To Be Truly Wise 1 Kings 2

McGregor Exegesis

Epiphany 6 – (February 12, 2012)

2 Kings 5:1-14
Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Getting Well and Being Healed

Getting well is an acquisition like getting a husband or getting a permanent. Being healed is a relationship. Naaman came to Israel to get something the way a conquering general would. Elisha cut through his presupposition by not even showing up for this great man. Instead he directed Naaman into a humble relationship with the healer, the God of Israel. The Psalmist remembers a time when he related to his prosperity as if he had gotten it with his own hand: "As for me, I said in my prosperity, 'I shall never be moved.'" (Psalm 30:6) When life humbled him he found a new relationship with God the healer. Paul is focused on his own body not because of a physical illness but because of the perception that his body tempts him away from Christ. The great preacher of the Gospel humbly admits that salvation might escape him if he doesn't attend to his personal relationship with Christ. A leper learns that Jesus can be moved to respond to his suffering, not just moved by his suffering but by his faith: "If you choose, you can make me clean," the leper says. (Mark 1:40)

Could the obverse of the leper's statement also be true, "If you don't choose, you can make me stay unclean?" Do people stay sick because God doesn't choose to heal them? What happens to their relationship with God if they don't get well? If they don't get what they came after? Do they storm off in a rage the way Naaman did? Is there anyone to offer a proud, sick man the counsel of a servant? If our illness brings us into a humble relationship with God, have we not received a blessing? Jesus didn't heal everyone. Does that mean Jesus didn't have compassion for everyone? Healing was one way that Jesus showed the love and power of God, but healing was not his mission. "Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.'" (Mark 1:14-15)

Nothing reinforces the notion that wellness is something we get, something we purchase, more than the cost of health care and the demand for it. Some people talk as if health were an entitlement, a human right. Turning health care into something we buy, something we demand, changes our relationship with both the healer and the healing. When was the last time we heard Jesus say, "I do choose," when we got well? Or did we say instead, "That anti-biotic really worked!"

The issue is not whether antibiotics really work. The issue is our relationship with God in the healing process. My relationship with an antibiotic is limited in scope and has a limited future. Ultimately I am dependent on God to heal me of my constitutional illness, sin and death. Neither an antibiotic nor the entire health care system can cure me of sin and death. So, I will treat each illness between now and death as an issue between God and me for the deepening of that relationship which heals not just the body that I am but the person that I am.

Epiphany 5 – (February 5, 2012)

Psalm 147:1-11, 20c
Isaiah 40:21-31
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
Mark 1:29-39

Healing the Primary Relationship

Now let me get this straight. Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. Then he heals a bunch of people. Then when people get their hopes up and start looking for him, he leaves town. That must have been a prayerful response. What did God tell him during his prayer time? “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? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…” (Isaiah 40:21-22a)

The people lining up outside the house of Simon’s mother-in-law are not the center of the universe, and as much as they may need healing, they need to know the center of the universe more. “How good it is to sing praises to our God; for he is gracious…he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:1b-3) Yes, that knowledge was already on the books, but it wasn’t written on the hearts of God’s people. So, Jesus is out of Capernaum and on to “proclaim the message” in the neighboring towns.

I’ve heard people say, “If you had enough faith, God would heal you.” Fine, show me the faith muscle, and I’ll squeeze it harder. The problem is that no one can identify the faith muscle. Is it in the brain? Is it in the heart? Is there a nerve attached to it that I can control? Do you think that if the folks left behind in Capernaum would have squeezed the faith muscle harder, Jesus would have snapped back into town? No, I think faith is not a squeezing harder or a trying harder. I think it is a relaxing into the knowledge of our caring God.

Jesus didn’t heal everybody then, and he doesn’t now. This is a hard pill to swallow. What do you say to the people waiting for their healing back in Capernaum? “Catch up with Jesus?” In a way, yes. Jesus is out ahead of life. As important as my body is to me, my knowledge of God is more important. First, it is more important because it is eternal whereas my body is mortal. Second, it is more important because my relationship with God is more important than any other. My body gives me relationship with the creation and with the people I love. Those relationships are just a little lower in importance than my relationship with God, but they are lower nevertheless. “You have made [us] a little lower than God…” (Psalm 8:5) Yes, a little lower.

So, Jesus heals because God cares, but knowing our caring God is primary. What is left today of those whom Jesus healed? Only their knowledge of our caring God. What is left of those whom Jesus did not heal? Only their knowledge of our caring God.

Is this comforting? It was for Job.

Epiphany 4 – (January 29, 2012)

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

Law As Love

Paul, having the grace of God as the centerpiece of the Gospel, struggles to provide the church with a rationale for good conduct. The foundation for good conduct is the same as the foundation for grace. It is Jesus Christ, the love of God. When the behavior of the church is motivated by the same love that motivated Jesus, restraints are unnecessary. When the motivation of the church is anything less -- and it is always less -- guidelines are required to stay reasonably close to the path that would be taken if the church were so motivated; thus, "But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak." (1 Corinthians 8:9)

Paul knows better than anyone that as soon as one promulgates a law, one quickens sinful instincts. For one person the law is an opportunity to take advantage of the restraint of others. For another it is an opportunity to prove one's superiority over others. For another it is an opportunity to stigmatize others. Happily, for some it is a help to self-control for the sake of others. So, when Paul articulates a rule like this, "Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall." (1 Cor 8:13), he is not intending any of the sinful reflexes to this rule, just the loving restraint.

For instance, Paul would never accommodate the "circumcision party" as a way of "keeping them from falling." Likewise the church is not advised by Paul to cater to the sinful convictions of the weak in its number in order to keep them from falling. Otherwise he would be saying that the church should defer to its members who, in our weakness, promote all manner of values counter to the mind of Christ.

What Paul is counseling here is to keep the mind of Christ in us which was a single-minded desire to live out God’s call, not a single-minded celebration of his freedom -- an important word to the "Me Generation".

Here is an opportunity to help your church think about the way it sacrifices its freedom in order to love the world as Jesus did, perhaps to contrast that with the way the church and individuals within the church are tempted to place their freedom above their call to love one another.

From the Old Testament and the Gospel lessons, one can briefly remind the congregation of the unique message God revealed, i.e. that mind which Jesus revealed which subsumes law under grace. (Never miss an opportunity to sharpen the image of Christ in the mind of the listener. It is inconceivable that Jesus would ever bomb an abortion clinic, for instance.)

Here is an opportunity to focus on the church's role to live in the world in such a way that the world (not just the church) may be saved.

Epiphany 3 – (January 22, 2012)

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

“Suppose We….”

If we could, at this time, shrink the Earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:

There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western
Hemisphere (North and South) and 8 Africans.
70 would be non-white; 30 white.
70 would be non-Christian; 30 Christian.
50% of the entire world's wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people.
(All 6 would be citizens of the United States.)
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
80 would live in sub-standard housing.
Only 1 would have a college education.

This provocative picture of the world's people was circulated on the Internet a few years ago. It bears on the theme of missions indicated by the Old Testament and Gospel texts, one of the traditional messages after Epiphany.

It has long been apparent to me that our evangelism is based on the people we need rather than the needs of people. We need educated people to be the volunteer staff of the church. We need people who can teach Sunday School and lead finance campaigns. We need the people who have money to support finance campaigns. We reason that we cannot reach the needy if we don't fill the church with the capable, but we expend most of our energy on that audience and fail to recognize how capable the others can become.

In the global town described above, there are only six people we'd be interested in recruiting for church membership -- we and everybody else.

This isn't the evangelism of Jesus. This isn't the evangelism of the early church. This isn't the mind of Christ that Paul counsels in the Epistle Lesson.

Fifty people are ready to talk with us about the grace of God over a meal.

Seventy are ready to talk about the Word of God with us as we teach them to read.

Eighty are ready to talk with us about the Kingdom of God working beside us to patch holes in their walls.

Suppose we, the thirty Christians, were to sell all we have, sell our church buildings, sell our personal possessions, leave our homes and join hands to bring the message of Christ to the seventy. It would not only melt the hearts of the remaining seventy but also of the six of them who have half the money. "I mean brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short..." (1 Corinthians 7:29)

Epiphany 2 – (January 15, 2012)

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

The Jesus You Love

In seminary, the droll among us would deliberately misunderstand the word "exegesis" and say, "Extra Jesus! I don't know what to do with the one I've got." Most of us came to school with one Jesus and left with many. A close examination of the Gospels reveals a Jesus for each writer. John's Jesus doesn't suffer and die on the cross; he is "lifted up." Mark's Jesus doesn't want anyone to know he is the Messiah. Matthew's Jesus does everything to demonstrate that he is the Messiah. Luke's Jesus is especially concerned about social justice. Then there is the Jesus of the creeds who has a divine and human nature. Modern scholars have proposed a "Historical Jesus." Since real human beings don't walk on water, command the weather with a word or rise from the dead, they reason there must have been a "real" Jesus that gave rise to the fabulous stories in the Bible. After thoroughly demythologizing Jesus, John Dominic Crossan relies on the premise that since Jesus was non-violent so God is non-violent – in other words, the historical Jesus is the reliable revelation of God. The Psychology of Religion adds another Jesus, the one whom people love, with whom they talk, and on whom they lean.

So, naturally, the title "The Jesus I Never Knew" caught my eye a few years ago. A friend had recommended my reading it since I had asserted that we should be preaching Jesus Christ every Sunday. Fine, which Jesus are we to preach? My answer is "Preach the Jesus you love." This is not relativism. The one true God is the one we meet in Jesus. The one who loves us and teaches us to love in return is the one who came to earth for our salvation. The many facets of the stories of Jesus and the subsequent reflections on Jesus provide the world with ample insights for each of us to find and be found by God in Christ.

Philip Yancey's book is about the Jesus he loves, and I love it. It is the Jesus we find in the text, all four Gospels together, and the Jesus we find in our hearts and minds. We are like Nathanael in the text from John. We don't know much about Jesus, but we know his promise to reveal himself as our Savior. We know our own confession of faith, and we know that he saw us before we first saw him.

That last assertion requires some support. The story of Jesus found in the Scriptures and
proclaimed in the church has not just revealed God to us, it has revealed us to ourselves. It is as if God has said to each one of us, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Meeting Jesus includes meeting the self that God has always seen. "Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:12)

So, a sermon on this text can probe what it means to meet Jesus, to confess Jesus as Savior and to become a disciple. It can also focus of the "come and see" role of the church in the world. Yes, evangelism, but evangelism in the sense of introducing a friend to a friend. It raises the question of the friendly nature of our church. If a member says to a friend, "I would like you to come to church with me to meet Jesus," is the church prepared to make good on that offer? Can that "Nathanael" meet Jesus in the sermon, in a Sunday School class, in the spirit of the congregation? The question is not just can "Nathanael" hear the name and the claim. Can he meet the friend who has known him and his needs – the Savior he desperately needs?

The Baptism of the Lord – (January 8, 2012)

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

God Speaks

God speaks and it is so. "Let there be light", and there was light. "Skip like a calf", and Lebanon quakes. "You are my Son", and Jesus was. "I'm filling you", and we become holy. There is much to contemplate here, a universe that is created from beyond itself and apart from its own logic, nature as God's servant, Jesus being adopted by God or revealed as God and finally a baptism that bestows holiness apart from the law.

Did the dark waters in the Genesis story have to work up to being light? No, they did nothing. It was the Word of God that brought forth light out of darkness. Did Lebanon have to practice skipping so that it could perform at God's command? No, it knew nothing about skipping until God spoke. Did Jesus take a crash course on being God. Nonsense! God supplied all the being there was to be. And, do we make ourselves holy? Do we discipline ourselves by the law, even God's law, and thereby become holy? No, "holy" belongs to God and God's nature, not to us and our nature. Holiness can only be an act of God. "Jesus said, 'Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." (Mark 10:18)

"Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers?" [Paul asked] …They replied, ‘No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.’ ... When Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied...” (Acts 19:2-6 selected parts)

The Holy Spirit came upon them. They did not come upon the Holy Spirit. Neither did they become the Holy Spirit nor the Holy Spirit become human. God stayed God, and they stayed sinners. But they were sinners overcome with God. Jesus was a human being who was also -- mysteriously -- Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus was not a sinner overcome with God. Jesus was not the work of God's Word. Jesus was God's Word. There is an essential difference between Jesus and us, between Jesus and all other human beings. Our holiness is borrowed. Jesus' holiness was his own.

His baptism was no covering of sin the way ours is. His was a shouldering of all we have to do because of our sin. You don't know the cancer patient unless you know her journey to find relief from her disease. You don't know the sinner unless you know the sinner's quest to be made clean. God's love for us is expressed in God's wanting to know us not as "you" but as "I".

If you are weary of self-improvement, consider God's love for you as you are and consider the transforming power of God's Word. If you would really like to experience improvement, instead of lining up obstacles to overcome, consider being overcome by God. If the Word of God can bring light out of darkness, can God not speak to your life and transform it? God doesn't lack the power. All God lacks is the opportunity.

Christmas 1 – (January 1, 2012)

Psalm 148
Isaiah 61:10 - 62:3
Galatians 4:4-7
Luke 2:22-40

Second-String Sunday

"Second String Sunday" is a recent emendation to the traditional church calendar. Advent having absorbed Christmastide, the Sunday following Christmas is the time for pastors to call the associate's number if they have an associate, or anyone free to preach, so the preacher can depressurize from the fall haul. Still, it presents a wonderful opportunity to preach to the faithful the depths of the Christmas story. First because only the faithful will show up, and second because all the obligatory remembrances have already been done. The following is an introduction to a message of peace and hope based on Luke 2:

The old man Simeon has always elicited my sympathy. His benediction is one to which I aspire: "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation..." Except I liked, "Now, O Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace..." much better than the NRSV above.

Simeon's self-concept is that of a servant of God. There he is in Herod the Great's magnificent, new temple. Perhaps he was too old to be full of himself in the splendor and honor of serving there. Suffice it to say that his perspective is mature. Whether he is in a new, impressive temple or in a humble village -- it is of little significance. The center of his joy is the privilege of being a servant of God. It is out of that relationship with God that has grown his anticipation of assurance. God is going to let him see the salvation of the world as it dawns. A bit like Moses standing beyond the Jordan looking across to the Promised Land, he will get a glimpse of what God is about to do.

Why is this vision so important to him that the end of his life is postponed? He is concerned about the future, about the future of his worshiping community and about the future of humanity in general. Well he should have been concerned. Herod had given them their temple, but otherwise his reign was one of terror especially at the end (13 - 4 B.C.E.). The spectrum of his religious community ran from accommodating Sadducees to fundamental Pharisees to fanatic Zealots. Would they not tear Israel apart and leave her to the ravages of her enemies. Indeed, was the whole world not on its way to hell? (Caligula would become the Roman emperor when Tiberius died of syphilis.)

Simeon's fears are our fears; so is his peaceful assurance at the sight of the child now not a month old... (The body of the sermon then can help us all see in the baby Jesus the assurance and hope over which Simeon rejoices.)

Advent 4 – (December 18, 2011)

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:47-55
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

Mystery, Not Magic

Preaching the mystery of the incarnation is not magic. People want magic, and so we are tempted to offer ourselves as magicians. Watch me while I turn bread and grape juice into the body and blood of Christ. Watch me while I turn a winter solstice bacchanal into a deeply spiritual event. This is a trap for both preacher and congregation.

Mystery is neither magic nor an escape from reality. Mystery is the witnessing of reality beyond all comprehension.

Scientists are supposedly the most rigorous disciples of reality, and yet they lead us to reality beyond all comprehension. The night sky has always been a mystery to human beings. Science has made it more mysterious still. Science has added the mystery of time and space. "See that white haze. It is a galaxy over a hundred million light years away." Rational terms have become a metaphor for the mystery of the vastness of time and space. A year, I know. Light, I know. A hundred million light years, I don't know. (How about dark-matter out there?) Einstein demonstrated that light bends and proposed that space is curved. Who knows how many pirouettes that light has done getting to earth. So, how far is that galaxy as the crow flies? It is a mystery. I can only stand in awe in the presence of a hundred million light years. Could "I Stand In Awe In The Presence" be a Christmas hymn?

Baby, I know. God, I know. Baby who is God, I don't know. Bread, I know. Wine, I know. I can only stand in awe in the presence of the incarnation.

The scientist says, "Stand over here and look at the universe, you'll be led beyond the rational into mystery." The preacher invites, "Stand over here..." We don't make the mystery. We bear witness to it, and a mystery properly witnessed elicits worship from both head and heart. The message of the child who is God is not irrational or anti-rational. It takes our rationality out to the end of its diving board and invites us to jump.

Advent 3 – December 11, 2011 Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Psalm 126 Luke 1:47-55 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8, 19-28 "Change Is in the Wind" Elijah was supposed to come before the big change came. We want change and fear it at the same time. So, all Jerusalem went down to the Jordan to hear John and be baptized by him. I get the impression that they went with both fear and hope. We don't know any of John's preaching except the "fire and brimstone" part, but he was Zechariah's son, a priest's son. He knew Isaiah as well as he knew Amos. The Gospel of John remembers his quoting Isaiah, nothing about fleeing the wrath to come. Although he is known for his warning, we have a fragment of his promise: "I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal." (John 1:26-27) John preaches, but Mary sings. She sings a song like that of Hannah. She was from Nazareth, perhaps the home of Jewish separatists, Jewish purists. If she had been a girl in our century, she would probably have been in a youth musical where she memorized the songs of Miriam, Deborah and Hannah long before she would have met the angel Gabriel. She had a song ready for the occasion. It may have sounded, even to her, like the celebration of a knight in shining armor come to save the damsel in distress, or the cavalry cresting the ridge bugle sounding just in time to save the circled wagons, the vindication of her life over that of her enemies. However, this was a song in a new key. This Joshua she was to conceive would not just invert the power structure but would also lead his people into the Promised Land. Her song is not about a single victory, not even a decisive victory but about a new world, a world swept by the Spirit of God. Turning the power structure on its head in itself is no better than town lake turning over in the middle of July; that is, when the temperature of the water at the bottom of the lake rises and causes the water at the bottom to trade places with the top. That is when the tap water in the town begins to smell like algae; no blessing, this inversion. No blessing, the Communist revolution. No blessing, the Red Guard. Just because people are oppressed doesn't mean they will make righteous rulers if they turn the society upside down. This is not just a song about an up-side-down world, but about a new world. Isaiah reminds us that this is not just a national victory; this is a victory of all people: "For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations." (Isaiah 61:11) Within a single human heart this change can be complete, but within the context of history it is fragmentary. However, if you look back over the two millennia of Christ, in spite of the ambiguities of history, one can see the promise of Isaiah in action: "Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed." (Isaiah 61:9) Blessed within history, yes, but it is not yet the promised new world. The wind of God, the Holy Spirit has many changes yet in store. We live in the midst of change, awaiting the wind like winnowers of wheat. "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-22)

Advent 2 –

(December 4, 2011)

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm. 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

A Two-Way Highway

Isaiah describes the earth-moving that has to be done if there is to be a highway fit for a king. The king is coming! Where is he coming? To your place of exile. To your place of imprisonment. A super-highway dead-ending at your doorstep. This highway is two-way. If the king can travel to you on it, you can also travel toward the king on it and toward the kingdom. Indeed the ancient practice was for the whole town to move out the gate and down the road to meet the king. (This is the same image Paul uses for the church meeting the returning Christ; in the air, yes, but in the air to accompany him to the earth.) John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness moving dirt for this highway, sin, that is. Remove the sin and replace it with obedience stretching from here to the horizon and watch what happens.

"There are those," says Peter, the preacher, "who say the terrain cannot be changed." "Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!" (2 Peter 3:4) And further, he warns, that this attitude unchanged will precipitate his coming in primordial fire we now call nuclear, the old-fashioned way of reshaping the earth. "But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the godless." (2 Peter 3:7)

Isaiah, the preacher, in counterpoint says, "Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins." (Isaiah 40:1-2) Where is the comfort for Peter's warning? "There is a fiery future alternative to nuclear," says John, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." (Mark 1:7-8)

Oh, but this is so slow compared to a bomb, this baptizing of people, and every day a new little sinner is born. So also it must seem to the highway builder. "Have we done anything today? This is going to take a thousand years, maybe two." Highways are built by people who know where they are headed and don't give up. "Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God..." (2 Peter 3:11-12)

Might we hasten this meeting by building the highway toward God as God builds the highway toward us? "Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other." (Psalm 85:10)

Christ the King – (November 20, 2011)

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24
Psalm 100
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Doing the King a Kindness

The twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew contains three happy stories: the one about the bridesmaids who were ready when the bride groom came, the one about the salves who made a profit for their master, and the one about those who did the king a kindness.

"Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world...'" (Matthew 25:34)

The very idea that anyone would be welcomed into God's presence for doing God a kindness! How could anyone conceive of doing God a kindness? The creator of the universe says, "Thank you and welcome." The eternal one grateful to us! Imagine plodding your way through life's frustrations, coming to the end and finding out that you have actually succeeded, you actually belong. The idea in the parable of the sheep and the goats is very different from the common idea, the idea that we have to do what God tells us to do in order to belong. Obeying orders is not the same as doing someone a kindness. In this parable the king responds to people who volunteered their care, not just to those who obeyed his command. It was an old idea that one could get in good with God by following certain rules, but the incarnation of God gave us a new idea, that one could actually do God a kindness.

Ezekiel passes on the judgment of God against those who fail to obey the command to care for God's flock. "And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?" (Ezekiel 34:19) He also proclaims God's promise to come and take loving charge of the flock. "For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out." (Ezekiel 34:11) Ezekiel can foresee God the shepherd. What he doesn't foresee is God the lamb. We can conceive of our fellow human beings as God's flock and live under God's command to tend the flock. Then we live under, and are judged by the command. That is the old idea, the idea that we can belong to the kingdom by following the rules. The incarnation of God in Christ, the lamb, opens up a new possibility, that we might be drawn to God out of compassion, that we might do something righteous because we care, not because we fear.

"God 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..." (Ephesians 1:20) There is power in this reciprocal identity of God, namely that the lamb is the king, and the king is the lamb; the person in need is the king, and the king is the person we helped. This is the heart of charity, of grace, of belonging to God's family, to respond to the needy as you would to the king.

Pentecost 22 – (November 13, 2011)

Judges 4:1-7
Psalm 123 or 76
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Pack Rat Or Flower

The parable of the talents scares me. It says that I can make fatal choices in my relationship with the master. My tendency is to think that I can just rock along through life doing what I want to do, and somehow that will be good enough. Jesus told this story about a man like me who knew the master, made his own decision about what he had been entrusted and, when confronted by the master, found his choice wasn't good enough. The master said, "Get out of here." Where do you go when the master of the universe says, "Get out of here?" That's scary.

Why do I identify with the servant in the parable that was rejected? Aren't there three servants here? Two are congratulated by their master and rewarded. Why isn't this, for me, the story of the two faithful servants? Because the rejected servant was a pack rat, and I'm a pack rat. His sense of security lay in preservation. The best thing he knew to do was to pack it away, store it up -- hide it. Those other two servants took chances with what they had been given. They could have lost everything. He didn't lose anything, but then lost everything.

To be a pack rat is to misunderstand life. Have you ever dug up or broken into the home of an actual rodent pack rat? You find a pitiful collection of things socked away for a day that never came. The pack rat doesn't understand that life is fluid. It flows. You can't stop it. You can only channel it. Life just flows. To really live, you have to let the gift of life flow through you. If you try to catch it, hold it, bury it, you'll miss it.

Consider the flower on the other hand. It's very nature is to share, to risk, to communicate. When a flower opens, it opens to the world, to the sun, to the heavens and to every creature on earth. (...for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. {1 Thessalonians 5:5) When it opens, it shares all its riches, its fragrance and its beauty. It invites every passer by. The bees come summoned by the scent, the humming birds by the color. They take from the flower, freely take as the flower freely gives. The flower has no protection and cares not to guard its beauty. It is soft and delicate and subject to all intruders. To risk its life is its life. The flower turns its face to heaven and beyond. (To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! {Psalm 125:1) It is in touch with the whole creation. That is the reward for the risk.

"She (Deborah) sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, 'The LORD, the God of Israel, commands you, "Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin's army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand."'" (Judges 4:6-7) Barak and Deborah, in a brief flowering of the tribal confederacy of Israel, plunged into what was either the end or the beginning.

Finally the flower explodes into the world with a plenitude of seeds. Nothing is left of it, no cache of collectable, no monument – but the world has changed for its having lived. A hundred flowers will rise where it has fallen. God will be glorified in endless years of summers.

Pentecost 21 – (November 6, 2011)

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25
Psalm 78:1-7
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

Get A Grip

Joshua assures the new arrivals to the Promised Land that the Lord is not to be trifled with. Paul visualizes the consummation of history with a family reunion in the sky -- including just the family. Jesus talks about the kingdom of heaven in the same vein, not everyone is included, the foolish having chosen and blundered their way out. The Psalmist counsels, therefore, that we teach our children how to serve the Lord so that they will be a part of the family in the future.

God's mercy is directed to all human beings, but human beings have choices. The Scriptures are clear that God honors human choice including the choice to serve other Gods, "honor" in the sense of honoring our freedom to choose. So, we can choose ourselves out of the kingdom, out of the family and out of the joyful consummation of history. What is even sadder is that we can choose our children out as well. The parents of western society have much to contemplate about having reared a secular generation. Joshua's words could just as well have bee delivered in AD 1960. "But Joshua said to the people, 'You cannot serve the LORD...'" (Joshua 24:19) What did he mean by "You cannot serve the Lord"? Was this a persuasive speech technique, or did Joshua really doubt the character of his audience? Or, did he mean that, given the risks of failing God, they should stay out of relationship with this God altogether? His listeners protested his assertion and insisted that they could and would serve the Lord. Then they went on to raise up idolatrous generations.

Serving the one God, serving the invisible and nameless one God has its rewards, but like performing in a high trapeze act, when you lose your grip, it’s a long way down. It is safer to align yourself with the spirit of the current age or the current place, the local gods. They change. You can change. A new attachment is never far away. When you drop the one God, the invisible and nameless one God, you drop a long way. The drop from there is likely to be abysmal. If you have entertained the one God and declined that relationship, you could never be satisfied with a lesser god. So, western society has not moved from one god to another, but from the one God to no god, a long fall, perhaps the fall Joshua had in mind when he said you can't serve this one God; you aren't up to it. It would have been better for the foolish attendants in Jesus' story not to have gotten involved with the wedding celebration at all then to have entertained the notion and failed to act. If you want "to meet Jesus in the air" (as Paul puts it), you better get a grip on it now.

If you are a servant of the one God, it is no accident. You are a servant on purpose, God's purpose now your purpose in life. If you are going to be part of a high trapeze act, you had better get a grip.

Pentecost 20 – (October 30, 2011)

Joshua 3:7-17
Psalm 107:1-7, 33-37
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13
Matthew 23:1-12

The Faith To Lead The Faithful

Remember that Joshua didn't know how to swim and neither did any of his people. For forty years they had been lucky to find enough water to drink. Neither did they know anything about building boats. If they were going to cross that river, especially in the high-water season, God was going to have to either build a bridge or build a dam. However it was that they got from Moab to Jericho, it was a miracle of God.

This crossing of the Jordan has long been a metaphor for our going from death to life. Again, there is nothing in our experience to prepare us for that crossing. If we are to cross, it will be a miracle of God. What we can do is stride right into the water as they did – priest first.

Hungry for a miracle and honed by forty years of utter dependence on God, the priests were the first into the water, the frightening water. Generations later the religious leaders that Micah addressed wouldn't go near the water. Rather than depending on God and God's miraculous power, they depended on the religious and political structures around them. The burden they bore was not the Ark of the Covenant but the institution that pays the rent. "Thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who cry 'Peace' when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths..." (Micah 3:5)

Sensitive to this age-old perversion of priestly role, Paul reminds the church at Thessalonica that he went out of his way to demonstrate that his only interest in them was to deliver to them the word of God, the path through the waters. "You remember our labor and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God." (1 Thessalonians 2:9)

Jesus criticizes the religious leaders of Jerusalem for the perversion of the stewardship of God's word. "They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them." (Matthew 23:4)

Jesus says in so many words that if we are not all priests, we are not any priests: "...you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father--the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah." (Matthew 23:8-10) Believing, as we Protestants do, in the priesthood of all believers, the contrast between the priests who stepped into the rushing waters of the Jordan and those who heaped burdens on the shoulders of others, is a call to self-examination. May this introspection free us from merely serving an institution and empower us to lead in the assurance of God's power.

Pentecost 19 – October 23, 2011 Deuteronomy 34:1-12 Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 Matthew 22:34-46 A Peek At The Future At the end of Moses' faithful life, God gave him a peek at the future. His vision was perfect, the Scripture says. He was able to see all the way to the Mediterranean. In fact, it says he was in perfect health, which causes one to wonder what he died of. And, since he was the greatest of prophets, why they forgot where they buried him. "Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord's command." (Deuteronomy 34:5) Jesus died in perfect health, (at the Lord's command?) and no one remembered where he was buried either. Is it possible that God also gave Jesus a peek at the future, if not from the cross, from the ascension? And if so, was it a peek at the Mediterranean or at Paul bringing the good news to Thessalonica or at all the children of the Gospel who, because of the faithfulness of Jesus, would come to embrace the single righteousness, to love God and neighbor? A part of the vision of the pioneers and perfecters of our faith is a just society. "You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor." (Leviticus 19:15) The consummation of God's promise to Israel is not just conceived in terms of the possession of the land (Deuteronomy 34), but in terms of a righteous community, a holy community (Leviticus). This holiness is synonymous with being filled with the Holy Spirit. Justice that is equal for rich and poor alike emerges from the same Holy Spirit as does speaking in tongues or any of the other gifts. There is but one Holy Spirit and one righteousness. To love God and to love neighbor are forever bound together in the nature of the Holy one of Israel. Therefore the one who campaigns for human rights has half a vision, and the one who turns to worship God has half a vision, but the one who does both has seen what God showed to Moses, the future for which Christ gave his life, holy community. We live toward a vision of holy community. Its geography is the earth and its power is the presence of God. Joshua crossed the Jordan River with that vision before him and the Spirit of God within him. (What he did afterwords raises some serious questions.) The disciples of Jesus departed Jerusalem after Pentecost filled with the Spirit of God and following the vision of a holy community. Living toward this vision starts at home. We must study justice, especially distributive justice, to know it. We must commit to justice to will it. We must pray for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to do it. The vision doesn't stop at home or at church. The vision is nothing less than the human community being the holy community. It is a time when "the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ." This is the peace we seek.

Pentecost 18 – (October 16, 2011)

Exodus 33:12-23
Psalm 99
Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Life Can Make Sense, Good Sense

"I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god." (Isaiah 45:5) "The LORD is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!" (Psalm 99:1)

Life has a coherent center. The universe has but one architect. There is only one righteousness. Human beings have but one judge. Because there is one god, life can make sense.

"Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob." (Psalm 99:4)

Life could have a coherent center, the universe a single architect. It could make sense and still have an evil intent or at least an indifferent intent. Life would still make sense, but the glory of God is that life makes good sense. Because there is one god, and that god is good, life can make good sense. "He [God] said, 'My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.'" (Exodus 33:14)

Life makes good sense to those who know the one god. "Moses said, 'Show me your glory, I pray.' And he [God] said, 'I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, 'The LORD'..." (Exodus 30:18-19)
"For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction..." (1 Thessalonians 1:4-5)

The knowledge of the one god came to Moses in face-to-face encounters on Sinai. It came to the people under his charge in a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. It came to them in the law. It came to the church at Thessalonica through the Gospel proclaimed and Holy Spirit experienced. The people were hungry for a single center for life and for their lives. God answered their hunger with the Gospel nurtured in the faith of Abraham and Isaac, championed in Moses and delivered in Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord!

There is a fork in the road for believers in the one god. Does this one God integrate human life making us all brothers and sisters, or does this one God radically divide the human community into God's people and the other people? There is biblical evidence on both sides. In the Lections for this Sunday, however, we find God talking to Cyrus as personally as God talked to Moses. "Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus..." (Isaiah 45:1) When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with that fork in the road, he took the one less traveled by and integrated the secular into the sacred.

Asked if it bothered her to join in the Christian devotional before opening the morning's food distribution to the poor, a Jewish volunteer working beside me said, "We only have one god."

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. (Psalm 96:11)

Pentecost 17 – (October 9, 2011)

Exodus 32:1-14
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

The Church Is Not a Charity.

At the foot of Mount Sinai, God’s people launched their first fund-raiser. It was a building campaign of sorts, and the people gave generously. The problem with it was that they were not giving as an expression of their relation to God. Psalm 106 begins, “Praise the Lord!” This is the orientation from which all true stewardship arises. When we call our people to apply their financial strength to the church, we are asking them to do what Paul praises Euodia and Syntyche for doing, “…for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel.” (Phil 4:3)
Jesus’ opaque parable of the wedding banquet is obviously about the distinction between those who “get it” and those who don’t “get it”. There are many possible applications of that dynamic in the Kingdom of God. One of them is that people don’t get it when they think they are doing God a favor when they show up or when they contribute. God is not needy. We are the needy. God is not a beggar and neither was Jesus.

If Jesus is not a beggar, then the church is not a charity. A charity appeals on behalf of a needy part of the community. The appeal of the Heart Association is not what it can do for you but what you can do through it to help people with heart problems. It begs money from you on behalf others in need. It invites you to become a benefactor to the needy and a creator of good. People want to be godlike in the sense of knowing and creating good. This is a strong appeal.

I am all for this appeal, but it should not be the church's appeal. The church is not calling people to be godlike in the sense of knowing and creating good, but rather to be servants of God who defines and creates good. This distinction is just as important as the one about Jesus not being a beggar but harder to keep clear. Most of our appeals for money are offers to link needy people with generous people, not appeals to link disciples with God's purpose and identity in the world. We promote the church as if it were a charity! And, people treat our appeals as if they were from a charity not from God! Would there be more financial support for the mission of the church if our campaigns emphasized God's claim on our lives and God's love for the world? I don't know, but I believe that disciples are better givers than benefactors.

Pentecost 16 – (October 2, 2011)

Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46

What about Judgment Day?

At the prayer group someone reported that a person had had a near death experience in which he met St. Peter at the gate and was turned away because he hadn't forgiven someone back on earth. The question was brought to me for a "professional" opinion. Being a "grace man" more than a "judgment man”, I directed the person to Romans 10:9 for the "sola fide sola gratia" assurance of salvation.

"Because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9)

All the while, I knew that there was another alternative. I could have directed the person to "The Sermon on the Mount" instead, where Jesus instructs the listener to leave his gift at the altar unfulfilled, to go and be reconciled with a brother before completing the transaction with God.

"Leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift." (Matthew 5:24)

So, I added the observation that although the price of admission to that eternal bliss has already been paid by Christ, it was certainly a benefit to this person to return and forgive whoever this was. I was satisfied that I had supported both righteousness and the primacy of grace.

Facile as this answer may have been, it is nevertheless an indication of a contradiction deep in our scriptures and theology. If you were to shake the Bible until all the parts that represent God as the judge and punisher of human sin fell out, you wouldn't be holding a very large book, but you would be holding the only part properly called "Gospel". So, what is it? God the judge or God the reconciler? Every Sunday morning preachers make this choice both in the content and the style of their messages -- judgment or grace.

"Only Trust Him," we sing. "Only if you don't come forward at the invitation, you're going to hell." Are there only two bottles in the preacher's medicine cabinet, one labeled "judgment" and the other one labeled "grace"? The prophet Amos took the former and Paul took the latter. Jesus seems to take them both. The role of the preacher, it has been said, is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable". Fine, I am as good a Neo-Orthodox, "both-and", "paradox" person as the next, but what I want to know is; when I get to the pearly gates, when "time for me won't be no more,” which is it going to be, judgment or grace?

Every day is a day I act on my trust in God’s grace or act on my guilt in God’s presence. Perhaps every day is judgment day in that sense, but at the end God is the actor, not I.

Pentecost 15 – (September 25, 2011)

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

Is the Lord Among Us or Not?

In the mouths of the Israelites in the wilderness, this was a taunt to Moses. They wanted to know if God was going to provide for their basic needs or not. The Psalmist assures us that God has been with us (Psalm 78) and prays that God will be with him (Psalm 25). Ezekiel argues that God is with us to judge each successive generation on its own merits. No Deist, he argues against clockwork, mechanical judgment that works its own way from generation to generation. Paul takes another meaning of the Lord being among us, not "How is the food and water holding out?” and not "Is God watching you right now?" but "Is God in you right now?" "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus..." (Philippians 2:5) For the chief priests and the elders in the temple "Is the Lord among us or not?" is an especially ironic question. Since their answer to Jesus' claim is an emphatic "No", is there then any sense for them that the Lord is with them in the temple?

"Is the Lord among us or not?" is as modern as it is an ancient question. Is God with us rather than with them? Is God with them rather than with us? Is God keeping us supplied with the things we need and want? Is God present in our self-understand, our history, our discourse? Is God present in our hearts? Or, not?

Our son was driving on the highway many years ago. My wife was riding beside him, his wife and baby in the back seat. Off in the ditch they went to avoid a collision, no one hurt, finished the trip, my wife reported. Nice piece of driving? Following too closely? My response was, "the Lord is among us." Yes, but what about the massacre of young people outside a Baptist church in Fort Worth the same week? Who responds with "the Lord is among us"? Baptists are as practiced as any Christians with such a response, but what sense does it make to them or to us? Is it the sense of Ezekiel, the shooter serving himself God's judgment by committing suicide? Or, is it in the sense that the survivors will face this event with the "mind in them that was in Christ Jesus"? Or, will there be those who choose the response of the chief priests and elders, who come to the church unsatisfied with God's presence in the punishment of the shooter, unsatisfied with God's presence in protecting their own and unsatisfied with God's presence in their own hearts, unsatisfied with a lord "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:6-8)

"Therefore, my beloved... work out your own salvation with fear and trembling..." (Philippians 2:12) This seems a strange admonition for the author of "saved by grace through faith". What's the fear and trembling? It is that in the absence of water in our desert, in the presence of an evil inheritance, in a society banishing God from its story, in the agony of my own loss, I might not be able to answer, "the Lord is among us." I might not unless I have an experience of God's presence in my heart and mind that transcends the rest of my experience, that cannot be taken away. This experience was the passion of John Wesley to have and to share. I commend it to you and to your church. We are going to need it.

Pentecost 14 – (September 18, 2011)

Exodus 16:2-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45 or Psalm 78
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16

Blessed Memory

The starving Israelites were not happy campers, but the blessed memory of their experience dances like a joyous child in Psalm 105. For Paul blessed memory has become the living presence of God in Christ Jesus, all that he has suffered, all that he suffers, all that he will suffer is Christ to him. Jonah was angry enough to die because of God's grace toward Jonah's enemies. The laborers hired early were angry at the generosity of the vineyard owner. Would these experiences turn into blessed memory? Would they turn into blessed memory on their own, or would someone have to turn them that way?

Life is not fair, but neither is God's grace. Because life is not fair, I can find myself dragging my history behind me as if it were a cotton-picker's sack, full of rocks. But, because of God's grace for me, that sack can become rather like the bouquet of helium-filled balloons lifting the vendor's arm at the state fair. Jonah's memory of Nineveh's not getting the punishment it richly deserved could become a rock in his tow sack. The laborers hired early could add their bitterness to their tow-sacks and drag them into the future, or they could look back and praise God for his grace – allowing the irregular Jews to join the righteous and allowing the Johnny-come-lately gentiles into the kingdom. Why? Why not? What is the turn of mind that compels some to find the damnation of others as precious as their own salvation and somehow tied to it? "If the atheist won't burn in hell, I won't be happy in heaven." Or, "If my ex doesn't burn in hell, I won't be happy ever." "But God said to Jonah, 'Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?' And he said, 'Yes, angry enough to die.'" (Jonah 4:9)

Was it right for Paul to be angry at his persecutors? Yes, probably right enough for him to die, but he was as pleased to live as to die because the one reality of his life was Christ, and that reality would remain the same whether he lived or died, whether his enemies were punished or pardoned, indeed whether he himself were punished or pardoned. "For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh." (Romans 9:3)

Can you imagine a spirit so powerful that it could slip into your tow sack and infuse the rocks until they began to rise, first relieving you of their weight and then relieving you even of their weight in daily life, so that all memory becomes blessed memory? This is the high calling of Christ. This is the Christ that is all in all to Paul, not just an ethic but also an ethic that arises from the presence and action of Christ. Quite the opposite of our salvation being tied to someone else's damnation, our salvation is tied to God's forgiving way. For us to join the Psalmist in song and dance about our memories, God will have to help us turn and bless the past, all of it and everyone in it, the Egyptians, the idealist who led us into the miserable wilderness, the evil ones who prospered, the lazy who ate and we ourselves who share the sins of the world. In the name of Jesus Christ may all your memories be blessed memories.

Pentecost 13 – (September 11, 2011)

Exodus 14:19-31
Exodus 15:1b-11, 20-21
Romans 14:1-12
Matthew 18:21-35

To Be Social

Robert Frost observed, "To be social is to be forgiving."* Jesus was serious about forgiveness. So much so that it sounds as if he says, "Not forgiving is unforgivable." Not quite. Not to respond to a repentant heart with heartfelt forgiveness is the action Jesus condemns in the church and beyond. If Joseph had not forgiven his brothers after the death of Jacob, if he had used his high position in Egypt to get even with them instead, that would have been the end of the story of the children of Israel. There would be no Jewish community if there had not been this pivotal act of forgiveness. There would be no Christian Community if there had not been the central act of God's forgiveness through Christ. Forgiveness is at the very heart of who we are and why we are here as a community of faith.

One could ask if Moses forgave the Egyptian army for pursuing him across the sea, but the parable Jesus told would not apply to Moses because the Egyptians weren't pursuing him to ask for forgiveness. Jesus did take forgiveness to a new level however when he told his disciples to pray for their enemies and when he asked God to forgive the very people who were putting him to death. Then should Moses have forgiven Pharaoh's army? As they washed up on the shore? What is the role of forgiveness in dealing with a murderous hoard? God was obviously prepared to use lethal force to protect the children of Israel. Perhaps forgiveness doesn't preclude a lethal defense, although Jesus refused it in his own defense and so did the early church. Only forgiveness makes a rational, dispassionate lethal defense possible if at all. What forgiveness will not permit is blood lust. A lethal defense is not necessarily anti-social. Blood lust is. We have witnessed blood lust tearing the social fabric of Iraq and elsewhere.

Even though his words apply to the whole human community, in this context Jesus is talking about forgiveness within the believing community, and Paul is talking about maintaining the harmony of the community. Paul asks the believer to make the well being of the community more important than his/her own prerogatives. One aspect of forgiveness is valuing the community more than one's own injury. It is an aspect of walking humbly with God not to dwell on how one's been done wrong. Rising above one's injuries is the first step toward forgiveness, but it is also the first step away from being determined by our injuries. If we forgive others, we may be able to forgive ourselves and thereby bless all of our past.

So, when Jesus says we should forgive seven times seventy, he is saying we should value the community more than we value our injury, and he is saying we should, for our own sakes, choose a future free from the injuries of the past.

*"The Star-Splitter" by Robert Frost
lines 44-47:
If one by one we counted people out
For the least sin, it wouldn't take us long
To get so we had no one left to live with.
For to be social is to be forgiving.

Pentecost 12 – (September 4, 2011)

Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 149 or Psalm 148
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20

A Brotherhood And Protective Order

The Pharaoh discovered he was dealing with yet another animal, a "new breed of cat", a people who were protected from the Death Angel. The Passover meal was the chartering ceremony of this new order -- brotherhood around a common meal in small groups and protective not in the sense that they were banded together to protect themselves but because they were banded together to received the protection of God. God is at the center of this new order and is the center of their protection. When the charter was expanded to include Gentiles, it remained that of a brother and protective order, still constituted around a fellowship meal; this time with more openness to sisterhood, but still with God protecting the community from the Death Angel, now referred to as the hell at hand or the hell to come.

Jesus gives the brotherhood/sisterhood some simple rules for protecting itself with God at the center of its protection. Jesus assures the church of God's presence and protection with these words: "Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them." (Matthew 18:19-20) The word "anything" in this context refers to the church's actions in ordering its internal life. This is Jesus' promise that God will support the church in this vital function. If the church doesn't order its life, who will? If the church doesn't deal with people in its midst that threaten its existence and mission, who will? I have erred on the side of inclusiveness when it included people that broke down fellowship and confused the mission. I have confused the priorities of our order thinking we were first a service organization rather than being first a protective organization. First we embrace the protection of Christ and the body of Christ. Then we imitate Christ in sacrificial service. This is the order of our historical development, and it is the order of priority for our perseverance into the future.

Who is it that is accountable to God not just for his or her own behavior but for the behavior that weakens the church? "So you, mortal, I have made a sentinel for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, "O wicked ones, you shall surely die," and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but their blood I will require at your hand." (Ezekiel 33:7-8) Is it only Ezekiel who is accountable? Is it only the pastor? Or, is it anyone who sees and understands the behavior that is breaking down the protection of fellowship in Christ? What Jesus describes is a church that confronts sin among its members, but with an eye to reconciliation not division. "As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked..." (Ezekiel 33:11)

God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but if the death of the wicked is the price of the life of the covenant community, then what? "Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands..." (Psalm 149:5-6) The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross changes our concept of the role of violence in God's protection of us; that is, violence is not a tool of our protection but rather our protection absorbs and transcends violence. Paul found all the protection he needed in Christ and him crucified. In Christ risen, he found himself in communion with the brother- and sister-hood.

Pentecost 11 – (August 28, 2011)

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

The Lord and the Calendar

The Son of Man comes in his kingdom. When God reigns, God is here. Moses experienced the presence of God because he experienced the reign of God. What would we have heard of the burning bush if Moses had not been obedient to God's reign? What would we have heard of Moses if the Nile had not been obedient to God's command? What would we have heard of the Nile's turning to blood, if the children of Israel had not been set free? Would Jeremiah's voice be heard today, if the reign of God had not vindicated his words? Jeremiah knew God's presence because he was obedient to God's rule. There were those who heard Jesus say, "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom," who did see Jesus return because they submitted themselves to his reign. (Matthew 16:28) Those who wait for Jesus to return before submitting to his reign still wait -- still look for the apocalypse and hope for an easier time to be obedient.

So, the company of those who wait to see Jesus apart from being obedient to Jesus point fingers at signs “There’s the anti-Christ!”, a figment of human imagination, as if it might provoke the return of the Lord, like some mixture of bat bones and adder's tongue might conjure up spirits. This thinking is both primitive and pagan. The Son of Man comes in his reign, and there are those in reach of this message who will not taste death before they see him come in his kingdom, but will have nothing to do with the fear of the end times.

Paul prescribes a formula for being ready to see the Son of Man come: "Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer." (Romans 12:9-12) This is not to a conjurer's taste, but this is the way to see the return of the Lord -- the simple, moral, spiritual way.

We frighten people with dire predictions when we should be frightened by our failure to live under God's reign. Believer and unbeliever alike have a sense of the wages of sin. The world needs to hear a clear word about the real source of our anxiety. The church is called to this prophetic role always, but especially now. Never were the words of Jeremiah more penetrating than now: "Therefore thus says the LORD: ... If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them. (Jeremiah 15:19)

The Gospel is our message. It is all we have to add to human discourse. Faith in Christ and the reign of God turn sin into reconciliation, crisis into hope, apathy into power and groping for God into communion.

Pentecost 10 – (August 21, 2011)

Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

Minding The Foundation

Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Some say Bill Gates, but others Babe Ruth, and still others General Patton or Roland Reagan. But who do you say Jesus is? "Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but ..." "Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug." (Isaiah 51:6 & 51:1) Now, who do you say Jesus is?

It has been a time of grand prosperity in human history. (Significant exceptions noted.) University students have calculated how long it will take them to earn their first million. The middle aged have calculated on early and luxurious retirement (Significant exceptions noted.). It has been a prosperity that devours the heavens and wears out the earth. The beneficiaries of this economic expansion have but a dim inkling of the damage it is doing to the foundation.

The few environmentalists, though not lacking in fervor, sound a faint alarm. The environment is only one casualty in the war to make every household a royal household, to make everyone as rich as the queen. Our faith is in the work of our own hands, the imaginations of our own hearts. The faith on which the expansion was build -- the morality that everyone benefits even if some benefit a lot more -- is failing. We trusted this economic boom to go on forever. We planned our lives around it. We invested money as if it would. We spent money as if it would. And when this idol lets us down, as it appears to be doing, we become dismayed to find nowhere to stand, the foundation gone from under our feet. "Save me, Jesus," will sound strange on the very lips that utter the words. What was Jesus to us before we began to sink?

It was the same Peter, who, sinking in the water cried out "Lord, save me!" that responded to Jesus' question about ultimate reality saying, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." It was because of his closeness to Jesus that he was able to make his great confession. It was because of his experience of salvation at the hands of Jesus that he was able to set all others aside and put Jesus at the center of the universe, to say in effect that when God's kingdom comes, it will come by the leadership of this man. We would be hard pressed to make such a confession today because we don't live that close to Jesus. We'd sooner say the models for the kingdom are the likes of Bill Gates, General Patton, Roland Reagan or Babe Ruth; economic, military, political or athletic power.

The word of God describes the true foundation for human life. The story of Moses shows the savior carefully at work behind the scenes of Egyptian prosperity to save not their prosperity but the victims of their prosperity. Isaiah tells us to look to the quarry from which we were taken rather than the vivid picture of the present age. Jesus defines the quarry from which we were taken in saying, "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." Paul describes the movement from faith to action. "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:1-2) It is time to mind the foundation.

Pentecost 9 – (August 14, 2011)

Genesis 45:1-15
Psalm 133
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

God's Grace and Human Morality

Perhaps Jesus had no use for ritual cleanliness. In addition to eating with unwashed hands, he let his disciples shell wheat to eat -- on the Sabbath! He walked on Gentile soil. He talked with the Samaritan woman. To the Pharisees, this was like fingernails scratching across a chalkboard, but to him it was nothing. It had no spiritual significance. He explains ritual cleanliness in non-spiritual terms: "Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Matthew 15:17) What had spiritual significance for Jesus was not ritual but moral. "For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile." (Matthew 15:19-20) What then would it matter to Jesus whether you were baptized by immersion or not, if the choir sang a capella or not, if the priest were ordained in apostolic succession or not? Of spiritual significance to Jesus is faith, hope and love flowing out of you. In this age where "spirituality" is the common denominator word for some nebulous human value, it is important to go back and check Jesus' definition of "spirituality". His meaning of that word embraces but transcends human aspirations.

The people in charge of ritual insist that cultic observance is the essence of spirituality, but everyone is in charge of their own moral actions, and Jesus says the heart is a better place to look for spirituality. Jesus left ritually correct country and wandered into Tyre and Sidon where he found a woman courageous enough to take charge of her own actions before the Lord. She acted out of faith in Jesus’ power, love for her daughter and hope in the goodness of God. Jesus gave her his mission statement as a rebuff, but she challenged the closed door -- faith, hope and love opened to her the door to the house of Israel. Her wit and her faith told Jesus more about his mission than he had told. He must have smiled, maybe laughed, at her twist on his biting aphorism, her revelation in the face of his revealing.

"How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!" (Psalm 133:1) Jesus discovered a gentile kinswoman, a kinswoman not by ritual, not by genetics, but by what flowed from her heart. Still it is the gentile who is privileged to be kinsman to the Jew, not the other way around. "...for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:29) It is we who are privileged to discover our unity with the chosen people, both in sin and in salvation. "Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." (Romans 11:30-32)

The tearful reunion of brothers in Pharaoh's court is like the reunion in God's court yet to come, for all of those born of the spirit -- male, female, Greek and Jew -- cleansed neither by ritual nor by race but united and welcomed by God's grace.

Pentecost 8 – (August 7, 2011)

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105, 1-6, 16-22, 45b
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

Why Wait For the End?

So it all works out in the end. Is that it? God prepares the salvation of the tribe of Jacob by positioning Joseph in Egypt. Jesus grabs Peter in the nick of time. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Romans 10:13; Joel 2:32) Not to worry, God will pull the thing out.

It may indeed all work out in the end, but why wait for the end? If Judah and his ten brothers had known it would all work out in the end, they could have spared themselves and Joseph a whole lot of misery by just working it out at the beginning. People get upset with the idea of salvation setting aside punishment. Something in the heart loves the punishment of an enemy, loves to get even. Joseph's little "gotchas" exacted on his brothers years later make the salvation pill go down easier for the Bible story consumer, but they have nothing to do with God's grace. Neither does Joseph's arrogance have anything to do with it. It is trust in God's working things out in the end that works things out in the end – by God's grace. It is Joseph's trust in God that is synonymous with Peter's stepping out onto the water and Paul's appeal to Jew and Gentile.

The prophet Joel said that, at the end, "all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." Paul remembers this as a characteristic of the end, but combines it with Moses' speech from the beginning. [Deuteronomy 30:11-14] Don't talk as if salvation were far away. Don't wait for the end. You have everything you need at hand. Now is the time to trust in God, to step out of the boat and be a part of salvation. When "you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead," you trust in God's working it out in the end. For Paul, the Gospel is the end and is about the end. That is why he thinks of Joel, who prophesied about the end. It is characteristic of the end time that "all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." Paul realizes that this "all" includes the Gentiles. It is not the ordinary situation for all to be enfranchised by faith. It is a characteristic of the end. So believing in Christ is believing in the end, believing in God's final victory. If then God will finally be victorious, let his kingdom come now, his will be done on earth as in heaven.

Don't prolong the agony of sin. It won't survive the end anyway. Instead, reconcile your relationship with God and neighbor now. “Leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled with your brother/sister.” To go on in bitterness and estrangement is a waste of time. To continue thinking that those people out there -- even those enemies out there -- are the problem is an unnecessary burden. Share your possessions with the poor now. Give up your worries now. Turn from the worship of things material now. Turn your attention to the will of God now. If this is the way it will be in the end, why waste the time between? Why wait for the end?!

Pentecost 6 – (July 24, 2011)

Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

A Kingdom of the Old and the New

The inheritance passing to the first born son is old, but its going to Jacob is new. The inheritance going to Solomon is novel, but its going to the gentiles is a radical innovation. Jacob and Solomon received the inheritance not by tradition but by divine intervention. Against the old way of primogenitor, they became the bearers of the covenant that God had sworn to Abraham. Even so, they were a part of the bloodline. Gentiles are not. So, is bloodline out? Does God micro-manage the covenant, choosing people one by one across the whole human race? "And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." (Romans 8:27)

Jacob intended to continue the supplanting of the first born by marrying the younger daughter of Laban, but Laban went back to the old ways and gave him Leah instead. Jacob's multiple wives and maids gave us the twelve tribes of Israel, all purebred, a major jump toward the promise that Abraham's seed would be like the sands of the sea. Solomon had a gentile mother and assorted thousand wives. Still, the children of Israel were "a people" not a collection of individuals. Abraham's blood was in there somewhere. Jesus, however, had none of Abraham's blood passed from father to father. So, how are we, who are united to Christ, heirs of the covenant? How can we rejoice with the Psalmist? How can we claim the inheritance? Are we related to God the way Abraham was, a primary relationship not an inherited one? Does the organizational chart for the kingdom of God have just two levels, God and everybody? Mustard bush, and all the birds? Net, and all the fish? Is there no hierarchy to the kingdom? No middle management? No tribe that passes on its heritage and God's covenant?

We hear the urgent observation, "The Gospel is just one generation from extinction!" Really? When Peter says of the church, "Once you were no people, but now you are God's people," does he conceive a people that is infertile, unable to raise up a second generation, unable to pass on to succeeding generations what it has received? Does every generation have to have the primary relationship with God that Abraham had? The Protestant in me wants to say, "Yes, yes -- forever yes." As a scribe I must bring out the new, and this is forever new. God is the only father of the tribe, and God chooses each individual to be a part of that tribe, Jew or Gentile. But the scribe of the kingdom also brings out the old. The kingdom of God is a tribe among tribes and propagates itself the old fashioned way, by training up its children in the way that they should go and by ritual and dogma and tradition, by distinguishing itself from the world around it and by not melting into it. This is the old. This is the mustard bush where generations of birds have nested, the net into which the salmon always return. Within God's kingdom there are "those who love him, who are called according to his spirit". This is new, always new, because it happens anew for each saint. This is the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl of great price. Do not think, however that the new can emerge without the old. Jesus emerged in a tradition. Francis of Asisi emerged in a tradition. There is a good reason that Mother Teresa didn't emerge in the church of Scientology. Her primary relationship with God was consummated within the tribal relationship to God she found in her culture of origin. Don't think that we can lose the Christian culture and expect saints to rise up ex nihilo. God's kingdom consists of the tribe and the called, the religious culture (which we love to criticize) and the "born again", the old and the new.

Pentecost 5 – (July 17, 2011)

Genesis 28:10-19a
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

God's Garden

Finally, there is no room in God's plan for the works of Satan; therefore, in the end those works will be no more. Between now and then, God and Satan work side by side, Satan like an inoperable brain tumor and God like the will to live. Sin and righteousness live side by side in God's garden. Jacob was a bold sinner and paid the sinner's price, but he was still a part of God's gracious plan. He was privileged to know God's presence and promise. He cooperated with the seed God planted in him to God's glory and to our benefit. The seed planted in the Psalmist is the knowledge of God's presence and the awe at God's personal knowledge of him.

For those who want to paint Jesus soft when it comes to judgment day, these words are hard to appropriate: "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 13:41-42) (What is it you don't understand about "thrown into the furnace"!) Paul continues to wrestle with our journey between the time we confess our faith in Christ and the time when time is up. He wants to understand the works of Satan as much as the works of righteousness in those who are saved not by works but by faith.

The one who sows seed has the harvest in mind. God didn't plant the seed of promise in Jacob that night just to see what would happen. God wanted something particular to happen. The trusting intimacy between a human being and God revealed in Psalm 139 must be an aspect of the harvest. That trusting intimacy made possible by the grace of God in Christ Jesus promises to restore the whole creation Paul tells us. "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God..." (Romans 8:19) Jesus says that in the harvest all the causes of sin will be destroyed. What a great day for all of us. But then he goes on to say that the evildoers will likewise be destroyed. This is an idea open to mischief. The wheat might decide to save God the trouble of killing the weeds and start doing the killing itself. The wheat, however, lacks God's ability to distinguish weeds from wheat. Jacob looked mighty like a weed running from home having dealt treacherously with his brother. Leave some space in your theology for someone burning in hell, but never give that someone a name or a category. It is not for the wheat to name the weed. The purpose for wheat is to bear fruit, maybe to be so vigorous that weeds lose their opportunity at the light of day. Wouldn't that be a great judgment day, food prevailing over hunger!

Pentecost 4 – (July 10, 2011)

Genesis 25:19-34
Psalm 119:105-112 or Psalm 25
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

The Mind-Set

Jacob and Esau may be the original "Jock-Freak" confrontation, though "Jock-Nerd" would probably have been more like it. I suppose that Esau didn't miss an opportunity to let Jacob know that he was an also-ran -- second out of the womb, last in the manly arts, and most importantly second in the eyes of their father, Isaac. Jacob had, no doubt, tried the bow as a child and thought he might get good at it, only to discover later that he was no match for his brother, not on that playing field anyway. But there was another field on which he could beat his brother and beat him for keeps. While Esau devoted his mind to outfoxing the deer, Jacob devoted his mind to outfoxing Esau. You don't suppose that the soup trick was a spur of the moment idea. It was the confluence of calculation and opportunity. That which we set our minds on, we will finally get a chance to do. Although tribal pride is clear in this etiological story, we don't have to conclude that Jacob's treachery is a part of God's plan. The Glory of God lies in the fact that God's plan survives Jacob's sinful nature and ours.

The Psalmist has contemplated abandoning his faithfulness to the ordinances of God in the face of conflict -- probably to adopt the mind-set of the world as a defense against the world -- has contemplated it, but has chosen to keep his mind staid on God's law.

Isaiah assures us that the Word of the Lord regarding the faithful always bears fruit. We do well to remain faithful, not even to let our minds wander to the alternative lest, at length, we act on it. Let God's Word act instead.

Jesus points out that it is the confluence of God's Word and faith that bears fruit, and by implication, not the confluence of the preoccupations of the mind and opportunity as in the case of Jacob. Paul expands on this distinction in terms of the mind set on the things of the flesh versus the mind set on the things of the spirit. Whereas the parable of Jesus proposes grades of faith from that of the path to that of the fertile soil, Paul uses a simple dichotomy between a worldly mind and a faithful mind. The end result, though, is the same. God's Word only bears fruit in the fertile ground of the spirit, in the one who is open and devoted to that Word.

So, our minds are active twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Active at what? What are our minds set on? O, that we might have a journal, a print-out of our thinking both awake and asleep. Would it look like a Jacob lying in wait of his prey? Would it look like a barren path? A rocky field? A thorn infested, hostile environment? Or, would it look like a place for God's Word to bear fruit?

Pentecost 3 – (July 3, 2011)

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Psalm 45:10-17 or Psalm 72
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

The Wedding

Isaac and Rebekah are wed. The Psalmist sings a wedding song for the king. Paul complains of a wedding on the rocks, and Jesus complains of a wedding proposal rejected, but offers it again.

They say that June became the month to get married in old England because May was the month for the annual bath, marriage being a hard enough venture that the least advantage was worth taking. Husband and wife seem made for each other. The ideal is there, but the reality often seems a bridge too far.

Rebekah takes the plunge. "And they called Rebekah, and said to her, 'Will you go with this man?' She said, 'I will.'" (Genesis 24:58) That is the way it is supposed to be. "Then Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent. He took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death." (Genesis 24:67) That is the way it was. Was his father, Abraham, unable to comfort him after his mother's death? Rebekah had never put a blindfold over Isaac's eyes, never raised a knife to plunge into his heart -- hadn't yet. King David had many wives, Solomon more. The court musicians may have thought of Psalm 45 as if it were the march from Lohengrin, but the church took it to be another theme, one for a heavenly procession. That heavenly tune didn't always play so well on earth though. "'But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, "We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn."'" (Matthew 11:16-17) It wouldn't even play inside the psyche of a single man. "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." (Romans 7:15) Is the ideal wedding, then, really a bridge too far? Jesus says it is not. "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:29-30)

Let's talk of a wedding, then, that brings "rest for our souls". Is this not the wedding we seek, the one God seeks? Comfort when we lose a loved one, the ennobling of our souls like marrying into the royal family, to become one flesh, this flesh and me; is this not what Christ offers, a yoke so light that beneath it I can dance to a heavenly tune?

Pentecost 2 – (June 26, 2011)

Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

Whoever Believes in the One God

Whoever believes only in the one true God receives the reward of God. Although Abraham demonstrated his faith in the one true God by leaving all to follow God's leading, it was not clear that he believed only in God. His fear of the Pharaoh led him to believe not in God but in his own cleverness, passing off his lovely wife as his sister. (He could do that since she had no children.) If his fear damaged the integrity of his faith, perhaps his passion for a son, even for the promise of God, might also compromise his belief in the only God. So God set up a test, and Abraham passed. Abraham had grown to be a man of integrity, a man with only one God. But O the price of that integrity! Inestimable what it cost Abraham, what it cost Sarah, what it cost Isaac. Isaac becomes like a stammer in the story of great men, Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. What would it cost you to believe only in the one true God? You would pay the price of any fanatic. The only difference between a fanatic and an Abraham is which god is her/his only god. Don't bother having one god if that one isn't the God of Abraham. Diversify your devotion to minimize the downside. You'll blend into the social fabric and save yourself a lot of grief. But, if you think that integrity is for you -- that is, that the one true God is for you -- "No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness." (Romans 6:13) And receive the reward of God: " But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:22-23) Faith in God is primary, but to live is to wed faith and action. Whoever believes only in the one true God receives the reward of God that includes a way of living.

Integrity doesn't require that we have no competing passions, no competing allegiances. It means that these competing passions and allegiances never win over our passion for and allegiance to God. Abraham didn't proceed to sacrifice Isaac because he had no love for him, no passion, no allegiance. Of all there was to his life, his son was his greatest passion except for one. Biblical faith is for people who are passionate about life. Jeremiah reminds us that all the prophets had a passion for the demise of the enemies of Jerusalem, but the genuine prophet would have an even higher allegiance: "The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes true, then it will be known that the LORD has truly sent the prophet." (Jeremiah 28:8-9)

Where is grace in all of this? Where is the Gospel? That you and I should be given the privilege and the power to respond to the one true God with integrity. "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me ... and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." (Matthew 10:40,42)

Trinity Sunday – (June 19, 2011)

Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Psalm 8
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
Matthew 28:16-20

No Better Words

One God and one creator of all, this is the uniting concept at the foundation of Biblical faith. Whatever role Satan or other powers play, it is a subordinate role bound and limited by God. Human beings, made in God's image, have a special intermediate role between God and the rest of the creation. Whatever angels or other heavenly hosts may do is unimportant. The drama of life has but two main actors, God and human beings. Human life is a dialog between God and us with the rest of creation our shared responsibility.

This unitary understanding of God is precious. It simplifies and solidifies the psychological landscape. It is like growing up in a home where love unites your parents. You don't live with the terror that your home is going to explode. That is the terror generated by dualism, by the "good god - bad god" belief system. Some people within the Christian tradition elevate Satan to such a level that they create a second god for themselves and live in a fearful dialog with that god. Genesis lays for us a firm foundation. Don't let the minor references to Satan in the balance of the Scriptures unbalance the picture. We believe in one God!

We believe in one God who is beyond naming or defining. We do not rise above God and look down on God. We never see God from the outside. We can never talk about God in terms of God's boundaries, but we can set up boundaries for our talk about God, and that is what the doctrine of the Trinity does. The Trinity is the boundaries for Christian talk about God. "The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you." (2 Corinthians 13:13) We do not confess God faithfully unless we confess God graciously acting in Jesus. We do not confess God faithfully unless we confess God who loved all life into existence. We do not confess God faithfully unless we confess God's grace and God's judgment bound in the communion of the Holy Spirit. God is like a stable home with two parents held together by love. The doctrine of the Trinity is a more stable understanding of the one God than the unitarian alternatives, one God who is Father, one God who is Son or one God who is Holy Spirit.

You have to have the Trinity to make sense of loving Jesus. You can’t truly love someone who is dead and gone. One can love St. Francis of Assisi from historical accounts, but that isn’t loving the person. If someone says, “I talk to St. Francis every day. He walks beside me, speaks to me and guides me.”, then that person has a vivid imagination but not a personal relationship. Yet we say this about Jesus, experience Jesus in this way without implying that we need a psychiatrist. What is the difference? God who is God the Son is Christ not dead but risen. God who is God the Holy Spirit is not Jesus gone but Jesus present.

The doctrine of the Trinity is a confession not a definition. Who can define God?! Christians can only confess their historic and person encounter with God. To confess God apart from God in Christ is impossible. To confess Christ apart from God the creator of all is impossible. To confess God in Christ apart from our experience of both through the Holy Spirit sustaining the church is impossible. Therefore, we are constrained by our experience of God to confess the one God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There are other words, but there are no better words.

Pentecost – (June 12, 2011)

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 7:37-39

The Big Bang

Pentecost is the church's big bang. Exploding out of that energy-laden center are all of the church's gifts and all of the church's potential: the utterance of wisdom, the utterance of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, various kinds of tongues, the interpretation of tongues and even the forgiveness of sin. The expansion of this spiritual universe is endless renewal, reformation, democratization and unification. Anthropologists try to explain the church in terms of human proclivity, sociologists in terms of human interaction and historians in terms of institutions and leaders. But the truth about the church is a spiritual explosion initiating the expansion of a spiritual universe moving today as it did on the day of the big bang.

It surely must have been with this understanding that John adds the parenthetical comment, "Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified." (John 7:39) Clearly the Hebrew Scriptures report on the work of God in terms of spirit, but the impact of Pentecost on the church was such a big bang as to set aside anything that preceded it. In the scientific community too, there is little talk about what would have preceded the big bang. It is not that no history exists before; it is just that the big bang subsumes history.

Notice the connection between the coming of the Holy Spirit as John describes it and the creation of Adam as Genesis describes it. God breathed into little Adam the breath of life, "nephesh". It is another form of "nephesh" that Jesus breaths into the disciples. The first "nephesh", Old Testament scholar Bill Power, described as "a bundle of desires" like a nest of baby birds, beaks wide open, straining upward toward the meal in the mother's mouth. At Pentecost, "nephesh" the yearning becomes "nephesh" the empowering -- one giver, one Spirit, one gift in two parts, the second seeming to subsume the first, empowerment setting aside yearning, but really they go together. Pentecost is the completion of God's gift of life. For this reason we talk about it as if there were no history of the Spirit before, but of course there was.
There is a history to the work of the Holy Spirit, but history doesn't grasp the Spirit. We can use history to claim that Christians have it and Jews don't, but that would be an abuse of the revelation. Time is not important to the Spirit. The big bang is for everyone. It is the beginning of everyone's time, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu... One of the manifestations of the neo-Pentecostal movement, the last half of the 20th century, was the fellowship across denominational lines among Pentecostals -- Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and "old line Pentecostals". Where years of hostility had frustrated theological and ecclesiastical unity, focusing on the work of the Holy Spirit has brought Christians together. It is as if we had all been ducks in separate fenced-in pens until the flood came and the water rose above the top of the fences. Suddenly, we were all riding the same wave.

When we focus on the gifts of the Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit, we discover that we have brothers and sisters across all historical and theological barriers. Where we find the fruit of the Spirit -- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control -- we have found God's completed creation. Where we find the gifts of the Spirit, the utterance of wisdom, the utterance of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, various kinds of tongues, the interpretation of tongues and the forgiveness of sin, we find the church.

And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Buddhists?

In fact, it is the person you meet if you read the whole Hebrew Scripture backward. "All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." (Acts 10:43) Who is it that is risen? It is the one the disciples knew. It is the one the prophets knew. It is the one God knew from the beginning of creation. And, if you don't know this one, you don't know the significance of the words "He is risen." "He is risen" does not refer to the son of the widow of Nain, nor to the daughter of the ruler of the Synagogue, nor to Lazarus, but to the one who is risen never to die again, the one who is risen to reign forever.

"Who he is" is tied to "that he is risen", and "that he is risen" tells us who he is. This is to read the Gospel forward from the resurrection: because he is risen we know that "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus..." (Luke 2:1) and we know that "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." (John 1:1) Peter moves from the resurrection forward in his sermon when he says, "God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses..." (Acts 10 40-41) Yes, witnesses, and to what do they witness? That he is risen who ... and then they go back and tell the story of his life knowing who he was but making it clear that they didn't know who he was before the resurrection. Beginning with Mark and culminating with John, the witnesses tell the story of Jesus ever more as the one who is risen. Indeed, in the Gospel of John, Jesus starts out risen. "Risen" is a given throughout the Gospel. "Risen" is a given when the beloved disciple enters the tomb. "Believing" is the event, not the resurrection.

So, you can't know Jesus as the Christ apart from his resurrection, and you can't know the significance of the resurrection apart from knowing the identity of Jesus. Therefore, preach the two in equal measure lest the risen Lord be confused with a butterfly.

Palm/Passsion Sunday – (April 17, 2011)
Matthew 21:1-11

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11

The Marvel of the Cross

"Equality with God" Paul says. John remembered that phrase, "For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God." (John 5:18) Jesus chose not to exploit it, Paul says, but John reminds us that Jesus could not help but manifest it.

What is it, this equality with God? Is it the gift of being grounded outside the universe? "The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near." (Isaiah 50:7-8) But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, 'You are my God.'" (Psalm 31:14) "Then Pilate said to him, 'Do you not hear how many accusations they make against you?' But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed." (Matthew 27:13-14)

A part of the meaning of Jesus' equality with God was the fact that he stood on bedrock our feet don't touch. The best of our footing is quicksand by comparison. His ministry was a walk without waiver and without intimidation by this world.

But Paul isn't pointing to the way Jesus was God, but the way God submitted to being Jesus. We can marvel either direction, the God-likeness of Jesus or the Jesus-likeness of God -- Jesus standing up to the threatened horror of the cross, or God submitting to the humiliation and torture of the cross. Let that marvelous way of thinking and acting be in us, he says.

But the crucifixion is only marvelous if Jesus is, in some sense God because if Jesus were just a human being, then he was the most stubborn human being that ever lived. Not only was he stubborn, but he was obsessive. He didn't have to be in Jerusalem. He didn't have to beard the lion in his den. He chose to do it, and he got just what any ordinary human being could expect to get. Nothing marvelous about that. People cover themselves with gasoline and light a match because they want to make a statement. Missionaries get caught and murdered by guerillas. It is sad, but it is no marvel.

This execution was a marvel. It was a marvel because of the way Jesus stood both outside and inside the action, subject to all the horror but none of the intimidation. It was a marvel more because of the shudder at the end, not his, not just ours, but that of the earth. "At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, 'Truly this man was God's Son!'" (Matthew 27:51-54)

Consider the terror of realizing that you have just murdered God's Son, murdered God in some sense. It is not just the horror of the human action, what about the horror of realizing that the ground of your being can be snuffed out!

“When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This it the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” (Matthew 21:10-11) They didn’t know the half of it.

We are not ready to see the glory of God in the resurrection until we have meditated on the marvel of the cross.

Lent 5 – (April 10, 2011)

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 130
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

Paint The Resurrection

Bones without flesh, flesh and bones without spirit -- that was Ezekiel's nation, dead on the battlefield or dead on its feet. Out of the depth, out of spirit, the Psalmist cries out to God. Without the spirit of God, flesh and bones may as well just be bones, Paul says. And Jesus returns to Bethany to find Lazarus just bones and turning flesh. Who can do anything about this?

The one who breathed life into the man of clay on the first day, who breathed his own breath into the man of clay, can do something about this. Is it harder to believe that God can bring a clay man to life in the first instance than bring a cadaver to life generations later? The process of procreation is well known so that the beginning of that process is easier to believe. The process of resurrection is not known at all; therefore, its beginning is hard to believe. That is why God told Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones -- prophesy! Paint a picture of the end of a process no one has seen. Paint a horizon not otherwise visible so that people who saw nothing begin heading toward it. Paint a horizon that only God can see, a horizon not yet created, a horizon that is promise. Paint, Ezekiel, paint! This is the challenge of every funeral message.

Jesus gets back to Bethany about time to preach Lazarus' funeral, the first day to make arrangements with the mortuary, the second day to give family members time to get there, and the third day to hold services. Yes, Jesus arrived in time to preach, but Martha didn't want preaching. "Martha said to Jesus, 'Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.'" (John 11:21) She didn't want any preaching about the sweet by and by. "Martha said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.'" (John 11:24) She wanted Lazarus back. Ezekiel wanted Jerusalem back. The Psalmist wanted his spirit back. Parents want their children back. Children want their parents back. And Jesus said, "If you have me, you have back whatever you lost."

The one who breathed life into the man of clay can breath life into Lazarus three days dead. John reasons it backward. If Jesus raised Lazarus, then he is also the one who brought to life the man of clay. He is also the one who restored the children of Israel -- restored Jerusalem. He is the only one who can restore the creation. Therefore, seek him rather than the restoration of what you have lost. He will replace what you have lost. He embodies the replacement of what you have lost.

Many times I have read the dialogue between Martha and Jesus at funerals and wished I could do for the grieving family what Jesus did for Mary and Martha. "Come out! Push up the lid. Slip the massive floral arrangement onto the floor and come out." But I didn't breathe my breath into the man of clay, and I can't raise the dead. Who am I? What can I do? I can prophesy. I can paint a picture of Jesus. If I lack talent, I can paint by numbers -- John 11:25-26. When Ezekiel prophesied, no one thought there would be a new Jerusalem, but he painted anyway, and when the message was finally embraced, there was a New Jerusalem.

There ought to be soft, fuzzy, stuffed toys in the pews for funerals, so we could embrace something throughout the service. My chest felt so concave it was collapsing into inner space. Like a black hole in space, it sucked every comforting word into the emptiness. I had an emptiness no dictionary of words could fill. Saturn and all its rings would have disappeared in my void. My emptiness was larger even than the loved one torn out. Only God is big enough to fill what I have lost. That is why Jesus doesn't talk to Martha about Lazarus. He talks about Jesus. "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?'" (John 11:25-26)

Lent 4 – (April 3, 2011)

1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
Ephesians 5:8-14
John 9:1-41

Turn On The Lights

"Thou anointest my head with electricity," David might say today. Olive oil was the energy for lighting the house, the basic ingredient in healing balm, the ceremonial sign of the transfer of power and nourishment for the body. We think of its just lying there in a bottle in the kitchen, but the Biblical view is more dynamic, more like electricity. It makes the lights come on. That is, God uses it to make the lights come on.

Samuel was in the dark trying to anoint one of the Sons of Jesse until God turned the light on for him. After being anointed, the light came on for David. He saw the Lord as his shepherd. Paul reminds us that when the light comes on, sin is seen for the repulsive thing it is. John walks us through the process of the lights coming on for the man born blind, shows us how Jesus turned the light on and how the man then could see Jesus as Lord, "Son of Man." It is not so important that the man with sight could see the chicken cross the road, but that he could see Jesus as Lord. That point is highlighted by Jesus when he says that the ones who can see the chicken cross the road but cannot see him as Lord are the blind. "Jesus said, 'I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.'" (John 9:39)

Illusion is worse than darkness. It is the real darkness. Eliab looked like the Lord's anointed to Samuel, but God told him that was an illusion. The twenty-third Psalm reminds us that disillusionment with life is an illusion. Eve found the forbidden fruit to be a delight to the eye, but it was an illusion. She was actually in darkness. "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." (Ephesians 5:11) Joe Camel made smoking look cool. How can our young people see smoking in its true light? Advertising makes consumption look desirable. How can we see consumption in its true light? Sex is displayed among us as a casual delight. How can we see it in the light of our need to love and be loved -- to procreate? Politics often looks like a shell game designed to foil the public interest. How can we see it as a tool for building community with sound decisions? The promise of the future is always portrayed in material terms. How can we see a promising future in spiritual terms?

It is not so much sight that we need as insight. We are inundated with sights -- video everywhere. We need to see Jesus Christ as Lord and the Lord as our shepherd. What we need to be able to see is the kingdom of God at hand. We were born blind to this sight, but Christ can heal our vision, can turn on the lights.

Lent 2 – (March 20, 2011)

Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 121
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Yielding To Be Born

Trust is implicit in birth. What does an infant remember of yielding to its mother's contractions? Perhaps nothing, perhaps a yielding trust that is the foundation for faith. Abram yielded to God's call (God's push?) and was born by God as a blessing to many nations. The pilgrim reciting Psalm 121 yields to God's protection pressing her/him on to Jerusalem. Paul sees through righteousness as a human work to righteousness as a yielding to God in trust. Only the righteousness of God is worthy of this yielding trust and is efficacious for salvation. Nicodemus, mistrusting his own righteousness, is directed by Jesus back to his life's original lesson.

Nicodemus asks, "How can anyone be born after having grown old?" The concept was harder for him than it is for us because we have seen God in labor and delivery. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." (John 3:16) We have seen the crucifixion in the flesh. "What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit." (John 3:6) We have seen the risen Lord in the spirit. We know we must be born again to inherit the resurrection. We will yield to death. We have no choice. But, we know that in death we will be yielding to a new birth at God's hands.

As people of faith, the spiritual descendants of Abraham, we have great confidence in death. Thus, all the more we have great confidence in life. For to be born again is to be born again and again, not in the sense of reincarnation but in the sense of renewal throughout life. What is confession and forgiveness before God but renewal, rebirth? What is Holy Communion? What is the yielding of our will to God's will? What is an act of charity? All are the experience of being born from above, feeling God's push, God's contraction, yielding to the new life that is born from above. It is living in this faith that makes dying in faith possible. It is faith in the face of death that makes this living possible.

This yielding in faith to the grace of God is a yielding trust in God but no other. It is a meek willingness to be born along the way that leads to life. We do not go softly into that night some call good -- a death that is nothing but oblivion. We kick at the traces of that way and make a horrible commotion. Faith in God is not a general credulity; meekness is not gullibility. Just as Jesus was absolutely defiant of the evil powers of this world, our faith is defiant of birth's opposite. Just as our yielding trust in God finds birth, Jesus found life for us through the cross.

Lent 1 – (March 13, 2011)

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Psalm 32
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11

Whatever Happened to Sin?

"You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:4-5) The serpent invites us to define ourselves and displace God. Jesus, on the other hand, insists on being defined by God, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4) Paul finds a synthesis of these two positions in the Gospel. Whereas Adam dared to define himself by transgressing and thus became the archetype of human transgression; and whereas Jesus submitted himself to the cross and thus became the archetype of human righteousness; a new possibility has emerged: Adam justified by the free gift of God's grace. God has embraced Adam, the one who would define himself, and has redefined him justified. The existentialists would cheer for Adam. The tenderhearted would cheer for God. And, the legalists would stomp off in a huff. Is that the last word on sin?

"Whatever Happened To Sin" was the title of a book by Carl Menninger. The answer, not in the book, is "humanism and democracy". Adam and Eve can out vote God now. Murder is not a willful breaking of God's commandment. It is a bad choice some people make because of deficient rearing or insanity. (This is a secular version of predestination. Nothing is anyone's fault because everyone responds to stimuli in a predetermined way.) Humanism and democracy are reigning ideals in our society, but do they apply to the interior life of an individual human being? Within my own mind there is no democracy, I cannot out vote God. I only have one vote. Within my own heart, I cannot eliminate guilt by rationalizing my actions as responses to stimuli. Rationalizing corrodes my interior life just like my sinful thoughts and acts do. I can say, "I'm OK," but I can't make it true. I can make myself the measure of goodness, but that is like drawing the target around the arrow, and I know it. Down deep, I know it. "While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long." (Psalm 32:3) But, if I let God's law define me, then I am shown up for the sinner I am.

If, however, Christ can be my righteousness, then I can cope with the original Adam, strive to live like the new Adam and claim my reconciliation with God, the free gift of God's grace. If Christ can be my righteousness, I can measure myself against God's law without becoming defensive. If Christ is my righteousness, then I can strive to live up to his image out of love for God rather than fear of condemnation. This is the dynamic of the interior life of the Christian. This is the appropriate spirit for a proper observance of Lent. From this stance I can affirm the human values in both humanism and democracy.

Epiphany 9, Transfiguration – March 6, 2011 Exodus 24:12-18 Psalm 99 2 Peter 1:16-21 Matthew 17:1-9 Close Encounters Rise above your problems. Keep your head when all about your are losing theirs. We seek a place where we can look down on, and thus gain some mastery over our lives. In that sense we all want to be gods – the one who transcends -- but what happens when we are the ones transcended? Fear, awe, worship and exhilaration can happen to people transcended. Why do people chase tornados? What’s perfect about a storm? Do we experience the transcendence of God in the 21st century? If so, how? A man I know discovered he had stage four cancer at age 52 – fear. After two years that included surgery and therapy, he was cancer free – exhilaration, awe and worship. He received his healing as an encounter with God and a commissioning from God. Cancer was to him what smoke and fire were to the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai. Cancer wasn’t God; neither was the smoke and fire, but experiencing the transcendent One has its attendant manifestations. Are thrill seekers really seeking God? Astronomer Carl Sagan would intone “ten thousand million light years away” as if that number had concrete meaning, but it sounded like worship, as if he were experiencing transcendence – either he transcending the universe or his being transcended by the universe. Is this a seeking after God? Was Moses looking for God while he was tending (transcending) sheep? Was Peter looking for God tending his nets? Do would-be gods look for true God? Do people come to our worship services prepared to “cast their crowns before him”? Is there anything we can do to prepare ourselves and our churches to be transcended by God? Is the fear prohibitive? Is the idea presumptuous? The Psalmist meditates on the Sinai experience of God as a part of worship and praise. Peter reflects on the time he saw Jesus transfigured. These close encounters become the cornerstones of belief and hope. These close encounters have God as their content; therefore the fear, awe, worship and exhilaration are responses to the holy not simply to overwhelming power. Fear gives way to faith, hope and love. Moses emerges with the law; Peter with faith in the ultimate victory of Christ. Neither emerges from their encounter with anything material -- no stone tablets remain; no booths were built. Was the cancer healed miraculously? But, what remains is the memory of a day when the earth shook beneath them and the holy one of Israel appeared, a day that interprets all other days.

Epiphany 8 – February 27, 2011)

Isaiah 49:8-16a
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Matthew 6:24-34

God Will Take Care of You

God will take care of Israel returning from exile. God will take care of those who seek refuge in God. God will be the sole judge of Paul; thank you very much. God will take care of our daily needs. Really? What are we supposed to be about then? Paul will be about the stewardship of the message of the good news of God. Jesus tells us to be about seeking the kingdom.

These passages use hyperbole for the sake of emphasis. Don’t dismiss the images or the injunctions.

What might it be like to live the return journey pictured by Isaiah? What might it be like to forget about both riches and poverty and rest in the refuge of God? What might it be like to be so intent on the stewardship of the Gospel that it doesn’t matter to you what others think of you? What would it be like to live in the kingdom now? The poetry of these lections invites us to imagine an alternative life.

Jesus diagnoses our stress: “All those things the gentiles set their hearts on.” (Matthew 6:32a) The nations, the other races, those other people strive for material things. Ideally, God’s people do not. Jesus agrees with the Buddha that striving for material things (serving mammon) is spiritual poison, but not striving itself. The object of life is not quietude but the kingdom of heaven. Meditation is our business if it is a part of this seeking but not if it is only a sophisticated self-indulgence. If we empty ourselves, we do it to be filled with the spirit of Christ. If we become quiet inside, it is to hear what Isaiah heard, to know what Paul knew and to find both refuge and direction in God.

God will take care of you from the inside out. When joy, confidence and gratitude well up from inside us, we delight in all the ways God takes care of us from the outside. That is the order of our salvation. Don’t wait for the outside-in movement. Take responsibility for the inside-out movement. Let God take care of you on the inside first. Give God the first hour of your day and the last. Reorient toward God throughout the day. Live the journey back home to God, and see the care that was always there.

Epiphany 7 – February 20, 2011)

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
Psalm 119:33-50
1 Corinthians 3:10-11, 16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

Grow Up!

“Grow up!” is the summary commandment Eugene Peterson uses in his paraphrase of the Matthew passage. Grow out of the childish (unspiritual) quid pro quo relationship with the human community. Grow up into spiritual maturity. Paul points out the childish (unspiritual) “wisdom” of the church at Corinth. The revelation of God in Christ may burn up their philosophical jewels. A child loves to have his or her own way, but the Psalmist loves God’s way. And what is God’s way? Leviticus gives specific instruction on how to live up to God’s social justice.

“I am YHWH your God!” is the refrain in our passage from the Torah. Personal gain isyou’re your God: “Now when you harvest the harvest of your land, you are not to finish (to the) edge of your field in harvesting…” (Leviticus 19:9) “Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain,” the Psalmist echoes. (Psalm 119:37) The “sojourner” is the object of God’s compassion – a gentler term than “illegal alien”. God also has the “afflicted” in mind – those who might not otherwise have food for whatever reason. Withholding the wages of the laborer is another of God’s concerns here, and the powerful have many ways of doing that besides the one noted in the text. Both Old Testament passages visualize a community of equal rights for people, not because of who we are but because of who God is. We are neither to be biased toward the poor nor the rich but to treat all people with equity and charity – yes, even in what we say. (Talking heads take note.) The Psalmist declares, “I will also speak of your decrees before kings…” (Psalm 119:46) Is he saying he will make God’s commands for social justice a political issue? Whatever it is that he speaks, he does it fearlessly because YHWH is his God, and his God commands it.

We hear the term “liberty” tossed about in public discourse, but freedom from oppression in this context doesn’t come from the freedom to do your own thing; it comes from one’s commitment to do God’s thing.

The New Testament passages look at the issues of human community and righteousness more from the perspective of spiritual maturity. Paul pictures the Spirit of Christ resonating in the soul of the redeemed, the saints, the holy people -- people “grown up into Christ”. (Note Leviticus 19:2b “Holy are you to be, for holy am I, YHWH your God!”) Paul focuses on being with an eye to how we are doing.

Jesus also implies another way of being by talking about a radical way of doing. Grow up from simple self-interest into the likeness of God. This maturity transcends self-interest and directs us toward the final hope for human community, a seasoning of gracious people throughout the world who refuse to be ignored and won’t let the childishness of the present age go unchallenged and unchanged.

Finally all four texts visualize a different world from the one we have created, one in which YHWH is our God and we are God’s mature creation.

Epiphany 6 – February 13, 2011)

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

Both Human and Spiritual

Moses issues both God’s promise and warning: Life is contingent on keeping God’s commandments. That is true for the first time they cross the Jordan or any subsequent times. For the Psalmist the issue is the same except the reward is happiness and honor. Paul focuses on human behavior but not directly on keeping God’s commandments. His distinction is between merely human behavior as opposed to behavior in the spirit of Christ. He is horrified not so much by human division as by their compromising Christ as the center of faith and their only hope for righteousness.

Jesus like Paul moves beyond the human to the spiritual. Human obedience makes the ritual offering and leaves, but spiritual obedience seeks reconciliation in the context of making a proper offering to God. What is adultery? What all is adultery? Jesus moves from a human to a spiritual definition. Swearing on something precious may enhance human trustworthiness, but Jesus directs us rather to the genuine promise keeping that arises from personal integrity. Then there is the human practice of divorce practiced as a male prerogative then and more broadly now.

If all people who have divorced and remarried commit adultery, what is the state of their relationship with God? What are they supposed to do about it? If there is a human and a spiritual way of talking about God’s commandments, perhaps there is a human and a spiritual way of talking about God’s judgment as well.

Jesus stops short of saying marriage is a sacrament but grounds it in the very creation. He strikes a blow on behalf of women who were so vulnerable to divorce in his society by bringing the force of the seventh commandment to bear, but that doesn't change the categorical nature of his pronouncement. No one escapes accountability to God for divorce, neither husband nor wife. This accountability to God should be strenuously taught in the church for the benefit of those who are entering into marriage for the first time, but how can it be heard as anything other than damnation by those who remarry after divorce?

Suffering is no grounds for divorce. Integrity always involves suffering, certainly the integrity of the marriage vow. But, casting out demons is always appropriate to the followers of Jesus. When a marriage has developed a destructive power of its own, threatening to destroy either or both marriage partners, it becomes a different creature than the one created and deserves to be treated differently.

Does a subsequent marriage then become a first marriage? That would be a legalism like annulment. No, I believe the will of God stands as Jesus spoke it, but it is not the only will of God. It is God’s will to reward the righteous, but it is also God’s will to save sinners. Confessing to God one’s sin in breaking the marriage vow is an act of accountability. As a remarried, divorced person I cannot claim the reward of the righteous with the marriage vow unbroken, but I can claim the grace of God for the sinner. I don’t think that claiming that grace every day makes a mockery of righteousness, not for those who love and trust God. It is a part of God’s wondrous love for me that my second marriage has become the promise of life that Moses spoke and reward of happiness with honor that the Psalmist extolled.

Epiphany 3 – January 23, 2011)

Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23

The Light of the World for the lost of the World

One of the problems with the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali was that they lived on the Interstate. The lost tribes of Israel got lost on the Interstate. If they weren't hopping a freight to Nineveh, someone was hopping off a freight from Memphis. If they weren't being conquered and assimilated, they were being courted and assimilated. Thus their land became known as "the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations," not our kind of people. Jerusalem, on the other hand, was taken to be the fulfillment of the Psalm, "The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" (Psalm 27:1) It is hard to let the Lord be my light and salvation without pinning God down to my land and my people. Paul is exasperated with the church at Corinth for staking out territory within God's salvation. He wants no part of it. What Paul understands is that the light of God can only be shared; it cannot be stored. The salvation of God can only be proclaimed not dispensed. The world is called to Christ not to any of Christ's servants.

It was in response to Jesus that James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John immediately left the boat and their father, and followed him. Already, in the Corinthian church of Paul's letters, people were subdividing their allegiance. Christ is the light of the world and the unity of the church. In him the nations have their hope and Israel her vindication. If anyone would serve Christ, he/she must lay aside all notions of domesticating God, of franchising Christ or packaging the Holy Spirit. The light that saves the world allows only a two level organization, God and people.

We deny what God has done and deny the world a clear witness when we divide ourselves according to the tradition in which we were baptized. We deny what God has done and deny the world a clear witness when we divide the human community into our people and those people. Perhaps the northern tribes disappeared into the nations precisely so that no one would ever again be able to make a clear distinction between the chosen people and all the people. "The lost of the house of Israel" that Jesus declared he had come to find were all over Galilee and beyond.

It may sound like foolishness to look at a Hindu and say to yourself, "She is one of us, one for whom Christ died." It sounds especially foolish in the face of anti-Christian violence in India. The existence of competing religions tempts us to retreat into territory we have staked out within the culture. We sing a defensive song, "The Lord is my light ... not yours." This inflames the violence of the human family. If we are going to be attacked, let it be on the grounds that we hold a common devotion to Christ and an uncommon love for the world. If we are branded foolish for not seeking the protection of orthodoxy or fundamentalism or humanism --- if we are dismissed because we don't align ourselves with human power, let it be for the sole reason that we were faithful to deliver to the world the single message with which we were entrusted: Out of God's love for you, Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

Epiphany 4 – January 30, 2011)

Micah 6:1-8
Psalm 15
1 Corinthians 1:18-31
Matthew 5:1-12

The Moral Economy

Given enough time, the wisdom of this world will rid us of a world worth living in. Confounding the wisdom of this world is inherent to the salvation of the world. The foolishness of the cross is the hope for a civil society. Linked to God by a moral debt, Hosea hears God claim the payment: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Hosea 6:8) The cross of Christ has created a moral debt of cosmic and eternal proportions. Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount with a description of the society that lives under the claim of that debt. The debt that God creates, our owing God for what God has done, God directs us to repay to each other.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit," Jesus proclaims, but the poor in spirit owe that blessedness to the kingdom of heaven, to God and to those who gather under God's loving reign. Each of the beatitudes presumes God's reign in a community. The community partakes both of this world and the world to come in the sense that Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is at hand." The blessings that Jesus pronounces make no sense apart from the reign of God. The meek will not inherit the earth because of a political or philosophical process. The wisdom of this world will not invent the kingdom of God nor secure its blessings. That kingdom, that community, that society can only be manifest among us as a gift from God, a gift from God that creates an obligation to God.

I am concerned about the way people treat each other in our society. I'm concerned about the abusive language of students in public school classrooms. I'm concerned about our treatment of children, our exposing them to violence and abuse. I'm concerned about our lack of restraint in language and action from the young woman "flipping off" another driver to the obscene caller to the drive by shooter. I’m concerned about political talk that uses the language of violence “metaphorically” as if political adversaries were actual enemies. Our sense of moral obligation is too low to support a civil society. If we were to disdain our financial obligations so, the economy would fall apart – and almost did. There is a moral economy to a society that is just as real as the financial but harder to gauge or manipulate, no GNP no DOW, but affecting our lives more deeply.

We can talk about moral economy in terms of obligation just as we do a financial instrument. Hosea asks what we owe God, and then answers the question in terms of moral obligation toward each other as well as toward God. If "Christ crucified", as Paul proclaimed it, were the symbol of our debt to God for the whole society, indeed the whole creation, it would completely change the moral economy. Our common sense of debt to God and obligation to each other would open us to the blessings Jesus pronounces in the Beatitudes. The "wisdom of this world", however conspires against such a consensus and such an expansion of our moral economy. Pray, then, that God will bring such a consensus, and preach Christ crucified -- God's ultimate investment in us and the ground of our joyful obedience.

Epiphany 1 – January 9, 2011)

Isaiah 42:1-9
Psalm 29
Acts 10:34-43
Matthew 3:13-17

Epiphany Loud and Soft

Isaiah says God's chosen one will accomplish his mission without amplifying his voice, without using the media. The Psalmist tells us it was not El Niño that got everyone's attention a few years ago, but El Niño's Padre. Jesus may never have raised his voice, but Peter lifts his voice to address the whole world. Matthew shows us Jesus quietly submitting himself for baptism, but God then breaks the silence.

The Psalmist heard the same thunder storm we hear, but he could take one step back and recognize it as God's voice. We have to take several steps backward, back behind the meteorology, behind the physics, back behind a closed-system universe, before we can hear God speak, before we can see God's glory. Has God lost his voice, or have we lost our hearing? It was ironic that "El Niño" was glorified when "oaks whirled" and the heavens alternately opened and closed. Some knew about the slight warming of the Pacific Ocean, but everyone knew the name "El Niño." Our general awareness falls short of glorifying "El Niño de Dios" (The Son of God), but our intuition is that a person is behind events that shake the world. The question is, who? Do we have the tools to build a world consensus? Is God manifest to the whole human community? Or, is epiphany a private experience like an audience with the Pope?

"...a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." (Matthew 3:17) But, who heard it? If the servant described by Isaiah were to come, who would know it? He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't harm the environment. When the earth shakes, people call it an act of someone -- El Niño, Baal, Tenchi Kani No Kami, God -- a name will surface. “Acts of God are not covered by this policy.” But it is an epiphany only meaningful to insurance companies? What about the manifestation of God at a higher resolution, the one Peter proclaims? "We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead." (Acts 10:39-42) Should the one who judges the living and the dead not be known by everyone? Is this one not more important to know than El Niño?

It seems to me that there are two models for epiphany, the one an event out of nowhere that freezes you in your tracks and the other a subtle process that requires intuition and commitment to interpret. The resurrection of Jesus was the former kind, and Isaiah's prophecy is the latter kind. "He will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching." (Isaiah 42:4) As Christians, our memory and our experience of God's self-revelation commit us to serve the world in two ways. We are to raise the resolution of the world's image of God by identifying God with us in Jesus. We are to serve justice in the world "until he has established justice in the earth". This is the commitment incumbent on all who have seen God in Christ, who have witnessed the epiphany both loud and soft.

Epiphany Sunday – January 2, 2011)

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Isaiah 60:1-6a
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

The meaning of Epiphany is that the birth of Jesus was not just a Jewish event and not just a first century event. It was a universal event, an eternal event, an event of God. One Christmas Eve years ago, I was touched by the witness of a Rabbi to the Christ event's being a saving event for his mother. The coming of Christ is a world saving event, not just an event for the Christian
Religion.

On National Public Radio's Morning Edition, Christmas Eve 1996, Rabbi Abie (AY bee) Ingber said that this day will always be special to him because it was on Christmas Eve that Christians miraculously appeared to save his mother's life in 1942. It was in Poland. The Nazis were rounding up her family along with the rest of the Jews preparing them for a horrible end. His mother, a young girl was sheltered that night by a series of evangelical Christians, each hiding her at the risk of their own lives. Attics, sheds and even an oven became her saving place that night, but finally the danger became too much for her last protector, and he turned her out into last hours of that cold Christmas Eve. She wandered, freezing in her tattered dress until she came to the house of a local official. His dogs attacked her, tore her clothes and bit her. He emerged carrying a gun, and she asked him to shoot her so that she could join the fate of her family. He said he would not kill her on this night. Instead, he took her in and fed her, gave her a new dress and took her to another Christian family who eventually got her to Russia.

Rabbi Abie Ingber added that two more Christians would intervene on her behalf before she would be free and living in the United States. It wasn't until years later that he learned of the old Polish saying, "On Christmas eve, even a stray cat has a home." He said that he is grateful to be a Jew and a Rabbi, but at the same time he is grateful to God for having used Christmas Eve to bring about a miracle of peace on earth and goodwill among people.

Christmas 1 – December 26, 2010

Isaiah 63:7 9
Psalm 148
Hebrews 2:10 18
Matthew 2:13 23

God In Time

Something fundamental in the relationship between God and people changed when Jesus was born. Isaiah extols God as the people's savior. The Psalmist calls for a universal shout of joy at what God has done. The Letter to the Hebrews explains the why and how of this new saving act. Matthew tells us that God in coming to us walked the bitter path of the chosen people out of Egypt.

It wasn't that God just became the savior or that people suddenly needed saving. These had always been true. It was the relationship between the savior and the lost that changed. The favored conception of salvation has always been God's descending from the heavens. With the birth of Jesus, salvation emerges within us, comes into the world the way we come, flees from the threat of evil people, grows up within the context of family and community, wrestles with adversaries and dies in all the horror of human suffering. Not exactly the salvation visualized by people who buy lottery tickets, a fortune dropping in one's lap. Not exactly the salvation visualized by theists with a hierarchical understanding of community.

The new relationship is one of a fellow pilgrim, God as fellow pilgrim not "deus ex machina", God as cross-bearer rather than repairman, God as both priest and sacrifice. The savior is among us and within us. If anyone thinks we could have forced God out of the sky at the recent millennium by intensifying the desperation of people, that person has missed Christmas, two- thousand-ten of them. God has come, and in coming has defined his coming within human history. Rather than looking into the sky or looking for the end of history, look into the human community with the eye of the Wise Men who found a star not so much in the sky as resting above a stable. Look at your community the way the shepherds looked at angel-defined Bethlehem. Look at each other the way John the Baptist looked for "the one who is to come". Look at yourself the way Jesus looked at himself. If the eyes of faith are for seeing Christ in others, then these eyes are also for seeing Christ in one's self. What better place for God to lift us than from within us. Isaiah saw the savior within the history of Israel, "It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old." (Isaiah 63:9) The birth of Jesus calls us to see the savior within the present, transforming the future, within an individual just as Jesus was individual, within the human community just as Jesus embraced and reconstituted the human community.

The incarnation doesn't set the "end time" aside. The incarnation is about time. Visions of the role of God as savior in the "end time" sustain the messenger in time, and the Gospel in time, just in time to proclaim: "Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death." (Hebrews 2:14-15) The birth of Jesus means that salvation is always in time and that now is always the right time. God's love is for salvation in time, not salvation too late.

Advent 4 – December 19, 2010

Isaiah 7:10 16
Psalm 80:1 7, 17-19
Romans 1:1 7
Matthew 1:18 25

God’s Hope and Ours

Since Ahaz won't ask for a sign of God's saving power, Isaiah gives him the sign of an Immanuel birth. Since the Psalmist senses God's anger at the children of Israel, he asks for God to ordain and equip someone to lead them back into God's good graces. Paul reminds us how we know Jesus to be the answer to that prayer. Matthew tells us how God brought together Isaiah's sign and the Psalmist's prayer.

I deeply sympathize with Ahaz, who couldn't bring himself to take divine assurance seriously. He might have enjoyed the Christmas Eve Service, but he would never have rested his heart there. He couldn't rest until he had figured out his own salvation. One moment he would be touched by the children's choir, the next, he would be thinking about buying a few thousand more shares of Assyria Ltd. Seated next to Ahaz at that candlelight service was a woman who had heard too many times, "God won't give you more than you can bear." Her prayer was that God would stop designing burdens and start lifting them. God brings together Matthew's story and Paul's faith to say, "Jesus was born like you were born, and you will be raised like he was."

Knit together in this Mary's womb is the aspiration of Israel and the hope of the Gentiles. Knit together are God's initiative and the obedience of Mary and Joseph. Knit together are the weakness of a child and the power of God. Knit together are human need and God's love. Knit together are our mortality and God's eternity. Knit together are the Holy Spirit and human history. Having failed to bond with his human creation as a father, God is going to become a child. Having failed to win our allegiance as creator, God will become our brother. Is there a heart so hell-bent that holding this infant to your breast, you don't feel the warmth of hope? Is there a life so etiolated that God's calling you sister – God’s calling you brother -- you don't blush with self-esteem?

This birth is an act of God too glorious to be trapped in a religion and limited to a few. This birth is like the sunrise. It is for everyone to claim and for no one to stake out a claim. "...Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name." (Romans 1:5) "All," Paul, "did I hear you say ALL?" We've made so much of your saying "elect", we've missed your saying "all". Did God bother to become our brother and fail to become the bother of all? Far be it from Paul to paint God so small and the elect so large. Elect we are like the rooster, to announce the sunrise.

So the sign is a son. God's answer is a child. Our hope is in God, and God's hope is in us.

Advent 3 – December 12, 2010

Isaiah 35:1 10
Luke 1:47 55
James 5:7 10
Matthew 11:2 11

The Desert Redeemer

Whatever it is that holds life hostage is about to be defeated. Isaiah likens it to the transformation that water brings to a desert. You have to live in the desert as I do to see, hear and smell the land turn to life -- cactus overnight sprout flowers delicate like that of a crocus; toads sing in chorus the joy of their redemption through the night; and the mesquite gives the cooled air a fragrance that glorifies God. It is a redeemed desert through which a redeemed Israel will return home. The Psalmist offers a partial list of lives previously held hostage: the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the blind, those who are bowed down, the strangers, the orphan and the widow. Jesus uses a similar list to verify that the redeemer, the Messiah has arrived. Luke shows us that Mary knows a liberation is about to happen. She borrows the song of Deborah of old to sing her own testimony to God the redeemer. So, why does James have to admonish the church to wait in patience? Was the coming of the Messiah really just a desert shower?

It has long bothered me that after the dust settled from the emergence of the church, the religion looked like a Gentile version of its Jewish precursor, the faithful trying to lead a righteous life so that the Messiah would come or so that they would be included in the new kingdom when the Messiah did come. The intense anticipation in first century Judaism became the intense anticipation of first century Christianity. What happened to the consummation? Had the Messiah not come? Christians proclaim his having come. Jews deny it. But both emerge staring at the heavens still waiting. Could it be that anticipation is the Good News, consummation in this life being over rated? But what can anticipation mean without consummation? Can a people anticipate the Messiah forever without his coming? Wouldn't someone call the whole enterprise into question?

The rain did come in our desert. The kingdom of God did bloom in the life of Jesus. The chorus of the saved did fill the air at the sight of the risen Lord. And the fragrance of the Holy Spirit has filled the church ever since. The coming of the Messiah achieved the end that Isaiah foresaw and Mary extols. Christ achieved the end that awaits the end.

"He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly..." Mary proclaims. In anticipation of this end the world devises ways to imitate it. Democratic government is a tool for bringing down the powerful and lifting up the lowly. We fight over the redistribution of wealth every day on Capitol Hill. "A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray," Isaiah promises. Consider the handicapped parking space and all the other ways we have become more considerate of our fellow pilgrims, how we have changed the road so that "no traveler, not even fools" are pushed away. (I take Isaiah to use the word "fool" in a narrow sense, but I mean it in the sense that no traveler, not even one who faces more challenges than the rest, will be excluded.) "Go and tell John what you hear and see," is the consummation John sought from his prison cell, a consummation of the heart. It is the consummation that belongs to all who have been blessed with faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit.

Yes, the desert is real, but its redemption is just as real. Yes, the end is accomplished, but the end has not arrived. Take each phrase of the prophesies for this Sunday and consider how many ways our lives have already conformed to that end. With the end then in sight, the end then assured, let us rejoice in the victory of God, and press on to the high calling of Christ.

Advent 2 – December 5, 2010

Isaiah 11:1 10
Psalm 72:1 7,18 19
Romans 15:4 13
Matthew 3:1 12

Not Without a Fight

Isaiah's vision of “The Peaceable Kingdom” restores “The Garden of Eden”. There are no poor. There is no violence (after the wicked have been killed, that is). Neither man nor beast kills to eat (a vegetarian Advent). The Psalmist prays for the king to come who will fulfill Isaiah's dream, again a peaceable kingdom once the oppressor has been crushed. And so, ‘The Peaceable Kingdom” is announced in the Gospel by a hell-fire and damnation preacher. The kingdom of God can't come without a fight, but Paul assures the church in Rome that the fight is not between Jew and Gentile.

God is picking a fight. It is a fight for the dispossessed. Those who were evicted from the
Garden will be restored. Who? Adam and Eve, certainly, but God too was dispossessed -- no more walks in the cool of the evening, indeed no more garden. The fight is not just on behalf of the dispossessed. It is a fight by the dispossessed. It is God's fight.

When we humans pick a fight, it never results in “The Peaceable Kingdom”. Our fights just prepare the way for the next fight – the way of all empires. God is picking this fight; therefore, it is perfectly chosen. "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" John hurls at the Sadducees and Pharisees. (Matthew 3:7) Is God's fight with the Sadducees and Pharisees? Who, after all, warned them to flee the wrath to come? "...he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked." (Isaiah 11:4) The fight is with the wicked. The fight is not with wickedness, but with the wicked; not with sin, but with sinners; not with materialism, but with materialists; not with urban blight, but with blighters. Isaiah is talking about a Messaiah who kills people. So is the Psalmist. John the Baptist doesn't sound adverse to such an idea. Neither are we. Killing terrorists is just fine. Many think, exterminating death row prisoners and many more would move us in the right direction. Periodically, to St. Paul's horror, Christians think killing Jews is a step forward. Pope Leo raised armies to kill the infidel. Were these the fights God picked or the ones we picked? Were these the people God labeled "wicked" or the ones we labeled? Does killing these people lead to "The Peaceable Kingdom”?

Pogo Possum, the prophet, may have been right, "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" But, in that case, the Messiah is coming to kill us. In the "Family Section" of the newspaper was a long article outlining a battle plan for wives and mothers to be able to survive the holidays. Church staffs and volunteers are steeling themselves for the onslaught. Retail managers are pacing the floor as if they were the Joint Chiefs. "Just thirteen more shopping days 'til Christmas," strikes terror. It will be a huge battle, but it is all for the promised peaceable kingdom, just one day of it when the lion lies down with the lamb, when Bob Cratchet gets a day off (with pay?), when families gather and the poor are fed -- just one day between the all out attack and the ignominious retreat into credit card exhaustion. Could Isaiah have thought it would be just one day? The Psalmist? Could Paul have been satisfied with God's people eyeing each other suspiciously from behind Hanukkah and Christmas fortresses? And what about the wrath to come? Are the wicked not slain? (“O that you would kill the wicked…” [in me]. Psalm 139:19) More than a day's worth of Peaceable Kingdom awaits the death of the wicked. Much will have to die in us and among us before this kingdom can come. But following the fight, God's fight, consider the victory, consider the peace that will descend and prevail.

Advent 1 – November 28, 2010

Isaiah 2:1-5
Psalm 122
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

The Perpetual Vigil

Isaiah is keeping the watch for international peace administered from Jerusalem. The Psalmist keeps a prayerful vigil for Jerusalem at peace. Paul exhorts the church to watch for the day of the Lord. Jesus adds, "Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour." (Matthew 24:44)

The message is not that Jerusalem is the center of the world or that one person is taken and another left. The message is "Remember what you are about." And what are we about? We are about another world and another reality, a world under God's rule and a reality more like heaven. "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." That is what we are about.

For this reason, we are always uncomfortable with business as usual, the conventional wisdom, "réale politique". The media version of life rings hollow to us. The "alternative media” is no better. First it was "World War". Then it was "Cold War". Now it is terrorism. We have tried ending war with war and winning cold war with terror. Now terror is all that's left. We are ready for something better, much better. We watch day and night for another possibility, one that God alone can precipitate.

"Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left." (Matthew 24:41) Jesus gives no rationale for one being left other than she was not ready for the return of the Son of Man. This is a lesson about being ready not a plot for a science fiction movie. Readiness means knowing what you are looking for. The Christians in north Africa were looking for something much better than what they had in the seventh century. When they saw Mohammed, they were taken. Or, were they left? When certain Christians in upstate New York saw Joseph Smith, they were taken. Or, were they left? Being ready doesn't just mean being alert. Alert sentries wind up shooting their own people unless they know what they are looking for, unless they know what they are about.

An important part of being ready for the return of the Lord is to keep watching for the real thing when the person next to you has run after an imitation. We ran off with imperial church in the fourth century. We run off with mega-church today. We ran off with the “civil religion” the previous two centuries. Now the society has run off without the religion at all. We were the alert. We were yearning for a breakthrough, but what we got, fell through. We were looking for the return of the Lord, but we didn't know what the Lord looked like.

"For as the days of Noah were...", Jesus says, but he could just as well have said, "For as the days of Jesus were..." We weren't ready for the Lord the first time, and we won't be ready for the Lord the second time unless we know what the Lord looks like. We know how the Lord looks when we live as he lived. We are ready when we know what we are about. "...Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires," Paul advises. His coming will be trans-national, Isaiah reminds. It won't be the triumph of a nation or a race or a religion. It will be the victory and the glory of God. Our readiness will be that we had already turned ourselves over to God's reign. Our alertness will be that we proclaimed the Gospel rather than settle for a sinful world. This is what we are about. This is the perpetual vigil of the church.

Christ the King – November 21, 2010

Jeremiah 23:1-6
Luke 1:68-79
Colossians 1:11-20
Luke 23:33-43

The Cross Next To Ours

Jesus claims us with his life. He claims us with his death. And he claims us for his eternal kingdom. First Jesus claims us by the way he lived. God was his refuge and strength to such a degree that he required no other. Then he claims us by dying a death that could not be ignored, a death that was deemed by God the perfect sacrifice on our behalf and vouched safe with the resurrection. Finally Jesus claims us for his heavenly kingdom. "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise." (Luke 23:43)

On the one hand, he is king because of his hereditary claim: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation." (Colossians 1:15) On the other hand he is king because of his leading us in victory over sin and death. "...through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:20) In the history of kingdoms, bloodline and conquest have been essential to being a king, but ruling a territory has been just as essential. When Jeremiah talks about the coming king, he identifies the territory: "In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety." (Jeremiah 23:6) The Psalmist is more expansive, "He makes wars cease to the end of the earth." His kingdom is the whole earth. Paul breaks free of the earth with a seeming reference to another realm, "the inheritance of the saints in the light". Is this the paradise that Jesus promises from the cross? Remember, Jesus said, "My kingdom is not from this world." (John 18:36)

So, Christ is the king of what? With world religions in open competition, can the world be subject to Christ? With our hearts the scene of open competition, can they be subject to Christ? Christ has the claim to be king, but where is his territory? Where can Christ be king? On the cross next to ours he can. From the cross next to ours, he can reign in our hearts. From the cross next to ours, he can reign in the world.

Pentecost 25 – November 14, 2010

Isaiah 12 or Psalm 118
2 Thessalonians 3:6 13
Luke 21:5 19

Our Day And The Lord's Day

Isaiah is excited about it. The Psalmist is excited about it. But, Jesus says not to get excited about it, at least not yet. And, Paul says you can't live on it. God's vindication of the righteous is dependent on two things: there being anyone righteous and God coming to separate them from the rest. Paul is concerned about believers that are so absorbed by God's imminent coming that they neglect righteousness. Jesus seems concerned that the disciples will be so weary of God's not coming that they will lose track of righteousness.

Is it only the righteous who can rejoice at God's coming? The Psalmist seems to says so, “There are glad songs of victory in the tents of the righteous…” (Psalm 118:15) Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the LORD. (Psalm 118:19) But, in Psalm 98 he goes on to say that everyone and everything will rejoice at his coming. "Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth..." (Psalm 98:4) In addition to Israel, the creation will rejoice, "Let the sea roar, and all that fills it..." but, in addition to Israel too, the rest of humanity will rejoice, "the world and those who live in it." (Psalm 98:7) It challenges the imagination to see everyone rejoicing, not just the sheep but also the goats.

"You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death," Jesus says. (Luke 21:16) Can you see them rejoicing when God comes to set things right, these friends and relatives? Can you see the arrogant and the evildoer rejoicing in the fire? "Hooray, the very thing we needed." Perhaps the coming of God so absorbs our attention that even the evil can't help but rejoice in what they see, God's righteousness being more captivating than their punishment. Wasn't Job, in all his misery, satisfied by the mere presence of God.

God's righteousness is so beautiful that we are rapt by it if we pursue it and awed by it if we flee it. So, the return of the Lord is rapture to us and awe to everyone. But, the return of the Lord is not for us or about us. It is about God. It is for God. We try to make it a function of our own behavior when we propose to bring God down either by the extravagance of our good or our evil. It is not the return of the Lord that is for us but rather the delay. "This will give you an opportunity to testify," Jesus says. (Luke 21:13) Every day the end is forestalled is another day we have to bear witness to the resurrection, another day the world has to turn and believe. The delay is for us. The return is for God. This is our day; that will be the Lord's day.

Pentecost 24 – November 7, 2010

Haggai 1:15b - 2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21
2 Thessalonians 2:1 5, 13 17
Luke 20:27 38

God of the Living

Is "dead" even a meaningful term to God? The creator and sustainer of all is just that - sustainer. "Dead" is only meaningful to the creation bound by time. A. Einstein first experimented with the proposition that time is not as rigid as we might think. It might seed up. It might slow down. If that is so, might it not also stop? Where would it stop if not in the one who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end?

Jesus refuted the Sadducees' argument against the resurrection of the dead with what might look like a play on words, "the God of Abraham" not "the God of the late Abraham". Or, it might be a glimpse at the reality that only Jesus, as the incarnation of God, could know. This hypothetical wife of a series of husbands proposed by the Sadducees is not known to God in the framework of time but only as herself in relation to God. Heaven, then, is not a reconstruction of earth. Why should it be? Heaven, rather, is a living within God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and the God of you and me, not a god of stone or of iron, but the God of the living, made up of the living in the sense of embracing the living. A man looked up to me from his bed, suffering from un-treatable lung cancer, and said, "Don't shovel dirt in my face yet." He is no less alive because he sick. He is no less alive because his time is running out. His life is in the God of the living not just in this body of death. "Because I live, you also shall live, " Jesus promised. Time will pronounce us all dead one day, but the timeless one who loves us pronounces us alive. Medical science can give us time. Death can take it away. But only God gives life.

Paul speaks of one who takes life away, not just time, one linked to Satan, one that must emerge unrestrained before its powerlessness can be revealed by a single breath from God. Its danger lies in the fact that people are free to embrace it rather than God, embrace death rather than life. What the consequences are for us within the life of God when we embrace death we don't know, but the consequences in time, for us in ourselves is agony and oblivion. As long as this choice exists, as long as people choose oblivion over a life in God, the Lord has not returned. Ordinary human history continues. "Don't worry," Paul says, "Christ hasn't come and taken the previous saints leaving you behind." We continue to be free to embrace death. We embrace the death of our planet with our unbridled appetites. We embrace the death of our communities with our self-centered lives. A critical mass in this sinful embrace may be coming which will manifest it to all the world for what it is – the death choice. "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming." (2 Thessalonians 2:8)

Undaunted by time or the times, though, we follow the God of the living. "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word." (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

Pentecost 23 – October 31, 2010

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 119:137-144
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10

Ain’t It Awful, Or Maybe Not

Are we out of control? The human community, that is. Try on Habakkuk’s description of the arrogant nation. Does it fit? What powerful nation doesn’t it fit? It fits our national friends and enemies alike. Try on the role of the aggrieved nation waiting on God to intervene. Waiting for God to intervene is not a national policy for anyone, friend or foe, but God will intervene nevertheless. When? How?

Robert Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t like a wall.” Likewise, something there is that doesn’t like the arrogance of power. It may work slowly like the elements weakening a wall of stacked stone in New Hampshire, weakening it until it falls. Something there is in the warp and woof of the universe and Habakkuk knows what and who. Paul appeals to that same inescapable force for justice in the world as he counsels the church in Thessalonica. But, does this add up to divine control in our lifetime? Is this finally any comfort? Both Habakkuk and Paul add an immediate dimension to God’s control.

The righteous must finally live by faith. That is the control present and personal.

Zacchaeus’ life was out of control. He had a license to steal. He had the Roman guard for protection, but he wasn’t sleeping nights. Something there is that doesn’t like the way Zacchaeus lived. The world around him raged out of control, and something inside him was out of control. He was up a tree. That’s why Jesus saw him and offered him the option of control.

Did Jesus offer him his life back by lecturing him all the way from the tree to the dinner table, telling him all the things he would have to change to take charge of his live? I doubt it. Instead, the love of God took charge of Zacchaeus. Since he was a traitor to his people, he couldn’t take a sacrifice to the temple and have the priest sprinkle blood on him and tell him he was back under God’s control, God’s blessing. He was stuck unless God’s actual love drew him out. Once God’s love ruled and Zacchaeus saw the vision of being in control by virtue of God’s control, he took charge. “Behold the half of my goods I give to the poor.” (His wife nearly fainted.) The world hadn’t changed, but he had, and because he had, the world had. Glory be.

Pentecost 24 – November 7, 2010

Haggai 1:15b - 2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21
2 Thessalonians 2:1 5, 13 17
Luke 20:27 38

God of the Living

Is "dead" even a meaningful term to God? The creator and sustainer of all is just that - sustainer. "Dead" is only meaningful to the creation bound by time. A. Einstein first experimented with the proposition that time is not as rigid as we might think. It might seed up. It might slow down. If that is so, might it not also stop? Where would it stop if not in the one who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end?

Jesus refuted the Sadducees' argument against the resurrection of the dead with what might look like a play on words, "the God of Abraham" not "the God of the late Abraham". Or, it might be a glimpse at the reality that only Jesus, as the incarnation of God, could know. This hypothetical wife of a series of husbands proposed by the Sadducees is not known to God in the framework of time but only as herself in relation to God. Heaven, then, is not a reconstruction of earth. Why should it be? Heaven, rather, is a living within God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and the God of you and me, not a god of stone or of iron, but the God of the living, made up of the living in the sense of embracing the living. A man looked up to me from his bed, suffering from un-treatable lung cancer, and said, "Don't shovel dirt in my face yet." He is no less alive because he sick. He is no less alive because his time is running out. His life is in the God of the living not just in this body of death. "Because I live, you also shall live, " Jesus promised. Time will pronounce us all dead one day, but the timeless one who loves us pronounces us alive. Medical science can give us time. Death can take it away. But only God gives life.

Paul speaks of one who takes life away, not just time, one linked to Satan, one that must emerge unrestrained before its powerlessness can be revealed by a single breath from God. Its danger lies in the fact that people are free to embrace it rather than God, embrace death rather than life. What the consequences are for us within the life of God when we embrace death we don't know, but the consequences in time, for us in ourselves is agony and oblivion. As long as this choice exists, as long as people choose oblivion over a life in God, the Lord has not returned. Ordinary human history continues. "Don't worry," Paul says, "Christ hasn't come and taken the previous saints leaving you behind." We continue to be free to embrace death. We embrace the death of our planet with our unbridled appetites. We embrace the death of our communities with our self-centered lives. A critical mass in this sinful embrace may be coming which will manifest it to all the world for what it is – the death choice. "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming." (2 Thessalonians 2:8)

Undaunted by time or the times, though, we follow the God of the living. "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word." (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17)

Pentecost 21 – October 17, 2010

Psalm 19:1-14
2 Timothy 3:14 4:5
Luke 18:1 8

Hang On For Dear Life

"...proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable..."
(2 Timothy 4:2) "And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?" (Luke 18:7) Hang on; help is coming. Life has it periods in which this is the best self-counsel. Our lives are so radically contingent, this is always good counsel. In an emergency we may grab for anything, but for hanging on, only God will do: "My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth." (Psalm 121:2)

There is a tenacity of heart and mind that goes into faith. In the face of apparent proofs for despair, we make a decision to believe in God. “I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your decrees are my meditation,” says the Psalmist. (Psalm 119:91) A believer should take this verse with him/her on to street and into the classroom.

Through the pain of adversity we insist that God reigns. In the dark night of divorce -- a separating from all we hold dear -- comes the choice to hang on to God, the only one we have left. I grieve for the person who has to endure not only his/her divorce but also the rejection of the church because of it. If ever a person need’s help holding on to God, it is then. For those the church rejects, however, there is still Christ. The last option becomes the best; the stone that was rejected has become the head of the corner. Did we have to lose everything to discover the only important thing?

Philosophy has driven God off the university campus. Astronomy has driven God out of the sky. Democracy has driven God from the town square. We think we can still find God in how we feel, but feeling is no more reliable a sense than sight. How did the people of Jerusalem feel just before it fell to the army of Nebuchadnezzar? How did Paul feel writing from prison? How did Timothy feel preaching a Gospel that was foolishness to the Greeks and blasphemy to the Jews? How did Mother Teresa feel facing the miserable dying people of Calcutta? Faith is not grounded in feeling any more than in sight or sound. Faith is the hanging on to God. Faith is the hanging on to the message of God. Faith is the hanging on to the promise of the sunrise that is in God and no other. Nowhere is that sunrise more beautifully spoken than in Jeremiah 31:31f, “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…”

Faith is holding on to God until you can feel God holding you. Faith is the hanging on to God for dear life that makes life dear.

Faith is holding on to God until you can feel God holding you. Faith is the hanging on to God for dear life that makes life dear.

Pentecost 20 – October 10, 2010

PENTECOST 20 (October 10, 2010)

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Ps 66:1-12
2 Tim 2:8 15
Luke 17:11 19

Seeking Certitude

"The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful..." (2 Timothy 2:11) Paul makes it sound as if our salvation is contingent on what we do: "If we... if we..." But he pulls the leash at the end not to let that dog go too far: "...if we are faithless, he remains faithful..." Salvation is contingent on our action only up to a point. Our actions can never change the nature of God: "...he cannot deny himself."

Jesus healed ten lepers. Only one returned to thank him, but the other nine were still healed. God's love for the ten was not changed by their actions. Jesus is impressed that it was the foreigner who returned to thank him, not the ones who had the prior claim on God through the covenant with Abraham. No doubt, the people of the covenant have always pondered Jeremiah’s instruction to pray for the nation that conquered them. As much as they might want God and God's gifts to be the private property of the chosen people, God cannot deny God's own identity, God of Abraham and Isaac and Babylon (Iraq).

We, the chosen people by God's grace, are often a disappointment to ourselves and, I presume, to God. We fail to be thankful; we are arrogant in the face of God's commands; we seek to avoid a death like the cross; we give up on the high calling of Christ. We deny him, and yet we don't change God; we don't change God's love for us. We can change some things to our great hurt, but we can't change that. Therefore let us join the Psalmist in praising God, “Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; give to him glorious praise.”

We need to work on our righteousness, but we depend on God's righteousness. We should avoid praising our righteousness, but we celebrate God's righteousness forever. Finally it is not the good news of us that is the center of our faith but the good news of God. Do our worship services celebrate our culture and its prosperity? Do we confuse the Kingdom of God with our earthly kingdoms? Is the good news of God really at the center?

Even when we celebrate what God has done for us, let us be careful that it is a witness to what God has done, and to who God is, rather than to what we have done and who we are. We have no glory of our own. God's glory is the only light that is not a reflection. It is for the glory of God in Christ Jesus that we may die with him, endure with him and finally also reign with him.

Pentecost 18 – September 26, 2010

Jeremiah 32:1-3a; 16-15
Psalm 91:1-6; 14-16
I Timothy 6:6 19
Luke 16:19 31

An Obscene and Unsustainable Lifestyle For A Holy And Eternal Life

Jeremiah lays the sustainable with the unsustainable before the people. On the one hand he prophesies that Jerusalem will fall, but on the other he buys a piece of land to show that God will sustain their future.

The godly tend to prosper, Paul reminds Timothy. This is not bad in itself as long as it supports growing rich toward God, being rich in good works; as long as it doesn't alter our fundamental orientation to be contented with food and clothing because we are satisfied by the love of God. Otherwise, wealth creates a chasm between rich and poor -- the rich and God. Witness the "rich man" and Lazarus.

The life style of the rich man was obscene in the face of Lazarus. It was an unsustainable life style in the face of death. Paul has a vision of a life style that is both gracious and sustainable. We in the "developed world" may not find our life style obscene, but we do know that it is unsustainable. We are told by the brook we can't drink and the air we can see. Still we top off our tanks with impunity and carry out the trash with both hands. We are helpless to do other than pursue the life of plenty until our planet blows the whistle, and the game is over. Or are we? Is there another game, a better game, full of grace and future? What is its theme, its idiom? "...pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." (1 Timothy 6:11-12)

There is an alternative to this obscene and unsustainable lifestyle we have developed, and it is not necessarily the Amish option. It does not mean abandoning our technological tools or forgetting what we have learned about production and economy. It is a life that uses all the tools and all the resources but uses them with a different motive and a different goal. The world is groping for this alternative that the church can model. Paul calls it "the eternal life", a life both holy and sustainable, rich toward God and neighbor.

Pentecost 17 – September 19, 2010

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Psalm 79:1-9
I Timothy 2:1 7
Luke 16:1 13

A Right Relationship With Wealth and With God

God created a world that has abundance and poverty. This would be true even if human beings were not involved. Plants flourish in the tropics and languish in the Arctic. Animals flourish and perish according to the cycles of the food supply. Wealth and poverty are built into the creation, but not "dishonest wealth". The crocodile clamps down on the rear leg of a Zebra crossing his stream -- wealth for the crocodile, but not dishonest; poverty for the zebra, but not unjust. It is nature. That is all. Only human beings can cheat the crocodile, the zebra and each other. It is a step up from nature. The prey becomes symbolic. Kill what you can eat. Kill more than you can eat. Kill more than you can ever eat -- "dishonest wealth". Jesus uses the sinful reality of dishonest wealth to make a point that is beyond wealth. Paul moves beyond wealth, praying for a stable human environment not for the sake of business but for the sake of the business of proclaiming Christ.

If I had been Luke's proof-reader, I would have written "Halt!" in the margin of this one. It is like a snarl of fishing line. We might be able to straighten it out, but who has the patience? The "rich man" didn't know how to fire the manager. He should have gotten the manager's keys when he told him he was through. The rich man seems to admire the manager's clever dishonesty. So, why did he fire him in the first place? Because his dishonesty had been too boring? The manager stole from the rich man all along, but he became more purposeful when the end was near. He had his eye on the transition from dependence on the rich man to dependence on a store of credit in the hearts of a small circle of business associates. It is this transition from reliance on one source of security to another that is the point of the parable. (Don't ask a parable to have more than one point.)

When Jesus applies the parable to his audience, he begins to clarify the nature of the transition from one source of security to another: "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes." (Luke 16:9) What friends have eternal homes? Jesus? Jesus' disciples? The poor? The implication of "dishonest wealth" here may not be that you should be dishonest in getting wealth but that, in a sinful world, all wealth is dishonest. Where people are left to starve, all wealth is dishonest. Within the context of a sinful world, however, there is still the opportunity to manage wealth faithfully or unfaithfully: "If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?" (Luke 16:11) Again, the transition is at stake, from the world's security, which is always just a loan, to spiritual security, which is an eternal possession (gift). The two sources of security with their separate loyalties place our lives in tension. "You cannot serve God and wealth." (Luke 16:13)

What if God blesses you with wealth? Is the tension eliminated? What if you take a vow of poverty and live at the expense of a wealthy church? Is the problem resolved? As long as material wealth looks to you like true riches, there is no resolution to the problem Jesus identifies in us. The choice to serve God rather than wealth requires first the insight to see spiritual riches as true riches.

All Paul wants for the church is a chance to make the riches of Christ the coin of the realm. He doesn't want to make the government the benefactor of the church. What does Christ have to do with power politics? True riches are to be given away. Riches that turn into poverty for many aren't true riches. True riches don't run out. The good news of God doesn't run out. It enriches the giver and the receiver. Pray for a stable government so that we can give Christ to the world not so that the world can enrich the church. Paul doesn't ask for the church to be tax exempt. He isn't appealing for prayer in the public schools. All he asks of God "for kings and all who are in high positions" is an environment in which the church can impart the true riches to everyone. He wants this because he sees God wanting it. Jeremiah and the Psalmist want relief for the ravaged poor because they see God wanting it. And, Jesus knows that we will never have a right relationship with wealth until use it for what God wants.

Pentecost 16 – September 12, 2010

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

A New Heaven And A New Us

Children are a reflection on their parents, and the chosen people are a reflection on God. It must be true because, more than once, God finds his own reputation sufficient reason to change a punitive plan. It can work the other way too. God's people, aware that the world is dependent on them to know the forgiveness of God, have a motivation to live godly lives that go beyond self-interest. There are a lot of proposed identities for God out there in the world, from indifferent to indulgent to punitive to vengeful to non-existent. Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” (Psalm 14:1) Yes but it makes a difference what theists say in their hearts too. I know of no other God than the God of Abraham and Isaac, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ , the one who is deeply committed to both human righteousness and divine forgiveness when righteousness fails. I know of no other image of God that combines a zeal for justice with an equal zeal for reconciliation, where love is steadfast but so is the demand for right living. The revelation of God that we serve is that of a perfect parent in an imperfect world. Our faithful witness is not just self-interest but an act of mercy toward the world around us.

The image of God in Christ is not that of a judge holding court but of a parent seeking a lost child. The mercy of God is evangelistic in the sense that it doesn't wait for an appeal process. It seeks out the child who needs mercy. Jesus proposes to his audience an absurdity, "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?" (Luke 15:4) The answer, of course, is …

"None of us would do that. We'd cut our losses and go on. What's more, we'd fire any shepherd that would leave ninety-nine unattended to look for one. The coin hunt we'd do, but, if we found it, we wouldn't throw a party costing more than the value of the coin. We didn't get our MBA’s for nothing.”

Jesus is revealing another facet to God's image. Not only is God intent on preserving relationship with the group, God's zeal is also for the individual. God comes with all power, justice and mercy seeking you. It has nothing to do with public relations. It has nothing to do with the general outcome of the human race. God comes out of love for you, a love that can set aside all other considerations in pursuit of reconciliation.

Now, this reconciliation that God seeks is not like that between human beings where we rise to our best selves and consign the worst to history. God has no rising to do. Reconciliation between God and us means a new creation, a new "us". "Behold! I saw a new heaven and a new us," Paul might have said to Timothy when he wrote, "But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost [of sinners], Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life." (1 Timothy 1:16) Paul was transformed by the "faith and love that are in Christ Jesus" not by Paul's ability to put an evil past behind him and rise to his best self. He became a new self, a self that has something important to say about the identity God for the sake of the world.

Pentecost 15 – September 5, 2010

Jeremiah 18:1-11
Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18
Philemon 1 21
Luke 14:25 33

No Other Gods, No Other Life

We think of God as the guarantor of our stable environment, but what if the environment falls apart? Jeremiah sees God’s hand at the potter’s wheel breaking a form unfit to hold his purpose. That form could be as large as a civilization or as small as an individual person – earthen vessels. We think of the United States as being too large and too stable to fall apart, but Jeremiah would see it as just one more clay pot subject to God’s hand. What moves God’s hand against God’s own creation? Its willful neglect of God’s goodness.

When society falls into chaos, the righteous appear to fare no better than the wicked. Being a follower of God is no apparent material advantage. It has no reward unless righteousness is its own reward. When life becomes meaningless, obeying God can be the only meaning there is. Onesimus returns to Colossae surrounded by chaos. If he returns to Philemon, he should be put to death as a run-away slave. That will be the reward for his righteousness in going back. Paul asks his owner to cooperate with God in rewarding righteousness. We don't know what happened. Did Philemon kill Onesimus? Or, did he take him back and call down the wrath of fellow slave owners for this dangerous precedent? Was there an earthly reward for righteousness or was righteousness its own reward? The church, like Paul, is here to appeal to the world to provide a stable social structure where righteousness is rewarded.

Jesus is not oblivious to the human need for an earthly reward for righteous living, but he claims us on the basis of a heavenly reward. Disciples get to be with him. That is reward enough. Though we domesticate his call, he refuses to be domesticated. He refuses to simply value what we want.

Jesus didn't have bold-faced print. He didn't say, "Read my lips," but he could say, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother..." Clearly Jesus had a narrow context in mind with these words. He was not contradicting the fifth Commandment. He was saying that discipleship is not something you tack on to your life. It is not something you add to your other interests and activities. It is your life. As a disciple, you are empowered to honor your father and mother, but honoring your father and mother is not your life.

By this standard most of us are inquirers rather than disciples. We are considering the commitment, but we haven't made it. We may have tried it on for size. We may take it very seriously, but we have not made it our lives. No, we've made it an addition to our lives, perhaps even a considerable addition. Am I being unfair? Am I putting the title of disciple out of our reach? Or, am I just being faithful to the words of Jesus? Is the title "disciple" identical with "the saved"? Did Jesus say only disciples will be saved? Is the question, then, who among the saved want to be disciples as well? But, that raises the question, "Who among the saved don't want to be disciples?" Oh, my!

John Wesley wrestled with the same issue under the headings "justification by faith" and "holy living". Albert Outler says that Wesley's great depression, following the Georgia fiasco, was the foundation of his conversion (in 1738) and a shift to radical "justification by faith" followed by "holy living" instead of "holy living in order to attain justification by faith." [WORKS Vol 19, 1:38].

When I accept Christ as my savior, I have no other gods. When I accept his call to discipleship, I have no other life.

Pentecost 14 – August 29, 2010

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Hebrews 13:1-8,15-16
Luke 14:1,7-14

Hold Your Life Lightly, But God Firmly

The proverb counsels discretion in our grasping. The Psalmist assures us that the open handed will prosper in spite of their generosity, even because of it. The preacher to the Hebrews exhorts us to hold fast to Christ rather than our love of money. Jesus challenges us to let go self-interest even in making out a guest list. All of this flies in the face of human nature. We are born utterly self-centered. Psychologists tell us that infants have to learn that there is a difference between themselves and the world around them. We are born thinking we are the universe. Enlightened self-interest is as far as we mature without God’s adding grace upon that grace. For the common good, we learn to give up some self-interest, but the revelation of God in Christ introduces into human life a new possibility.

Buddhist teaching recognizes that it is human passion, our grasping for life, that disturbs the spirit. Its council is an emptying of all these passions. Christian teaching recognizes the same human predicament but offers a filling instead of an emptying, a filling of the Holy Spirit. Filled with faith in God, trust in the promises of God, confidence in treasures laid up in heaven, we may loosen our grasp on possessions, open our hands to the poor and use our time for the neglected people around us. It may be that we have to reach a state of disillusionment with life before we seek an alternative. It may be that we have to empty ourselves as a part of the journey, but nature hates a vacuum. Empty is not a stable state for us. Filled is our stable state. Filled with God's spirit we may hold our lives lightly.

To hold one's life lightly because one holds God more firmly does not mean squandering one's life. We are not called to offer hospitality to evil. Our open-handedness is the freedom to make investments of love in people more the way God does. I have made the judgment that picking up hitch-hikers may squander my life. I would not be treating my life for the precious gift of God that it is. I have decided to sit down and take time with people who drop in to the church for aid rather than treat them in a mechanical way. In order to take this time, I have to let go a busy schedule, let go the praise for many tasks well done -- who knows, maybe let go a promotion. "He frittered away his time on people who were not prospects for church membership or large donations."

When the church hold's its life lightly because it holds God more firmly she can expand her guest list. I'm concerned about our guest list. We go after the people who can help pay the bills, run the programs and make the church a more comfortable place to be. Why not? Oh, because of the nature of Christ. What would happen if we invited the poor, the blind and the halt? Would our resources be sapped? Would the people with resources abandon us for a church where they "could be fed"? Or, would something else happen, something revelatory, something that confirms our proclamation of God in Christ? How lightly can I hold my paycheck, my status and my self-congratulation? How firmly can I hold God? How firmly will I let God hold me?

Pentecost 13 – August 22, 2010

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

Defined by the Sabbath

When Jerusalem was carried away captive to Babylon, the Jewish nation was shaken to its foundation. Through this experience, Isaiah heard God speak about their foundation: "If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day... I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob" (Isaiah 58:13-14)

We have been carried away captive but not shaken because we stayed right at home. The church has been carried away by the culture around it and is only gradually coming to the realization that it is held captive. "Little League Soccer games are scheduled on Sunday morning, so we won't be in worship during soccer season." Of course, go in peace and the peace of God go with you. "I have to work on Sunday." Certainly, we can't expect a secular society to support worship on the first day of the week any more than on the Sabbath. One morning we wake up in Babylon, and there we are.

It didn't begin with the repealing of Blue Laws. It began by our own neglect of the Lord's Day. First, we misused Jesus' reference to untying the ox, using "getting the ox out of the ditch" as a metaphor for household chores, fishing trips and finally anything. Jesus lived in a religious community that had been carried away captive by legalism. He would as gladly have set them free from that captivity as he set the woman free from hers. When we use his words to excuse our neglect of the Lord's Day, we confirm the accusation that Jesus broke the Sabbath and taught his disciples to do the same. That, of course, is not true.

People are stiff-necked and rebellious. It might have come to this even if the church had been faithful, even if we had taught the society the meaning and value of the Lord's Day. It might have come to the same end, but what we have done made this end certain.

What is lost? Not the dominance of the church over the society, but the loss of a shared vision, this vision: "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits. Who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. The LORD works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." (Psalms 103:1?8)

This is one's counsel to one's own heart. This is a world-view that anticipates and supports peace with justice. This is a vision that requires the attention to and practice of regular worship; otherwise it vanishes. This is the vision apart from which the people perish.

During and following the Second World War, the dominance of the church was almost palpable. It was like "... something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them." (Hebrews 12:18-19) We weren't up to it, just like the children of Israel weren't up to the implications of Mt. Sinai. As we wake up to our captivity, we have another chance, one that the author of the letter to the Hebrews holds up as the final warning and promise, a vision not of earthly dominance but of faithful witness, a rediscovery of our very foundation, bearing witness every Lord's Day that the captivity of the world has ended.
He is risen!

I’m a pastor. I work on Sunday. What does it mean to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy? In addition to worship, I take it to mean that the Lord’s day is for the nurturing of loving relationships, God, family and neighbor. I use that rule to measure my Sundays.

Pentecost 12 – August 15, 2010

Isaiah 5:1-7
Psalm 80:1-2; 8-19
Hebrews 11:29 12:2
Luke 12:49 56

The Threat of Faith

The preacher to the Hebrews exhorts his readers to faith, but at the same time he tells them how threatening they can become by having faith. Why were those heroes of faith "stoned to death... sawn in two... killed by the sword"? Why did they go "about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented"? (Hebrews 11:37) Because the rulers of this world perceived the faithful to be a threat. Even if the faithful prosper -- especially if the faithful prosper -- the rulers of this world are threatened. [...who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.] (Hebrews 11:33-34) These too are a threat and will draw hostile reaction.

Isaiah tells us of a time when the burden of faith was too much even for those to whom it was given. They traded the protection of faith for the security of this world. They left the gift for which they had been called and sought the power for which they were unfit. ”For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the people of Judah are his pleasant planting; he expected justice, but saw bloodshed; righteousness, but heard a cry!” (Isaiah 5:7) There are many in the present nation of Israel who think this time has come again.

The rulers of this world cannot control people whose trust is in God and thus they are threatened.
Faith is a threat to the rulers of this world, clerical or secular. Faith in God means that you cannot be manipulated by the rewards and punishments of this world. You cannot be bought with the world's comforts because you have been bought by the sacrifice of Christ. You cannot be controlled by the threat of death because you have already died with Christ. Because you have given yourself to God, you are uncontrollable by the world; therefore you are a threat and you always will be.

This doesn’t mean that you are called to be troublemakers for your own sake, however. You are to use this immunity for the sake of the world. Though a threat to the rulers of this world you are a part of the world’s hope.

Pentecost 11 – August 8, 2010

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20
Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Reality

Since most of what we experience as real comes to us through our five senses, we assume to be real whatever comes to us through these channels. Therefore, if I had a five-channel machine that I could connect to each of a person’s senses, I could convince anyone of anything. We don’t have these five-channel machines yet, so we make do with two or three and call it virtual reality. When we have five-channel machines, we will drop the word “virtual,” but will it be reality?

Actually, the world around us is such a machine. When I see a tree, I don’t see what it really is, a mass of protons and electrons. I only see what my eyes are equipped to see. The same is true when I look at you or when I look at the past or the future. We don’t call it “faith,” this trust we place in senses so easily deceived. We call it “reality.”

What if faith is a sixth sense? “But the word of the Lord came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’” (Genesis 15:4) Which of Abraham’s five senses received this information? Did he believe because he was irrational or because he experienced this promise through a sense more reliable than the other five?

Sarah’s age, something he could experience with his five senses, became the virtual reality, and God’s promise became the reality.

The Psalmist declares, “A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.” (Psalm 33:16-17) If this is reality, he didn’t get it through his five senses. Military might for him has become the virtual reality; the reign of God has become the reality.

What if faith is the most reliable sense?

“Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Things not seen, heard, tasted, felt or smelt, that is. So, things whatted? Things faithed. Things perceived in a different way, hoped for, but not just hoped for – things perceived not by the common senses nor hoped for in the common way we hope, by wishing or worse, by denying reality. Faith is the assurance more than the hope. It is the assurance that only this sixth channel can transmit. The other five channels can be fooled by any five-channel transmitter. The sixth channel is the clear channel that only God can use. Whatever comes through, it is reality. The rest is virtual reality.

Is Jesus making light of our reality when he says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.” (Luke 12:32-33)

Get a real purse? I thought I had a real purse.

Pentecost 10 – August 1, 2010

Psalm 107:1-9, 43
Hosea 11:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

The Twilight of a Possession

Passion for possessions seems to drive our society. Shopping is a cure for the blues. Anticipating the next major purchase gives life momentum. We are actualized in the act of acquiring things. When we have to move, however -- when we have to put every single thing we have bought into a box into a truck -- possessions take on another aspect. They become the source of anxiety. Will it get broken? Will it fit the new house? Why did I ever buy it in the first place? Early in their existence they buoyed our lives, but now they weigh us down. They become like a lead life preserver.

This is true for the little moves of our lives, but it is more true for the final move of our lives. Dying people don't have to be reminded that they can't take it with them. They have a declining interest in possessions.

Possessions always come to a twilight, not just because we pass away, but also because their ability to sustain us passes away. What happened to that toy for which you were willing to fall down in a screaming fit on the department-store floor before Christmas? What happened to it in March? What happened to that new car? Boat? Resort property? If you are still as excited about them now as you were when you bought them... If they still sustain your joy in living the way they did at first, then these Scriptures are not for you. No, these words are for the people who finally cannot be satisfied with material possessions regardless of how exciting they may have been – people who just can't sustain their lives with their possessions.

The material things that really sustain life move through us, e.g. air, water and food. The only security in them is that they keep flowing not that we possess them. When I see refugees leaving a war torn land, people who had ancestral homes, I remember how tenuous our grasp can be on even the most basic of possessions. When I look at my retirement account, I stop short of declaring, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry." (Luke 12:19)

Hosea reminds us that our real deliverance comes from the invisible God not the visible blessings of God. “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.” (Hosea 11:3)

Jesus calls me to mistrust my abundance and the abundance around me. (Although, I like to refer to abundance as “blessings”.) Paul reaches out to my faltering spirit with hope. I am being transformed from a person who breathes earthly air to one who breathes heavenly air. The currency of this world is being exchanged for the currency of the next. It is something God is doing in me, but it is also something I do. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal." (Matthew 6:19-20)

The twilight of a possession can be the dawn of faith.

Pentecost 9 – July 25, 2010

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-19
Luke 11:1-13

Temporary Damnation

In Matthew we hear Jesus contrast eternal punishment and eternal life, but most of the time when Jesus or any other voice in the Bible talks in absolute terms it is not about God as the agent of damnation but rather of reconciliation. (Matthew 25:46)

Hosea proclaims God’s damnation of Israel for nine verses then marvelously shifts to God’s reconciliation with Israel. The Psalmist starts out talking about God’s salvation then switches to damnation and back again to salvation. Paul reminds the church at Colossae of their salvation through Christ but spends some time warning them about losing it. Jesus uses the image of a disinterested friend to teach us not to settle for damnation.

Sometimes life gets so wrong that it can feel like damnation. The pressing question then is whether this damnation is temporary or eternal. Some people imagine that Jesus’ “ask, seek, knock” encouragement is about heaping up blessings, but I think of it more in terms of overcoming damnation, the damned quality of one’s life. Is the damnation eternal? No! Ask. Seek. Knock.

A local photographer is confined to a wheelchair because of Multiple Sclerosis. She said that the disease can take her mobility but cannot take away her faith and love. She has become a writer now instead of a photographer.

Never settle for damnation. God doesn’t.

Pentecost 8 – July 18, 2010

Amos 8:1-12
Psalm 52
Colossians 1:15-28
Luke 10:38-42

The Righteous, The Self-Righteous and The Rich

Righteous indignation is only becoming to the righteous. The words of Amos are a temptation to assume that you and I can stand in his place and point our fingers at others. Do we not live in a society that tramples the needy and declares the new moon past and all the blue laws with it – open for business 24/7. Amos can point the finger and it be the judgment of God. We on the other hand can’t rise above the culture enough to point down. All we can do is confess that Amos’ curse is upon us. Our definition of prosperity is ruining the land (and sea!) and will lay waste the people, but we have no intention of changing. That is why the judgment Amos pronounces is so certain. He doesn’t say these things will happen if we don’t change our ways. He just says they will happen.

The Psalmist like Amos can stand far enough above the fray to point the finger and let it be God’s hand. I’m not the Psalmist. I can’t point my finger with the same immunity to self-righteousness. Better I should let the Psalmist point at me, single out my sharp tongue and my deceit, than take shots at others using the Psalm as cover. The greatest threat to the church is inside the church not outside. “The godly” in the Psalm does not equate to you and me or to the church necessarily. Only God can designate the godly. Surely the church includes the godly, but it contains those who do mischief against the godly as well. This is sad. May the day come when the godly will indeed laugh; that is, be free from threat. The godly would not gloat over the ruin of anyone, but would be confirmed in being rich toward God.

There is confusion among us about the world’s riches and the will of God. On the one hand Amos and Psalm 52 assume that rich people are the enemy of the poor and the godly, maybe even that the godly are poor. On the other hand God promised the children of Israel a land flowing with milk and honey. Could it be that the problem is not so much being rich as trying to make ourselves rich?

Martha is all of us. Who can claim to have chosen the better part and made it stick? We have our moments centered on Christ, but mostly we “are worried and distracted by many things.” We want to make ourselves rich, but then Christ can’t make us rich.

Paul has a clear picture of the riches of Christ Jesus. God has made Paul rich, even his suffering is rich in meaning. The church at Colossae can be rich. Your church can be rich too, but if it is to be rich, it will be rich in the confession of Jesus in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.”

Pentecost 7 – July 11, 2010

Psalm 82
Amos 7:7-17
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

All you need to know about eternal life you learned in kindergarten.

We make salvation complicated in order to avoid obedience. Moses says, "All you needed to know to live in God's kingdom you learned in Deuteronomy." Jesus simplifies it further, "All you needed to know to live in God's kingdom you learned in the Shema."

The story of the Good Samaritan is an explication of the proposition that the rule of love is the only rule you need to know. A devout and astute colleague of mine once observed about a church that they didn't need any more Bible study. They needed to start doing what the Bible says. W. C. Fields was caught reading the Bible on the movie set. To which he responded, "I'm looking for loopholes." Was the Levite studying the Torah when he passed by the man beaten and lying by the side of the road? Is Bible study itself obedience? Is Biblical knowledge itself the source of salvation? Is theological sophistication the same as intimacy with God? The thief on the cross didn't know the Bible. He knew Jesus. This is not an argument against studying the Bible or pursuing the knowledge of God but rather an argument for the spirit of God's love in our hearts and the practice of God's love in our actions.

The Priest and the Levite in Jesus' parable can stand for those who seek to possess eternal life by their knowledge and practice of the religion; the Samaritan, for those on whose heart God has written the law by the imposition of the Holy Spirit.

Just as Amos said, God has dropped a plumb line into the house of Israel. But Jesus has found this heir of Jeroboam, this Samaritan, to be upright and the house of Judah to be askew. The plumb line of God is love and can be dropped into any setting as both a guide and a judgment. “’What do you see, Amos?’ Yahweh asked me. ‘A plumb line,’ I said.”

“For this reason, since the day we heard it, we have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding...” (Colossians 1:9)

We can all be like the Good Samaritan when we allow God to transform our minds with "the hope laid up for us in heaven". The priest operated on the hope of getting to Jericho before dark; the Samaritan, a higher hope. The fruit that each bore was appropriate to the hope that each had.

Professing love for God and not loving the neighbor is not acceptable to God. We didn’t need Jesus to tell us; the Psalmist had already heard God tell us. “No more mockery of justice, no more favoring the wicked! Let the weak and the orphan have justice; be fair to the wretched and destitute; rescue the weak and needy; save them from the clutches of the wicked!” (Psalm 82:2-4)

"May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:11-14)

As Malcolm Muggeridge put it: "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but that it has been found difficult and not tried."

Pentecost 6 –

July 4, 2010

Psalm 30
2 Kings 5:1-14
Galatians 6:1-16
Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

Sales and the Marketplace

Don’t waste your time with a closed mind. Jesus sounds like a sales manager giving a pep talk before the dealership opens for the weekend. First he tells them how successful they can be (“the fields are white for harvest”). Then he tells them how to close the deal (“peace to this house”). He also braces them against the corrosive effect of rejection, not to take it personally (“whoever rejects you rejects me”). Then he gives them the power they need for their mission (“See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy). Finally, in case they are tempted to get puffed up with power, he reminds them about the true and lasting reward. Thus the Christian faith entered the religious marketplace of the first century. It’s hard to imagine one more tempestuous than ours today, but it probably was.

I wanted a picture of the statue of John Wesley, founder of Methodism, in old town Savannah, Georgia. When I got to the square I found Wesley with his hand outstretched to an assembly of yellow-shirted Falun Dafa devotees promoting a religion I had never heard of. I had arrived not at a safe haven for my religious tradition but at the religious marketplace. Sometimes I wish discipleship were easier. I weary of all the effort to reach new people. I wish they’d just come to worship and learn. I never wanted to be a salesman. But, “sales” is not a bad word. It affirms people’s freedom to choose. It challenges the salesman to be convincing. It forces us back to the sales manager for our power and direction. It gives the world a chance it wouldn’t have if Christianity were an exclusive boutique.

Does Elisha have an eye to the religions marketplace when he says to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.” Paul is in open competition with other salesmen in Galatia, but he will not abandon the faithful representation of the Gospel to close the deal, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything?” Then with a blessing much like the one Jesus offered to the welcoming household, Paul closes his presentation, “…peace be upon them and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.”

Pentecost 5 – June 27, 2010 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14 Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 Galatians 5:1, 13-25 Luke 9:51-62 The Mantle of Christ Being led by the spirit is the issue. Elisha wants to have the spirit in him that was in Elijah, his father in the faith. With this spirit comes power and direction, the power to part the waters so that one may go as God directs. With this same spirit comes direction that is superior to the law. Christ has set us free from the law not that we might be set adrift but that we might be led by his spirit. People adrift wash up on flesh beach. At first we think Paul is just talking about hedonism, but his detail list includes idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, envy and factions. In an election cycle it is good for us as a country to measure ourselves against this list. “My political party, right or wrong,” sounds mighty like factionalism. Campaign media consultants promise their sorcery. Any contest for power has swirling around it all the other signs of the flesh-directed life. Jesus says if you are going to water-ski, grab the line and don’t let go – use both hands. Otherwise you are all washed up. It is the power and direction that keeps you afloat. People that dabble in discipleship are just wading in the shallow water. When the boat motor roars and the line tries to pull your arms off, if you gird your loins and brace your legs, you will soon be walking on water. The spirit is this kind of force. It doesn’t leave you much time or reason to consider another direction. That’s why you don’t need the tedious law, the law that lacks saving power. But let go the Spirit and you need all the law and then some. Have you picked up the mantle of Christ? Have you traded the sinful reflexes of this world for his high calling? Are you his disciple lock, stock and barrel? Martin Luther said that his young colleague Phillip Melanchton had swallowed the Holy Spirit feathers and all. He meant this as a criticism, but it is an image of doing more than just nibbling at the Spirit of God. Are you just nibbling, washed up on flesh beach. It’s time to walk on water. It’s time to part the sea. Can you hear the motor revving? God is about to line up both hands and your whole heart.

Pentecost 4 – June 20, 2010

Psalm 42
I Kings 19:1-15a
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

Wait On The Lord

Ready to give up? Elijah was. So was the Psalmist. Paul could have given up on the “foolish” Galatians, and Jesus certainly could have given up on people who respond to his miracle by asking him to leave town. But, they didn’t give up. Why? They were oriented more toward God than toward their own success.

It wasn’t so much a show of force that gave back Elijah’s zeal, as it was the quiet recognition that God was not through with him. The Psalmist can’t get back to his life of worship in Jerusalem. The Bible doesn’t tell us why. Faced with the option of despair he receives the gift of hope instead. He preaches himself a little sermon:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.” (Psalm 42:11)

Paul found out that the church in Galatia had abandoned the cornerstone of his teaching and the heart of the Gospel. He could have said, “Phooey on them,” but instead he wrote a letter that has helped the church better understand the good news Paul preached -- the promise of reconciliation among people, e.g. Jew, Greek, slave, free, male and female; and people with God: ”for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith” (Gal. 3:26)

The man who lived crazy didn’t want to stay with the people who preferred him crazy, but Jesus hadn’t given up on them. He told the man to stay in his own land and tell people what had happened. We don’t know for sure, but it may have been that man’s testimony that prepared those Greek cities to become one of the strongholds of the early church.

So, there is no wind in your sail? You are dead in the water? Wait on the Lord. God has a future you haven’t dreamt of.

Pentecost 3 – June 13, 2010

Psalm 5:1-8
1 Kings 21:1-21a
Galatians 2:15-21
Luke 7:36-8:3

“Revelation Collision”

The Old Testament lections tell us that God will not tolerate evil, and the New Testament lections tell us that faith in Christ will free us from judgment -- revelation on a collision course.

Ahab is a cowardly sinner, but Jezebel is brazen. They are both beneath contempt in the eyes of the biblical author, partly for their own sakes and partly for what the Northern Kingdom might have been. These are God’s chosen people, after all, who are being ruled by a “surfer girl” from the Mediterranean coast and all her “new age” priests. (I can hear the “Beach Boys” singing in the background.) Ahab is a babe in the woods when it comes to politics, but Jezebel shows him the way called “disinformation” in the lexicon of propaganda, a euphemism for the better Anglo-Saxon word “lying”. She was a political advisor from the Baal Foundation, a Phoenician political think tank. Her plan is clever without being wise. Like most political stratagems, it works for the immediate objective but fails the test of time. Elijah arrives to pass that judgment from God.

What Jezebel and Ahab did was venal and common as dirt. How far back do you have to go in your local newspaper to find an unscrupulous land deal reported? That is not the issue. The issue is “Can they be saved?” Can they turn, repent, believe in Christ and be saved? As much to the point is this: “Do you even want them to turn and repent and start attending your church?”

There is something in our hearts that would rather keep the “bad guys” bad and the “good guys” clearly identified with us. The Gospel looks beautiful in print, sounds great in sermons, and plays well when I am the one “justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ”. However, it is a real challenge in general practice. What if Jezebel had met Jesus? Could it not have been she weeping at his feet? Could God not have heard the sound of her cry? And how might she have met Jesus, if no one could visualize her forgiveness, if everyone were pleased to leave her in her role as the villain, pleased to let her die like a dog in the end? How is it then with the Gospel entrusted to your church for Jezebel's sake? What might you do or say as the body of Christ that would stir her heart and bring her to salvation? How might it be at your next covered dish dinner if she were there for the Gospel feast?

Pentecost 2 – June 6, 2010

1 Kings 17:8-24
Psalm 146
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17

Light Up and Live

“God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 Jn 1:5) Therefore the presence of God lights up life. Jesus lit up the life of the widow from Nain – to say nothing of the life of her son. The crowd lights up in response. Glorifying God is turning your light in God’s direction. Paul recounts how God lit up his life and how the churches of Judea turned their light toward God in response to his conversion. Another widow lights up when Elijah revives her son, and she reflects that light toward God. The Psalmist lights up thinking about who God is and what God does.

Light and power are both in play here. The power of God enlightens those who witness and receive it. The widow in Zarephath knows that Elijah is the real thing. The crowd and around the widow of Nain knows they are in the presence of a great prophet or something marvelous. Paul knows that he is an apostle by divine authority, and the churches in Judea know that God is turning the enemy into an ally. In three hundred years, God will turn a whole empire of enemies into allies of sorts.

What do you know? You know you worship the living God when that God surprises you. Idols never surprise us because they are projections of us. God surprised Paul and the widows. It is surprising in the world that God sets the prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, loves the righteous, watches over the strangers and upholds the orphan and the widow. That is not the God of human projection.

This God is a surprise to a nation that leads the world in the number of prisoners it holds -- a surprise to a country teaming with single-parent type widows, strangers from across the border and children orphaned by poverty. The compassion your church shows to these is surprising to the world and sheds light on the living God.

So where’s the light? Where’s the power? Where’s the surprise appearance of God? Where’s the glory and those glorifying? Will it be in your message this week? “This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.”

Trinity Sunday – May 30, 2010

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
Psalm 8
Romans 5:1-5
John 16:12-15

Clever We Are; Wise We Aren’t

There was a time when Wisdom delighted in the human race, according to Proverbs 30. It must have been before we figured out how to open a hole in the ozone layer and turn atoms into poison eternal and open an artesian oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Clever we are; wise we aren't.

Of all the reasons we need an outpouring of God the Holy Spirit, our need for wisdom is seldom mentioned. We know we are clever, so we think we are wise. We need the Holy Spirit to make us feel good, to heal our bodies and minds, to give us love and enthusiasm, to grow the church and to confirm our hope. If we have all that, we can figure out the rest. What we don't want is restraint or constraint. We don't want wisdom telling us to consume less. We don't want wisdom telling us to share more. We don't want wisdom telling us to have fewer children and take better care of the children we have. "Come Holy Spirit so we can sustain our foolishness?" No. "Come Holy Spirit; make us truly wise that we may ever enjoy your consolations."

We need wisdom for our own sakes, but we need wisdom for God's sake too. "O LORD, our Sovereign, how majestic is your name in all the earth! ... what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet..." (Psalm 8:1,5-6) Does God's decision to put all things under our feet make God look majestic or foolish? The Scriptures reveal that God has chosen to be known in part by looking at God's covenant partner. "What are human beings that God is mindful of them..." Yes, and, "What is God that God makes such a blunder?" Our foolishness raises doubts about our claim to the created order. Maybe we are just a clever species that blundered into its own dead end. Much is at stake when we pray for God the Holy Spirit to come and impart to us wisdom.

If God the Holy Spirit can impart wisdom to us, then we can know and understand things that we didn't know and understand before. We can know that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit even if that were not clear to us when the New Testament was being written. "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth..." (John 16:13) This truth is not a wisdom concocted from things lying around but a wisdom that God brings from outside the creation, outside the cleverness of the clever. "[It] has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5:5) Paul is talking about love, but a love that includes wisdom because it is God the Holy Spirit pouring in. Paul is talking about a future in which the love and wisdom of God are characteristic of the human race. The love and wisdom of God in us is both God's glory and ours. "...we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God." (Romans 5:3)

The presence among us of God the Holy Spirit means there is still hope -- hope that we may become truly wise in addition to clever; that, rather than blunder into an evolutionary blind alley, we may ever enjoy God's consolations.

Pentecost – May 23, 2010

Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
Romans 8:14-17
John 14:8-17 (25-27)

Taking the Message to the Streets

The disciples were sitting down when the Holy Spirit arrived. Surely they jumped up. They must have jumped up and run out into the street. Else, how would the sundry residents of Jerusalem have heard them in their own language? They came out of the house saying what? "Look at these flames on our heads?" Doubtful. Luke assumes that we know what message would issue from such a power. We don't know what the Jews all heard in their own language, but we know what Peter said in one language. It was a message about the end time and the beginning time. The coming of the Holy Spirit marked the end and the beginning. Jesus was the end of waiting for the Messiah and the beginning of the waiting for the one already known to be the Messiah. Baptism marked the end of being a thrall of the present age and the beginning of a new citizenship.

Jesus had to end his sojourn with the disciples following the resurrection in order for the new age to begin. The new age needed Jesus in the sky and the Holy Spirit in the heart. The new age was to knit back together the human fabric that had been shredded on the tower of Babel. It was like a space ship departing. Everyone had to make the decision to get on or stay behind. It sounds as if it were a general boarding, open to all regardless of race, religion or national origin. "Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." (Acts 2:21) But, it also sounds as if it one boards by invitation only, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever." (John 14:15-16) The new age is somehow a mutual venture of God and people. Is that why the new age is so old now and so incomplete? Did we get on board too slowly? Or, were too few invitations sent out?

The Psalmist looks briefly at the dark side of the dependence of the creation on the Spirit of God. "When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground." (Psalm 104: 29-30) If there is a Pentecost, then can there be an un-Pentecost? What is the sound in the room when the Holy Spirit withdraws? And, what happens then when the disciples go out into the street? It doesn't have to be tongues that we remember when we leave a worship service, but it does have to be some manifestation of the presence of God. Otherwise, we have nothing to take to he street, nothing to send us out of the room with a message.

It isn't tongues that Paul holds up as proof of the new citizenship but prayer, a crying out in prayer. Paul wants to be sure that all disciples stay in touch with the experience of the Holy Spirit when they leave the church, "When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God," (Romans 8:15-16) When we leave our worship services, do we take with us any such touchstone? Do we take a burning message into the street? In the present age, are the only burning messages among us commercials?

It is asking too much of preachers to expect us to come up with something everyone will recognize as the Holy Spirit. It is too much to ask of an order of worship or a liturgy to guarantee such experience. A tongue-speaking service is a contrivance. The disciples didn't meet that day to speak in tongues. But, it is not asking too much to expect God to give us the Holy Spirit. Our liturgy and our preaching should be filled with such expectation and supplication. Then, just before our people leave the room, we should prompt them to reflect on the worship hour and search their hearts for the evidence of God's having drawn near. "They said to each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?'" (Luke 24:32) For it is only after we identify our own experience of the Holy Spirit, that we take the message to the street.

Easter 7 – May 16, 2010

Acts 16:16-34
Psalm 97
Rev 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21
John 17:20-26

The Integrity of the Church

If God grants a slave girl the healing for which she didn't pray, how much more will God give to the church the unity for which Jesus did pray. If the feeble testimony of a demon disturbed Paul that much, how much more does the feeble testimony of a divided church disturb the martyrs. When we divide the church, when we feed the division of the church, when we profit by the division of the church, we deny all those who gave their lives to bear witness to a faith that is above division; and we deny the efficacy of the prayer of Jesus "that they may be one, as we are one".

The truth is that God answered Jesus' prayer. We are one as the Father and the Son are one. What is untrue is the division we practice. It is untrue and un-evangelical because the unity that God gives the church is not for its own sake but "so that the world may believe".

This unity of the church is not just integrity within itself but integrity with God. The jailor was about to kill himself because the earthquake opened the doors of the prison and opened the shackles of all the prisoners. He was about to kill himself because he assumed the integrity of his prisoners; that is, the unity of their self-interest, to flee captivity. He assumed the integrity of his superiors, their common allegiance to punishment -- his execution for dereliction of duty. What he discovered instead was an integrity with God on the part of Paul and his company. The prayers and hymns were a foretaste of this integrity; the mighty act of God in opening the doors of the prison was a confirmation of this integrity; but Paul's interest in the salvation of the jailor rather than his own escape revealed this integrity. God's love for the jailor and Paul's love for the jailor were one. The jailor discovered God's motive and God's love in Paul, the very integrity for which Jesus had prayed. That is what led to his conversion, not the worship service, not the miracle but the integrity of the church with God.

"The LORD is king! Let the earth rejoice!" This was the affirmation of the Jailor and his entire household that day. He had found the transcendent power of life, and it was far above the power he knew when he sought to take his life, "All worshipers of images are put to shame." Luke doesn't tell us what happened to the jailor when he had to account to his superiors for the prisoners he had personally escorted out of the jail. The jailor may have had the privilege of joining the martyrs.

"Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates." (Rev 22:14) This is the jailor being welcomed into the new Jerusalem by Jesus himself, his robe washed in the blood of the Lamb and in his own -- his robe the integrity of the church with God.

Easter 5 – May 2, 2010

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

God’s Love Conquers

Acts
Peter dreamed that the Pizza deliveryman showed up with "The Works."
"I didn't order all those toppings," said Peter, "just kosher."
"Try it; you'll like it," said God.
In order to be sure it was the right order, he tried it three times, and he bought it.

The lynch pin of the theological argument for Gentiles being included in the Jewish sect arising from Jesus is the discovery that the Holy Spirit works equally in Gentiles to convince them (us) of the resurrection and convert them into disciples of Jesus, "the repentance that leads to life." (What is that exactly, the repentance that leads to life?") God delivers the movement of the faith across the borderline between Jews that believe and Gentiles that come to believe. It was not a church growth insight on Peter's part or a marketing breakthrough. Church growth is appropriately a function of perceiving what God is doing and then following.

Psalms
"All things praise the Lord" is not exactly the same as all things are good to eat, but it might mean that there are no taboo things in creation. God called them all good. "Clean and unclean" (taboo) is a different distinction than "good and bad". God sets aside the distinction "clean and unclean" along with "Jew and Gentile."

Revelation
The movement of the consummation of history is not from earth toward heaven but from heaven toward earth. It is therefore not something we perfect and give to God, but rather something God perfects and gives to us. Therefore, our appropriate response is faithful, prayerful submission to the gift. We cannot create it and bestow it on ourselves. The role of the church is not to perfect the world, but to show faith to the world and call the world to faith. The image of the church in Acts, the image of Peter in our text, is one of faithful, prayerful submission.

John
Our public relations are to be based on our obvious love for one-another. This is the sign that Jesus gave us to give to the world, not the cross. The cross is an appropriate reminder of the kind of love that flowed to us from God, but it is this love that should relate us to the world. It is in this sign -- love, not the cross -- which we conquer. And, what do we conquer? We conquer (the love of God in us conquers) the barriers that break down community: God-people, Jew-Gentile, religion-religion, male-female, class-class, age-age, nation-nation. This requires a new commandment, not just that we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, but that we love our fellow church member the way Jesus loved us. It doesn't replace the former commandment. It adds to it. We are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and to love each other as Jesus loved us. Is there a difference between the way we love ourselves and the way Jesus loves us? I should say.

The United Methodist Church is contemplating striking a blow for the faith by creating a new distinction among us, "Confessing" versus just plain. Does God's love conquer by dividing? One could ask the same question of every division of the church through history. No, God's love reveals a unity from which people may separate themselves. The vast majority of the Jewish community of the first and second centuries chose to separate itself from that unity revealed to Peter and the church. John quotes Jesus as using the term "the Jews" to indicate that choice, i.e. people choosing to separate themselves from the unity that God reveals. We do it for the best of reasons and the worst of reasons, but when we do it, we do not love one another as Jesus loved us.

[A flashpoint for recent schism has been the treatment of homosexuals in the church. The contention of one side is that full equality for them would be contrary to Scripture and the will of God. I wonder if they are thinking of gays and lesbians in terms of taboo rather than evil. People shun taboos like evil, but they are not the same. We must always resist evil, but we can grow past taboos.]

Easter 4 – April 25, 2010

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

God to the Rescue

Peter raises the dead as an extension of the power of the risen Lord. The Psalmist lives in the promise of a shepherd's rescue. John of Patmos see the saints "...who have come out of the great ordeal," rescued beyond their death. In the Gospel of John, when asked his identity, Jesus points to the works of God that he does. As the blind man said, "Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind." (John 9:32) Only God can perform such a rescue; therefore, this must be God.

"God to the rescue" sounds melodramatic, unless you are the one being rescued. If God is creator and sustainer, can God not also be rescuer? There is a problem with God's coming to the rescue, though. It implies that the Holy One is not adequately in charge. "Oops, Tabitha died. I didn't intend that -- good of Peter to remind me." It challenges us to understand randomness within God's will. Some things just happen, maybe a lot of things. They happen because of all the decisions people make every day. They happen because of forces working independently. Otherwise, why would God intervene in anything? Why would God raise the dead, shepherd people around the dangers of life, or provide alternate consequences for the faithful, alternate to the normal consequences found on earth, if God were totally in charge of the day-to-day events. You don't rescue people from consequences you ordain; and if you ordain trouble just so you can rescue people, you are sick.

Did God ordain Tabatha's death or not? What is the meaning of this rescue? What does it say about the identity of God and the church? Luke doesn't say Peter labored long in prayer over the body. He doesn't mention prayer chains stretching across the country with their own web page. All he says is that Peter prayed and bingo... Don't you suppose there were other mourners in Joppa at that time? If people could be resuscitated as easily as Tabatha was, couldn't the church have made that its primary business? Who could have competed with such power? "Raising of the dead every Wednesday at 7:00 PM in the chapel, members only."

The church didn't take up the resuscitation of corpses as its mission because that was not its mission. Raising Tabatha contributed to the mission of the church by identifying the power by which the church lived: God the Holy Spirit. "...many believed in the Lord," is the consequence of the raising of Tabatha not "many came and brought the deseased with them." So, maybe her death wasn't so random after all. Maybe both her death and her resuscitation were ordained by God for the sake of identifying Christ in the church. Maybe miracles aren't for us at all, but for the sake of another audience. Expecting a miracle for myself is vain. Receiving a miracle in order to identify God to a lost and desperate world is humble service.

"Well, preacher, does God come to the rescue or not?" Certainly God does. That is what makes such rescuing God's very signature. The Gospel is the story of God's rescue mission. "Then can I expect the rescue I want?" If you expect the rescue you want, you may miss the rescue you get -- better just to trust the rescuer.

Easter 3 – April 18, 2010 Acts 9:16, 7-20 Psalm 30 Revelation 5:1114 John 21:119 The Risen Lord Raises Up the Church The risen Lord takes an active role in managing the church. He waylays Paul to recruit him as the missions chairperson. He makes Ananias a member of the nominating committee. He interviews Peter for the position of lay leader. John of Patmos, he makes worship chair. The church can exult like the Psalmist, "I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me." (Psalm 30:1) The church was and is the singular witness to the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus busies himself with the organization and direction of the church immediately following the resurrection, and the church busies itself in proclaiming the resurrected Lord following Pentecost. The church is a community of witnesses with a single priest who is Jesus himself. In Acts, Luke makes it clear that God in Christ leads the church out of its original setting as surely as the Holy One brought the children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt. Saul, like Moses, is accosted by God while in the pursuit of his own mission. God changes that mission and reinterprets the reality in which both Moses and Paul operated. John, presumably the Disciple that Jesus loved in some distinctive way, is clear that Jesus chose Peter, not him, for authority over the original community of witnesses. Jesus, even more than the rest of the community, knew Peter's weakness for power, either to be intimidated by not having it or to be arrogant in having it. Jesus knew this to be true of all future church leaders, too. So, Jesus ties power to love and love for him to love for the community of witnesses. The early witnesses interpreted the resurrection to be the confirmation of their vision for the conversion of the world, one that looked much like a half-hour western on TV where the Lone Ranger and Tonto come into town from nowhere, identify and dispatch the bad guys, establish the reign of righteousness and ascend the throne on the horizon with a hearty, "Hi Ho Silver." The author of the Apocalypse seems to embrace this vision, but the way he describes it leaves the action hovering in space. The rescuer doesn't quite ride into town. The shoot-out is in the sky. There is a parallel drama to the one on earth going on above, and it is on that plane that the conquering lamb clearly conquers. On this earthly plane, he also conquers, but not with the same finality. Worthy is this lamb who was slain and who conquers for the sake of the church. Worthy is this lamb who was raised and leads the church, worthy to be praised. His victory can be seen on earth the way other invisible forces can be seen, by their impact on the visible, e.g. the raising up of a joyous, loving community from a bitter, hateful execution; the turning of a persecutor into a missionary; the sustaining of genuine righteousness in a church populated with sinners. It is the risen Lord who creates and directs the church. Apart from that the church has no mission and no proper existence. I promise to try harder to keep this in mind when I prepare an order of worship and a sermon. It is the risen Lord who raises up the church.

Easter 2 – April 11, 2010 Acts 5:27-32 Psalm 150 Revelation 1:4-8 John 20:19-31 Welcoming the Hero Home “This is the day that the Lord has made," is not a celebration of another sunrise or another day's life but rather an exultation over the king's victory in battle. The whole city has turned out to welcome the conquering hero home, a king of a smallish state unlikely to win, a king who got passed over in favor of another, a king who nevertheless by the power of God has gotten the victory. It could be David, but it could be Jesus. ”Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the LORD." (Psalm118:26) Didn't we just hear that on Palm Sunday? Wasn't that supposed to be the exaltation of Jerusalem? It fizzled just like the Psalm does. Palm Sunday started out fine, but when Jesus got to the Temple -- nothing, no delegation, no high priest -- nothing. And, by the time Psalm 118 gets to verse 25, we are back pleading for success. The real consummation of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is the scene from Acts where Peter is standing before the high priest and the Sanhedrin. It is as if Jesus and the high priest got their calendars mixed up. Jesus shows up with a procession at the temple, and the high priest isn't there. The high priest shows up to confront what God is doing, and Jesus isn't there. In place of Jesus and with his full authority is Peter. Peter is no longer the cowering figure in the flickering firelight outside the house of the high priest on Good Friday, a man with nothing but defeat on his mind. Now, he is inside the house standing before the high priest with nothing but victory on his mind. The high priest, for his part, having failed to meet Jesus when he could celebrate victory, now must meet him with bitterness and defeat as Peter declares, "We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him." (Acts 5:29-32) This transformation in Peter is the surest witness to the resurrection in the whole story of the early church. He went from a mindset of defeat to a mindset of victory. He went from being intimidated by earthly defeat to being captivated by heavenly victory. Why? How? The resurrection of Jesus is the answer given and the most plausible explanation there is. We mortal humans are constantly in search of victory thinking. That is why we have these endless play offs in sports, so someone can for a fleeting moment break free form the mind set of defeat, thrust an index finger into the air and proclaim, "We're number one!" Consumer confidence even rises briefly, "I'm buying." But, the world champions of 2010 are the dogs of 2011, and the fans are back to pleading with God for victory again. Peter has found something different. He has experienced a permanent change. It is more than his memory of seeing the risen Lord. That experience recedes into history. Peter has something that doesn't recede, that is more than memory. He has the witness of God the Holy Spirit. When Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into him and the rest of the disciples, they were transformed. (John puts this in the final discourses, but the historical sequence has to be otherwise.) The mindset of defeat was replaced with the mindset of victory. It was a permanent change. This is the change the risen Lord has for you and me. The conquering hero had to overcome locked doors to receive the welcome of the disciples, had to pierce a locked heart to change it from defeat thinking to victory thinking. In prison on Patmos with all the earthly signs of defeat, another John welcomes our hero home in a vision of his coming on the clouds. I welcomed the risen Lord home when I heard his story proclaimed in the worship service as a child. By the time I was twelve years old Jesus was my hero. That has not been equal to the transformation in Peter yet, however. I still struggle to keep the risen Lord at the center of my thinking and my mind stayed on spiritual victory amid earthly defeat. Where the disciples received the Holy Spirit in a rush, I am afraid God the Holy Spirit only seeps into my life, but... Da-yenu, it is enough for me. To receive the Holy Spirit as God pleases is enough for me.