Sunday, June 24, 2012

"Peace in the Paradox"


(Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blythspirit/2486985271)
June 24, 2012
New Testament Reading: 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
1As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” 
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! 3We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,
4but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, 7truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; 8in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; 10as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
11We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. 12There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. 13In return — I speak as to children — open wide your hearts also.


SERMON: “Peace in the Paradox”

A quick peruse of the Christian section in a book store or online will yield some very bold promises:  When Joel Osteen’s not hawking his Live Your Best Life Now book, he’s selling Every Day a Friday: How to Be Happier 7 Days a Week.  Max Lucado picks up on this same cheery theme in his book, Great Day Every Day.  Then, you have to throw in the other end of the spectrum from Iris Delgado.  It’s slightly darker, titled, Satan, You Can’t Have My Children.  Wow.

If Paul were a motivational Christian writer (which of course he was), he would be somewhere in between these two.  His book title would probably be Not-So-Great-Day Most Days But Still I Rejoice or How To Find Peace When People Want to Kill You.  Not so catchy.  No “live you best life now” here…instead there are imprisonment and violence, sleepless nights, hunger, poverty, feeling like an imposter everywhere you go, even death.  But in that same depressing breath, Paul promises genuine love, the power of God, salvation, being well known by God and possessing everything that no amount of money will ever be able to buy.

Either Paul is prone to rapid mood swings (mid-sentence even!), or this persecuted follower of Jesus is teaching with more authenticity than anyone we’d ever find in the Christian section of a bookstore or on Amazon.

No one really wants to hear about all that hardship, but no one wants to hear rainbows and butterflies from a persecuted man in prison, either.  Or when we face family tension, a doctor heavy on bad news and light on time, another day exactly as empty as the one before.  We don’t need someone who promises it will all go away unless they can actually make that happen.  And saying “It’s God’s will” doesn’t really help, either.  For, we worship a God who weeps when friends die, who hears the cry of people in slavery before they can even put that cry into intelligible words.  Yes, God is sovereign, but that doesn’t give us permission to blame God or the person involved when life goes wrong of its own accord.

Rather than easy answers in the face of hardship, what we all crave is authenticity and solidarity: the comfort found in the story of another and the assurance that we are not alone.  The church in Corinth was no different.  They struggled with the tension of how to be one body in the midst of division and conflict.  An easy answer to the persecution within and around them would have been welcome.  But it would not have been real or lasting.  And so Paul did not give an easy answer.

Rather than ignore the hardship all around them or superficially promise that if they just really believe in Jesus it will all be okay, Paul embraced both.  He lived in the paradox.  It might mean he’ll sell less books or that he’ll be unpopular, but that’s a risk he was willing to take.  He urged this church that he deeply loved to “not accept the grace of God in vain,” which in Greek means don’t accept “grace with emptiness.”  In other words, superficial grace: grace that demands that every day be “perfect” and abandons ship when the waters of life get rough.  We see in our reading from Mark this morning that God’s grace doesn’t work that way. 

While Jesus and his disciples were sailing beyond
Galilee, a storm arose quickly and waves crashed into their boat, swamping it.  But Jesus just slept in the stern of the boat, on a cushion (an important detail, apparently).  His disciples anxiety rose with those waves and they finally woke him, pleading, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

“...In afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger…”
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

In restlessness, listlessness, loss of love in relationships, anxiety over the future, regret over the past…
“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

The Teacher does care.  When we think of our Savior as placidly snoozing through that storm, dreaming dreams of blond disembodied angels floating through fluffy white clouds, we miss a key detail in the story: he woke up!  He rebuked, not his disciples for their anxiety, but the source of anxiety itself: the storm.  He commanded the wind and waves to be still, speaking peace right in the midst of those destructive waters.  We’re not able to know the tone of voice he used when he spoke to his disciples, but I imagine the One who spoke gently to a dead little girl to get up and live again, spoke with the same compassion here:

“Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?”

Faith that denies the reality of the storm is not faith. Peace that glosses over the rough waters of our days is not peace.   Jesus reminded his disciples that even when it seemed like they would lose their lives, in that overwhelming place of uncertainty, fear does not reign.  Peace does.  Faith does.  This is the paradox we cling to.

How easy my call would be if I could assure y’all that all of the worry in your days will magically go away if you just trust God more.  That your faith will exempt you and your loved ones from suffering and pain, that every day is going to be like a joyful Friday if you want it badly enough.  I’m afraid can’t promise that…at least in this life.

What I can promise you comes from our realistic motivational Christian writer Paul:

Purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit,
genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God: these are bigger than the heavy loads we carry.  Following Jesus in putting the poor first and radically loving those society says don’t deserve it will mean that we are treated as imposters, but we belong to a God who knows us more intimately than we even know ourselves, and accepts us as we are.   And we belong to each other, with that belonging taking deeper and deeper root as we intentionally bear one another’s joys and burdens. 

All around us, it may seem that death reigns as cancer spreads, rampant hunger goes ignored and our bodies seem to betray us in not functioning as they once did.  But in us dwells a life that will never die: a life that we have not bought or earned but that is woven into our very being with threads of grace.  With tears in our eyes, we stubbornly rejoice in the promise of the day when all tears will be washed away and all turbulent waters will be stilled with a word of Peace.  Salvation is not some distant promise, it is here, today, right now.  Though some struggle to make ends meet and others struggle for meaning in acquiring more things, we already possess the only thing we need on this journey of life: grace.

Precious Lord, take our hand
Lead us on, let us stand
We are tired, We are weak, We are worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead us on to the light
Take our hand precious Lord, lead us home.

Through many dangers, toils and snares, we have already come; 
'Tis Grace that brought us safe thus far
 and Grace will lead us home.    Amen.

Monday, June 18, 2012

"A Mighty Shrub"

(Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mskiki/2117154936/)
June 17, 2012

GOSPEL READING:  MARK 4:26-34
26Jesus also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.


SERMON: “A Mighty Shrub”

If Jesus had a favorite subject to speak about, it might just have been the kingdom of God.  If he had a favorite way of talking about it, that would be parable.  And here we have perhaps the most well-known of them all: the parable of the mustard seed.

God’s kingdom creeps in like this teeny seed, smaller than any other, but when it grows it spreads its branches wide and becomes the greatest of all…shrubs.  Wait a minute.  That can’t be right.  Surely the kingdom of God grows into a mighty cedar of Lebanon or an oak of righteousness like described in Isaiah.  In Matthew and Luke’s telling of this parable, it does magically transform into a great tree.  We often like to assume that the point of this parable is what huge things God can grow from a tiny seed of faith. 

But here in Mark, all we get is a mighty shrub.  I have to say, I’ve never really stared at the blueberry bush in my backyard and exclaimed, “Ah, so this is what God’s kingdom looks like!”  Apparently God’s kingdom starts small and stays relatively small.  But maybe all this “small talk” is no accident on Jesus’ part.  Perhaps we learn something of how God chooses to work in this world.

God prefers to work through the diminutive and tiny (and no I am not tooting my own horn at this point, y’all!): one little word was spoken into the chaos of darkness—“light”—and so all was made.  The people of Israel were led to freedom by one tired man and his walking stick.  Vertically-challenged David was chosen to be King of Israel over his much more impressive brothers.  Ruth the young powerless widow refused to leave her mother-in-law and so they survived and ultimately became a part of Jesus’ bloodline.  Jesus was born in a lowly, dirty barn to a scared teenage mom and an older dad.  He chose only twelve disciples to create the movement that would change the world forever.  He fed huge crowds with one little loaf of bread and two fish.  And as one little word began creation, Jesus uttered three little last words from the cross to re-create this world: it is finished.  And it was.  All the power of sin and death, all of the separation between humanity and God and each other was finished, once and for all. 

This parable reminds us that, while the kingdoms of our world strive for bigger and bigger and more and more, God’s kingdom does not work that way.  It comes in the whisper of loving words, in the small action of really seeing those around us, in the single choice made every day to live for something and Someone greater than ourselves. 

While God can command all the powers of the universe to usher in a triumphant, mighty kingdom that will never end, God instead weaves the kingdom into seemingly-ordinary lives like yours, and mine.  Because God’s kingdom is deeply personal, revealed through every detail of our lives with no moment too insignificant or difficult for God to break in.

But smallness is not all we see of God’s kingdom in this parable.  This kingdom is like a mustard shrub that gives shade for the birds of the air, and spreads its branches wide enough for wandering creatures to rest there.  It is a nesting place.  Like I spoke of last week, it is home.

And as a shrub, it won’t hold as many birds as a mighty oak.  But perhaps lots of kingdom shrubs are what God is after: so that our faith doesn’t become anonymous, so that we don’t just become another number headed to heaven but so that we have the depth of relationship that can only be found in a small community.

There’s something else to this shrub kingdom: a cedar of Lebanon looks impressive stretching many feet into the sky, but a shrub never loses its closeness to the ground.  God’s kingdom is much closer to the ground than to the sky: not wanting to be a far-off concept dwelling in the clouds of heaven, God’s kingdom brings a little bit of heaven here, onto this dry, weary earth.  Closeness to the ground makes that kingdom a little more fragile, more exposed to illness and danger, but God would not have it any other way. 

We never really think of God’s kingdom as a vulnerable thing, but if God was willing to come to earth as a helpless baby, should we be surprised that God’s kingdom takes on that same incarnate risk?  The God who makes a kingdom like a shrub chooses vulnerability, because God would rather be intensely connected with this earth and thus open to its pain and abuse than safe and contained in a perfect heaven, separated from us. 

To sum it up, we learn from Jesus’ story of the mustard seed in Mark that God's kingdom is intentionally and subversively small, is willingly vulnerable, intimately connected with the joys and pains of this earth and provides a nesting place of authentic community.  We have that kingdom all figured out, don’t we?  Well, not really.  This story is a parable: that tricky teaching tool of Jesus that helps us see a small part of the picture more clearly, while recognizing that we will never understand the whole of it. 

In other words, parables remind us that we are not God, and call us to let go of that which is beyond our control.  Our parable this morning began with mystery: “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself…”

And so try as we might to define God’s kingdom fully in this parable of the mustard seed, it will always in some ways be beyond us, while popping up in surprising moments of our lives to startle us with grace.   Barbara Brown Taylor captures this mysterious growth of God’s kingdom, saying,

“At my house there is a gardener and there is a worrier. The gardener is a pretty easy-going fellow. Every May or June he comes through the door with a brown paper sack full of seed packets and a couple of evenings later he can be found puttering around the yard, emptying the packages into shallow furrows, heaping the dirt into little mounds and curling pieces of fence around them.
Several weeks later, plants appear in the strangest places. He has been known to plant green peppers between the azalea bushes and broccoli by the mailbox. For the second year in row a stand of asparagus is pushing up through the roots of the crepe myrtle trees and sweet pea vines are winding through the branches of the weeping cherry. In a few weeks, string beans will overtake the back deck of the house, covering everything in sight.
All of this drives the worrier crazy. She knows how gardens are supposed to be and this is not it. You are supposed to begin by buying a book, for one thing, with illustrations on how to arrange plants according to size, height, and drainage requirements. First you must test the soil; then you must fertilize, mulch, weed, and water; above all you must worry, or else how will your garden grow?
To her eternal dismay and amazement, there comes a day every summer when the gardener proclaims that the vegetables are ready. He goes out to collect them from all over the burgeoning yard and a little while later the worrier sits down to a table heaped with manna. Against her will and better judgment she has to admit that he has done all right, in spite of his refusal to worry. This year there are even two dill plants that appeared out of nowhere, gifts from the earth itself.”

The earth produces of itself, the powerful, peaceful kingdom of God comes like a blueberry bush in the backyard, all the while calling us to rejoice in what we can see and trust in what we cannot: that a kingdom is coming, and that in some ways it is already here.   Worrying will not hasten the full sprouting of that kingdom…but loving, even a little, just might.  Amen.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

"Of Tribes and Kingdoms"

Sunrise from Mt. Kilimanjaro (credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/slapshot/344483476)
June 10, 2012

Old Testament Reading:  1 Samuel 8:4-20, 11:14-15
8:4Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, 5and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” 6But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the LORD, 7and the LORD said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. 9Now then, listen to their voice; only — you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
10So Samuel reported all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for a king. 11He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day.”
19But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, 20so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
11:14Samuel said to the people, “Come, let us go to Gilgal and there renew the kingship.” 15So all the people went to Gilgal, and there they made Saul king before the LORD in Gilgal. There they sacrificed offerings of well-being before the Lord, and there Saul and all the Israelites rejoiced greatly.


SERMON: “Of Tribes and Kingdoms”


It is a commonly known technique that when you want to ask a person for something you sandwich the request between two positive statements.  Let me give you an example: say you wanted to ask a friend (we’ll use Earl) to watch your dog for three weeks.  You would say, “Hey Earl, have I ever told you how funny you are?  I mean, I think you would even make my dog laugh.  Speaking of my dog, mind watching him for me?  You’re such fun to be around I’d probably have to pry him away from you!”  See what I did there?  My salesman brother-in-law swears by this practice.

The people of Israel could’ve used a little sugar-coating.  They did a terrible job of asking Samuel for a king: insulting him the whole time.  First it was, “You’re OLD!”, swiftly followed by “and your children are a disgrace!”.  Not too clever, guys.  Then they ask for a king to rule over them “so they could be like other nations.”  After all this time the prophet Samuel has been trying to help them see that Yahweh has set them apart as a holy people and here they are asking for a McDonald’s and a Walmart.  Sigh.  The text says he was “displeased” by this request.  I’m betting it was closer to disgusted.

But God calls Samuel to listen to them anyway and then to tell them that the king they seek will only bring oppression and hardship, on everything from their daughters to their donkeys.  But these blunt blokes have already made up their mind: a king it must be.  This is a huge paradigm shift for them: from being ruled as tribes to becoming a monarchy. 

However harsh their request, you can understand where they’re coming from.   With Egypt to the south, Babylon and Assyria to the east, Aram/Syria to the north, and still farther north, the Hittites, this little tribal people, nestled between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, are justifiably nervous.  After warning them through Samuel, God allows for their free will to reign and they anoint Saul as their King.  He turns out to be a bit of a violent wildcard and has this unfortunate habit of being possessed by evil spirits, but they got their King.  The tribe became a kingdom.  And so most civilizations of the world have gone following in this same direction ever since.

But as our parents told us growing up, “Just because it’s popular, doesn’t mean it’s right.”  The kingdom model has not always been a positive direction: from the crusades spreading colonialism more than Christianity to a world where wealth makes kings of very few and paupers of the majority of our planet.  Perhaps as children of God, we should seek something more than just another kingdom.  Even our language of “God’s kingdom” in the church has easily been corrupted by our understanding of worldly kingdoms. 

Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, a Cuban-born theologian challenges this most strongly, even calling for a change of terminology: from “kingdom” to “kin-dom.”  She says,  “to be an instrument for transforming the world, our church needs to change more than its structures.  We must change our very self-understanding as church. The Kingdom metaphor perpetuates elitist and patriarchal systems in the church, and sanctions all sorts of oppression. “Kin-dom” of God means family — la familia de Dios — with the emphasis on kinship, equality, “a true sense of home, of being safe, of being able to be and become one’s self.  If the church is about Kingdom, there is no need to change. The church can ally itself with the world’s powerful, and ignore the poor and marginalized. A kingdom of God’s Church can preach justice to others while exempting itself from being just. But if church is God’s kin-dom or family, then the church is not only for the poor but of the poor.”

We may not all be ready to let go of language of God’s kingdom on earth, but we can reclaim it.  We can recognize that God’s kingdom looks much more like a family structure of unity and belonging than an oppressive hierarchy. 
In other words, a tribe.  Now, I’m not advocating that we as a nation return to a tribal system: this is an impossibility in today’s world.  But, I do believe that we in the church have the power through our Compassionate King to become a tribe once again: to let go of the tendency to want to be just like other people, to reject the notion that material wealth and God’s favor are one and the same, and to fiercely fight not for power but for unity and reconciliation no matter how deeply politics, theology and history divide.

If we are going to learn how to be a tribe once more, who better to learn from than an actual tribe?

I made a good friend last week at Duke’s Summer Institute on Reconciliation: a minister named Wilfred, from Tanzania.  His tribe, the Chagga people, live at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Describing life there, he said, “In our context if there are no relationships, there is no life.  People can do without water or food, but not without healthy relationships.”

He went on to describe a ritual by which they enable healing in relationships.  Between people’s homes, they grow a very particular plant called the “esaled plant.”  This is meant to divide between neighbors’ land, but what divides can also unite.  If you are fighting with someone to the point that you are no longer talking to one another, you simply pluck a leaf from that plant, hold it behind your back and approach that person.  You greet them and, before they can flee, you take the esaled leaf from behind your back and place it on them.  As soon as it touches their skin, they are obligated, tribally bound, to talk with you until your conflict is resolved.  If you are not able to resolve the conflict, you go to the tribal elders and they help mediate the conflict.

Perhaps here we could use pine branches….
Actually, we in the church already have such a mechanism for reconciliation in our tribe.  It’s here, on this Table: bread and a cup.  Jesus teaches in Matthew that if we are angry with a brother or sister, before coming to offer ourselves at this Table, we should go first to them and be reconciled and then come to the Table to find healing and peace.  As the Spirit fills us at this Table, we are given eyes to see what really matters and, just like a family meal, we are reminded in simple bread and a cup that what unites us is stronger than what divides us. 

Being an imperfect, reconciling tribe in the midst of kingdoms of power requires great strength and trust in God.  It takes even more courage to proclaim the kin-dom or kingdom of God that is already coming, and to participate as the Spirit urges us to cross divides and seek others’ welfare before our own.  As part of God’s kin, we need no other King.   We need only to engage in the uncomfortable task of making peace in all areas of our lives and come to this Table to remember that we belong to a tribe of grace. 

Reconciliation is no simple task: there’s nothing simple about the cross.  But like those Chagga people in Tanzania, we cannot survive without it.  The survival of the church depends not on adopting economically extravagant kingdom models or building theological arsenals against all those who threaten us.  Our survival as a tribe depends upon our willingness to remain a family and our openness to include all those in search of home. 

Thanks be to the God who calls us family, to the Savior who sets a Table of peace for us and to the Spirit who is bringing a kin-dom, even now.  Amen.