen? Well, it was too many political and financial leaders were abusing their power and acting unjustly. Meanwhile, everyday folks extended unearned trust and didn’t question what was going on. And just like Micah said, it laid to waste our land… or economy in this case.
But this isn’t just paralleled in global issues. The Reformation is also mirrored in our private lives. Sometimes we think we are content with our lives. We don’t want to change. Yes, there are some things going on like an old hurt or perhaps a relationship that is causing pain but we’d rather ignore it than do something about it. And over time, it erodes and damages our self and ability to love even more.
You see, the Christian life is one that demands that we honor the holiness of God’s gifts in the present but also live in openness to the Spirit and where it is leading. Reformed and always reforming. The global economic crisis would have never happened if people had been living, as I suggested before, the love of God whereby meaningful relationships, God inspired changes, and love-filled growth become a way of life. And the decay and crumble of our lives would not happen either if we were living this way.
Now, a word of caution… this is a “we” thing. I’m not saying that if someone has struggles that it is their fault for not being faithful enough. Just as Micah and Matthew both reinforced, we are in community, bound together. My struggles represent my difficulties but my struggles equally represent the failure on the part of others to respond and support me in healing relationships.
For example, the person mired in grief or bound by a history of abuse defiantly has a responsibility to reach toward and receive the love and healing of God. But we each also have a responsibility to reach back to them and do the same whereby meaningful relationships, God inspired changes, and love-filled growth are reflected in our way of life.
And this is where we find ourselves today. Economically, we are in a very anxiety and fear filled time. The church, both locally and universally, is also having painful struggles that represent the push and pull between being reformed and continuing our work of reforming. Our lives are places where injustice, pain, complacency, and fear gain too much power over us and abuse us. It would be easy to feel like this is a pretty dark place.
But there is another motto of the Reformation that applies here. In Latin it is “Post Tenebras Lux” which translated is “After darkness, light.” At the dawn of the Reformation, people were nearly hopeless. They were being crushed by the decay. But light does come and God is always near. History would tell us this was the end of the dark ages and beginning of the Reformation. But we know it was simply being open to the Holy Spirit once again, just like Micah and Matthew call us to today.
Sisters and brothers, our calling is to embrace the love of God and the Holy in the present… to be reformed. Our calling is also to let that love hold and open us to the Spirit who guides us into ever more meaningful relationships, God inspired changes, and love-filled growth that becomes a way of life… to be always reforming. We need not fear this path because we are God’s and we are One in the Body of Christ. Amen.
Showing posts with label Holy Spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holy Spirit. Show all posts
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Peace for What?
Peace for What? <–- audio file of sermon. A sermon based upon John 20:19-31
Good morning. First off, let me go ahead and acknowledge that you might have noticed something different about me today. Is it new glasses? No. Perhaps a new outfit? No. The answer is I shaved my head 2 days ago at a charity event raising money for and awareness of childhood cancers. Some of you know that I do this every year and it’s always a wonderful event. Actually, the child we honored at the event was in the hospital and unable to attend. But like I said, it was still a wonderful occasion and such a great cause.
And just so you know, it is okay to ask me questions about it. It is okay to stare. And if you ask, I’ll even let you rub my head. But when you look at my head, please remember all those who struggle with cancer and need our support and then say a prayer for them.
Okay, now back to the task at hand. What do we make of these disciples and of good ole doubting Thomas? This is a story that a week and a half ago, I was going to preach pretty much the same thing we usually do. I thought we were going to look at the struggle between intuition and fact and of the different ways of knowing. I thought we might focus on how Christ comes to us no matter what our needs are so we need not vilify Thomas for being slow to believe.
But then Sunday night our televisions, radios, Facebook pages, and text messages starting buzzing with news that the President would speak. Soon the word came out that Osama Bin Laden was dead. And from that point forward broke a frenzy of praise, sorrow, questions, debate, and doubt. And somewhere in all this, a few people paused to ask, “what should the Christian response be?”
What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who apparently has masterminded the deaths of thousands of innocent lives? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who struck fear in the hearts of so many? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who was also a husband, father, grandfather, brother, and someone’s child? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who had become so consumed by hate and fear that he could not see the humanity in others?
Sisters and brothers, I’m not going down a road toward telling you what you should believe politically or think about Osama Bin Laden. But I am going down a road that points to what happens when we live behind locked doors.
Let’s take another look at this passage. The passage begins, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”
See, when we think about this passage in time, Jesus had just been crucified and died. That very morning Mary and Mary had discovered the empty tomb. Jesus had appeared to some of them on the road and they were sharing the news. But the general feeling amongst all of them was fear. They were afraid for their lives and afraid for their futures. They closed themselves off and locked the door. But Christ comes through the barriers and says, “Peace be with you.”
Later in the passage, we have the same disciples only this time Thomas is also there and he has not believed that Jesus was truly resurrected. The passage reads, “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”
Here again we have the closed doors that are presumably locked. Even a week later, the disciples are hiding out rather than being out and about. And Jesus comes through the barriers to once again pronounce, “Peace be with you.”
So, what do we make of this? It would be easy to speed on past these verses and get to the story of Thomas’ disbelief. But I don’t think these verses are here by accident and I don’t think John went to the trouble of noting the closed doors if it weren’t an issue for us to learn from.
First of all I think we need to have grace and compassion in our hearts just as Christ did when we look at this story otherwise we get caught up in judgment. These people were scared. Jesus had been their companion and champion. They believed he was going to restore justice in the land. They hadn’t yet realized his justice would be of a more far reaching kind. So in their fear, they retreated to a home and hid out.
But Jesus came in and didn’t speak harsh words or judgment. He wanted them to be at ease and to release their fear. He greeted them with a wish and hope for peace in their lives. Christ wants them to not fear or to feel worse for their struggle. He wanted them to heal. His words were about understanding their experience and knowing that more than anything, they needed to let go of the fear and receive peace and the hope that springs from it.
This is truly an amazing model for our lives. It is an orientation toward people that begins with saying, “I want to know and understand you and your needs.” To have a starting place of grace and compassion in our hearts is a starting point of love rather than assessing, judging, categorizing, or any of the other countless ways we sum people up without first seeking to understand them and their experience.
When we are scared and either literally or metaphorically close ourselves off, what would it be like if someone who loves us came on in and spoke love and peace into our hearts, minds, and spirits? How would we react if that person looked at us with eyes of compassion that told us that our experiences and feelings are safe with them?
And looking outside of ourselves, what if we were the person who could be that voice of peace, love, and healing for the one who has walled themselves off? When we’re dealing with the person who lashes out at us, what if our starting place was that of looking into how someone got so overrun by fear rather than lashing back at them? What if our priority was to truly know and understand people and their experiences instead of quickly assessing what category they fit into?
Now coming back to where I started with the death of Bin Laden, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time to make people stand accountable for their crimes or that understanding why someone is fearful is an excuse for the way they may have hurt others. There is a time for that accountable justice. There is even a time and a place for those categories like liar, cheater, greedy, selfish, terrorist, and murderer. Those classifications can help us as a society understand who has been hurt and how to exact justice. But those categories should never be a substitute for seeking to know and understand one another. That’s just not what the Christian life is about.
The Christian life is found in our second point today. Christ’s peace and calling are to fling open the doors and live out in the world as agents of love and healing. Jesus said, “Peace be with you” not only as a way to still their anxious spirits but to clear the path to move beyond the fear and anxiety. Next, he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and told them to go out and spread the Good News and extend the gift of the forgiveness of sins to all. Their job, their calling was to be out in the world. They had received the Spirit and the Spirit should not and cannot be contained behind closed doors.
So what does this mean to us? Well, more often than not, our fears come out in more subtle ways that are not directly damaging to others but cause harm we will never see. We wall ourselves off from certain “kinds” of people or places thereby cutting of relationship after relationship after relationship. We convince ourselves that our fears are actually wise judgments or well thought out beliefs so we don’t need to bother with this person or that group. We tell ourselves that “they” are sinners or liars or too uneducated to understand or too far beyond help. We convince ourselves that we need not worry about them because they don’t want our help anyway. We use words terms like “crazy liberal” and “snooty” to feel better about not looking at them as a whole person.
But maybe that’s just the problem. The message of Christ doesn’t start with figuring out what category someone fits in to or how to fix them. It starts with understanding. Instead of seeing “they” and “them” we need to see a person struggling or striving or searching and look more deeply into how that journey has shaped their life. When our starting point is that of trying to understand someone, the issue of helping will then naturally into place. And you know what else? We often find that we were helped in some way too.
Now, I’m not saying living the Christian life means to blindly walk up to a person who’s fear may have built to the point of violence. But I am saying that it means unlocking the doors of fear we’ve constructed for ourselves. It means gently challenging the fears of others by seeking to understand them and being open so that they can understand us. It means challenging our own fears by trusting in the peace of Christ to overcome all.
Does all this sound too big? Well, it starts here. The church is the proving grounds for how we’ll live in the world. We start with the people around us and let go of seeing the labels and the judgments and the walls that keep us from seeing the whole person.
With Christ’s peace, we can let go of seeing the person who snubbed us when we needed a friend or the person who complains instead of helping or the person who boasts instead of listening. And when we let go of the categories of judgment we might understand that we weren’t actually snubbed because the other person was deeply depressed at the time. And those complaints are just a mask for loneliness. And the boasting was just a mask for fear. If we can let the walls we have between us down long enough to understand one another, we’ll cultivate such a deep community we’ll have the strength to go out into the world and do this with others.
And we already do. Look at the Kairos ministry. That’s an amazing example of understanding that leads to healing. And I could stand here and name ministries and individual actions in this congrigation that over and over reflect the triumph of Christ’s peace and the healing of understanding. But today’s passage reminds us that there’s always more to be done.
The Christian response to Bid Laden’s death is not as simple as cheering or grieving. We must seek to be thoughtful and compassionate, appreciating justice yet seeking greater reconciliation. Christ’s call in the world always begins with peace that breaks down fear. That peace leads to understanding. And understanding leads to healing.
Sisters and brothers, whatever fears we are hiding behind or keep locked away, Christ breaks in past them and says, “Peace be with you.” As we leave here today, let us be bold to hear and receive that peace. Let us be brave to understand and be understood. Let us be trusting in Christ’s calling and be agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. Amen.
Good morning. First off, let me go ahead and acknowledge that you might have noticed something different about me today. Is it new glasses? No. Perhaps a new outfit? No. The answer is I shaved my head 2 days ago at a charity event raising money for and awareness of childhood cancers. Some of you know that I do this every year and it’s always a wonderful event. Actually, the child we honored at the event was in the hospital and unable to attend. But like I said, it was still a wonderful occasion and such a great cause.
And just so you know, it is okay to ask me questions about it. It is okay to stare. And if you ask, I’ll even let you rub my head. But when you look at my head, please remember all those who struggle with cancer and need our support and then say a prayer for them.
Okay, now back to the task at hand. What do we make of these disciples and of good ole doubting Thomas? This is a story that a week and a half ago, I was going to preach pretty much the same thing we usually do. I thought we were going to look at the struggle between intuition and fact and of the different ways of knowing. I thought we might focus on how Christ comes to us no matter what our needs are so we need not vilify Thomas for being slow to believe.
But then Sunday night our televisions, radios, Facebook pages, and text messages starting buzzing with news that the President would speak. Soon the word came out that Osama Bin Laden was dead. And from that point forward broke a frenzy of praise, sorrow, questions, debate, and doubt. And somewhere in all this, a few people paused to ask, “what should the Christian response be?”
What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who apparently has masterminded the deaths of thousands of innocent lives? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who struck fear in the hearts of so many? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who was also a husband, father, grandfather, brother, and someone’s child? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who had become so consumed by hate and fear that he could not see the humanity in others?
Sisters and brothers, I’m not going down a road toward telling you what you should believe politically or think about Osama Bin Laden. But I am going down a road that points to what happens when we live behind locked doors.
Let’s take another look at this passage. The passage begins, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”
See, when we think about this passage in time, Jesus had just been crucified and died. That very morning Mary and Mary had discovered the empty tomb. Jesus had appeared to some of them on the road and they were sharing the news. But the general feeling amongst all of them was fear. They were afraid for their lives and afraid for their futures. They closed themselves off and locked the door. But Christ comes through the barriers and says, “Peace be with you.”
Later in the passage, we have the same disciples only this time Thomas is also there and he has not believed that Jesus was truly resurrected. The passage reads, “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”
Here again we have the closed doors that are presumably locked. Even a week later, the disciples are hiding out rather than being out and about. And Jesus comes through the barriers to once again pronounce, “Peace be with you.”
So, what do we make of this? It would be easy to speed on past these verses and get to the story of Thomas’ disbelief. But I don’t think these verses are here by accident and I don’t think John went to the trouble of noting the closed doors if it weren’t an issue for us to learn from.
First of all I think we need to have grace and compassion in our hearts just as Christ did when we look at this story otherwise we get caught up in judgment. These people were scared. Jesus had been their companion and champion. They believed he was going to restore justice in the land. They hadn’t yet realized his justice would be of a more far reaching kind. So in their fear, they retreated to a home and hid out.
But Jesus came in and didn’t speak harsh words or judgment. He wanted them to be at ease and to release their fear. He greeted them with a wish and hope for peace in their lives. Christ wants them to not fear or to feel worse for their struggle. He wanted them to heal. His words were about understanding their experience and knowing that more than anything, they needed to let go of the fear and receive peace and the hope that springs from it.
This is truly an amazing model for our lives. It is an orientation toward people that begins with saying, “I want to know and understand you and your needs.” To have a starting place of grace and compassion in our hearts is a starting point of love rather than assessing, judging, categorizing, or any of the other countless ways we sum people up without first seeking to understand them and their experience.
When we are scared and either literally or metaphorically close ourselves off, what would it be like if someone who loves us came on in and spoke love and peace into our hearts, minds, and spirits? How would we react if that person looked at us with eyes of compassion that told us that our experiences and feelings are safe with them?
And looking outside of ourselves, what if we were the person who could be that voice of peace, love, and healing for the one who has walled themselves off? When we’re dealing with the person who lashes out at us, what if our starting place was that of looking into how someone got so overrun by fear rather than lashing back at them? What if our priority was to truly know and understand people and their experiences instead of quickly assessing what category they fit into?
Now coming back to where I started with the death of Bin Laden, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time to make people stand accountable for their crimes or that understanding why someone is fearful is an excuse for the way they may have hurt others. There is a time for that accountable justice. There is even a time and a place for those categories like liar, cheater, greedy, selfish, terrorist, and murderer. Those classifications can help us as a society understand who has been hurt and how to exact justice. But those categories should never be a substitute for seeking to know and understand one another. That’s just not what the Christian life is about.
The Christian life is found in our second point today. Christ’s peace and calling are to fling open the doors and live out in the world as agents of love and healing. Jesus said, “Peace be with you” not only as a way to still their anxious spirits but to clear the path to move beyond the fear and anxiety. Next, he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and told them to go out and spread the Good News and extend the gift of the forgiveness of sins to all. Their job, their calling was to be out in the world. They had received the Spirit and the Spirit should not and cannot be contained behind closed doors.
So what does this mean to us? Well, more often than not, our fears come out in more subtle ways that are not directly damaging to others but cause harm we will never see. We wall ourselves off from certain “kinds” of people or places thereby cutting of relationship after relationship after relationship. We convince ourselves that our fears are actually wise judgments or well thought out beliefs so we don’t need to bother with this person or that group. We tell ourselves that “they” are sinners or liars or too uneducated to understand or too far beyond help. We convince ourselves that we need not worry about them because they don’t want our help anyway. We use words terms like “crazy liberal” and “snooty” to feel better about not looking at them as a whole person.
But maybe that’s just the problem. The message of Christ doesn’t start with figuring out what category someone fits in to or how to fix them. It starts with understanding. Instead of seeing “they” and “them” we need to see a person struggling or striving or searching and look more deeply into how that journey has shaped their life. When our starting point is that of trying to understand someone, the issue of helping will then naturally into place. And you know what else? We often find that we were helped in some way too.
Now, I’m not saying living the Christian life means to blindly walk up to a person who’s fear may have built to the point of violence. But I am saying that it means unlocking the doors of fear we’ve constructed for ourselves. It means gently challenging the fears of others by seeking to understand them and being open so that they can understand us. It means challenging our own fears by trusting in the peace of Christ to overcome all.
Does all this sound too big? Well, it starts here. The church is the proving grounds for how we’ll live in the world. We start with the people around us and let go of seeing the labels and the judgments and the walls that keep us from seeing the whole person.
With Christ’s peace, we can let go of seeing the person who snubbed us when we needed a friend or the person who complains instead of helping or the person who boasts instead of listening. And when we let go of the categories of judgment we might understand that we weren’t actually snubbed because the other person was deeply depressed at the time. And those complaints are just a mask for loneliness. And the boasting was just a mask for fear. If we can let the walls we have between us down long enough to understand one another, we’ll cultivate such a deep community we’ll have the strength to go out into the world and do this with others.
And we already do. Look at the Kairos ministry. That’s an amazing example of understanding that leads to healing. And I could stand here and name ministries and individual actions in this congrigation that over and over reflect the triumph of Christ’s peace and the healing of understanding. But today’s passage reminds us that there’s always more to be done.
The Christian response to Bid Laden’s death is not as simple as cheering or grieving. We must seek to be thoughtful and compassionate, appreciating justice yet seeking greater reconciliation. Christ’s call in the world always begins with peace that breaks down fear. That peace leads to understanding. And understanding leads to healing.
Sisters and brothers, whatever fears we are hiding behind or keep locked away, Christ breaks in past them and says, “Peace be with you.” As we leave here today, let us be bold to hear and receive that peace. Let us be brave to understand and be understood. Let us be trusting in Christ’s calling and be agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. Amen.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
For God So Loved the World
For God So Loved the World <-– Audio file of sermon based upon John 3:1-17.
Good morning. A great deal of prayer and reflection has gone into preparing this sermon. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me this week, “what are you thinking?” and my reply was, “about my sermon.” I don’t tell you that to impress you. Quite to the contrary, I tell you this to impress upon you how complicated and nuanced this passage is. In fact, I fear that if you don’t take notes, you may get lost but I’m trusting that the Spirit will reveal something of use to each of us today regardless of my ramblings. So here we go.
You may be wondering why this is such a difficult passage. It sounds simple enough. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking guidance. Jesus offers a response. Nicodemus doesn’t quite get it. Jesus then tries to clarify and a central passage of Christian teaching is born. Simple, right?
Oh if it were only so. First of all, I should tell you that I have a history with this passage and I bet some of you have had similar experiences. See, my family are all from an evangelical Christian tradition and I was raised in that. I was scared into believing in God by threats of the fires of hell and eternal damnation. I was also told that if I believed hard enough and said the right “sinners prayer” that I would be “saved.”
Not wanting to be burned eternally, I prayed and tried to convince others that they needed to believe too. At the very center of this experience was John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The emphasis was on the perishing, not God’s love.
I’m not telling you this to mock evangelical beliefs. In fact, I concede that I first recognized my calling into ministry from within that denomination. So, I know that God was alive and working in our lives. There were people of great sincerity who committed every waking hour to gaining converts. We’re not talking about televangelist charlatans but rather people of sincere faith and love trying to do what they thought was right.
But by the time I was a pre-teen and a teenager, I had begun to question whether the fear of God was the path God wanted us to take. Did it produce a mature faith that Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 13? Did fear of God make me do the good deeds because it is the selfless, right thing or because of selfish fear of judgment?
My questions led me back to this passage and others with new eyes. I began to see that God was of such abundant love that no action on my part could ever separate me from it. And I continued that faith journey that would soon land me in the Presbyterian Church where I found others that embraced an abundantly loving God. I found the words in the Brief Statement of Faith and heard what I believed to be true about God. Those words were:
I’ve offered this long preface to say that this passage has for many been reduced and boiled down, combined with popular notions of afterlife, and turned into a slogan on a bumper sticker. That slogan holds truth but misses God’s abundance because it was too quick to strip away all that lies around it. Sometimes the good stuff is as much in how something is said as much or more than what is said… and this is one of those times.
You see, as soon as the story starts, we don’t just get Nicodemus coming to Jesus. He comes to Jesus in the cover of night. We’re talking about a Rabbi, a minister who’s seeking deeper understanding of God. This is a good thing but he’s not able to do it out in the open which will hamper his faith and understanding as we soon will see.
Nicodemus is very complimentary to Jesus by acknowledging that he is surly of God. This is a big deal because the rabbinical belief at the time would have commonly held that the Rabbis and other educated teachers were the only ones with special knowledge from God. But what I want us to hear were his exact words because they come to bear later. Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
“We know” is the word I want us to hold onto here. See, we’ve got this educated minister type who is professing to “know” something of God’s truths. Hold onto that thought… we’ll come back to it.
Jesus replies to his nighttime visitor’s compliment by saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” This is where things start to get interesting and I need to give a quick lesson in biblical study.
First of all we need to look at this phrase “the kingdom of God.” We usually read this phrase through current imagery. That imagery of the kingdom of God is usually imbedded in some notion of afterlife and heaven. But in Jesus’ time, they did not use this phrase that way nor did they have a notion of heaven in the same way modern Christianity has developed one.
This phrase meant to be in the presence of God. That presence is both an earthly experience and a spiritual experience. So it can include images of afterlife but it is equally about experiencing the presence of God here and now. As a side note, that’s what the Lord’s prayer is asking for when it invites God’s kingdom on earth. It is inviting the experience of God in its fullest sense.
Next, we need to look into translation issues. Most of you probably know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek and the Old was in Hebrew. We still have some scrolls that are quite old that those are considered the most authoritative for translating into any other language, be it English, Spanish, Korean, or otherwise. The older scrolls are considered more authoritative because they have fewer edits or copying mistakes. All that makes sense, right?
Well, translation into any language is still not an easy thing. Sometimes there are just not words that translate exactly. Other times, we use phrases that don’t translate well either. For example, earlier I said that we “boil down” meanings. You know that I mean we take out all the extra stuff rather than cook it until it has no water in it. But if we were trying to translate my sermon into another language, they would be confused as to why I just dumped a bible into a pot to cook all the water out of it.
So translation takes time, skill, and faithful seeking in order to be done well. But most of us aren’t going to learn Greek and Hebrew. Trust me, I’m thrilled when I realize how much I still know and can use it well. But I’m even more grateful for commentaries & a really good study bible because smarter people than me have spent their lives working this stuff out.
So, I want to call your attention to all the footnotes in the book of John. If you have a good study bible, it will show you lots of word choice variations from the original Greek. Often it will say that an alternative meaning exists and the book of John is full of them compared to other books of the bible. And we’re not talking about synonyms here. It’s actual different meanings. Well, most scholars believe all the dual meaning Greek words in the book of John are very intentionally picked for their nuance because more concrete Greek words could have been used but they weren’t.
And that’s where we find ourselves in this reading. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” If you pick up a study bible, you’ll see that the Greek word we translate as “from above” also means anew or again. In fact, many translations like the NIV and King James use the word “again” instead of “from above.” But this is not an either/or choice here. This is a both/and situation. When Jesus is talking about this rebirth it is one of time and space and beyond. It is both “again” and “from above.” We know this by what happens next.
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus, zeroed in on the meaning of being born again. But Jesus offers new images to help him wrap his mind around it. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit… The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
So we have this set of images of being of both water and Spirit. Water birth as in the birth at a certain time and place… like the waters of baptism or of the womb. Spirit birth as in something that has no bounds and is purely of God. By the way, the word we translate as Spirit is another double meaning word. It also means wind. So, Jesus is working hard to get Nicodemus to see a more complicated image of rebirth that will reveal the Kingdom of God, the presence of God. He goes on to try to explain that this birth of Spirit is like the wind. He tells Nicodemus we can’t control it. This is another key point, so hold onto that one too.
Nicodemus is still baffled and questions Jesus. Jesus responds with a monologue that holds even more imagery to point to how mysterious this rebirth is. Now, we’re tempted to read this monologue as the only thing that matters but I’ve had us hold onto earlier points because they do matter.
First of all, Jesus calls into question how a teacher who is supposed to “know” things and earlier claimed to know what was of God could miss the truth of the Spirit. Next, Jesus uses heavenly descended and ascended language. This is key because it comes back to the Kingdom of God. By pointing to Jesus’ direct connection with God, Jesus is confirming his status as having knowledge to share from God. Then Jesus uses some more dual meaning words when he makes a comparison between himself and a story of healing with Moses.
This is where we get into the talk of belief and eternal life and I’ve spent so much time getting here because we can’t understand what is being said here if we don’t understand how complicated the road was to get to him saying this. Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Now, I could have just written a sermon focusing in on those two verses but I believe that does a disservice to God and to us. We’ve taken a journey with Jesus through a dialog about being born anew and from God. When we first understand that this birth is full of mystery and is of God, we see these verses with different eyes.
First of all, we’re told that “God so loved the world.” We are not told that God loved people who liked Jesus, or worshiped only God, or Israelites, or any other group of people. God’s actions sprung from an abundant love of the whole world. That alone is radical enough.
Next we see that God gave us Jesus. It doesn’t say that God “gave up” Jesus as some are tempted to hear it. That reduces Jesus to only his death. Rather, we are given this gift, not as a sacrifice but as a piece of God with us. This gift is for our good and salvation. In fact it tells us the gift gives eternal life.
Eternal life… again, this is one of those phrases we often hear through the ears of modern beliefs but when Jesus and Paul and others in the bible talked about eternal life, they were talking not only about beyond this time. They were talking in present and ongoing terms as well. Eternal life is synonymous with abundant life and liveliness.
And finally, we are told that this gift is not to condemn the world but to save it. This is still wrapped up in that abundant love. Yet, these verses are so frequently used in unloving ways to condemn non-Christians. Is it that not believing in Jesus is the same as being condemned?
Well, that’s not exactly what this says. It only says that Jesus is a way to eternal and abundant life. And this is one of those places I choose to stay humble. I’m not sure what God’s plans are in the life of the Buddhist, the Muslim, or the atheist. And I’m definitely not sure how God reveals God’s self to the sheep from another fold that are referred to in John 10 yet we’re told they still recognize God’s voice. So I don’t concern myself with the job of God nor with the judgment of God. Our lives are full enough just trying to tap into that abundance that God has very clearly called us in this flock to.
Okay… I know I’ve taken you on a winding road that probably leaves you either wanting to read more or so tired you want a nap but our hope is that God has revealed something. So what is God’s message to us this second Sunday of Lent? I think there are several things. First, we need not have the assuredness of Nicodemus when we seek God. Come humble and seek what God has to tell us, not the other way around. Second, this rebirth is full of mystery. Some of it we can control like the waters of baptism. But other parts, like the birth of Spirit are like the wind, we can’t control it. It’s tied up in God’s grace. Third, God’s love is abundant and precedes us and anything we could ever do to deserve or earn it. That alone is salvific even if we never hear anything else. And finally, the kingdom of God made manifest can be found in Christ. Jesus is our abundance not only in the hereafter but here and now as well. May this Lenten journey reveal more of Christ’s abundance in our lives. Amen.
Good morning. A great deal of prayer and reflection has gone into preparing this sermon. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me this week, “what are you thinking?” and my reply was, “about my sermon.” I don’t tell you that to impress you. Quite to the contrary, I tell you this to impress upon you how complicated and nuanced this passage is. In fact, I fear that if you don’t take notes, you may get lost but I’m trusting that the Spirit will reveal something of use to each of us today regardless of my ramblings. So here we go.
You may be wondering why this is such a difficult passage. It sounds simple enough. Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking guidance. Jesus offers a response. Nicodemus doesn’t quite get it. Jesus then tries to clarify and a central passage of Christian teaching is born. Simple, right?
Oh if it were only so. First of all, I should tell you that I have a history with this passage and I bet some of you have had similar experiences. See, my family are all from an evangelical Christian tradition and I was raised in that. I was scared into believing in God by threats of the fires of hell and eternal damnation. I was also told that if I believed hard enough and said the right “sinners prayer” that I would be “saved.”
Not wanting to be burned eternally, I prayed and tried to convince others that they needed to believe too. At the very center of this experience was John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” The emphasis was on the perishing, not God’s love.
I’m not telling you this to mock evangelical beliefs. In fact, I concede that I first recognized my calling into ministry from within that denomination. So, I know that God was alive and working in our lives. There were people of great sincerity who committed every waking hour to gaining converts. We’re not talking about televangelist charlatans but rather people of sincere faith and love trying to do what they thought was right.
But by the time I was a pre-teen and a teenager, I had begun to question whether the fear of God was the path God wanted us to take. Did it produce a mature faith that Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 13? Did fear of God make me do the good deeds because it is the selfless, right thing or because of selfish fear of judgment?
My questions led me back to this passage and others with new eyes. I began to see that God was of such abundant love that no action on my part could ever separate me from it. And I continued that faith journey that would soon land me in the Presbyterian Church where I found others that embraced an abundantly loving God. I found the words in the Brief Statement of Faith and heard what I believed to be true about God. Those words were:
And so my overarching belief in God’s abundant love and grace was nurtured and I began the path to a fearless faith of selfless acts rather than a fear filled one chock-full with compulsory deeds.
Yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.
Loving us still, God makes us heirs with Christ of the covenant. Like mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.
We trust in God the Holy Spirit, everywhere the giver and renewer of life. The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith, sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church.
—lines 40, 47-57
I’ve offered this long preface to say that this passage has for many been reduced and boiled down, combined with popular notions of afterlife, and turned into a slogan on a bumper sticker. That slogan holds truth but misses God’s abundance because it was too quick to strip away all that lies around it. Sometimes the good stuff is as much in how something is said as much or more than what is said… and this is one of those times.
You see, as soon as the story starts, we don’t just get Nicodemus coming to Jesus. He comes to Jesus in the cover of night. We’re talking about a Rabbi, a minister who’s seeking deeper understanding of God. This is a good thing but he’s not able to do it out in the open which will hamper his faith and understanding as we soon will see.
Nicodemus is very complimentary to Jesus by acknowledging that he is surly of God. This is a big deal because the rabbinical belief at the time would have commonly held that the Rabbis and other educated teachers were the only ones with special knowledge from God. But what I want us to hear were his exact words because they come to bear later. Nicodemus says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”
“We know” is the word I want us to hold onto here. See, we’ve got this educated minister type who is professing to “know” something of God’s truths. Hold onto that thought… we’ll come back to it.
Jesus replies to his nighttime visitor’s compliment by saying, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” This is where things start to get interesting and I need to give a quick lesson in biblical study.
First of all we need to look at this phrase “the kingdom of God.” We usually read this phrase through current imagery. That imagery of the kingdom of God is usually imbedded in some notion of afterlife and heaven. But in Jesus’ time, they did not use this phrase that way nor did they have a notion of heaven in the same way modern Christianity has developed one.
This phrase meant to be in the presence of God. That presence is both an earthly experience and a spiritual experience. So it can include images of afterlife but it is equally about experiencing the presence of God here and now. As a side note, that’s what the Lord’s prayer is asking for when it invites God’s kingdom on earth. It is inviting the experience of God in its fullest sense.
Next, we need to look into translation issues. Most of you probably know that the New Testament was originally written in Greek and the Old was in Hebrew. We still have some scrolls that are quite old that those are considered the most authoritative for translating into any other language, be it English, Spanish, Korean, or otherwise. The older scrolls are considered more authoritative because they have fewer edits or copying mistakes. All that makes sense, right?
Well, translation into any language is still not an easy thing. Sometimes there are just not words that translate exactly. Other times, we use phrases that don’t translate well either. For example, earlier I said that we “boil down” meanings. You know that I mean we take out all the extra stuff rather than cook it until it has no water in it. But if we were trying to translate my sermon into another language, they would be confused as to why I just dumped a bible into a pot to cook all the water out of it.
So translation takes time, skill, and faithful seeking in order to be done well. But most of us aren’t going to learn Greek and Hebrew. Trust me, I’m thrilled when I realize how much I still know and can use it well. But I’m even more grateful for commentaries & a really good study bible because smarter people than me have spent their lives working this stuff out.
So, I want to call your attention to all the footnotes in the book of John. If you have a good study bible, it will show you lots of word choice variations from the original Greek. Often it will say that an alternative meaning exists and the book of John is full of them compared to other books of the bible. And we’re not talking about synonyms here. It’s actual different meanings. Well, most scholars believe all the dual meaning Greek words in the book of John are very intentionally picked for their nuance because more concrete Greek words could have been used but they weren’t.
And that’s where we find ourselves in this reading. Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” If you pick up a study bible, you’ll see that the Greek word we translate as “from above” also means anew or again. In fact, many translations like the NIV and King James use the word “again” instead of “from above.” But this is not an either/or choice here. This is a both/and situation. When Jesus is talking about this rebirth it is one of time and space and beyond. It is both “again” and “from above.” We know this by what happens next.
Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Nicodemus, zeroed in on the meaning of being born again. But Jesus offers new images to help him wrap his mind around it. He says, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit… The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
So we have this set of images of being of both water and Spirit. Water birth as in the birth at a certain time and place… like the waters of baptism or of the womb. Spirit birth as in something that has no bounds and is purely of God. By the way, the word we translate as Spirit is another double meaning word. It also means wind. So, Jesus is working hard to get Nicodemus to see a more complicated image of rebirth that will reveal the Kingdom of God, the presence of God. He goes on to try to explain that this birth of Spirit is like the wind. He tells Nicodemus we can’t control it. This is another key point, so hold onto that one too.
Nicodemus is still baffled and questions Jesus. Jesus responds with a monologue that holds even more imagery to point to how mysterious this rebirth is. Now, we’re tempted to read this monologue as the only thing that matters but I’ve had us hold onto earlier points because they do matter.
First of all, Jesus calls into question how a teacher who is supposed to “know” things and earlier claimed to know what was of God could miss the truth of the Spirit. Next, Jesus uses heavenly descended and ascended language. This is key because it comes back to the Kingdom of God. By pointing to Jesus’ direct connection with God, Jesus is confirming his status as having knowledge to share from God. Then Jesus uses some more dual meaning words when he makes a comparison between himself and a story of healing with Moses.
This is where we get into the talk of belief and eternal life and I’ve spent so much time getting here because we can’t understand what is being said here if we don’t understand how complicated the road was to get to him saying this. Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
Now, I could have just written a sermon focusing in on those two verses but I believe that does a disservice to God and to us. We’ve taken a journey with Jesus through a dialog about being born anew and from God. When we first understand that this birth is full of mystery and is of God, we see these verses with different eyes.
First of all, we’re told that “God so loved the world.” We are not told that God loved people who liked Jesus, or worshiped only God, or Israelites, or any other group of people. God’s actions sprung from an abundant love of the whole world. That alone is radical enough.
Next we see that God gave us Jesus. It doesn’t say that God “gave up” Jesus as some are tempted to hear it. That reduces Jesus to only his death. Rather, we are given this gift, not as a sacrifice but as a piece of God with us. This gift is for our good and salvation. In fact it tells us the gift gives eternal life.
Eternal life… again, this is one of those phrases we often hear through the ears of modern beliefs but when Jesus and Paul and others in the bible talked about eternal life, they were talking not only about beyond this time. They were talking in present and ongoing terms as well. Eternal life is synonymous with abundant life and liveliness.
And finally, we are told that this gift is not to condemn the world but to save it. This is still wrapped up in that abundant love. Yet, these verses are so frequently used in unloving ways to condemn non-Christians. Is it that not believing in Jesus is the same as being condemned?
Well, that’s not exactly what this says. It only says that Jesus is a way to eternal and abundant life. And this is one of those places I choose to stay humble. I’m not sure what God’s plans are in the life of the Buddhist, the Muslim, or the atheist. And I’m definitely not sure how God reveals God’s self to the sheep from another fold that are referred to in John 10 yet we’re told they still recognize God’s voice. So I don’t concern myself with the job of God nor with the judgment of God. Our lives are full enough just trying to tap into that abundance that God has very clearly called us in this flock to.
Okay… I know I’ve taken you on a winding road that probably leaves you either wanting to read more or so tired you want a nap but our hope is that God has revealed something. So what is God’s message to us this second Sunday of Lent? I think there are several things. First, we need not have the assuredness of Nicodemus when we seek God. Come humble and seek what God has to tell us, not the other way around. Second, this rebirth is full of mystery. Some of it we can control like the waters of baptism. But other parts, like the birth of Spirit are like the wind, we can’t control it. It’s tied up in God’s grace. Third, God’s love is abundant and precedes us and anything we could ever do to deserve or earn it. That alone is salvific even if we never hear anything else. And finally, the kingdom of God made manifest can be found in Christ. Jesus is our abundance not only in the hereafter but here and now as well. May this Lenten journey reveal more of Christ’s abundance in our lives. Amen.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Seeking the Holy
Seeking the Holy: Ash Wednesday sermon based upon Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Good evening. It is good to be with you on this beginning day of the holy season of Lent.
Some in this room look forward to Lent as a time they’ve encountered since childhood. Many have negative memories of being forced to fast without understanding why or what is to be gained. Others look at this time as something odd that just doesn’t quite make sense. No matter our history, Ash Wednesday and Lent still come to us like clockwork 40 days before Easter.
So, here we are. We gather on a day we don’t usually and with the imposition of ashes, we engage in a practice that seems foreign in our culture. But why are we here and what is all this about? Well, I’ll sum up all of Lent for you in one phrase: Seeking the Holy.
The idea of Lent is about seeking what God has for us so that when Holy week arrives, we’ll have the courage to bear the crucified Christ. We’ll be able to look into the eyes of a Christ murdered for living fully into love. And by the end of Holy week, we hope our Lenten practices will have prepared us to receive in a new and bolder vision of the risen Christ. We’ll recognize when we see Christ around us in the world. We’ll hear God’s call more clearly and we’ll respond with faith and passion to that call.
Now, that’s a lot of hope to be bound up in 40 days. Most of us can’t give up our biggest vice for a few days. How are we supposed to get from here to there and feel like we’ve experienced that kind of growth? Well, it starts right here. (Hold up ashes)
We start this journey on ash Wednesday with the symbol of ashes for a reason. Ashes are about sorrow and repentance. They also symbolize our own mortality as we are formed from the dust of the earth and to dust we shall return. So, when we receive the ashes, the hope is that it is an outward marker of an inward understanding, and understanding of humility.
When we are humble, we can truly repent because we can truly see the damages we’ve caused by our words, deeds, and deeds left undone. So, a good first step in seeking the holy is cultivating humility. That’s really what the whole of the Matthew passage is about. It’s a guidebook for keeping ourselves humble so we can see God.
And usually that’s what the practices of self-examination and penitence, prayer and fasting, works of love, and reading and meditating on the Word of God are about. The things we give up and the practices we take on for Lent point us toward God.
So this is where we find ourselves this evening. What is it each of us needs to see God more clearly and experience God more fully? What is it that will prepare us to bear witness to what Easter has to offer? Many of us have already chosen Lenten practices that will be of meaning. But I want us to think not only of the practices but of the experience.
So, I’d like to take us on a guided meditation to reflect on how we might seek and find the holy during this time. I realize this might be a bit out of our comfort zones. I know it’s out of mine. But I believe God’s still small voice is bolder than mine will ever be. What God will tell you is what you need. So, as we prepare ourselves, just try to remember that you are in God’s loving arms and the loving arms of God’s community. Whatever is revealed to you is something God and those who love you will help you through.
To begin, I’d like you to know that there are no wrong answers here. There are times in our lives when silence is too much to bear and recognizing that the inner conflict is holy too. So, if you find yourself uncomfortable, ask yourself and God why. If the answer is too big for this moment, then feel free to sing a song in your head or do what you need. This won’t last long and we’re here together.
So, let’s begin. Let’s lower the lights just a bit. Try to relax the tension you feel in your body.
Breathe naturally and you can either close your eyes or just relax your gaze. Remember, there are no wrong experiences here.
Now just let the silence speak to you for a few moments.
I imagine God is already speaking to you but let’s try and focus in. Think on the question, “where is God?” or “where is the holy?”
What things have been getting in the way of experiencing God and the holy? Fear, discontentment, boredom, frustration, embarrassment, hate, fatigue, depression, sadness, greed, self-centeredness… gossip, haunting memories, health problems, our playthings like television and the internet, overscheduled time, underutilized time.
What does God want for you? joy, liberation from fear, guilt, & shame, belonging, courage, vitality, peace, kindness, humility, gratitude, an inner sense of grace, community & connection… to volunteer, to take quiet time in the day, to enter into a different kind of prayer, to seek God in study, to restore God’s temple (your body), to engage in acts of love of both yourself and others.
What small steps can you take to claim what God wants for you during this time? Intentional scheduling, covenanting with a friend for support, making a plan, cutting out something distracting, taking the time to breathe.
What would it take to start out each day with grace and love for yourself and others that God has for us? What would it take to see the holy in others and our everyday lives?
What God’s still small voice tells us right now is true. It is something that will bear fruit in Lent and beyond. This time is about a journey to seek the holy and I believe God is calling. Take what God has shown you and hold onto it. Nurture it in the days and weeks to come. Feed it in the ways God has shown you tonight and will reveal in the time to come.
If we are seeking the holy, I imagine that what will emerge is not just a single Lenten practice but a focus on something that will truly make us better people and stronger community. May God bless this journey and our walk together. Amen.
Good evening. It is good to be with you on this beginning day of the holy season of Lent.
Some in this room look forward to Lent as a time they’ve encountered since childhood. Many have negative memories of being forced to fast without understanding why or what is to be gained. Others look at this time as something odd that just doesn’t quite make sense. No matter our history, Ash Wednesday and Lent still come to us like clockwork 40 days before Easter.
So, here we are. We gather on a day we don’t usually and with the imposition of ashes, we engage in a practice that seems foreign in our culture. But why are we here and what is all this about? Well, I’ll sum up all of Lent for you in one phrase: Seeking the Holy.
The idea of Lent is about seeking what God has for us so that when Holy week arrives, we’ll have the courage to bear the crucified Christ. We’ll be able to look into the eyes of a Christ murdered for living fully into love. And by the end of Holy week, we hope our Lenten practices will have prepared us to receive in a new and bolder vision of the risen Christ. We’ll recognize when we see Christ around us in the world. We’ll hear God’s call more clearly and we’ll respond with faith and passion to that call.
Now, that’s a lot of hope to be bound up in 40 days. Most of us can’t give up our biggest vice for a few days. How are we supposed to get from here to there and feel like we’ve experienced that kind of growth? Well, it starts right here. (Hold up ashes)
We start this journey on ash Wednesday with the symbol of ashes for a reason. Ashes are about sorrow and repentance. They also symbolize our own mortality as we are formed from the dust of the earth and to dust we shall return. So, when we receive the ashes, the hope is that it is an outward marker of an inward understanding, and understanding of humility.
When we are humble, we can truly repent because we can truly see the damages we’ve caused by our words, deeds, and deeds left undone. So, a good first step in seeking the holy is cultivating humility. That’s really what the whole of the Matthew passage is about. It’s a guidebook for keeping ourselves humble so we can see God.
And usually that’s what the practices of self-examination and penitence, prayer and fasting, works of love, and reading and meditating on the Word of God are about. The things we give up and the practices we take on for Lent point us toward God.
So this is where we find ourselves this evening. What is it each of us needs to see God more clearly and experience God more fully? What is it that will prepare us to bear witness to what Easter has to offer? Many of us have already chosen Lenten practices that will be of meaning. But I want us to think not only of the practices but of the experience.
So, I’d like to take us on a guided meditation to reflect on how we might seek and find the holy during this time. I realize this might be a bit out of our comfort zones. I know it’s out of mine. But I believe God’s still small voice is bolder than mine will ever be. What God will tell you is what you need. So, as we prepare ourselves, just try to remember that you are in God’s loving arms and the loving arms of God’s community. Whatever is revealed to you is something God and those who love you will help you through.
To begin, I’d like you to know that there are no wrong answers here. There are times in our lives when silence is too much to bear and recognizing that the inner conflict is holy too. So, if you find yourself uncomfortable, ask yourself and God why. If the answer is too big for this moment, then feel free to sing a song in your head or do what you need. This won’t last long and we’re here together.
So, let’s begin. Let’s lower the lights just a bit. Try to relax the tension you feel in your body.
Breathe naturally and you can either close your eyes or just relax your gaze. Remember, there are no wrong experiences here.
Now just let the silence speak to you for a few moments.
I imagine God is already speaking to you but let’s try and focus in. Think on the question, “where is God?” or “where is the holy?”
What things have been getting in the way of experiencing God and the holy? Fear, discontentment, boredom, frustration, embarrassment, hate, fatigue, depression, sadness, greed, self-centeredness… gossip, haunting memories, health problems, our playthings like television and the internet, overscheduled time, underutilized time.
What does God want for you? joy, liberation from fear, guilt, & shame, belonging, courage, vitality, peace, kindness, humility, gratitude, an inner sense of grace, community & connection… to volunteer, to take quiet time in the day, to enter into a different kind of prayer, to seek God in study, to restore God’s temple (your body), to engage in acts of love of both yourself and others.
What small steps can you take to claim what God wants for you during this time? Intentional scheduling, covenanting with a friend for support, making a plan, cutting out something distracting, taking the time to breathe.
What would it take to start out each day with grace and love for yourself and others that God has for us? What would it take to see the holy in others and our everyday lives?
What God’s still small voice tells us right now is true. It is something that will bear fruit in Lent and beyond. This time is about a journey to seek the holy and I believe God is calling. Take what God has shown you and hold onto it. Nurture it in the days and weeks to come. Feed it in the ways God has shown you tonight and will reveal in the time to come.
If we are seeking the holy, I imagine that what will emerge is not just a single Lenten practice but a focus on something that will truly make us better people and stronger community. May God bless this journey and our walk together. Amen.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Response to Issue of Youth Involvement in Conferences
The following is my response to an excerpt entitled “Christian Conferences: Necessity or Distraction?” from Becky Garrison’s book entitled “Jesus Died for This?” posted on Youthworker.com. In it, she tries to pull apart the difficulty of deciding how to invigorate youth’s spiritual growth through conferences, local involvement, etc. Among the issues she raises are the ways in which events speak to only a certain context. To her, I wrote:
I understand that the issues raised in this piece are complex though I must quickly concede that I am not involved in youth work and do not pastor a congregation. I am a pediatric chaplain. Yet regardless of my role, I think it is a tough balance when looking at programed events. How are they set up? Who will benefit from it? What will be the lasting effect?
Honestly, I think it is very difficult to plan for a group and determine what will positively affect the most number of people. What is one person’s transformative experience is another’s distraction. We each find what we are looking for (even if it is not what we need).
When I think of my own conference experiences as a youth, most were fleeting moments of buzz but the new people I met and my exposure to a broader world of believers made an immeasurable impact upon me. In my adult life, I understand the types of events that will feed me most and choose those. They are usually more communal and intimate gatherings like the Quaker Pastoral Care Conference and the Pediatric Chaplains Network Annual Forum (which my spouse has lovingly dubbed “chaplain camp” because of how fun it is).
As an extravert, I need new people to cultivate new tools. But what do more introspective, introverted people need? I suspect the answer for most youth programs is in offering and providing many different types of encounters so that participants can come to understand the varying ways they connect and therefore develop an ever-evolving spiritual life. But regardless of how one chooses, I truly believe the Holy Spirit always does her work if we show up.
I understand that the issues raised in this piece are complex though I must quickly concede that I am not involved in youth work and do not pastor a congregation. I am a pediatric chaplain. Yet regardless of my role, I think it is a tough balance when looking at programed events. How are they set up? Who will benefit from it? What will be the lasting effect?
Honestly, I think it is very difficult to plan for a group and determine what will positively affect the most number of people. What is one person’s transformative experience is another’s distraction. We each find what we are looking for (even if it is not what we need).
When I think of my own conference experiences as a youth, most were fleeting moments of buzz but the new people I met and my exposure to a broader world of believers made an immeasurable impact upon me. In my adult life, I understand the types of events that will feed me most and choose those. They are usually more communal and intimate gatherings like the Quaker Pastoral Care Conference and the Pediatric Chaplains Network Annual Forum (which my spouse has lovingly dubbed “chaplain camp” because of how fun it is).
As an extravert, I need new people to cultivate new tools. But what do more introspective, introverted people need? I suspect the answer for most youth programs is in offering and providing many different types of encounters so that participants can come to understand the varying ways they connect and therefore develop an ever-evolving spiritual life. But regardless of how one chooses, I truly believe the Holy Spirit always does her work if we show up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)