Sunday, November 17, 2013

The New from the Old

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November 17, 2013

Isaiah 65:17-25
17For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-and their descendants as well. 24Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent-its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.


Sermon:  “The New from the Old”

Confession time: pastor-types are among the most sacrilegious people you’ll ever come across.  It’s why sometimes we try to explain the Trinity with a chocolate chip cookie (dough: Father, chocolate chips: Jesus, nuts: Spirit).  It’s why we love a good religious joke, such as:

How many Presbyterians does it take to change a lightbulb?
“Change?  What do you mean change?  Why would anything need to change??

Our favorite topic of satire is other Christians, just as each of us has the most fun ridiculing our family, and honestly, there’s a wealth of material there.  In seminary, we most enjoyed poking fun at the Left Behind Series, a collection of Christian fiction novels that depict the end times, which has now been immortalized in film starring Kirk Cameron.

According to those books, at some point, people who accept Jesus will literally be raptured up into heaven, beam-me-up-Scotty-style.  If they happen to be flying a plane or driving a car at the time, well that’s just tough.  Those who didn’t pray a prayer in the right way are, you know, “left behind.” 

Then a slick suit-wearing Antichrist will arise and manipulate his way into driving the world into suffering and darkness.  And someday, at the end of all that horror, God will decide enough’s enough, and set things right with a new heaven and new earth, destroying the old in the process.

All of this is somewhat based on scripture, but a very literalist take on what was mean to be poetry in the book of Revelation.  What Dawn read for us this morning was never meant to be understood as a blueprint for the step-by-step progression of the end times, as the Left Behind series indicates.  It was actually acted out, not read, in the early church and like any good play, it used over-the-top drama to get people to ask hard questions about what life and sin and heaven were all about. 

We change-loving Presbyterians have a way of reading scripture, and it’s relatively simple.  Scripture interprets scripture.  Things can’t be picked out and raised above others, we take it all as a whole.  And as John Calvin said, we read that word through the rule of faith and life, that is, through our relationship with God through Jesus Christ and through real life with all of its joys and struggles. 

So this “Left Behind” business just doesn’t cut it, because it doesn’t engage scripture with itself or with the real world, but instead seeks to escape it all.  Holding all of scripture together, we read Revelation by first hearing its parent text: our Isaiah reading from today.

There we hear the bold promises of God who will restore a broken people, wiping away the past forever.  Crying and young death will be no more, and life will not be a radical escape but a radical relishing of the gifts of creation, of food and drink, of home and work.  Before people even call out to God, God will hear them. 

But this promise, unlike that limited Left Behind one, is not just for people.  It’s for animals, too!  The lamb will eat with the wolf (and not be eaten by it).  It would seem vegetarianism is in God’s great plan for the world, because the lion eats straw.  The serpent, that crafty creature, will eat dust.  Perhaps we would we call that...dirtatarian?

Then comes that greatest of promises:  They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the Lord. 

Who is ‘they?’  I asked a friend much more versed in Hebrew than I am, and it’s not what I expected.  These words were first spoken by Isaiah to a people crushed by an invading army.  I assumed, as we often do, that “they” meant their enemies.  But God’s vision of a new heaven and new earth does not include such a distinction.  “They” in the Hebrew here includes everyone, the entire re-created order: people, animals, everyone in this new Jerusalem.  It is not just “they” who hurt and destroy in this life.  It is unfortunately also “we.”  And so God’s ultimate hopeful promise is that we will become our best selves, and no longer hurt one another and destroy God’s good creation.  Sorry Left Behind fellas, but I prefer this vision of things to come.

God does not bring a new heaven and a new earth in order to destroy creation.  This is the same God who crafted every speck of this planet and us and called it very good.  This is the same God who did, once upon a time, flood the earth in its wickedness and start over, but who also promised to never, ever do that again. 

Do we trust God’s promises?  Do we reject a lesser (but somehow more marketable and profitable) god of anger and violence against whoever we understand “them” to be, in order to embrace the God who entered into this world willingly to transform “us” and “them” for all time?

I hope we do.  Because if we do, there is so much good news.  And this is not the fluffy, feel-good, stuff of Hallmark cards and Christmas Coca Cola commercials.  This is the earth-shattered with the grace of heaven, world re-creating good news of the One who is creating newness, even now.

This new heaven and new earth is not a get-out-of-pain-free card for those faithful enough to cash it in, as some might have us believe.  The God we follow chose to enter this world in a transformative and troubled way, and so we do not get to check out of this life.  We live it, just as Christ did, with all of its darkness and light, heaviness and hope.  This new heaven and new earth is not escape. 

It is transformation.  This stuff – the stuff of pain and sorrow, the stuff of a wolf-eat-sheep world and lions threatening the weak, the stuff of weeping children and old grudges, this is the stuff out of which God’s newness is made. 

We do not know why this life can be so terribly hard at times, and we do not know why God allows it to be this way.  But we do know God, at least in part.  And the God we know in scripture, the God we know in our faith in Jesus Christ, the God we see in our real life, that God can be trusted.  And that God who called everything ‘good’, still sees goodness in this messy world, and still works to help us see it, too.  This God is, at the very heart of things, a Creator, and not a Destroyer. 

So, have hope.  We do not get to escape this life’s trouble, but we get something even better: we get the promise that there is new life on the other side of it.  Isn’t that what this good news is all about?  Isn’t that why we pray for each other and this world, trusting that promise? 

Change is coming, whether we Presbyterians like it or not.  But it is not a change we need to fear.  It is the change of sorrow for joy and weeping for delight, of hunger for feasting and violence for everlasting peace.  The God who created us all – animals included – isn’t done yet.  Not even close.  And that is good news!  Amen.


Present-Day Saints


November 3, 2013 -- All Saints' Observance
Ephesians 1:11-23

15I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Sermon: Present-Day Saints

I know a saint named Ted.  He is in his early 70’s, with wild salt-and-pepper hair and an unruly beard and coke bottle glasses.  He has ALS and so, every few minutes, his body jolts of its own accord.  Ted always, always, wears pearl snap plaid shirts, haphazardly tucked into his faded blue jeans. 

I met Ted in a coffee shop a few years ago.  A bit bewildered to be back in Texas after two years in Northern Ireland as a mission worker, I tentatively entered the coffee shop in my hometown, armed with my laptop so I could search for a church (I found you that way, you know!).  Always eager to get near a window, I took a seat parallel to Ted, with a table between us.  He had his laptop, too, and large headphones to hear the old Western movie he was watching.  I engaged in the socially-closed-off ritual of putting my headphones in, too, and didn’t say a word to him.  This continued for the next several coffee shop trips. 

But for some reason one day, our eyes met.  “I know you,” he said, matter of factly.  “Really?” I replied, as I took out my headphones.  “Yep, I’m Ted, and I used to teach you in shop class in middle school.”  What I did next was hopefully Oscar-worthy, “Ohh, yesss,” I said, squinting at him to take a closer look.  “Of course I remember you!”  Honestly, y’all, I had no recollection whatsoever of ever having met him in my life.

But with Ted’s memory, connecting me to my past in that town as I searched what future God might have in store for me, Ted and I became fast friends.  Every Monday morning, as part of an unspoken ritual, we met there, still with our laptops, him watching old movies and me call searching.  But we also talked a good bit each Monday, and refilled each other’s coffee.

That saint Ted is a very spiritual person, though he says his wife is a much more devout Catholic than he is.  He would keep up with my interviews and travels and always check in about how my search was going, reminding me he was praying for me, and I would hear about the work he was doing on his land and pray for his health. 

In a wilderness time between calls, knowing that saint Ted would be at the coffee shop each Monday morning was not only a comfort.  It was a tangible reminder of God’s presence in my life. 

Frederick Buechner once said, “In God’s holy flirtation with the world, God sometimes drops a handkerchief. Those handkerchiefs are called saints.”

I am grateful to God for dropping Ted back into my life.  And I am sure that each of you, when thinking back on your life, especially on times that were challenging and uncertain, can think of saints God has dropped into your path, bringing you hope.

I think this is what the writer of the letter to the Ephesians was getting at when he wrote, “with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which God has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.” 

In the eyes of the world, there was nothing particularly powerful about Ted, especially as his body grew ever weaker.  He did not command the attention of any room, and you could tell from his chatty energy that he was used to just blending in to corners, never being spoken or listened to. 

Saints are not the spiritual greats of our days, nor are they the most powerful or brilliant or beautiful or successful.  The Greek word for saint – hagios – literally means, “different.”  Saints are those who dare to be different: to speak in a society of technological isolation, to remember the connections to their other fellow human beings.  Jesus spoke of such saints when he said,
Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.  Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 

What he’s really getting at is this:  blessed are you saints who dare to be different for the sake of my kingdom.  Blessed are you who go ignored, because you do not ignore others.  Blessed are you who long for health, because you do not define people by their disease.  Blessed are you who are teary eyed, for you allow yourself and others to actually feel.  Blessed are you when you are mocked or labeled “dreamer” or “strange,” because God’s kingdom is built of saints like you.

God drops saints in our lives, and the mark they leave on us never goes away.  They are extraordinarily ordinary people, people we could sit next to for months and never really see.  But if we allow God to open the eyes of our hearts, we will see that saints are all around us – present day saints as well as those who know eternal life and never fully leave us.

These saints show us how to live with authenticity and courage.  They teach us the power found in the vulnerability of saying hello to a stranger.  They fill us with hope that the kingdom of God is not some ancient dream or distant promise but is here, now, in our midst. 

Being a saint is not that complicated, really.  Ted taught me that.  All it takes is an open heart and open eyes.  All it takes is recognizing a long-lost friend in the stranger next to you.  All it takes is the courage to be different.

There is a power at work within us: the same power that blessed those the world cursed and ignored, the same power that challenged the proud and arrogant, the same power that refused to let death win. It is the power of Christ within us, and it is what makes saints of shop teachers, and of us, if we’ll open ourselves up to it. 

Thanks be to the God who drops saints like unexpected gifts into our lives, to the Lord who is above all and through all and in all, and to the Spirit who binds us together with saints of every time and place in this one body of Christ the church.  Amen.

The Spirit of Freedom

October 27, 2013
Joel 2:23-32
23O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God; for he has given the early rain for your vindication, he has poured down for you abundant rain, the early and the later rain, as before. 24The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.
25I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.
26You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. 27You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I, the LORD, am your God and there is no other. And my people shall never again be put to shame.
28Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. 29Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.
30I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. 31The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 32Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.



Sermon: “The Spirit of Freedom”

I was only a child when I heard the prophet Joel speak.  I was in the marketplace buying grain for my master.   A slave at the age of 8, I had no hope of ever seeing my family again. 

His first words were, “O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God!”  What an absurd thing to say.  Even at 8, I knew it was ridiculous.  How was I supposed to rejoice, as I carried grain that I would not get to eat, knowing that spilling a single grain would result in harsh punishment by my master?  I did not even know what it was to be glad anymore: each day was as monotonous and harsh as the one before it, and I had no reason to believe it could change.

But for some reason, though it would mean my master’s anger at me taking too long to return, I stayed there, in that marketplace and listened.  His words were like water in the parched places of my soul.

“God has given the early rain for your vindication, has poured down for you abundant rain.  The threshing floors shall be full of grain, the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” he said. 

I wasn’t sure what ‘vindication’ meant, but I did know what grain, wine and oil meant.  I was nearly starved, and thought with anger that a child should not have, “What good does all that do me??  I’ll still go hungry and invisible.”

But then he said, “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.”  YOU shall eat in plenty and be satisfied.  That meant me.  I almost dropped my master’s bag of grain in shock at such a statement.  I felt like he was talking directly to me: the dirty, barefooted 8-year old slave. 

Where did he get these ideas?  He said I wouldn’t be put to shame again.  Could he know the shame that I carried around every waking moment, the shame of being unable to stop those horrible Babylonians from breaking my family apart and taking my sisters and brothers and even my parents into slavery?  My shame had been with me so long, I didn’t even know how I would feel without it.

People started laughing at that prophet Joel at this point.  “What nonsense!” they shouted.  Some even threw the rotten fruit from the market at him.  But he only became more determined.  There was a fire in his eyes that told me that this was no ordinary man, and that my life depended on hearing what he had to say.

Picking up a rotten fig that had been thrown at him, I gobbled it down greedily, and kept listening.

Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”  That Spirit sounded comforting and real.  But I was not a son anymore, I thought bitterly.  My family was gone.  I belonged to no one.  I was no one.  The small flicker of hope he had stirred in me went out again, and I turned to leave.  His words were not for me – an 8 year old slave boy.

I’m not sure if he saw me struggling to shuffle away with my heavy bag of grain or if that Spirit he spoke of told him to speak, but his next words stopped me dead in my tracks:

Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”

Suddenly tears sprang to my eyes and I turned.  I noticed that the marketplace had grown very still all of a sudden.  Slaves were dropping their heavy purchases for their masters, and for the first time in a very long time, standing up straight.  I let my bag of grain fall to my feet and did the same.

God’s Spirit poured on us?  Even uttering such words in a public place could have gotten him killed.  In fact, several merchants’ faces grew dark with rage and they started muttering to one another. 

I remember my mother teaching me about the great God of our people, Yahweh.  I remember hearing that he had taken my ancestors out of slavery once very long ago in Egypt.  I remember that they had been led by a pillar of smoke and flame in the wilderness, and how the sky, the sky, had rained food!  But that God could not be around anymore.  I considered those old stories fairy tales, things people just told themselves to feel better. 

Perhaps Yahweh used to do great signs and wonders and miracles, but not now.  Now, we were all broken, hopeless, scattered, alone.  That God was gone.

Except that there was Joel, refusing to be silenced by the merchants.  As they tried to seize him, he shouted even louder: 

“I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the LORD has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the LORD calls.”

At the mention of “survivors” and “escape” something amazing happened.  All of us slaves, who were so accustomed to being silent and invisible, started shouting.  I was astounded to hear my 8-year-old voice crying out with theirs.

It was a primal cry: full of the anger of broken families, the heartache of occupation, the despair of feeling abandoned as a people.  But it was also a cry of joy: his message made no sense, but somehow we knew it was true.  We knew that God’s Spirit would come and bring us freedom because even then, in that moment, our souls felt more free than they had in years.

I never saw Joel again, but I can guess what sort of sticky end he came to.  After he was dragged away, we all took up our loads again, only now they didn’t seem so heavy.  Though those slave burdens could be felt in our hands and on our backs, they didn’t seem real anymore.  What was real, in this world of despair and abuse of power, was Joel’s words.  A Spirit would be poured on all of us, a Spirit that would bring us a freedom unlike any we had ever known, and we could already feel it beginning.

When I returned to my master, clearly very late, he hurt me.  He called me “worthless slave” and kicked me.  He told me I was “nothing.”  But though my ears heard those words and my body was bruised, there was something within me now that he couldn’t touch, something Joel’s words had put there.  It was hope.

Before I met Joel, I thought that the most powerful force in the world was despair.  I saw how it stamped down our people, until we were breathing but not really alive.  I saw how the slave owners used it to make us feel weak and less than human.  But I was wrong.  Despair is not the most powerful force in the world: hope is. 

It was completely foolish to hope that there would be a day when we wouldn’t be slaves anymore, when God’s Spirit would be poured on all of us, when there would be enough food for all.  But hope is always a bit foolish, isn’t it? 

And that sort of foolishness makes all the difference in the world.  Which I suppose is why Joel was willing to give his life for it.  Trusting that God’s Spirit wasn’t just something of the past, but was alive and freeing us from what enslaved us, even now, was foolish.  Believing that a day of liberation was coming was foolish. 

But, I’ve come to believe that God works in foolish ways on purpose.  You see, this world thinks it is so very wise, with its ways of getting power by pushing others down, of some eating and drinking too much just because they can, knowing full and well that others go hungry.  Wisdom in this world allows children to be enslaved in civil wars or in cocoa plantations or in families that don’t love them.  Wisdom in this world says that God only helps those who help themselves, and God loves the important best.

So of course, God’s Spirit must be foolish: foolishly poured out equally on everyone, foolishly mocking the ways of greed and power, foolishly hopeful in the face of despair.

There’s something I learned as a child slave, and that is that everyone is a slave, in one way or another.  Some as enslaved by people desperate for power.  Some are enslaved by the need to be important or right.  Some are enslaved by addiction, worry or fear.  And nearly all of us are enslaved by despair, something we carry around like I carried that heavy sack of grain in the marketplace, assuming we’ll never be able to let it go. 

But I’ll tell you what Joel told us that day:  The Spirit of God is upon you, and that Spirit is more real that your despair.  So, let it go.  Throw it down, stand up straight, and know that you are not invisible to God.  And know that no one else is, either, even those who seek to keep you down.

When freedom finally came, as I knew it would, it didn’t feel as dramatic as I thought it might.  I realized that God’s Spirit had already stirred a freedom within me, even as I was still enslaved.  Mostly, I was given freedom from anger and bitterness, freedom from thinking I deserved God’s presence any more or less than anyone else. 

“O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the LORD your God,” Joel had said.  It sounded foolish at the time, and it was.  But I say the same thing to you, in the middle of whatever despair or worry enslaves you, “O children, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God” because God’s Spirit is with you, even now, and will never leave you.  You are free.  Amen.