Monday, August 26, 2013

Set Free on the Sabbath

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August 26, 2013
Luke 13:10-17
10Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, "Woman, you are set free from your ailment." 13When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, "There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day." 15But the Lord answered him and said, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?" 17When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Sermon: “Set Free on the Sabbath”

I love Sabbath.  I love it celebrated in worship here as a community, as we embrace a day to remember that the world and our lives do not revolve around us, but around God.  I love covered-dish luncheons like last week’s, and oh boy, do I love Sunday afternoon naps, y’all.

A lot of us pastor folk also like to say that our “Sabbath” is actually our day off during the week, which for me is Friday.  That “Sabbath” day looks like sleeping in, reading novels in coffee shops, lazily cooking soul-satisfying fare, having dinner with friends, curling up with my dog, not checking my email.  Yes, most pastors would say this is a description of what Sabbath is for us.

And we would be wrong.  You see, Sabbath and a day off are not the same thing.  Days off are necessary for all of us: a day to remember that we are not nearly as important as we think we are, and that the world will keep spinning all the same if we take a break.  A day to recharge our bodies and souls so that we have energy to do all the things God calls us to do.  Retired or still working, we all need days off.  But what the world needs is Sabbath.

It’s one of the 10 Commandments, you know: Sabbath.  Right up there with not murdering anyone and not coveting your neighbor’s donkey.  And so it wasn’t just a gentle suggestion by God.  “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” is a non-negotiable as far as God is concerned.  But how do we do this?

Remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy does not just mean taking a nap or showing up for worship (or napping during worship).  Scripture shows us that Sabbath, which we have sought to simplify into meaning “rest”, actually has many meanings.

In Genesis, Sabbath was God taking a satisfied look at all of creation and resting.  But Sabbath came to mean many other things as well.

In Exodus, Sabbath meant the economic sacrifice of not working one day a week.

In Leviticus, the land itself takes a Sabbath on the 7th year to rest from bearing crops, that it might be more fruitful the next year.

In Deuteronomy, Sabbath was set apart as a day to remember God’s great deeds in freeing God’s people from slavery in Egypt.

In Isaiah, the Sabbath was described as a day of holy delight.

And then Jesus came along, and rolled all of these ideas about Sabbath into one.  He managed to make the religious folk furious as he did it.  (The fella sort of enjoyed doing this.)  You see, those who were trying to get this so-called Son of God stopped used the Sabbath to do it.  They constantly tried to prove that Jesus was “breaking” the Sabbath.  And Jesus constantly responded by showing them that the Sabbath was for the “broken.” 

When his disciples were hungry and plucked and ate grain from a field on the Sabbath, and got in trouble for it, Jesus (good Jewish fellow that he was) reminded the religious leaders that David had once eaten consecrated bread on the Sabbath when he and his companions were starving, “breaking” the Sabbath.
 
And Jesus told them, “The Sabbath is made for people, and not people for the Sabbath.”  Which is a cryptic way of saying, the Sabbath is made to bring life to people, not to take it away with prideful rules.  Then, never one to stop short of heresy, he said, “I am the Lord of the Sabbath.”  Oh you know they loved hearing that.

But Jesus’ Sabbath stirring up didn’t end there, y’all.  He went on and healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, and when those same religious folk got angry, he said, “Is it lawful to do harm or good on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?”

Finally, we come to our story in Luke.  You can bet that the synagogue leader let out a sigh of frustration when Jesus walked into the synagogue.  He knew there would be trouble.  And there was.  A woman who was bent over with pain for years and years (we might call it severe arthritis or fibromyalgia these days) came.  She did not come directly to Jesus to be healed, though.  She came to the temple to worship, on the Sabbath.  And Jesus happened to see her in her pain and suffering and decided the Sabbath was for her. 

When the synagogue leader was about to chuck her out for groaning too loudly and disrupting the hymns (she didn’t even sign the friendship pad, y’all!), Jesus called her over.  And right there, right smack in the middle of the synagogue, in plain sight of everyone, he healed her.  Well, in Greek, he loosed her bonds.  He set her free.

That worship leader was irate.  Instead of addressing Jesus directly, he sort of passive-aggressively started stirring up the congregation:  “Do you see this, y’all!  There are six days to work, this lady should have come on one of those days.  This is the Sabbath day, and that means no work!  That means rest.” 

Jesus responded with his favorite pet name for the religious leaders: hypocrites.  (They didn’t like this nickname very much.)  He said that every person there cared for their animals on the Sabbath, not letting them starve and feeding them.  How much more worthy of care was this woman?  Eighteen years was long enough for her to be bound by suffering and sorrow.  The Sabbath day was the perfect day for her to be set free. 

You see, for Jesus, the Sabbath was about rest and recharging, and it was about worshipping God in community.  But it was also about setting people free, right in the midst of that community; a way to honor God by honoring the humanity of a child of God.

Jesus and that synagogue leader read from the same play book, they both knew what the Commandments said, “remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.”  But they interpreted them very differently. 

You see, Jesus did not understand holy to mean free from imperfection or suffering, like the synagogue leader thought holy meant, keeping the wrong sort of people out of worship.  No, for this Lord of the Sabbath, holiness was found in liberating all of God’s children, especially on a day set aside to remember God’s great liberation of the people of Israel from slavery. 

A nice idea, isn’t it?  But you might be thinking, “Okay, so Jesus got it right, he healed people on the Sabbath, I get it…but what does that have to do with me?  I don’t see him coming in here to interrupt your sermon by healing us from heart issues and aching joints!”

And you would be right: Jesus doesn’t promise us healing in that way.  (Though it might be nice if he did come interrupt my sermon some time, don’t you think?!)  But he does bring us freedom if we’ll open ourselves to it.  That bent-over woman was open to the freedom he brought, because she knew that she needed him.  She came when he called her, and so she found it.  The synagogue leader could not see the ways he had made God’s beautiful law a chain to bind himself and others, and so he found no freedom that day.  He found only anger and frustration.

Perhaps in this story, the Lord of the Sabbath is still trying to teach us religious folk what this Sabbath thing is all about.  Teaching us that if we expect Sabbath to mean encountering God for one hour a week only, then that is all we will see of God, though God is woven through our most hectic days, too.  That if we expect Sabbath to be predictable and ordinary, with God never teaching us something new or freeing us in this community, then that is all Sabbath will ever be for us.

But what if we embrace the full meaning of Sabbath as Jesus did?  What if we say it is for rest but also for remembering how God has carried us through difficult times when we lacked the energy to see a new day? 

What if we believe that Sabbath is a time for all to be renewed, even the earth itself, and then play our part in that renewal?  What if we trusted that freedom on the Sabbath was possible, not just for us, but for those whose backs are bent with the weight of worry or injustice?

Sabbath can be incredibly tame and predictable, as the synagogue leader worked so hard to make it.  Or Sabbath can be the space where we open our schedules, our hearts, this world, to the God who as far as we know took only that one Sabbath rest after creating us, and has tirelessly worked for our freedom ever since. 

So what will it be for us?  A Sabbath of comfortable bondage to the way we’ve always done it, or a Sabbath of being set free by Christ so we can in turn set others free?  The former will keep us finding God in the old, familiar ways, and thus staying exactly as we have ever been.  But the latter, if we have the wild courage to follow it, will lead us to discovering God in all the wrong places: in the poor, the weighed down, the forgotten, the broken in body or spirit (or both). 

Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.  But remember, also, that it’s not about you (or me).  It’s about the Lord of the Sabbath, and he is still, and always will be, about the work of setting people free, calling us to join him.  Will we?  Amen.

Stressed-Out Savior


August 18, 2013
Luke 12:49-56
49"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! 51Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! 52From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; 53they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
54He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain'; and so it happens. 55And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat'; and it happens. 56You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

Sermon: “Stressed-Out Savior”

You really don’t want to invite Jesus anywhere: there’s no telling what that guy might say! 

Case in point: I was once at a worship service in which a baby was being baptized.  You would think Jesus would fit in well there, right?  Well he did, when someone read these words from Matthew, “Jesus called a child, whom he put among them and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

And we were all sitting there with gentle smiles on our faces, thinking, “What a nice thing to say, Jesus.  Beautiful.”

Unfortunately the person reading scripture didn’t end there…Jesus went on to say, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea.”

That sweet smile on our faces turned to an awkward frown.  That’s a little intense, isn’t it Jesus?  He sounds more like the Godfather than the Son of God!  Like I said, you just never know what Jesus is going to say.

Our scripture reading this morning is another doozy.  Now, I’m not sure if Jesus just didn’t get enough coffee that morning, or if someone cut him off in traffic as he rode his camel, or if he accidentally put salt in his cheerios.  But he is grumpy!  This whole section of Luke sounds like a divine temper tantrum:

Jesus gets invited to the home of a Pharisee for supper and goes, but refuses to wash his hands first. 

When the Pharisee politely points him towards the bathroom, Jesus goes off.  “Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness!”  Awkward.  You can bet he didn’t get asked back to dinner.

He spends quite a bit of time calling people “fools” at this point.  And then he tops off all of that grumpy speech with, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”

And then he says what should never be the Bible reading at a family reunion, describing that division as father against son, mother against daughter, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and vice-versa. 

Man, you can’t bring this guy anywhere!  He’s not safe at baptisms, creates a scene at dinner parties and stirs up ill-will at family reunions.

So, what is all this division talk about anyway?  Isaiah promises a Messiah who will be called the Prince of Peace.  Luke’s Gospel begins by telling us that Jesus will “guide our feet in the way of peace.”  When Jesus healed the sick, he wished peace upon them.  He told his followers, when sharing the good news in towns and villages, to give the peace of God to them.  And at the end of this Gospel, when the resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples, he doesn’t say “You fools!” but instead, “Peace be with you.” 

Well, as with all scripture, a look at the original language helps.  English has very clear understandings of peace and division: in Greek, his words lose none of their intensity, but are a bit more clear. 

At this point in Luke, Jesus’ “face is set toward Jerusalem”: he knows what he must do, that this mission of his will move from words and sermons to painful actions and sacrifice, and quick.  He has no time to waste, so he does not mince his words.  This is not the time to gently goad people into being faithful.  This is the time to shock them into joining a movement that will change their world (and everyone’s world) forever. 

Jesus begins, “"I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!”

A stressed-out Savior.  Except, (throwing my sermon title into question), there wasn’t exactly a word for “stressed” in Greek.  What Jesus did say is that he was “sunechomai,” pressed together, barely held together, felling like he could fall apart at any moment.  It is really important that he used this word, because I believe this whole passage centers around the idea of being held together or breaking apart.

He goes on to say that most troubling phrase, that the English Standard Version unfortunately translates as, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  Funny how we always remember the most shocking translation of Bible verses, even if they’re not true to the original language.

Jesus said nothing of a sword.  What he said in Greek was, “I did not come to bring eirene,” which is to mean, things held perfectly together in wholeness.  “I came to bring division, things broken apart.”  Remember that Jesus had spent an awful lot of energy speaking to the religious folk who were more intent on teaching him the orthodox truth that would keep him from going too far in his claims about God and himself, on keeping him safely boxed in so he couldn’t change their religious tradition.

And so this word is for them, as much as it is for us, “I did not come to keep things nice and neat, to bring whole, easy answers, to baptize your life with comfort.  I did not come so you could put me in a nice, predictable box.  I do not enjoy being pressed together in that way.   I came to bring the fire of the Holy Spirit, to divide your life, to split open all of the simple ways you have thought of me.  I came to break open this world with something bigger than you could ever imagine: bigger even than family connections, y’all.”

Then he talks about the weather (but not in a small talk sort of way).  He says, “You see clouds, and you know rain is coming.  You feel a hot breeze, and you know you better get that iced tea ready.  But the fabric of the universe is shifting beneath your feet, and you don’t even notice!” 

Jesus speaks about “interpreting” the present time.  But that English word isn’t quite right, either.  In Greek, he calls them to examine the present time.  To see the ways the world is being broken open—divided—by God-With-Them.  To see that Jesus didn’t just come to heal and talk.  He came to split open a simple and self-righteous understanding of religion.  He came to break the power of sin and death forever.   In this sense, we can most certainly say that he did not come to bring wholeness, but division.

I think we are much like his audience that day, wondering if this so-called Savior was cracking under the pressure of so much public speaking and healing. 

Our entire lives, entire societies, are built around the idea that we should be whole: We follow the paths laid out for us, careful not to stray away from what society and our families tell us is safe and good.  We compartmentalize our lives so that we are capable of swallowing all of our pain and doubt and still functioning.  We put God in the box we need God in, because we really don’t have the time or energy to think in a new way.

When we reach this point of thinking the story of Jesus coming is just a nice fairy tale, or worse, something we fully grasped years ago and so have nothing new to learn of it, Jesus comes.  And he comes with awkwardly shocking language.  He comes telling us that nothing is safe, not even fathers and mothers, sons and daughters.  All is within the realm of this coming Kingdom.  And all will be broken open.

You see, for Jesus this was a matter of life and death, and life again.  It still is.  There’s no time to waste with simple platitudes and easy answers, with compartmentalized pain and tamed hope.  Jesus comes to break open our vision, so that we can examine the fabric of this world shifting beneath our feet, and rather than fearing it, boldly follow where God is going.

If we think that our lives and this world fits neatly together in a comfortable state of peace, all it takes is one explosive protest, one shocking phone call, one word spoken without thinking, one number on a lab report, to turn it all upside down.  We all know this.  So does God.

And so we are given a Savior who can handle our fractured lives, who knows that complete wholeness is an illusion, and who doesn’t fear moments of conflict, anger and division, but instead turns them into resurrection.

Jesus may not be safe at dinner parties, baptisms or family reunions.   He might make us examine the ways we feel barely held together, and how others do as well, and then embrace our divided selves as he does. 

He might make us examine the ways this world only pretends to be held together, while persistently being on the brink of falling apart.  He might make us examine how we have made faith a treadmill we doggedly walk upon, never daring to step off into the unknown.  Because of this, he is exactly the sort of wild Savior we need.

Thanks be to the God who holds this fractured world completely, to the Savior who does not promise us security but instead promises us his very self, and to the Spirit who is bringing a breaking-in Kingdom, even now.  Amen.

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Never-Ending Story


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August 11, 2013
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
1Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. 3By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

8By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old-and Sarah herself was barren-because he considered him faithful who had promised. 12Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, "as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore."

13All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, 14for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. 16But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.


Sermon: “The Never-Ending Story”

I find it laughable that I would be remembered for my faith.  Actually, I have found a lot of things laughable in my life.  Especially that day when, as an old woman, three strangers appeared under some oak trees in our front yard, with some startling news.  You see, God had made a promise to my husband Abraham and me, Sarah, many, many years ago: that we would have children as numerous as the stars, and that those children would bless the whole world.  But that promise was as old as I was, sore and tired, and never in my wildest dreams did I expect to come true.   But it turns out, God has even wilder dreams. 

“Sarah’s going to have a baby!” I heard those men say to my husband.  Y’all, I had to grip the tent pole to keep from falling over.  The first thoughts were panic and those one word questions: “What? HOW? What? Really?  But HOW?”  And then the ludicrousness of the moment took over.  I began to laugh.  Not a polite giggle either.  A loud, tears-streaming-down-your face, doubled-over gaffaw!  Me, Sarah, a mother when I’m old enough to be a great-grandmother??  Hilarious.   But you see, God has something of a sense of humor.  It was true.

Your book of Hebrews talks about my family as the example of faith.  It names all the wonderful parts, when my husband went on a grand adventure in the wilderness, it mentions my son Isaac and his son Jacob as great pillars of God’s promise, and, like that first promise made to us, it says our descendants were as many as the stars of heaven, as innumerable as grains of sand on the seashore.  And all of this, according to Hebrews, happened “by faith.”

Your book makes it sound like we are the “poster family” for faith.  Maybe we are.  But not because of all of those wonderful moments.  You see, faith is not tested or proved in those shining moments of joy.  Faith is made real in darkness.  Funny your book doesn’t mention those moments. 

It doesn’t tell you that, many years after God’s promise of children to my husband and me, I gave up.  In my time, a woman who couldn’t have children was pretty useless in society.  I felt invisible.  And so I gave up on that promise, assuming it was only meant for Abraham, and not me.  I told him to do what he had to do to have children: which involved my slave-girl Hagar. 

I thought I was being generous and unselfish.  It turns out, that act completely destroyed my trust in my husband, and made me even more bitter.  But by faith, I made it through that.

Your book doesn’t tell you about what happened after the day I laughed at that impossibly good news of having a baby.  I had my son, somehow enduring the ordeal of giving birth at such an age, and named him Isaac, meaning “Laughter” in my language.  (Of course.)  But that Laughter nearly died at the hands of my husband.

I found it curious one morning, when Abraham wanted to take Isaac up to the mountains of Moriah for a sacrifice to God, but did not take any sacrificial animal.  I felt a strange disquiet, but trusted him.  And I regretted that.  Isaac came back from that mountain totally changed.  He no longer seemed like a little boy.  Something deeply troubling had happened there, something so horrible he couldn’t even tell me, his mother.  Abraham looked shell shocked, too. 

“God told me to make the ultimate sacrifice.” he said.  “God told me to sacrifice Isaac, but at the very last minute, God changed his mind.”  There are no words to describe the fury I felt towards Abraham.  It never went away.  I told him he was a senile old man who was hearing things and that God would never ask us to kill the child that was promised so long ago.  I did not speak to him for a month, and couldn’t look him in the eye for longer than that.  I’m not sure I ever understood what happened on that mountain, and I don’t think Abraham or Isaac did, either.  By faith, we made it through that.

And then, eventually, my story on earth came to an end.  But we know that this life doesn’t end here, don’t we?  I received my promised land, and it is beautiful.  And I continued to watch after my boys, from here.  I saw when my son Isaac married Rebekah.  In the written story it says, “Isaac took Rebekah and she became his wife.  So Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.”  I tell you that I was comforted, too, seeing him so happy.  By faith, that broken boy who came down the mountain was whole again.

And would you believe, in this laughable story of mine, that my husband Abraham, that old wiley man, got married again and had even more children?  Oh, that really made me laugh, looking down on that.  I am glad he found someone else.  I gave him a hard time about that (as only a wife can do) when he finally died and joined me here.  By faith, we were reunited.

Your book goes on to speak about Isaac’s son Jacob, the grandson I never knew, as an heir of the promises of God.  What it doesn’t tell you is that Jacob was a bit obsessed with being an heir.  So much so, that he tricked my son in his old age by dressing up like his older brother Esau to steal his inheritance, his blessing.  By fooling his old feeble daddy.  Oddly enough, Rebekah his mom told him to do that, because he was her favorite.  And you think your family is dysfunctional!  You have no idea, y’all.  But by faith, Jacob became a blessing to others instead of a thief, blessing even a Pharaoh before all was said and done. 

I tell you all of this because, as much as I appreciate your book making mention of me, I’d prefer you to know the whole story.  All of those dark and painful chapters where our faith as a family was actually proved.  When we really, really did not like one another but loved one another all the same.  When there was little trust and lots of hurt, and we still held on. 

Your book says that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  This is so true.  God wants us to have enough imagination, enough wild dreams, to believe that whatever frustration we are facing, whether that be from our family, our work, or our friends, is not the end of the story.  Faith is believing there will always be another chapter.

You have a saying that I wish I had known a long time ago, that captures this idea well: “Don’t put a period where God puts a comma.” 

So, if you like, remember me, Sarah, for my laughter and my faith.  But when you do, remember my whole story so that maybe, when your own story seems like a happy ending is not possible, you might find the faith to love even when it’s not deserved, to forgive even when you’re too furious to speak, and to trust that God’s wild dream for you will come true.  And who knows?  Maybe someday someone will write down your story, as an example to others, as a chapter of this never-ending story of faith we share.

Oh, and one more thing, y’all.  Whatever you experience, whatever you face, don’t forget to laugh, okay?  Sometimes, that’s the most faithful thing you can do.  Amen.