Sunday, June 26, 2016

Risking Forgiveness

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June 26, 2016
Matthew 18:21-35

21 Then Peter came and said to Jesus, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29 Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. 31 When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Sermon: “Risking Forgiveness”

One of my favorite places to go in the summertime as a kid was a water park called Schlitterbahn.  It had all the usual rides: unexpected spouts of water, boats hurling down fake waterfalls, dizzying, looping, slides designed by some deranged person.  But my favorite was always the river.   I found it incredibly peaceful.

The river was a ten-foot-wide swath of fairly fast flowing water in a big, perfect loop.  You didn’t ride in a boat, you didn’t hurl yourself down a slide.  You just floated there, toes dangling along the slightly-rough concrete bottom, and let the fake current carry you.  Round and round you would go in a perfectly predictable path.  Most kids found it to be the most boring ride at Schlitterbahn, if you could even call it a ride.  But, as a self-proclaimed terrible swimmer, I think I found comfort in its predictability.  No surprises, no demands.  Just the river.

As we come to what might be the most difficult topic to be found in my yellow box of sermon suggestions – forgiveness – I can’t help but remember that placid water feature.  Because our inability to forgive has a lot in common with that fake river.  Often, it’s not that we don’t want to let go.  It’s not that we think forgiveness is beyond us.  It’s not even that we think we’re right all the time.  It’s just that we’re caught in a loop, maybe a loop we didn’t even make, and that loop requires as little as possible from us. 

Forgiveness is breaking the familiar loop of aggression – whether created ourselves or inherited from others – and if we’re really honest, that’s just too much work.  We’d rather float along the path of least resistance, even if it means being weighed down by regret and bitterness. 

If Jesus was a lifeguard at Schlitterbahn (just go with me here), he’d have a thing or two to say about that fake river.  He’d probably say that even if we think we’re a bad swimmer, or not practiced in forgiveness, the predictable path is not always the best one. 

He knew what the path of aggression was – he faced it much himself.  Jesus described a complicated forgiveness scenario in Matthew using terms thankfully foreign to our Cameron context, like “king,” “slaves,” and “master.”  Allow me to put it in our own language, will you?

The kingdom of heaven is like a landlord who wished to settle accounts with his tenets.  One man owed eight months of past-due rent.  The landlord threatened to throw him out on the street, along with his spouse and children.  But the tenet pleaded for forgiveness and mercy, promising he would repay as soon as he got another job (he’d been laid off his last one).  The landlord relented and forgave his debt in full, creating a clean slate for the man and his family. 

But that same man ran into a former friend of his at the Piggly Wiggly that same day, one who owed him $50.  He grabbed him in the parking lot, threatened him and said he’d call a collection agency on him.  The landlord’s wife happened to see this take place (there aren’t many secrets in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot, after all!).  She told her husband, and the husband called the tenet to come back.  He was enraged that the tenet didn’t show his friend the mercy he’d been shown.  And allowing aggression to produce more aggression, he booted the man and his family out of his house and demanded that he make weekly payments to make up for the lost rent.  Don’t be like this with people, or God will be this way with you.  The end.

It’s not a happy parable, is it?  It’s something of a cyclical river of anger, where mercy is flooded with retaliation and bitterness.  It teaches us a painful but important lesson about human nature, though.  Forgiveness is not the norm.  Grace is not our default mode. 

By default, we float an unending river of tit-for-tat, us-versus-them, action-and-reaction, and don’t even notice that we’re not going anywhere at all, but are trapped in the same circle of anger. 
The only way, Jesus shows us, is to interrupt the circle.  Re-route the river.  Stop the cycle of retaliation.  And the only way to do that is to forgive. 

Forgiveness is not the weak acceptance of wrong and lack of responsibility.  If that were the case, Jesus never would have spoken words of forgiveness from the cross as he died.  Forgiveness is risky and messy, vulnerable and unexpected.  It does not mean allowing people to harm us again and again.  It means letting go of our anger, which might actually allow us see clearly enough to remove ourselves or others from harm’s way, without retaliating. 

You don’t need me to tell you who to forgive.  We all have someone, or many people.  And forgiveness, being so very linked with grace, is not a one-time deal.  Seventy times seven.  More than that, even.  As much as it takes, not because the person deserves it or not, but because we have committed as followers of Jesus Christ to be a people whose lives are marked more by grace than by anger.

If we don’t forgive, we know exactly what will happen.  We’re trapped in that looping river, and the past will repeat itself again and again.  Violence births violence.  Fear births fear.  Bitterness births bitterness. 

But if we do forgive, that’s when the real adventure begins.  The worst case scenario is that things will stay exactly the same, and we’ll be no worse off.  But allowing ourselves out of that endless, mindless loop, we might just find that something beautiful happens: grace births grace, kindness births kindness, and forgiveness births forgiveness. 

And, even if we’re afraid, and even if we think we’re not a very good swimmer (or forgiver), isn’t that a risk worth taking, an adventure worth having? 
Let’s dare to forgive and be a people of grace, starting with ourselves.  And then let’s dare to trust that God’s grace for each of us isn’t trapped in some concrete, fixed path of the past, but can break free, swirling through this weary, angry world until every life is drenched with that forgiving water.  Thanks be to God!


Amen.

Sunday, June 19, 2016

A Peace Mission

Belfast Peace Art
June 19, 2016
Ephesians 2:11-22
11 So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands— 12 remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. 15 He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, 16 and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. 17 So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; 18 for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, 20 built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. 21 In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; 22 in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.


Luke 10:1-11
10 After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’


Sermon: “A Peace Mission”

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”  It was a common enough question.  My answer in kindergarten was perhaps a bit uncommon.  I proudly said, “I want to be a missionary.”  You know you’re destined to be a pastor when…

A missionary is really all I’ve ever wanted to be.  I’ve explored that calling in many ways.  Initially, I thought perhaps it meant being a doctor and helping people physically and spiritually.  But a semester of shadowing doctors and nurses in high school showed me that wasn’t my passion (I particularly remember one experience of passing out in a patient’s room.  Oh dear.). 

Then, I went on a mission trip to Honduras my senior year in high school, and heard a priest tell us the importance of preventing illness by improving water conditions.  So, I studied Bioenvironmental Science in college, convinced that being a missionary would look like improving water quality in disadvantaged places of the world.  But several semesters of biochemistry and microbiology (and an internship at a wastewater treatment facility!) showed me that wasn’t my passion.

Finally, I went to Belfast, Northern Ireland as part of the wonderful Presbyterian mission year, the Young Adult Volunteer Program.  There, I finally discovered the mission I’d been looking for since kindergarten.  I was called to be a missionary of peace.

And I still am, hoping I live into that calling in big and small ways every day.  One of you put a note in our little yellow box of summer sermon suggestions, asking about the true nature of mission.  Here’s the best I can muster, guided by Luke chapter 10 (admitting mission is always perplexing and complicated):  mission is going to “the other” and speaking the peace of the kingdom of God.  Ada Maria Isazi-Diaz would challenge us to think, not of a top-down powerful kingdom of God, but instead an equitable family of God, a kin-dom. 

Let’s unpack my definition a bit.
Mission is going.

Luke says, “the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go.”
We must leave to do mission.  Now, before you think this means we need to have a passport or a suitcase to do the Missio Dei, the mission of God in the world, let me clarify.  Going simply means not staying where we are.  Not being too stuck in our ideologies or theologies.  Not being too stuck in our fears and safety nets.  In order to participate in God’s mission, we must leave our ways of comfort and predictability, and go where Christ is going.

Mission is going to “the other.”

Jesus said, “Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”

Sometimes we’re the lambs.  Honestly, sometimes we’re the wolves.  But we’re always sent into the unfamiliar, into community that’s quite different from ours.   Which is why our ongoing mission partnership with Mercy Community Church in Atlanta is so essential.  We, the housed and privileged, go to the unhoused, the forgotten, the “other.”  Because it is only in encounters with those unlike ourselves that we can truly experience or share in the peaceable kin-dom of God. 

Orlando showed us, in the most painful of ways, what the world looks like when we don’t go to “the other,” but instead build walls of hatred and anger.  We must go to the other, because if we only ever go to those who are most like ourselves, we are building our kingdoms, and not the kin-dom of God.  We go to the other because we need conversion (or to put it in a Presby way: to be reformed and always reforming) as much as anyone else does.

Mission is going to “the other” and speaking peace.
Jesus said, “Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you.”

When we get the courage to go to “the other,” whether that be someone who votes differently than us, or the unhoused veteran, or the fearful gay teenager, or the lonely, forgotten older person, we do not go speaking words of judgment.  We go and speak peace. 

Our speaking peace doesn’t mean we’ll hear peaceful words spoken back to us, but that’s not the point.  We initiate peaceful communication first, and don’t get too riled up if it’s not appreciated. 

In Luke, Jesus gave us a picture of what “speaking peace” looks like.  It’s much more than words.  It looks like eating together, like we do at Mercy, eating soup prepared by unhoused people.  Speaking peace looks like receiving and giving hospitality, and letting the lines between the two get nice and muddled with grace.  It looks like not moving from house to house too quickly, but instead doing the long, vulnerable work of building relationships.  It looks like healing the sick – bringing wholeness to the grieving, the hurting, and the ailing.  This is what speaking peace means.

But we don’t just speak a human peace, a ceasefire, the absence of war.

Mission is going to “the other” and speaking the peace of the kingdom of God.
Jesus said, “Say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’   
Even if you’re not welcomed, shake the dust off your feet, but still leave that good news, that gospel: the kingdom of God has come near.’

We speak God’s peaceful kingdom – the sort of shalom that can’t be annihilated by the hateful, heartbreaking actions of a few.  This peace is the stuff of true reconciliation, what Paul spoke of in Ephesians as the whole of the gospel, “Christ is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” 

This is the peace I saw in a poor-in-things, but rich-in-spirit, gardener named J.R., determined to get fresh produce into his heroin-plagued neighborhood of Atlanta.  This is the peace of St. Patrick, who voluntarily returned to the very people who enslaved him in Ireland, to share the good news of the kingdom of God.  This is the peace we see in whole communities refusing to give in to revenge and hatred, but instead publicly uttering words of grace, forgiveness and solidarity.  We are on a peace mission our whole lives.

My mentor, Dr. Carlos Cardoza-Orlandi spent a lot of time getting us seminarians to understand the nature of mission.  And, after much (much) reading and study, he finished that class by saying, “A couple of you are really starting to understand mission, and I’ll tell you why:  you’re perplexed by it.”

Mission should always be perplexing, where the peaceful kin-dom of God interrupts our patterns of speech and behavior, where the lines between “us” and “them” become blurred, and where we can’t really figure out whether we’re the givers or the receivers.  Where we allow ourselves to be uncofortable enough to let the peace of Christ break down the walls we too often ignore, or pretend don’t exist. 

Mission is going to “the other” and speaking the peace of the kingdom of God.

Where is Christ calling you to go, to get out of your addiction to routine and familiarity?

Who is “the other” Christ is calling you to be in relationship with?

What peace needs to be spoken through your life and the life of our church?
And where is the kingdom, or kin-dom, of God near to us all, bringing hope and light and good news, in even the darkest of times?

We are all missionaries, friends. 

Jesus first sent out 70 people to start this whole adventure we call Christianity.  And look at all they did!  There are about that many of us here today.  And so Jesus sends us out again (and again and again), until there is no more “other,” until peace permeates every grieving, fearful corner of this world, and until the kin-dom of God is as near as the person next to us.

Thanks be to God!  Amen.  

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Prayer 101

This begins my summer sermon series on topics submitted by church members.  It will be a great variety over the next few months!

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June 4, 2016
"Prayer 101"
Matthew 6:5-15 

“Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
    hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
    Your will be done,
        on earth as it is in heaven.
11  Give us this day our daily bread.
12  And forgive us our debts,
        as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13   And do not bring us to the time of trial,
        but rescue us from the evil one.
14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Sermon: Prayer 101
College is a wild time for many people.  I had my own rebellion as a college student at Texas A&M, one I will share with you, because I trust and love you people.

My rebellious phase didn’t involve wild partying or skipping class.  No, I rebelled by becoming what I would term militantly evangelical and fundamentalist in college!  Thrilling, right?  Now, what I mean by that is this:  I forgot my Presbyterian grace-saturated, God-sovereign upbringing, and began to see everything and everyone harshly in black-and-white.  I was on God’s team; most people weren’t.  I’d suppose rock bottom was when I tried to find out whether my Presbyterian parents, who had raised me in the faith, we’re “really saved” or not.  I also remember a conversation with my sister, who was venting about something bothering her, in which I told her that “if she really trusted God, it would all go away.” I didn’t listen to her, or try to feel what she felt.  I just stuck a big Jesus sticker on her problem and walked away.  I’m not proud of that. 

But what John Calvin termed “irresistible grace” was still at work in my life, pulling me back to my roots.  That grace pulled me back partly through a conversation about prayer.

A fellow fundamentalist friend told me that if you prayed for anything at all, Jesus would automatically give it to you.  Cancer, gone.  Success, wealth, granted.  Worry, annihilated.  “But what if you don’t get what you prayed for?” I asked, thinking particularly of my grandfather who died from cancer in my freshmen year.

I’m still haunted by her answer.  “Then, you weren’t really praying in the right way.  Wow.

Would you ever tell someone who prays for their loved one’s suffering to end that they weren’t praying the right way?  It’s actually a pretty hateful thing to say, never mind the fact that it entirely removes grace from the equation, as if God is some sort of legalistic grammar goon taunting us with, “but you didn’t say the magic words!”

I wish I’d had the presence of mind to think of Matthew 6 in that moment.  Because Jesus does tell us how to pray, not just in the right words, but the right way to come before God.

I love the way The Message phrases Jesus’ teaching on prayer:
When you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production…All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?

“Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense God’s grace.

Once our focus is on God, then we pray the words, the words you may know by heart.  Words that Isabel Thomas remembered even when dementia had its hold on her.  

“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name”
God, you made us all.  You dwell in a perfect place; we don’t.  You are holy, blessed, the truest good.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
We have too much of our kingdoms, with their power and greed and injustice.  We need yours, a peaceable kingdom where righteousness dwells.  We have too many competing wills, and are pulled in too many directions.  Show us your will.  Come down, once more, and make this place a bit more like heaven.

“Give us this day, our daily bread…”
While we pray for the big picture – your heavenly will dwelling with us – but we also pray for that to come in the most ordinary of ways.  Give us bread.  But remind us that “us” means all, and teach us to feed one another.

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
The first part of this is so much easier than the second.  We do need forgiveness.  We are a mess, Jesus.  We hoard and we hate.  Funny how you seem to think the key to us accepting forgiveness from you is extending it to others.  We will try to let go, with your help.  We will try to forgive those who owe us things, our debtors, because forgiveness loses its power if we hoard, and do not share it.  Grace loses its power if we make people earn it.

“Lead us not into temptation…”
You know, Spirit, what this looks like for each of us.  The need to be right.  The need to be important.  Addiction to power, status, fear, even our cell phones and tablets!  When we go down that all too familiar, all too destructive path of self-focus that keeps us from truly seeing each other and you, turn us in a new direction.

“But deliver us from evil.”
Evil exists, God.  You know this. Not in the form of some little red fella with a pointy tail, but in the form of our indifference to suffering.  Our systemic racism.  The greed that threatens death to the planet.  The weaponized hatred of those who do not understand us, and our own hatred of those we do not understand.  Take this evil from us, God.

“For thine is the kingdom…”
Ah, finally some good news!  You’re bringing a different sort of kingdom, even now.  Where the last are first, the least are greatest, and there’s enough for everyone.  It’s already coming, and we can’t wait for it to fully arrive.

“And the power…”
Power very unlike human power. Power to do what we can’t: to help and to heal.  To redeem and renew.  To love without limit, or condition.

“And the glory…”
Radiant light, Creator.  The glory we witness in sun through the pines.  In a familiar, beautiful song.  In a feeling of peace we can’t explain.  Your glory saturates this place, every place, and we are so grateful.

“Forever…”   
Not just for a day.  Not just until election day.  Not just until you return.  But for all time, you are all things.  Amen.

We pray this powerful prayer, friends, not because these are the magical words that make God answer us.  We pray this prayer because we need it, more than God does.  We pray this prayer because all is not as it should be, and this grieves our incarnate God as much as it grieves us.  We pray this prayer in the tension between what is, and what should (and will) be.

N.T. Wright[1] captures this tension between God’s kingdom and ours, writing,
“If the kingdom is here, why is there still injustice? Why is there still hunger? Why is there still guilt? Why is there still evil? The [first followers of Jesus] didn't dodge this question. They didn't escape into saying: Oh, we didn't mean that; we're talking about a new individual spiritual experience, leading to our sharing God's kingdom in heaven, not on earth. No. They went on praying and living the Lord's Prayer. And they would tell us to do the same.

But how? What Jesus did, he did uniquely, once and for all. That is essential to the gospel. We don't have to go on repeating it again and again; and we couldn't, even if we wanted to.
Rather, think of it like this: Jesus is the medical genius who discovered penicillin; we are doctors, ourselves being cured by the medicine, now applying it to those who need it. Jesus is the musical genius who wrote the greatest oratorio of all time; we are the musicians, captivated by his composition ourselves, who now perform it in a world full of muzak and cacophony. The kingdom did indeed come with Jesus; but it will fully come when the world is healed, when the world finally joins in the song. But it must be Jesus' medicine; it must be Jesus' music. And the only way to be sure of that is to pray his prayer.”

So, let us pray his prayer together now:
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
And the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.




[1] Wright, N.T., "Thy Kingdom Come: Living the Lord's Prayer," The Christian Century, 1997.