Sunday, February 22, 2015

Rebel with a Cause: Completing the Law


February 22, 2015 -- First Sunday of Lent

Exodus 20:1-17
Then God spoke all these words:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation[b] of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that theLord your God is giving you.
13 You shall not murder.
14 You shall not commit adultery.
15 You shall not steal.
16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Matthew 5:14-20
14 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.


Sermon:

I was in the grocery store line behind an exhausted mother and her frustrated toddler the other day.  The mother was at least five years younger than me, with her unwashed hair hastily pulled up in a haphazard ponytail, donned in sweatpants and a t-shirt.  The little boy couldn’t have been more than five, and he was clearly not in the mood for grocery shopping.  He kept trying to reach for candy and say, “Mine!” and his mom would snap at him with an irritated, “NO.”

Eventually, the little boy started crying.  The mother’s emotions overflowed as well as her voice rose in anger.  “Just do what I tell you!” she shouted in the little boy’s face.  “Why won’t you just behave?   What do you have to be so bad all the time?!”  And then she slapped his arm.  Hard.

He just stared back at her for a moment, taking that in.  And then another wail rose as the spiral continued, of them pulling each other into deeper and deeper frustration.

I don’t know what it’s like at home for that young mom.  I don’t know if she has other kids, or if she works a couple of minimum wage jobs to try to pay for those groceries she was buying.  I don’t know if she has a partner at home, or if her only company is screaming toddlers.  But I do know this: whatever it was she was trying to communicate to her toddler, it wasn’t working.  He wasn’t able to be who she wanted him to be through her shouts and slaps.  Like many children, he probably realized that he most had his mother’s attention when he misbehaved, and so he kept it up on purpose. 

“Why won’t you just behave?  Why do you have to be so bad all the time?” she demanded. 

What is it exactly, that makes us change our behavior for others, or for God?  Is it the knowledge that we are fundamentally bad all the time, that we are a constant source of disappointment?

Is that why God gave us the 10 commandments, the law, as strict rules for us, so that maybe God won’t be so annoyed at us all the time?  Is God just an overworked, exhausted, unwashed mother, tired of another tantrum and ready to just slap us?

Perhaps.  Or perhaps we’ve just reduced the gracious law of God to rules.  Rules keep us in line.  Rules keep us sure of who’s in and who’s out.  Rules show us what is expected of us.  Rules make us feel safe.

But they weren’t called the 10 Rules, now were they?  They were called the 10 commandments.  And commandment is mitzvah, the Jewish word for commitment.  And mitzvah is deeply rooted in covenant relationship.  Those commandments are housed in an understanding that God chose a people for peace (shalom) and life.  That God graciously ordered their life together to make that a reality.  To understand commandments – the law of God – outside of the context of that covenant relationship God created, is to reduce them to a to-do list. 

Lent can sometimes feel like that.  Do this: pray more.  Don’t do that: eat chocolate or drink coffee.  Do this: go to church.  Don’t do that: spread gossip.  Do this: show how faithful you are to others.  Don’t do that: admit your doubts.

And, just like the law without covenant becomes hollow, so does this season.  It becomes simply one big guilt trip, 40 days of remembering what disappointments we are to our weary Parent God.  But that is not what the law was meant to do, and that is not what Lent was meant to be.

Jesus came to place the law of God back where it should be – housed within an understanding of God’s covenantal love for us, a covenant extended to all of us.  He came to say that this law wasn’t just a rule book or to-do list.  He came to put flesh and blood on the reality that God will go to extraordinary lengths to show us we matter, and we cab ne better.  He came not to abolish, destroy, the law, but to fulfill it.  The word is actually “complete.”  The same word Jesus uttered from the cross when he was murdered by the State: “It is complete.”

Why was the law made “complete” on the cross?  That’s what we’ll discover together this Lent, as we journey with this “rebel with a cause” Jesus.  You see, when you redefine the law as what it was always meant to be – about covenant relationship with God and one another – that is a very threatening thing.

It threatens the Keepers of the Rules: the religious leaders who use the law as a tool for segregation and spiritual domination; the political leaders who use the law as a tool for social subjugation and power.  Make no mistake: Jesus didn’t go to the cross because our vengeful, angry, tired God wanted to slap somebody and slapped her son instead of us. 

Jesus went to the cross because he chose to.  He went to the cross because he consistently subverted the Keepers of the Rules and extended the covenantal love of God to those they deemed unworthy.  He went to the cross because he broke the rules of men to complete the loving law of God. 

If we are going to take this Lenten journey to the cross, we will need to understand that Jesus didn’t walk around placidly holding sheep all the time.  He turned over tables of oppression.  He flagrantly broke Sabbath rules by healing no matter what day of the week it was.  He mocked a Pharisaic idea of what cleanness and uncleanness meant, and sipped water with a Samaritan woman.  He called people hypocrites when that’s what they were being, and asserted that a faith community could sort out its own conflicts without a power-hungry priest-type manipulating the situation.  He told the most powerful in society that the greatest were the servants.  And finally, he said he was the Son of God, the Messiah.  He was not a mild, meek Messiah.  He was a revolutionary, a renegade, an agitator of the status quo.  And they killed him for it. 

This Lent, let’s get to know that Jesus.  Let’s get to know why he fulfilled the law by bending the rules towards justice and love.  Let’s let his holy anger and righteous resistance unsettle us for these 40 days.  And then lets come to the cross together, to see the law made complete in his sacrifice. 

We may think we know the law.  But do we know law in the context of covenantal relationship?  We may think we know Jesus. But do we know the Jesus who ushered in a peaceful insurrection along with the resurrection? 

Let’s meet the real Jesus this Lent, that the law of God might be written on our hearts, and recited to our children and grandchildren with love.  Because, rooted in that kind of loving law, we might just be able to change.  We might stop acting out to try to get God’s attention, and instead hear the cries of those in need around us.  We might stop keeping score of how much better we are than others, and instead confess that we’ve never got it exactly right, no matter how good we are at faking it. 


And we might start actually living the risky and self-sacrificial lives our Messiah calls us to, because we know that we are extravagantly loved by our Parent God, and so we know we can love God and our neighbor out of that same extravagance.  Let’s make this journey of Lent a journey towards a law and a life fulfilled in the dangerous love of Jesus Christ, our rebellious Redeemer.  Amen.  

Monday, February 16, 2015

Head in the Clouds

Image Source
February 15, 2015
Mark 9:2-9
2Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.

7Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.


“Head in the Clouds”
I remember the first time I ever flew.  I was fifteen, and my Aunt Karen invited me to come visit her, but to make it extra fun, she bought me a plane ticket to fly 45 minutes to Dallas, instead of a lengthy road trip.  I was elated – flying all by myself!  My parents took me to the airport really early, and so before going to my gate, I had some time to kill.  These days, a fifteen-year-old would probably just play on their phone and hang out at an airport Starbucks.  Not so then.  As soon as I entered that airport as an “unaccompanied minor”, an employee was with me constantly, and promised to take me somewhere “fun” to pass the time before my flight. 

Do you know where they took me?!  The airport nursery!  I mean, there were kids playing with blocks!  I know I’ve always looked really young, but goodness, I was fifteen and mortified to be taken to a nursery. 

Things did get better, though.  I finally got on the plane, and settled in my much-coveted window seat.  After a bit of nervous heavy breathing and frenetic heartbeats at the take off, I watched with wonder as we went up, up, up.  We went through the clouds and my breathing slowed, my heart calmed.  I felt totally at peace, like I was getting a front-row view of heaven that day.  In the clouds, I couldn’t worry about what lay below me – about the insecurities known to any fifteen-year-old, about this school project or that friendship.  There were only the clouds, and me.  My life was totally out of my own hands.  I was free.

I can’t help but wonder if that’s something of what Peter, James and John might have felt that day they went on a hiking trip up a mountain with Jesus, only to have him transfigure before them.  According to our text, we hear that Elijah and Moses appeared with Jesus, and then Peter went into planning mode.  (I’m a planner – I appreciate this.)  He knew it was getting dark, and Pete, he was a worrier.  He also knew that mere mortals shouldn’t really be looking at glow-in-the-dark Jesus, Elijah and Moses.  Like a good boy scout, he was ready to pitch three tents for them.  He was already taking that other-worldly experience and trying to appropriate it into terms he could understand, like calling it just some special camping trip. 

Jesus could have just said, “Pete, calm down.  Just be present in this moment, for once, without worrying about what it might mean.”  He could have stopped glowing. 

But instead, Pete, James and John got their heads in the clouds.  In the Greek, we hear that “a cloud was born to overshadow them.”  Egeneto – Genesis, born.  They were surrounded by new clouds, and they couldn’t even see Jesus anymore.  They were no doubt terrified.  But like me on that first flight as a fifteen-year-old, I suspect they were also enthralled.  Maybe for the first time, these disciples realized how very little in this life was up to them.  Maybe they stopped worrying about what they couldn’t see.  Maybe, just for a moment, they felt free. 

That is what new clouds do, after all: they make us feel both terrified and free.

When carefully laid plans are replaced by life’s spontaneity, a new cloud is born.

When grief weighs heavily, giving every breath an exhausted edge, but reminding us we’re made for more than this one life, a new cloud is born.

When we find ourselves awake in the middle of the night with worry about what we can’t really control, but then eventually drift off to sleep once more, a new cloud is born.

When our meticulous faith is shaken by new thinking or circumstances, a new cloud is born.

Having a new cloud descend upon us is a terrifying experience, but it can also be liberating.  Because, as much as we might feel like we are alone in that foggy din, we are not. 

A voice spoke to Pete, James and John from their cloud: “This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him!” it said.  God spoke, not in the uphill climb to that mountaintop, not in the blinding light, not in the descent as changed people.  God spoke in the cloud of unknowing. 

Perhaps God still speaks best to us when we have our head in the clouds.  In those rare moments where life’s beauty or heartache leave us unable to consider more than the exact moment we are living, to let go of the illusion of control.  As that childlike fifteen-year-old on that plane, I realized how very dependent I was on the pilot.  I couldn’t chart my own course even if I’d wanted to. 

When life’s clouds come, and with them God speaking to us, we realize how utterly dependent we are on God and one another.  We realize that sometimes living in the transfiguring – changing – moment is more important than figuring out what it all means.

The clouds did clear on that mountain.  Pete, James and John were there just as they had been, and so was Jesus.  But before they could begin interpreting that moment, before Pete could plan how to best communicate it, Jesus shushed them.  “Don’t tell anyone,” he said.  “Not yet.  Not until all is finished and I’m raised from the dead.”  I don’t think he said this because others wouldn’t understand this chapter of the book until they knew the whole story.   I think he told them to keep that mountaintop moment to themselves because he knew they didn’t yet understand it, and maybe they never would. 

Often, we don’t understand what happens when the clouds descend in life.  We don’t know why anxiety seems more powerful than hope.  We don’t know why we have to lose people we love.  We don’t know why God constantly resists our habit of boxing Her in.  We just know that, when the clouds come, we let go of the illusion of control of our lives.  We are forced to be still for a fleeting moment and just be.  Not do, not plan, not prove, not explain, not defend.  Just be. 

Jesus being lit up like a Christmas tree revealed his true identity.  The clouds of unknowing revealed to Pete, James and John theirs.  We learn who we are with our head in the clouds.  We learn how “other” God is.  And, if we allow our breathing to relax and our thumping hearts to calm, we will begin to hear that God bending close to us, whispering in our ears through the uneasy fog, saying, “You, child, are my beloved.  Listen.”

We don’t need the bright moments of clarity to see God and ourselves clearly.  We need the clouds, trusting that when we reach out to what we cannot see, God reaches back, and we are not alone. 

Thanks be to the God who led a wandering people to freedom in a cloud each day, and leads us still; to the Son who dimmed his own light to meet us in our shadowed lives; and to the Spirit who fills us with faith beyond our understanding in the fog of the unknown.  Amen.


Sunday, February 8, 2015

Not One Is Missing

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February 8, 2015

Luke 15:1-7
15 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
So he told them this parable: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Isaiah 40:21-31

21  Have you not known? Have you not heard? 
          
Has it not been told you from the beginning? 
          
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 

22  It is God who sits above the circle of the earth, 
          
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; 
     
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, 
          
and spreads them like a tent to live in; 

23  who brings princes to naught, 
         
 and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
24  Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, 
          
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, 
    
 when he blows upon them, and they wither, 
        
  and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25  To whom then will you compare me, 
         
 or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
 26  Lift up your eyes on high and see: 
         
 Who created these? 
    
God who brings out their host and numbers them, 
  
        calling them all by name; 
     
because God is great in strength, 
        
  mighty in power, 
        
  not one is missing.
27  Why do you say, O Jacob, 
         
 and speak, O Israel, 
    
 “My way is hidden from the LORD, 
          
and my right is disregarded by my God”? 

28  Have you not known? Have you not heard? 
     
The LORD is the everlasting God, 
          
the Creator of the ends of the earth. 
    
 He does not faint or grow weary; 
          
his understanding is unsearchable. 

29  He gives power to the faint, 
          
and strengthens the powerless. 

30  Even youths will faint and be weary, 
          
and the young will fall exhausted; 

31  but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, 
       
they shall mount up with wings like eagles, 
     
they shall run and not be weary, 
          
they shall walk and not faint.

Sermon: “Not One Is Missing”
Not one is missing.

Our Creator brings out great hosts and numbers them, 
calling them all by name; 
because God is great in strength, 
 mighty in power, 
not one is missing.

Our Savior seeks out the lost sheep, leaving those who have community to find those who are alone and bring them home, and not one is missing.

But that’s not exactly true, is it?  In the church, many are missing.  It often seems an entire, young generation is missing.

When I was a mission worker in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the church I served recognized the need to be present among young adults.  They saw that hundreds of young adults, college students, lived in the neighborhood around the church.  They were mostly Catholic, but many only went to church when they were home in the country and not when they were away at school in Belfast.

The church heard from other local residents that these students were actually a bit of a problem.  The students would come home from pubs in the wee hours of the morning and make all sorts of noise in their intoxicated state.  Some were even causing damage.  Thursday night seemed to be the worst.

So they decided to do something.  A couple of church leaders set up a table outside the church from midnight to 2:30 a.m. one Thursday night, serving tea, coffee and cookies to the students to sober them up a bit, show them some love, and get them home safely.

When I arrived, this operation had developed into bacon sandwiches as well (there is nothing quite like the smell of bacon to get young adults coming in droves).  Every Thursday night, we shivered together in the cold and served those students.  They told us their deepest struggles (freed up by a spirit of the non-holy variety) and we even would pray with them sometimes.  We served in a powerful way, showing that generation that they mattered to us, and to God.

Do you know how many of those students came to worship, or our other activities?  How many joined our church?  None.  We did get one new member, a 60-year-old recovering alcoholic artist who decided to go on the other side of the table one night and start serving people with us, and never stopped.  But that was all.  No missing generation filling our pews.  No big bump in numbers. 

Here’s the question: was it worth it?  Yes.  Even though we didn’t get those young adults to come to our church?  Yes.  Because we did something even more powerful than getting them to come to church: we took church to them.  That is how we really gather in those who are missing from our churches.

There are a lot of reasons why this generation is missing from our pews. 

Sometimes, people are missing because we don’t really know what we’re inviting them to be a part of.    The truth is, we Presbyterians are really, really good at casseroles, and not that good at explaining the difference God has made in our lives through our church.

Some people are missing because they’ve just given up on church, or prefer to find God in service to others or to find community in friendships. 

There are many reasons why young people are missing from church.  But that might be approaching the question from the wrong direction.  What if they’re not the missing ones?  What if we as the church are who’s missing?

Missing from meaningful discussions of public policy and education for all.

Missing from Carolina Lakes trailer park right up the road, where kids’ parents have to work late and they’re left to their own devices, without guidance, or someone to help them with homework.

Missing from communities plagued by gun violence and gang activity.

Missing from social media where young people are not wasting time, but forming essential community in ways we may not understand.

They’re not missing – this lost generation of the church.  We know exactly where they are – so does God.  It’s just that perhaps we’re not prepared to go there.

You see, going there requires admitting that sometimes, “we’ve always done it this way” doesn’t cut it.

It requires knowing WHY we happen to be a part of church and why that makes life better for us, and communicating this with authenticity and joy.

It requires an end to labeling an entire generation as selfish or lazy or distracted and seeing them as perhaps the most creative, innovative, passionate generation there’s ever been.

It requires recognizing that the missing young people from our church are not our salvation – God is.  Those young people need to know that this God loves and accepts them, and if we don’t bother to show them, who will?

I’ve been here at this wonderful church for 3 years now, and from day one I have heard a constant refrain:  “I just wish we had more young people.”

Here’s the harsh reality: wishing won’t make it so.  We can’t wish an entire generation into being a part of this place.  When church has lost its center of power in society and moved now to a marginal place (which, by the way, isn’t something to fear, because that’s where church started in the first place), we must follow the God who calls everyone by name, seeking them out. 

It’s not enough to “wish” for young people.  Young people in our society, like Isaiah alluded to, are faint and weary with the sorts of pressures many of us can’t even imagine.  They are exhausted by the constant demand to perform better, reform better, conform better.  God wants to gather them home.  God wants us to be a part of that.
Here’s the difficult truth in that gathering: gathering young people home might not mean they come into our pews, like it didn’t mean that for us in Belfast.  It might not mean that, if they were never raised going to church, they’ll find comfort here and join us.  We have to stop treating the missing generation of the church as warm bodies to fill our aging churches.  We have to start treating them like the creative prophets they are, and go to where they are, and then, by the grace of God, let them change us.

Do we “want” more youth?

Then we need to first of all support those we have.  22 young people under the age of 25 are members of this church.  An additional 6 were baptized here and haven’t yet been confirmed as members.  That is about ¼ of our congregation!  Some are children and teenagers, busy with basketball, karate, scouts and dance and other activities.  They might not be in church every Sunday.  But have we taken church to them?  Have we filled a car with people and been to a basketball game to support them?  Have we been to a concert or a dance recital to show we care?

Some are young adults, here and away at school, working and learning and needing to know they are still a part of this family, especially in a time when they’re figuring out who they are and who they want to be.  The PW Valentine’s gift cards are a wonderful step in showing them our love, but we can do even more.

If we feel young people are missing, and God’s vision is for no one to be missing, we need to first seek out our own who might feel disconnected and forgotten.

Then, we need to get outside of our set ways of doing things, and get outside our walls.
This might look like mentoring a young person who needs a positive role model.  This might look like speaking of church not as an obligation or something they “should be” going to, but as a powerful, intergenerational community where they are wanted, not just needed.  This might look like asking a young person for their opinion long before we ever give ours.  This might look like volunteering at Cameron Elementary School to show those kids they are worth our time.  It might look like praying for those in Carolina Lakes trailer park, and then getting to know them.

This might not look like families pouring into our pews: like I said, church is at a marginal place in society now.  But all powerful movements begin at the margins.  Do you think the church isn’t taken seriously today? Ask a young person what that feels like.  Do you think the church is mocked by society as being unintelligent or frivolous or too simplistic?  Ask a young person what that feels like.  They know.  Adults often treat them that way.

Christ showed us that one lost sheep is worth leaving all the rest to go and find.  If we are to follow that Christ, we must be willing to leave behind all the non-essentials and find the lost generation of the church.  If we are to follow that Christ, we must admit to them that, though we adults seem to have it all together, we’re all lost in our own ways, too.  If we are to follow that Christ, then we can begin the process of finding each other, and being found by God.  This might not happen within these walls.  In fact, if we’re doing it right, it probably won’t.


In God’s compassion, no one is meant to be missing.  So let’s do something about it – not so we can survive as a church.  Christianity has never been about survival – the cross showed us that.  At our best, Christianity is about resurrection, where stones are rolled out of the way so new life can begin.  

We are only the church when we get outside of ourselves.   

We are only the church when no one is left out.  

We are only the church when we are sent by the Spirit, and go.  Amen.