The Secret of Idolatry

Amos 6: 1a, 4-7
1Tim 6:6-19

The passage we read in 1Timothy 6 talks about not loving riches more than God and how to be a person of God. It's some really good advice.

It reminds us how easy it is to be idolaters, in fact, much of our society has become about worshiping things rather than God. If we begin with tv shows, we'll skip past American Idol that has idol in its name and think instead of reality tv stars like the Kardashians or the Hiltons. We follow them and enjoy seeing pictures and hearing about their lives and their children and the clothes they wear and we enjoy them so much that tv producers have created shows to help us indulge in our fascination with these people.

Now let's talk about tv shows that aren't reality tv. The Vampire Diaries and Breaking Bad and all these other shows that we simply MUST WATCH AS SOON AS THEY COME BACK ON! And how teenagers post pictures in tumblr and adults write posts on Facebook and everyone talks about it at the water cooler at work. We learn that we can escape our life and we begin to crave that escape to such a point that it becomes more important than doing things with our family or praying to God.

Let's talk about music. This one in particular I'm guilty of because I do not go anywhere without music handy. ANYWHERE. Every single time I'm in the car, the radio goes on or Pandora gets plugged in. EVERY TIME no matter if I'm going ten feet or ten thousand. Many of us go to concerts and we follow the bands on Facebook and twitter. I spend more time listening to music than I do anything else. Music has become such a huge part of what makes me who I am that I'm not sure what I'd do without it. (That is a scary statement to make about something so trivial as music... shouldn't I be able to say the same thing about God and MEAN IT like I do about music? Shouldn't we all?)

What is your vice? What is your idol? Some of us have more than one.

Food has become a major topic lately in the health world because people are talking about how there are teenagers and adults who eat too much or do not eat enough. If we were to talk to these people we would hear things like they spend all day long thinking about food and thinking about the calories in food and how much exercise it takes to get rid of a chocolate bar. There are others who will admit that when they are stressed or upset they find themselves reaching for food to make them feel better. They have idolized food and made it their way of coping with life.

Food and music and tv shows should not be the things we think about all day long. But there's more idols than just those such as body image. There's nothing wrong with worrying about taking care of your body - God did call it a temple after all. But we obsess. How many calories are in that pie? How many minutes of exercise so I can eat it without guilt? What can I wear to hide my huge thighs and cover my fat rolls? What makeup can I wear to hide those lines on my face and what clothes can I wear to look more professional? I think I'm getting white hair, I need to dye my hair. What color should I dye my hair? Does any of this sound familiar? Have any of you obsessed about your body and face and the image you present to the world?

Then there's Social Media, and the many moments we spend thinking about it. Wanting to check Facebook and see what our friends are up to and if anyone has liked our posts. Our inability to go a moment without posting or tweeting about what is happening in our lives. Our constant desire to see what others are doing and so we get online to check out what they are doing tonight. And if we happen to get bored we do not read a book or sit quietly, instead we reach for our cell phones and begin texting people until someone responds so we don't have to spend a moment alone or bored.

These are all idols because they are things that are more important in the course of our day than anything else and maybe we would deny that they're more important, but the amount of time we spend thinking and worrying about them tells us the truth. It should alarm us how our connection to people and to God have become sublimated by things. Our possessions are way more important to us. Humanity has always been this way to some extent which is why a 2000 year old text can still be relevant today.

It's not that money is evil, the having or even the wanting to have it. It's what we DO with the money when we get it. It's what we have DONE to obtain the money or what we TRY to do to get money. Because we want money so we can possess things. And there is nothing wrong in owning a nice car or flat screen television. However, do we help others? Do we care about what happens to the world and if we care, do we act? Do we offer ourselves for a weekend to Habitat for Humanity? Do we give our canned goods to the food pantry? Do we help out at the homeless shelter and do we make time for our friends and family who need real relationships with us and not just the occasional text?

Idols slowly take over our lives without us even being aware. It's insidious and once it has us it's even harder to let go because we make them all seem so innocent. "I just watch Breaking Bad, I am not a tv junkie like some people!" "I just listen to music because it's too quiet for a 2 hour drive." "Everyone has to eat, so what that I like to eat pie instead of broccoli? I exercise!"

None of these things are bad in moderation. It's when they become all we think or care about that we have gone wrong. When we can't wait to get home so we can eat that pie or watch that show. When we can't sit in silence because we might start thinking about things we don't want to think about and so we flip on music to silence our inner reflections.

Whether we are Christians or atheists, when things become more important than people and our connections to them - that's a problem. Easy idols are things like drugs and alcohol and sex - everyone knows there are people with THOSE kind of problems and some of us have sympathy and some of us think we're better than that. But we're not. None of us are. We all have something we depend on to get us through life and more often than not it isn't our family, friends, and God. Whatever it is - that would be your idol. And idols will destroy your life even while they pretend to make them better.

What is truly important are the people who love you and who you love. What is truly important is God. Not that we treat them like they're the most important thing in our life because if we're honest, we don't. But maybe the first step in fixing that is being aware of the things we dwell on most in our minds and making sure they do not take up more space in our hearts and minds than they should.

And as a church, we need to start looking around and thinking about the things we have considered more important than God and what God wants us to do. For example, we do not have adequate handicap access into the sanctuary. I have been told by multiple sources the reason for that is because it was expensive to do and because it might mess up how pretty our church looks outside.

In the last month we have had four funerals and two of them have been here at the church. There were several people in wheelchairs that needed to get into the sanctuary. The chair we use to get them down the stairs is awkward to work the first time and the person in the wheelchair sits and looks at it and us helplessly and with no little embarrassment as we try to figure it out. Then, we have to make them get up out of their wheelchair to this tiny chair that will lower them down or take them up. We need to move their wheelchair and make sure to not hit them in the process since they are suspended in that chair, waiting for access to it. It's slow and it's not big enough for a heavy person and it will not work if the person cannot get out of the wheelchair on their own.

Because we do not want to spend the money and/or do not want to make our church less pretty, we have basically told anyone in a wheelchair that they are not TRULY welcome here. We do not consider their safety and comfort more important than money or aesthetics. This is our idol as a church and after I saw the embarrassment on that woman's face as we tried to get the lift to work, I realized we need to address this.

We need to start talking about it. We need to remember what God has called us to do; to NOT put riches and idols above our Christian duty. I have been told by others who are getting older that going up and down even those couple steps is becoming more and more painful, and they will never use that lift.

And it's not just older people that are in wheelchairs or find stairs difficult to navigate. There are all ages. We are called to welcome people, all people who are different from us. It is very important that we relook at this and think again about how we are the only church that is not fully handicap accessible and what we are saying to those outside this church by not working on it. Whether we meant to be hurtful or not, we are causing others pain.

As your pastor and as a Christian, I think this is something we have neglected to look at properly. My hope is that we can revisit this and that we will educate ourselves about what it would take to make everyone feel welcomed, comfortable, and accepted inside our church.

Amen. 

Thirsty for God

Amos 8:4-13
Luke 16: 1-13

After the last prophet in the OT, Malachi came and prophesied to the people, Israel went without a prophet for four hundred years. Four centuries of silence from God. But what was even worse than his silence is when Jesus Christ came to the earth and showed them the truth, the way, the light – they rejected Him. They rejected him because they had no recollection of what it means to be in the truth.

During the time of Amos, Israel had broken covenant with God so many times that they barely kept Sabbath and holy days. Again and again they turned to pagan gods and pagan ways and ignored their true God. That is why they were punished. That is why God removed Himself from their temple and from their hearts. As part of the punishment, there were no messengers of God to prophesy to them. Not even anyone like Amos or Ezekiel to chastise them and urge them to repent. For four hundred years Israel was left without guidance, they were sheep without a shepherd.

I don’t know if anyone has ever seen sheep that aren’t being guided but let me just tell you this, sheep are not the brightest of animals. They will walk, one by one, off of a cliff. They will wander aimlessly until they are caught in something they cannot get out of and then the rest will follow them to their doom. Now imagine these people, these sheep wandering around the world for four hundred years doing whatever they wanted. Is it any wonder they did not recognize the Messiah? Is it any great surprise that they laid traps to trick Jesus and that they fell upon him as wolves in sheep’s clothing and killed him?

If we were to travel back in time to the ancient days where the Israelite’s lived in the land of milk and honey and where they also desecrated all that was given to them, we would find them often referring to a specific time in the future. They called it, “the Lord’s Day” and they were referring to the end of times when God comes down and we are reunited with Him. Many of the people thought that this would be a time of great joy, tremendous feasting and celebrating for their people. However, many prophets were actually prophesying that the “Lord’s Day” would not be like any had thought because of the actions of the people. Where they thought feasting would occur, instead a great Famine would be enacted - where shouts of joy and celebration are turned to cries of sadness and the wailing of the damned.

Here, we read in Amos another sign that the Lord’s Day is a day not of happiness and reunion but of Judgment and that the People of Israel will not fair overly well. There were too few people observing the laws, the customs and rituals that God had put forth. There were too few people loving the Lord, listening to His commandments and obeying.  Does this not sound familiar? Where have we heard this before?

When John the Baptist was preaching about the Messiah, he found many people that did not listen to the ways of the Lord. He found Scribes and Pharisees corrupting the meaning of the Laws and using them for their own gain. He found that this was a land of the damned and the lost. Jesus Christ was born into a land that had very few with any true faith. The people had forgotten what it meant to be loyal, to be true to their God.

Once again, I ask, where does this sound familiar? In this world we inhabit, where are the true believers? Where are those that follow the rituals, the laws and the ways of Jesus as he set forth two thousand years ago? When I read the paper, when I watch the news I do not see healings, blessings and love. I see hate crimes, robberies, murders and abuse. Just this week while watching the news I heard about a man who accidentally shot his best friend as they argued over a gun and instead of telling someone about it, he cut his FRIEND up with a chainsaw and tried to hide his body throughout a couple counties.  

What kind of world are we living in? What has happened to our faith? I have a friend who is fond of quoting a particular verse from St. Francis Assisi. It says, “Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” The first time I heard that it took me a moment to get it and then I realized what it was saying. Our actions should be all the preaching we should have to do. The backup should be the words.

Instead, I find in this fallen world of ours we use words that have very little meaning. We throw them around to those among us as shields and weapons. We use them and we think very little about what we say. I once knew a person that every time I spoke to her, before she would respond she paused as if gathering her thoughts. When I asked her why she always took a moment before she spoke she told me something very interesting. She said, “I take a moment to speak so I do not have a lifetime of regret.”

Back in ancient times, there was a simple sheep farmer named Amos who heard God calling to Him. He saw what Israel and Judea were doing and when God showed him what was to happen, he paid attention. God gave Amos many signs of the coming troubles. God did not just give one vision, one word to Amos but many. Why does God do that? Why does God make sure to hammer home the point with multiple visions, multiple prophesies and multiple prophets? God is giving us a chance to wake up. To open our eyes, our hearts and our minds to what He is trying to tell us.

It scares me, really. The Israelites were living in a time of belief. They believed in God, matter of fact they believed so much in God that they even believed in pagan gods. So here are a group of people that have a temple, have many miracles, have proof that God is there with them and still they turn away from Him. Still, they turn to false gods. And today, in a world of disbelief, in a place where it isn’t ‘cool’ to be faithful I have to wonder how we are ever going to hear what God is saying to us. How are we going to see the signs, to hear those words?

We have book after book in the Old Testament and the New Testament proving that God loves us so much that God continues to talk, Jesus continues to reach out to us despite the many things we do. Who is paying attention anymore? Is there anyone that actively seeks the Lord? Sometimes I think that the 21^st Century is not a blessing, but a curse. Perhaps it is a punishment for us for having grown lax in our beliefs like what happened to the Israelites. The worst of all famines is when we can no longer hear the word of God, when we have no contact with Him.

So very long ago, God removed himself from Jerusalem because of the actions of His people. Today, I think God is removed from us not because God walked away but because we pushed Jesus away. We kept turning a deaf ear to the Holy Spirit until we could no longer distinguish God's quiet voice from everyone else’s. We cannot hear Jesus because all we hear is what we want, what we need and what we think we should be doing.

The passage we read today in Amos signaled that God had come to the end of his tether. There were no more days of mercy for the Israelites. God would remove His presence from them and would no longer protect them. The only reprieve God gave was to say that one day the Messiah would come and make it well with God. The Messiah came just as God promised. Jesus died for our sins, taking our place. And now, so many years later I can see that God is removed from this world once more. But this time I know it is not because Jesus wants to be, but because we have made it this way.

Amos 8:13 says, “In that day the lovely young women and strong young men will faint because of thirst.” I don’t know about you but when I look around and see what is going on in this world, I thirst. I am dying for some relief - just a brief respite from the pain, the anguish and sadness that drapes this world like a cloak. I think it is time for us to once again embrace God, to ask the Lord to come to us, to remove from us the pain and despair and instead replace it with His love and saving Grace. We need Jesus. We need to follow the Holy Spirit. We need to take what we know and share it with this broken world, to once again be the vessel that God’s light shines from.  

Amen.

Rejoice in the Differences

Ex 32: 7-14
Luke 15: 1-10

 Today's parable deals with two sets of people and how they are both feeling as they hear Jesus' words to the crowds. First, we are told that tax collectors and sinners were gathered around Jesus and so were the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. These are two completely different groups surrounding Jesus and trying to hear what he had to say about life and God. Jesus has a choice. He can choose to spend time just with the sinners and tax collectors, or he can choose to spend time with the Pharisees and teachers of the law, or he can try to spend time with all of them.

Jesus refuses to take sides. He refuses to spend time with only one group and thereby silently saying the other group isn't as worthy of his time and attention. He also challenges the people in each group to do the same. He challenges us to not think that one type of person or one certain viewpoint is the only one that we can accept. Jesus offers two parables to help us to come to terms with this idea.

The first is the parable of the lost sheep. In this story, it is obvious the lost sheep are the sinners and tax collectors, and the other 99 sheep are the Pharisees and teachers. Jesus says to them through this parable that although the one sheep has wandered away from the flock, that does not make that sheep any less important than the other 99. The majority does not win in Jesus' eyes for every person has importance and worth. Every single person has purpose and meaning and a mission in this world, and once we understand that we understand why Jesus made the choices he did; why Jesus chose not to support the unspoken opinion that one group was less worthy than the other group.

We are called to stop thinking that we or anyone else are better than others. We all have prejudices. We all have little walls in our minds that we seem to come up against at times in our lives. For some of us we have a hard time being patient with children that misbehave. For some of us we do not understand people of different cultures and their customs and we dismiss them as odd or strange. For some of us we cannot stand people that label themselves liberal or conservative because we have the opposite view. For some of us we do not like other church denominations and we find ourselves making little remarks or jokes about the differences. For some of us we have no patience for someone that has been in prison. For some of us we think homeless people or people on welfare need to just "get a job". For some of us we cannot stand women that dress in a provocative manner or men that wear flashy jewelry or baggy pants and we tell each other they must not have been raised right. For some of us we think that people with mental problems, no matter how severe or mild, makes them people we shouldn't associate with.

We're no different from the people back in Jesus' time. If Jesus was spending time with the people we have a distinct dislike of we would be looking at him the same way the Pharisees looked at Jesus. We would be saying the same remarks, "Why does he sit with THEM?! Doesn't he know that all Muslims are terrorists?! Doesn't he know that all ex-convicts are hardened criminals waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of you?! Doesn't he know that those are bleeding heart liberals who want to ruin our country with their socialism?! Doesn't he know that those are those hard-hearted conservatives that only know how to love guns, money, and power and not people?!"

Jesus looks back at them calmly and reminds the people that they are not the only ones in the world. Their views are not the only ones that matter. They are not the only people Jesus has come to spend time with, the only people Jesus wants to save. Jesus challenges us to remember that not only do we need to welcome those who are different and those we may not understand, but he challenges us to rejoice in the welcoming.

You see, the biggest part of the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin is that at the end, the person who has found what was once lost rejoices in finding it. They have a big party! Both the man and the woman call up their friends and gleefully say, "Come party with me because I've found my sheep! I've found my coin and we need to give thanks!" Jesus is trying to show the Pharisees that in their judgment of others they have condemned themselves to a life without joy.

They have judged others less and judgment brings no one any happiness - not the judged or the judge. Jesus is saying we need to let go of this kind of attitude and instead accept that every person is loved by God and when they walk through the doors of this church or they walk into your life that they are there FOR A REASON! God has placed them there, and it's not for you to belittle them or hurt them with your cold indifference or make quiet remarks to your neighbor about them.

When Jesus chose to NOT choose between the two very different groups of people he was making a quiet, powerful statement. "I love every single one of you. Every one of you have flaws and you make mistakes and you're not perfect at all, but I am here for you. There is no choice to be made except to say I died for all of you."

While in seminary, I attended a very liberal church one Sunday and heard a sermon on homosexuality and accepting the many differences God has created in each of us; the pastor reminded us to rejoice in our differences because it takes all types to make the world work. Afterward, I was introduced to a woman who towered over me in her high heels. She had to be 6'3 and she wore a tan dress with light blue swirls in it and her makeup was flawless and her nails were painted a light blue to match her dress. As I shook her hand, I realized this woman had been born a man, and for a moment I didn't know what to say or do. What did I have in common with this .. (And that's when my mind stopped and I thought "do I call her a woman or a man now that I know?!" and so I settled with) person? My thoughts swirled in my head and then she smiled at me and she said, "Tell me about yourself. It must be hard to be a student in seminary, I know, because I have a daughter in college."

And just like that I realized no matter her appearance and no matter that I thought I had nothing in common with her, suddenly she was just another parent worried about all these college kids trying to make it in the world. We talked for a good 15 minutes and it was one of the best conversations of the day. I knew that a Christian accepts everyone, but this was something I had never considered: HOW do we treat those that are different and who startle us in their differences?

Not by ignoring them. Not by making fun of them. Not by going along with what the rest of the world does. We look to Jesus. We remember how he sat with the sinners and he sat with the saints of the day and he loved them all. He talked to each of them like they were a person because they ARE people. They love and laugh just like us. They fight with their siblings and their spouses and they worry over their children. They wonder what the world is coming to and they hurt when they are treated as less just like we are hurt when we are rejected.

We treat those that are different from us like they aren't different at all. We accept their differences not by ignoring them, but by educating ourselves and asking questions and treating them just like we would the person that looks just like us or thinks just like us. Jesus didn't understand the Pharisees' attitude because what Jesus saw is that these supposed saints had no joy in their life because they were too busy being judgmental. It's time to stop judging others and start learning about them and through learning we will understand them and through our understanding we will love them - that is what Jesus calls us to do - to love everyone no matter their differences from us.

Amen.  

The Cost of Discipleship

Deut 30: 15-20
Luke 14: 25-33

Jesus was always willing to lay everything out for us. There was no hiding of facts or concealing the more grueling parts of what it meant to be his follower. Jesus believes that if you want to follow him then you should be aware of what it is you're taking on. Churches today should probably follow his example more closely when new people arrive, but we're so eager to make them feel welcome and we're so busy praying they'll stay that we would never consider telling them the blunt truth about what it would mean to be a member of this particular church.

And it's not that there's a bunch of bad things going on here, but it's the idea of saying honestly, "We could use you on about three different committees and your money will be very welcome and please don't sit in that pew over there unless you want someone very influential in the church to make you feel like you've done something wrong." Even though that is the bare, bald truth in almost every church in America, no one wants to state that to someone just walking in the door! We want to offer them friendship bread and handshakes and hugs. We want to show them how loving and kind and open we are to their differences. We want them to STAY and so we don't reveal all the truth at one time. We allow them to discover our little idiosyncrasies all on their own over time.

Jesus, well.. Jesus wasn't like that. Jesus loved walking up to a crowd of people and telling them exactly the way it is and letting them sort it out for themselves. Jesus tells the people in this text that they need to hate their mother and father, their brother and sister and their children and husband. They are to hate their very own life. If we walked up to every new person that comes in the door and said such things, how might they react? They'd think we're crazy Christians; fanatical Christians!

What was the purpose of Jesus telling the people that they must hate those the bible tells us to love and cherish? What is the purpose of us hating our own lives that God has given to us? This doesn't make sense! What is Jesus telling us?

Nothing in life is free. Nothing in life is truly easy. There are too many sermons and too many pastors preaching about how life is good when you're a Christian. There is too much talk about how much God loves us and how much Jesus has done for us and not enough about the cost of being a Christian disciple. There's a difference between a Christian and a disciple of Jesus Christ.

A Christian is someone who believes in God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. They believe that Jesus died for our sins and through his death we are accepted into the relationship of the Trinity and will receive eternal life. That's a Christian. A disciple of Jesus Christ is a person that believes all the things a Christian does, but also acts upon those beliefs. They are not passive in their faith. They feel Jesus calling them to new places and feel the Holy Spirit urging them onward and they believe in the Father's promises to them and therefore they take action.

A disciple cannot sit back and watch injustice happen before their eyes. A disciple feels the need to tell a person that is hurting that there is more to life than pain. A disciple knows when to offer a helping hand, a listening ear, and a prayer. A disciple does not only come to church to hear the Good News, but to learn how to spread the Gospel to those that have not heard it. A disciple gives more than he or she takes. A disciple understand there is a true cost to being a Christian, one that not everyone is prepared or willing to give.

It's why Jesus doesn't sugarcoat the truth. It's why we really shouldn't either. Being a Christian disciple is hard work. It sometimes requires us to be at odds with our family. It sometimes requires us to give up our hobbies so we can help improve the church. It sometimes requires us to spend all sorts of hours in meetings when all we want to do is get home to our kid's softball game. It sometimes requires us to give a lot of money to certain functions and events because we know that no one else is going to fund the dance competition in school this year, but it's something the teenagers actually enjoy. Sometimes it means being at odds with the people who are working for the same things you are, but each person has a vision and they're not meshing right now.

Being a disciple is full of stress and angst and anger and conflict. We're at war with others and with ourselves. When we're honest, we know there is more we could be doing to follow Jesus. We know there is more we could do in our personal lives, our professional lives, and in church life to make the Kingdom of God more real to the world. We fight against our need to be independent and our desire to lean upon God. We fight against what we know we should do and what we want to do instead.

It's easier to pretend we didn't hear the sermon that says, "give more time and money to church and your community" and that way we can sit back in our recliner and watch that episode of Modern Family without any guilt. We can tell ourselves that since we put in that hour on Sunday, we're good for the week. "That was quality God time and now I need quality Me time!" But Jesus, he doesn't let us get away with that.

He tells us to hate our lives, not to sit back and relax in it. Jesus wants us to understand that when we take on the label of Christian all that we say and do is suddenly labeled Christian Behavior and Christian Way of Doing Things. It's an all or nothing deal that is so black and white that we instinctively try to search out the gray area. We want to hide in the shadows! We do not want to be the poster child for Christian life! But the day you were baptized; the day you stood up in church and said I believe; the day you accepted your membership here at church you took on the life of a Christian disciple.

We have taken on a heavy cross and Jesus tells us that in plain words. He tells us to prepare us for what is coming. For the tests, the trials, the tribulations that we want to pretend aren't coming our way and that if we pretend maybe we can avoid them. It won't work. And not only that, but in the meantime we are Christian in name only because we are not acting as Christ's disciples because we have buried our heads in the sand.

Jesus leaves us with no excuses and no pretenses in this passage. "Are you a Christian?" he asks, and when we say yes he replies, "Then act like it with all of your heart and soul and mind."

I will end with the wise words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who writes about the cost and grace of discipleship, “Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a person must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a person their life, and it is grace because it gives a person the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: 'Ye were bought at a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God [Jesus made flesh].”

Amen.

Jesus the Sociologist

Jer 2: 4-13
Luke 14:1, 7-14

In the last couple weeks, I have been noticing how different people's reactions are too stressful situations. When I was a sociology student at Lock Haven University, the students were told to observe different people in different settings and to write down how each one reacted to certain things and try to figure out why that might be, and to a 22 year old it was much less disturbing to observe people in crisis than to actual be in the midst of the crisis with them. Jesus might have felt the same way sometimes as he waited to begin his ministry.

Jesus could have been considered a sociologist. He knew people. He'd studied them. He'd become a human to understand why they react the way they do and why they have such varying degrees of faith throughout their life. God became flesh not only to save us from ourselves, but to better understand us when we are hurting and lacking in faith. Understanding breeds compassion and compassion breeds patience and patience allows a person to wait to judge the person they are trying to help.

In this text today there was a lot of watching and listening and judging going on. The very first sentence of the text says that on the Sabbath Jesus went to eat with a prominent Pharisee and he was being watched closely. It doesn't say why he was being watched, but if we look back in Luke we can see that Jesus has done things on the Sabbath that others have taken offense to. We might conclude that Jesus was being watched closely in order that these offended people could have more ammunition against him. He also could have been watched closely because despite how he sometimes ignores the Sabbath laws, the person knows there is more to Jesus than the simple man in a robe and sandals.

What we also know is that Jesus is doing some observing of his own. Jesus is always paying attention to people. He is always trying to help them figure out why they do what they do, and why God does what God does. It's one of the reasons we call Jesus our Mediator. He helps to make God understandable to us and make us understandable to God. Because Jesus is completely human and also completely God he is able to understand each side and help us. I've heard some of you say that you don't like the Old Testament because it is too violent and God seems angry all the time.

In Jeremiah, we find out a reason why God is angry all the time. God asks Jeremiah, "What fault did your ancestors find in me that they strayed so far from me?" God is hurting here. God does not understand us and our lack of faith and commitment to God. All God wants to do is love us and give us a great life and the ability to be with God forever, and the people keep turning their backs in favor of wooden and clay statues that have no power at all! God is offended and becomes angry after the repeated betrayals. That is why God seems so different in the Old Testament.

Without Jesus, God sees us with kindness, but without true understanding of how hard it is to live life day by day with the challenges that face us and the hurts and pains that plague us. God needed to become human to understand us completely and we needed God to become human so we could understand God better.

When I was around 14, my sister Ashley became very ill. She was throwing up a lot and I felt so bad for her. However, my sister sometimes becomes a little dramatic and her constant moans and cries began to slowly irritate me and even though I was running around getting her Ginger Ale and crackers and helping hold her hair I felt completely unappreciated. I knew she was in pain, I could tell that easily enough, but the total understanding of what she was going through was not there because I was not the one experiencing it. Two days later, I got what she had and suddenly, as I was whining and complaining much louder than she ever had - I knew that Ash had had a legitimate complaint. I shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss her pain as dramatics.

This is why we needed Jesus to come to us. We needed God to understand us better, we needed Jesus to take on our humanity and our sins and die for us to wipe out all the past hurts and misunderstandings. Jesus came and observed us and offered us wise advice on how to live our lives and how to better understand a God that often seemed hostile and unwelcoming when God was angry at our faithlessness.

Now, we know that God is pure love and compassion. Now God knows that being human isn't easy even with all the promises God makes to us. We have trials and we are constantly being tested in our lives and sometimes God seems far away as the stars from the muck and mud we are walking through. Jesus brings God to us. Jesus brings us to God.

And that brings me to the final thing I want to mention today. I've been asked before why we do Communion monthly and why some churches do it quarterly and others do it weekly. I've also been asked why we have a hymn before Communion and these are great questions that tie right into why we needed Jesus to become human.

First, we must understand what we are trying to do with Communion. Communion is sacred and special. It should never be taken lightly. This is the moment when Jesus offers the disciples and us a way of communing directly with God. Jesus tells us that the bread becomes his broken body, the body he sacrifices for our sins on the cross. The juice becomes his blood, the blood that cleanses those sins and heals us of our doubts. In those precious moments that we take Communion, we are no longer 75 people sitting in pews, but we are at the banquet table in heaven. We are accepting God's grace and forgiveness as we eat the bread and drink the juice. God is accepting us as God's children.

Therefore, we have a Communion hymn to help us let go of today's worries and burdens. We are to try to open our hearts and minds to what we are about to experience and receive. The words are to remind us of this sacred moment and give us reverence for the beautiful gift Jesus has brought to us with his presence in our lives. It's also why a pastor always blesses the meal and asks the Holy Spirit to come upon the bread and juice. This is when it becomes a true communion between God and God's people.

When we truly understand the gift of Jesus Christ, we should be feeling an almost desperate need to share this gift with everyone around us. Every person is God's child. Every person deserves the chance to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. My hope is that our church can bring more people to Christ and by doing so we will become closer to God as well. May God bless each of you and the path you have taken in your life. May your faith be strengthened and your commitment to Jesus renewed each time you take Communion. May your heart be compassionate and your mind willing to forgive others as you begin to understand the angry God of the Old Testament is the very same loving God of the New Testament. The difference is Jesus and now we understand God better because Jesus has helped to create a connection that was not there before.

Amen.