Take a Risk - Be Like Jesus!

Zephaniah 1: 7, 12-18
Matthew 25: 14-30

The parable today is about a wealthy man who goes away on a long journey. Before he departs, he distributes his property to three slaves. It is a great deal of money. The first slave takes the money to the market, to a wealth management firm, and invests in high-risk ventures. The second slave does the same thing, puts the money to work at high risk. Both do very well. Both reap rewards. When their master returns, he is very pleased. He tells them well done and promises that they will receive more responsibility in the future.

The third slave takes a very different approach with his money, his one talent. He digs a hole in the ground and puts all the money in the hole for safe keeping. In a time of stock-market decline, this man looks very wise. He’s not a bad man. He is a prudent, careful, cautious investor. He is not about to take chances with the money. It is all there, every penny of it, when his master returns. He is proud of himself. “Here it is. All of it, safe and sound.” For his efforts he is treated as harshly as anyone in the whole Bible.

The point of this story was not about doubling or tripling the money lest some of you might think that’s the reason the third slave got into trouble. The point of the parable is about living and taking risks. It is about Jesus himself and what he has done and what is about to happen to him. Mostly it is about what Jesus hopes and expects of all of us after he is gone. It is about being a follower of Jesus and what it means to be faithful to him.

The greatest risk of all, according to the parable is not to risk anything, not to care too deeply and profoundly enough about anything to invest yourself completely, to give your heart away and in the process to risk everything. The greatest risk of all, it turns out, is to play it safe by living cautiously and prudently!

Let’s play ‘Let’s Pretend’. Let’s pretend that you work for me. In fact, you are my executive assistant in a company that is growing rapidly. I’m the owner and I’m interested in expanding overseas. To pull this off, I make plans to travel abroad and stay there until a new branch office gets established. I make all the arrangements to take my family and move to Europe for six to eight months. And I leave you in charge of the busy stateside organization.

I tell you that I will write you regularly and give you directions and instructions. I leave and you stay. Months pass. A flow of letters are mailed from Europe and received by you at the national headquarters. I spell out all my expectations. Finally, I return. Soon after my arrival, I drive down to the office and I am stunned.

Grass and weeds have grown up high. A few windows along the street are broken. I walk into the Receptionist’s room. She is doing her nails, chewing gum and listening to her favorite pandora station. I look around and notice the wastebaskets are overflowing. The carpet hasn’t been vacuumed for weeks, and nobody seems concerned that the owner has returned.

I asked about your whereabouts and someone in the crowded lounge area points down the hall and yells, "I think he’s down there." Disturbed, I move in that direction and bump into you as you are finishing a chess game with our sales manager. I ask you to step into my office, which has been temporarily turned into a television room for watching afternoon soap operas. "What in the world is going on, man?" "What do you mean?"

"Well, look at this place! Didn’t you get any of my letters?" "Letters? Oh yes! Sure! I got every one of them. As a matter of fact, we have had a letter study every Friday since you left. We have even divided the personnel into small groups to discuss many of the things you wrote. Some of the things were really interesting. You will be pleased to know that a few of us have actually committed to memory some of your sentences and paragraphs. One or two memorized an entire letter or two - Great stuff in those letters."

"OK. You got my letters. You studied them and meditated on them; discussed and even memorized them. But what did you do about them?" "Do? We didn’t do anything about them."

Jesus told today’s parable because he knew soon he’d be leaving the disciples and they’d have to carry on without him. He had left them with instructions in the form of his stories and actions, but he didn’t give them those instructions just so they could memorize them. He wanted these stories and his actions to become part of who they were and he wanted them to transform their lives into living examples of the love of God.

We are also called to transform our lives into living examples of Jesus by not just memorizing the bible and being able to quote it to people, but by ACTING on Jesus’ words. We are told to be faithful to Jesus and have each been given gifts to do Jesus’ work in the world. I preached this to you a couple weeks ago, about how each of us has a gift for helping others and the church in some way.

We get into trouble when we doubt ourselves and our church’s ability to make a difference. We get into trouble when we’re so busy memorizing lines of scripture that we do not DO anything about what we’ve learned. We get into trouble when we think we know Jesus, but do not let others know Jesus by acting like him when we’re outside of these walls.

The third slave got into trouble because instead of doing something with the talent he had been given, he hid it from the world and thought he was keeping it safe for his master’s return. But a hidden talent does no one any good. The same goes for all of us. Jesus has placed you here for a specific reason. You have the ability to make a difference in someone’s life. You have the ability to transform your life, your family’s life, and your friends’ lives.

It takes faith and faith requires risk. We have to risk being laughed at; we have to risk failing; we have to risk being tired and sore and sweaty from all of our efforts. But when our efforts pay off they pay off big as they did for the first and second slave, and when the master came back he said because of what you have done you will be given even more.

Jesus risked it all for us. He’s asking us to take chances and give the Holy Spirit a chance to speak to us about trying new things and being a force of goodness in this world. It may look completely differently from anything we’ve ever done before and that’s okay. It may require us to see people in a whole new light. It may require us to join up with other churches or invite people who have never been a Christian to take part. Jesus is asking us to listen, to learn, and to grow.

Growth isn’t about money or butts in the pews. Growth is about transforming from cautious and careful into risky and unpredictable. It’s about making the world around us ask, “What’s going on over there? What are they up to? Why are they doing that?” because when they talk about us they’re going to talk about Jesus. We don’t need to get them into a pew to change their life – we’re called to change their lives outside of these walls and then they’ll come walking in the door all on their own.

How we do it is up to us. But the first and most important thing we can do is that when we say we’re a Christian then we act like Jesus. Be who we say we are and when we falter – admit we made a mistake. Honesty goes a long way towards changing other people’s opinions about Christians and God. As does an open minded outlook on what they’re going to tell you about why they don’t believe or don’t go to church. By being their friend instead of their enemy, you will show them what Jesus showed the prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners – that God isn’t here just for the good people – God is here for everyone.

And once we stop making church be only for the goody two shoes of the world, we create an open space and a safe place for everyone to co-exist while getting to know Jesus. That’s transformational right there.. a place for everyone to be loved and no one will be judged.. what a promise we could offer the world if we lived and loved just like Jesus!

Amen.

Procrastination and Transformation

Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25
Matthew 25: 1-13
There is a fable which tells of three apprentice devils who were coming to this earth to finish their apprenticeship. They were talking to Satan, the chief of the devils, about their plans to tempt and to ruin humanity. The first said, "I will tell them that there is no God."
Satan said, "That won’t delude many, for they know that there is a God." The second said, "I will tell humans that there is no hell."
Satan answered, "You will deceive no one that way; humans know even now that there is a hell for sin." The third said, "I will tell humans that there is no hurry."
"Go," said Satan, "and you will ruin humans by the thousands." The most dangerous of all our delusions is that there is plenty of time.
In the passage on Matthew today, we read about 10 virgins who were all the same. They each had a lamp filled with oil, they were all dressed as part of the bridal party, and they were waiting outside for the bridegroom to arrive. Back in that time, it was customary for the bridal party to wait for and greet and then follow in the bridegroom rather than the bride. But as sometimes happens in weddings, something went wrong and the bridegroom was late.
The ten virgins all fell asleep while waiting only to be awoken by a shout, “He’s coming!” and they immediately wake up and began to trim their lamps. However, out of the ten women, five of them had run out of oil and had no reserves with them. The other five women, not knowing when the bridegroom might come and this not being their first long wait, knew to bring extra oil just in case. The five ladies who did not have oil asked them to share, but they refused and so they went out looking for more oil and missed the bridal procession into the house, only to be turned away by the bridegroom when they finally came back.
This parable Jesus tells the disciples is about how the kingdom of heaven will be at the end of the age when Jesus comes back. He is telling us that we need to be prepared for that time and there are things we can do to be prepared for when he arrives. No one knows the day or the hour, not even Jesus himself, but we are to be prepared anyway.
What does that mean for us as individuals and as a church?
As a people we need to know the signs to look for and we need to know what God is expecting of us. That means reading the bible more often than on a Sunday morning during church. We should be praying and listening for God’s voice. Every one of us has a connection to God that strengthens the more we pray and read the bible. If we want to know God, then we have to be speaking and listening to God. It also means we should not be afraid to be who we are as God’s child. It means we are to embrace opportunities to speak of our faith and how our lives have changed since we have become faithful disciples of Christ.
As a church, it means we constantly need to be working toward God’s goals and not our own. We need to look around our community and our towns and our country and this world and asking, “Where is Jesus? What is Jesus doing? What does he expect from us and what would he tell us to do if he was here? Who would Christ be ministering to?”
In football they have a huddle, the goal of the huddle is to give you thirty seconds to call the play. Sixty thousand people watching you huddle, and they don’t mind you taking thirty seconds to call the play. They understand that you have to get organized, that each player needs to know where they should be and where they are going to go after the snap.
A huddle is a necessary part of playing the game. But let me inform you if you do not already know, sixty thousand people do not pay $80 a ticket to watch you huddle. See, people don’t come to football games to watch the huddle. They want to see if their team can overcome the opposition who is daring them to snap the ball and move down the field to score. What they want to know is does your practice work?
Now what Christians often do is get high on their huddles. We gather together on Sunday morning and Sunday nights and Wednesday nights and we go nuts over the huddle! We say, “Boy did we have a huddle!! My quarterback can call plays better than your quarterback.” And boy do we go off on the huddle. But what people don’t seem to understand is, that the huddle is so that we can play the game. The effectiveness of our church cannot be measured by how well we do on Sunday morning. The test of the church is what it does in the marketplace. What we need today is churches that are representatives of Jesus Christ not only when gathered but when scattered.
Sometimes as a church, we get caught up in maintaining the status quo. The programs we’ve done for years, the committees that have existed since the church opened, the same materials for Sunday school and the same special programs every year. All great things, but sometimes we get so caught up in doing them we stop looking around and stop asking those vital questions that Jesus wants us to ask. We stop wondering what new things we may try and what new experiences we can have when we pause and look around.
As disciples of Christ and as a church, we are called to transform our lives into a holy experience. We need to not just be saying the right words, but doing the right things to help this world to know Jesus Christ in word and deed and spirit. The ten virgins all started out on equal footing, but when the bridegroom took longer than normal, the cream rose to the top. The wisdom of the five women showed over the foolishness of the others. They knew to be prepared, just as we are to be prepared for the long wait. Jesus may take another 5 years to come back or another 5,000 years and in the meantime, we are still called to transform our lives and the lives of those around us by spreading God’s word and sharing God’s love with everyone we meet. But that means a lot of work on our parts. That means thinking ahead and staying diligent. It’s not something many of us enjoy doing. Tim Hansel in his book "When I Relax I feel Guilty," writes some insights of what most people want from God.
"I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please."
If we would be totally honest, the idea of transformation really scares us. That is because we know that such a radical change would be quite uncomfortable. We realize that with transformation comes a major overhaul of our lives and priorities. But that is what we are called to do. Transform our lives by being intentional about the things we do as a people and as a church. We are called not to stay too long in the huddle, procrastinating and thinking we have all the time in the world to make changes. Instead we are called to always be the person God sees when looking at us and the only way to do that is by knowing the scriptures, praying to God, and sharing what we have learned with those around us. Then, when the time comes for the bridegroom to appear we will all be ready and able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Amen.

Stumbling Blocks

Deut 34: 1-12
Matthew 22: 34-46

I was speaking with someone the other day and the fact that Moses never made it to the Promised Land really seemed to disturb them. I remember them saying something like, “Well, that doesn’t seem fair!”. It becomes even more disturbing when a person continues to read the rest of the passage and notices that the author says there was never again a prophet like Moses, one that had spoken to God face to face.

The story pretty much moves on from there with Joshua being the new leader and Moses buried outside the Promised Land. The more we ponder this passage, the more irritated we might become. God let’s Moses SEE the Promised Land with his own eyes, but then tells him he will never enter, and sure enough Moses passes away.

This is a man who for forty years, has put up with some serious crap from the people and some serious tests by God. Moses had to deal with the stress of getting the Hebrews together in Egypt, convincing them to leave all they have ever known and once he gets them on board, then he has to face down a pharaoh. This is not just any leader of a nation – this is a man considered a god to his people and telling a god anything is asking to be killed. But Moses does it and God backs him up with the ten plagues.

Then, once he gets the Hebrews free to head out into the wilderness, the Pharaoh sends out soldiers to get them back. Can you imagine the ridicule Moses would have endured when he tells them that his staff is going to part the waters so they can cross? Now they are across, the soldiers are dead and the Hebrews start complaining that without food or water, they will die out here. Moses goes to God and I can just hear him saying, “Look, they have a point. I trust you, I do, but they are scared for their families. Can you throw us a bone? Preferably one with meat on it!”

So God gives them manna and dew to drink in the mornings, and quail to eat at night. Then they get to Mount Sinai and while Moses is up on top of the mountain speaking to God and receiving the Ten Commandments, the Hebrews have begged Aaron to create for them a new god to worship since it was taking too long for this one to come through for them. Moses comes down, lugging these heavy, beautiful stone tablets to see a glittering calf being worshiped. In a fit of anger, he breaks the tablets and throws a huge temper tantrum. Think of this, once he has calmed down, realizing what he has done, he knows he has to go back up the mountain and say to God, “Um.. so.. the tablets got broken, because I broke them when I was angry… and um.. can we have some new ones please?”

Moses was a mediator. He had to constantly mediate between the Hebrews and God. One would do something the other didn’t understand and Moses would have to interpret it to the other. Moses led a hard life, and every now and then his anger got the best of him. The moment where God had had enough of Moses’ temper was with the water and the rock. The Hebrews were very thirsty and once again complaining about God not taking care of them (because apparently 40 years of food and water from heaven just wasn’t enough to convince them).

God told Moses to speak to the rock and water would gush forth. Moses, being angry at the Hebrews’ lack of faith, frustrated with God about how long it was taking to get to the Promised Land, struck the rock twice and water gushed forth. But because of how he disobeyed God, God told Moses that he would never enter the Promised Land. While God appreciated all that Moses had done, God was tired of Moses’ anger and the way he lashed out when his temper was up.

But when you look at all that Moses had done for so very many years – it still seems like if anyone earned the Promised Land- it was Moses! But this character flaw of his continually got the better of him. So are you as disturbed by the way Moses’ life ends as I was? What can we learn from Moses’ story?

This was a man like no other, blessed like no other and yet, even he was not able to please God fully. I was reading a book the other day where the author told a story about her mother asking her who her favorite biblical character was and she refused to tell her. She said that at 8 years old her favorite character was Moses because he always managed to disobey God and not get into trouble. But of course she didn’t want to tell her mother that! The sad truth is that Moses did get into trouble. He was shown the goal he had worked forty long years for, but he was never allowed to fully obtain it. Moses died with regrets even as he would have been proud of all he had accomplished.

Now, I know what we can learn from this story. How many of us let character flaws continually drag us back to our old ways? How often do we say we will never do that again, whatever it is that we know is wrong, but then somehow we find ourselves doing it anyway? Perhaps you are quick to anger like Moses and you do and say things you regret when you’ve calmed down. Perhaps you tend to worry too much about things you cannot fix, and allow that worry to control your life. Perhaps you depend on alcohol or drugs when you should be depending on God. Perhaps you spend too much time working and not enough time with your family. Perhaps you like to overeat when you’re feeling especially emotional. Perhaps you have moments of such sadness that no matter what is happening around you, no one can reach you. Whatever it is, we all have a character flaw, we all have a thorn in our side that continually plagues us throughout our life.

It is our presiding sin, the one that seems to trip us up and prevent us from making it to the Promised Land on our own just like Moses. We wonder how we will overcome it and we worry and stress about how we are not good enough to get to heaven because we cannot seem to get over this lifelong sin.

Moses may not have made it to the earthly Promised Land, but God certainly had a table prepared for him in heaven. Moses was given his heavenly reward by being faithful to God even though he got angry. God does not ask us to be perfect and without sin. That was Jesus’ job description because God knew none of us could do it. If not even Moses, the one person that got to speak to God face to face could do it, God knew no one else could live a life free of sin either.

It doesn’t mean we ever stop trying. As Christians, we are called to spread the good news and be faithful to God through our love of Jesus Christ. Being faithful takes effort – just ask Moses! Sometimes we stumble along the path, but we get through our hardship, we get through those moments of weakness knowing that Jesus is walking this path with us. This journey through the desert is not one made alone – Moses knew that and we know it too.

If we hold on to our faith, if we hold onto our love for Jesus and our love for our fellow human beings, God will be able to forgive us those character flaws. God will be able to forgive us our sins when we continually come back with red cheeks and downcast eyes. The journey we take is not an easy one, and sometimes our deserts last a good, long while and we become disheartened. But the one reassurance I can give to you is that no matter where you are in your journey you are not alone. You have never been alone. Jesus stays close to you and even when you are at your darkest hour, the light of his love will get you to the Promised Land. It may not be on your terms, it may not be on your time schedule, but Jesus will help you get there.

Amen.

Clothed in Christ

Exodus 32: 1-14
Matthew 22: 1-14

Jesus is always telling us what the kingdom of heaven is like to try to show us the way we are to live our lives. The kingdom of heaven is what we aspire for; it is the ultimate goal of a Christian’s life and can only be attained when we live life with the same attitude as Jesus Christ.

Some people think that means we should always be kind and never have a harsh word to say about anyone. They think that Jesus was all rainbows and lollipops and cotton candy sweetness, but a close reading of the scriptures shows us that Jesus was anything but sweet. Jesus was blunt and bold and he cut right to the heart of a matter with his parables about life and the kingdom of heaven.

In today’s passage we learn about a king whom had invited guests to attend his wedding, but the invited guests do not come. Worse, when the king sends more servants to try to cajole the guests to the celebration, they beat and kill the servants which enrages the king. The king retaliates by killing the murderers of his servants. So far, this does not sound like a sweet tale told by a sweet, gentle man. This is a parable meant to awaken us to our wicked ways and our often lazy attitude toward our obligations.

The king is God who throughout the centuries has often invited the Israelites to live better lives through a covenantal relationship with God. First with Abraham and then with Moses and then with David, God continually extends a hand out to Israel, inviting them to partake in a better life than the one they are living filled with envy, pride, and greed. However, the Israelites continue to ignore God and God’s invitation. They worship other gods. They hurt innocent people. They cheat each other and lie to their loved ones. They commit murder and adultery and blaspheme in the temple.

God does not give up on them. God continues to send prophets and invitations, but the people not only turn away, they kill the prophets and as Jesus is aware they will soon kill him too!

Jesus tells us in the parable that God does not give up. Instead, he punishes those who have killed his people and the king then has his servants go out into the streets and find anyone they can, both good and bad, and invite THEM to the wedding instead. There will be a celebration, the king is determined to see it happen.

This part of the parable sounds more like the Jesus we have come to expect! Obviously, the people that the servants are collecting are the gentiles. They’re us. The invitation to eternal life has now been extended not only to the Jews, but because of Jesus we are also given the invitation to come and participate in the wedding celebration. All people, both good and bad, are invited to make an appearance and help celebrate this occasion! This is the Jesus we understand and expect. The loving, kind, generous Jesus that we love to think we know so well. This is the God we’re comfortable with. The one that would do anything for us and even though we sometimes sin, our God loves us and forgives us and welcomes us back with open arms.

Oh.. wait. Jesus isn’t done speaking yet. Jesus isn’t done teaching us yet. As the king is walking through the banquet hall, he sees the many people celebrating and is pleased with them. The good and the bad are mixed together and in their wedding finery, no one would know that any of them were not there by their own merits, but instead are there because of a generous, unearned invitation by a kindly king and his dutiful servants.

The wedding finery that we Christians are supposed to put on is the term we often use called being clothed in Christ. When we are clothed in Christ, God does not see our sinfulness, but rather sees the blood Jesus shed for us and God loves us the way God loves Jesus. That is why it is so important for us to know who Jesus is because if we are going to be like Christ, then we must know Christ fully. We cannot be clothed in the wedding finery if we cannot find it. Or if we only know a part of Jesus, it would be like coming to the wedding with our dress on, but no shoes on our feet or coat on our backs.

Unfortunately, sometimes this is exactly what happens to us. We think we know who Jesus is and we think we know who God is and we’re so sure that we are getting into heaven, into that ultimate wedding feast. In our sureness, we overlook parts of our character and actions that do not match up with Jesus and we get into trouble. This is exactly what happens to the poor man the king sees as he walks through the banquet hall.

There he was, mingling with all the others decked out in their wedding finery, but this man had no such clothes on his body. He walked around as if it was a normal day or a normal party, and then the king noticed and asked him, “How did you get in here without the proper wedding clothes?” The man has no response for the king, he is literally speechless to be caught not wearing what he should be wearing and the king has the man thrown out of the celebration where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The ending of this parable is harsh. It even seems a little cruel. Why would Jesus be telling us that THIS is what the Kingdom of Heaven is like?! How could God turn away that poor man for not wearing the proper clothes? Why would Jesus, our good and loving and kind Jesus, allow God to treat a person in such a cold, cruel manner?

Again, this parable is a warning and a wakeup call. Jesus reminds us that it is not enough to just say we are Christians, we must act like Christ. We must not treat others with disrespect and we must try to live up to our obligations such as working hard to spread the gospel and create peace in the world. The man who was thrown out was thrown out because he said he belonged, he said he was the king’s guest but could not even bother to put on nice clothes for the celebration.

We do that sometimes. I’m a Christian! We declare loudly for all to hear, but when our nephew who is constantly annoying us asks for advice, we pretend we’re too busy to listen. We say we love everyone, but that coworker that took the position you wanted is somehow always the butt of every joke you make and you’re the first person to spread the bad gossip about them. We say we’re supporters of the church, but when someone calls to ask us to be on Consistory or a committee, we tell them not this year or I don’t think I’m the right fit for it or I don’t have time.

Here’s the truth about Jesus: he sees us and he knows us. Jesus is kind and loving and generous, but Jesus is no pushover. He knows and understands that sometimes we get lazy and ambivalent about what it means to be a Christian. Jesus tells us these parables not to be cruel or cold, but to give us yet another opportunity to change our ways. To change before we become the man at the banquet, underdressed and about to be thrown out into the darkness. Jesus does not want that for any person. It’s why every person in this world is invited to the wedding, both good and bad. It’s why we get a million second chances because it is never too late to be clothed in Christ. It’s never too late to become the person God knows we can be.

Jesus loves us, and Jesus is our teacher. As every parent raising a child can attest, part of teaching is being strict even when it hurts because it helps us grow and it helps us change into better people who understand there are boundaries and rules to follow. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus’ heart hurts that that man was thrown out of the wedding celebration. There is also no doubt in my mind that if we do not act the way we should, if we do not follow the commands of God to love one another that we will be the one thrown out for we will not be wearing the clothing of Christ.

That is a risk I’d rather not take.

Amen.

Reaping a Fruitful Harvest

Isaiah 5: 1-7
Phil 3: 4b-14

Planting a garden begins long before a seed is placed in the ground. The gardener envisions the desired harvest and then selects the finest quality seeds. The soil is prepared and enriched so that the garden will return the highest yield. Space, sunlight, and water requirements are all considered when planning the placement of each vegetable and fruit. By the time the ground is tilled and the seeds planted, much hope has been invested in a garden that is yet to grow.

So the gardener waits, watches, and waters, looking for the first sign of growth. With sprouts come stems, then stalks, as leaves begin to spread – an indication of growth but no assurance of a harvest. This is the ongoing risk for a gardener: no assurance of a harvest. So if seeds fail to sprout, or plants grow wildly beyond their row, becoming entangled with other plants, or the fruit that hangs from the vine sours in taste and there is no harvest, the garden is plowed under and a garden for a new season is planted.

Who is at fault for a failed harvest – the gardener or the garden? This is the question we’re left asking after reading the passage in Isaiah today where God is the gardener with a garden filled with wild grapes instead of a yield of healthy grapes. As we know, the grapes that God had so tenderly looked after and grew with such care and attention are a metaphor for humanity. God created us, God shared knowledge and wisdom and promises with us, and instead of growing up strong and wise, filled with righteousness and justice we went our own ways down wicked and wild paths.

Who is at fault for this? Is God not a good enough gardener? Has God not given us enough blessings? Has God somehow failed in attending to our needs and therefore God is at fault for us growing up wild? Or is humanity at fault? God has given us the freedom of choice, the ability to choose our path, but promises that if we follow Jesus’ ways that we will be given the greatest of blessings: that of a life of righteousness and justice that does not end upon our deathbed, but instead we are given eternal life.

In this passage, God is in pain. God wants so much for us to choose God’s ways, but we continually turn away causing God untold grief at our refusal to see the goodness and mercy and grace that makes up our Creator. God has painstakingly tried to make it clear that if we choose to love and follow God that there is something beautiful to be gained in the relationship between creator and creation.

Have you ever painstakingly put together a project and followed all of the rules only to have everything collapse for no real reason? When my cousin was about 10 years old, he received a ten gallon aquarium for Christmas. He eagerly read the book that came with it and began to follow the instructions to create the perfect aquatic environment for his fish. He assembled the filter, washed the gravel, bought the plants and fish. Everything was prepared as well as it possibly could have been and he was so excited to see his aquarium come alive. What he did not know at the time were some snails had smuggled themselves in with the plants. They soon overran the environment. So did a few guppies the girl next door brought over. Worse, no matter how diligently he fed the fish, they seemed to prefer eating each other than the fish food! Within a few months, his excitement and enthusiasm waned and the aquarium was dissembled and placed in the garage.

It’s a hard lesson to learn. That sometimes we can do everything right and still everything goes wrong. We’re the right fit for that new job, but a new hire gets it instead of us. We raise our children to love the Lord and to obey the rules, but sometimes they decide to test the limits society has placed upon them and end up in jail and with a bitter heart that does not believe in God. We invest our money in many different ventures like we’re told to do, and we follow our tax accountants advise to the T and when the market crashes like it has in the past we’re left without a retirement.

Isaiah tells us that God understands. God was a vigilant vinedresser. No effort was too great to expend upon this crop of grapes. A very fertile hill is chosen, the vineyard is dug and cleared of stones, choice vines are planted, and both a watchtower and a wine vat are constructed. All of this careful attention is performed with one hope, that excellent grapes will be produced.

The project fails. The grapes grow wild, just as if the garden had been left alone. The exemplary efforts of the vinedresser have no effect. The environment could not have been more favorably prepared for growth, yet something goes terribly wrong.

In times like this, we are forced to reevaluate our identity, goals, and relationships. It is difficult when we do the right thing yet are forced to live with the consequences of other people’s poor decisions. And sometimes it is our own poor decisions that God is left to deal with. This passage is a warning to us. Yes, God wants many good things for us, but God does not want us to use these blessings only for our own gain and prosperity.

You see, the yield God was hoping for from his vineyard was that we would take the care and love we’ve received and share it with those around us. The fruit we humans are to produce are the fruits of righteousness and justice. The care we receive from God is supposed to be reflected in the care we give to others. The relationships in our lives should be healthy and happy and loving in the same way God’s relationship is supposed to be with us. God is not content until the blessings we receive are shared equally with everyone.  If the fruit of justice and righteousness are not produced, the result according to Isaiah is that God will allow us to run wild and leave us to our own devices.

How scary is that?! If we’re allowed to do as we please, humanity has proven time and again that we will do the wrong things. We will be selfish and hateful and spiteful and arrogant. We will destroy whole villages when we go mining for gold and oil and coal. We will destroy the environment and demolish rain forests in our efforts to gain more land and prosperity. We will pollute our oceans with oil from wrecked ships and with garbage we throw out as if no one else lives on this planet. We will destroy whole countries in an effort to gain power and prestige and we will destroy ourselves with our self-centeredness.

God is calling us away from all of that and calling us back to righteousness; to living in a way that makes God proud to call us God’s children. God is calling us to understand that there is more to this life than the limits we place upon ourselves when we think it’s all about power, wealth, and recognition. When we see Christ in every person we meet we begin to recognize that we’re here for a higher purpose than having the best clothes, haircut, and entertainment devices. We’re here to love one another with the same fierceness and care that God shows us, and that can only happen when we turn back to God and give thanks for what we’ve been given.

When we recognize that all we have is not because we did it on our own, but because God has given us these abilities; we are able to recognize that these blessings are not just for us alone. They’re for every person we encounter. And when we start to look at the things we have as things to be given they stop controlling us, and become a tool to help the world. We become kinder and more generous and the love that shines from our hearts will make those around us take notice. And when they start to ask questions, you’re given the chance to show them a God who is not dispassionate and uncaring, but fiercely loving and attentive toward all of humanity.

If we start producing the fruit of righteousness and justice – we can change the world!

Amen. 

Love and Sin

Exodus 12: 1-14
Romans 13: 8-14

For 2,000 years the Bible, often unaided by any human intervention, has transformed the lives of those who read it, many times dramatically so. St. Augustine is a good example. For most of his life he was a famed academic in the Roman Empire. He was very successful in rhetoric, a noble profession. But he lived a thoroughly dissolute, self-indulgent, immoral life. The time came when he began to consider the claims of Christianity.

He was alone in a garden one day when he heard a child singing out a line from a game: "Pick it up and read, pick it up and read." He turned to his copy of the Scriptures, which was opened to Romans 13. His eyes were drawn to the following words: "Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.”

Deeply convicted, he surrendered to Christ, and the Roman rhetorician went on to become the Christian bishop of Hippo, the greatest theologian after Paul, and one of the most formidable intellects of Western civilization.

This leads me to ask what is a sin? In Augustine’s eyes, before he began to know Jesus Christ, he did not consider his life sinful. We could quibble about the definition of a sin and about what makes something sinful. However, I have to think that a sin is whatever keeps us from God. If there is anything in our lives that keeps us out of God’s arms; anything that keeps us from going toward God – then that is what is sinful, regardless of what anyone else says. Sin separates us from God. God is not sinful and will not accept anything sinful.

Jesus Christ died for our sins so that we may enter heaven instead of being cast out. Jesus didn’t just whitewash our sinful pasts to make them look clean, he took all that sinful behavior away. Most of us in here today understand and accept that part of our faith. We understand that sometimes we will lie or speak hatefully or maybe even fudge our tax return and that when we come to God with these sins, Jesus will make it right with our Father in heaven.

In fact, I have to say perhaps we are all a little too accepting of this part of our faith. Perhaps we have gone from being truly repentant to just being lazy. There are many kinds of sin. There are many ways to sin. One of the things I’ve always envied about the Catholic religion is their ability to organize and simplify certain things about God and Christianity. Catholics have categorized their sins into venereal and mortal. Basically they figured out there are some sins that we all do and then there are the special sins that require a bit more effort on humanity’s part. I think we are all comfortable being forgiven for the really bad stuff so that sometimes we forget to pay attention to the not so bad sins.

We become comfortable with the news we see on television or read about in the newspaper. We start seeing nothing wrong with three deaths to gang violence last night or when a mother shakes her baby to death. We begin to accept that sometimes children go to bed hungry in this town and we accept that there are others that have the brains for college, but lack the funds so they will work at Sheetz for the rest of their life when they could have been a doctor. We accept the homeless in the cities and the children that grow up without direction from their parents. We shake our heads at the gangs and the violence while talking about how it was different when we were kids. We say things like, “Teens didn’t act like they do now; we respected our elders.”

We forget what brought us to the point we are at. We forget that many of the kids that are in gangs join so they won’t be picked on in school because some parents didn’t teach their children to ignore differences and to accept everyone. We forget that because the economy isn’t prospering that many parents are working when their children come home and so now many teenagers have no role models to teach them how to be responsible. We forget how every generation of children and teenagers rebel against their parents in some way and we tell ourselves we never did the same thing.

I’m not sure how we get to the point where gunshots and screams are okay background noise. I’m not sure how we start to accept that twenty soldiers were killed in Afghanistan this weekend. I’m not sure how we allow children in this town to go without food in their stomachs and I don’t know how we accept that some children will just not have the guidance they need while others will have more guidance than they could ever want. And I’m really not sure how we can look Jesus in the eye after we die and say that we did all we could for these people.

These are the people that will never ask the church for help. These are the people that don’t even know that the church COULD help. If there was ever an untapped source of humanity it is the people that live right outside these walls. In every town and in every city, churches are surrounded by needy people. Every day that a church ignores that need is a day the church has ignored the chance to change a person’s life by showing them the transforming and life changing love of Jesus. When we help someone that cannot do anything for us, we show them the true love of God because God does everything for us when we have nothing to give in return.

You see, this passage today is a reminder that the love of Christ is all encompassing. It is a reminder to us that love is the fulfillment of the laws that God has created and love is about caring for others more than we care about ourselves. Love is the essence of discipleship, the basis for transformation. Love involves all we are and do, individually and as faith communities every single day.

Love defines the attitude, behavior, and norm by which the Christian community takes account of its life. This love has two feet: love of God and love of neighbor. Loving God and loving our neighbors are inseparable. If you do not love your neighbor you are not loving God and if you love God you will love your neighbor because God IS your neighbor. We do not help others to put butts in the seats of this church. We help them because that is the right thing to do. We help because that is what Jesus calls us to do. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors.

What is a neighbor? Not just the person across from you in the street. Think of someone that annoys you. Someone that constantly does things that hurt you. Think of someone so completely different from you that they could be from another planet. These people are your neighbors. They are to be loved with the same fierceness as we love ourselves and our family.

We are to be the light of the world. We are to be the voice that cries out, “You are God’s beloved child!” We are to be the ones that change a life by offering Christ’s Good News. And every day we pretend that is not our mission, every day when we say we are too tired or too busy or we don’t have enough money to make any real difference is a day that we go away from God instead of toward God.

And that is the danger of sin. It takes away our urgency to help others. It takes away our ability to be kind and compassionate to those less fortunate. It takes us away from God and God’s voice that reminds us that our mission is about making sure every single person has the chance to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. It takes away from our commitment to our families and to our community and it distracts us from our purpose.

We are here in these pews to worship the Lord. We worship by praying and singing. We worship by offering ourselves to do Christ’s work. It is not for others to do. It is not for another church to do or another mission group. It is our work. It is our duty. Christ’s great commission before he ascended into heaven was to spread the gospel to all four corners of the earth. And that means our mission is clear – we need to educate the person across the street from us just as much as we educate the people across the world from us. With every person we help, that is one more person who may help us spread God’s word and that is an exciting thing to realize!

Amen.

Be Peter!

Genesis 37: 1-4, 12-28
Matthew 14: 22-33

Fear makes us do funny things, and by funny things I do not mean laughter inducing. Fear causes us to act out. We say things that are not nice. We treat others with disrespect. We get angry at things we normally shrug off when we’re not afraid. We hide and cower when we’re afraid or sometimes we become paralyzed by our fear.

The passage we read today in Matthew is filled with fear, but it doesn’t end that way. It ends in worship. Trinity is about to begin a whole new chapter in its faith journey and we all know that new beginnings are scary. The fear of the unknown can make us hide away from doing risky things because we want everything to go back the way it was before - before the change.

One of the worst things we can do as a church is to be so afraid and filled with fear that we do not look at change as a chance to try something new and perhaps prosper in unexpected ways, but instead we look at change as something to avoid at all costs because the old way worked just fine. However, Jesus has something to say about that. He tells us that we cannot put new wine into old wineskins otherwise the skins will burst and all will be lost. Instead, we are to put new wine into new wineskins so both will be preserved.

The same holds true for this church. Do not be afraid to try something new. Do not be afraid to think outside the box when it comes to doing God’s work. This year, we had a little girl show us that we can make a difference in a place halfway across the world just by having faith. We raised so much money for the Philippines in one night that I was astounded and I think many of you were as well! We put our necks out and we tried something different and look at the result!

How do we go from fearing change to embracing it as an adventure? Prayer. In the book of Matthew, the author makes it very clear that prayer has a major impact on the things that Jesus accomplishes. Last week, Jesus went away to pray and was bombarded with 5000 people and so he healed them and talked to them, and before they left he fed them. How did he feed them? He prayed over the food and asked God to provide and there were BASKETS of food left over. In the passage we read today, Jesus once again goes away to pray and when morning comes, the disciples see him walking on the water unafraid of the violent winds and the raging sea.  

The only way to be calm in the midst of crisis; the only way to be successful in times of trouble is through a strong prayer life. Jesus tells us that all it takes is a little bit of faith and we can do miraculous things just like he has done. Not because we are suddenly powerful, but because we have invited Jesus into every aspect of our life and this church and where Jesus appears – miracles happen.

How many people are in this story of Jesus walking on the water? It's a trick question in that there are technically 13 people in the story if all the disciples are on the boat. However, as we read the text we see only 3 people. Jesus, praying and walking on the water. The disciples, as one crying out in fear and later worshipping, and Peter calling out to the Lord and walking on the water. We are one church, one body with one mission – to spread God’s loving gospel to all those who have ears to hear it. However, all it takes is one bold person, like Peter, to make significant changes to the course of journey for all of us.

All of the disciples sat in that boat and all were afraid. In Luke it tells us that they knew it was Jesus walking toward them and yet, they were still terrified. These are 12 men who understood that Jesus was the Messiah, but when he did things like this that defied all logic they could not believe. How much harder is it for us, who have not met Jesus face to face and spent three years with him, how much harder is it for us to go out on a limb and pray that it won’t break on us and that we’ll fall to our death?

But that is what we are called to do and Peter understood that on a deeper level than the rest of them. Peter calls out to Jesus and says, “Lord if it is really you, command me to come out to you.” Now, we can do the same thing as Peter does. We can call out to the Lord to tell us where to go and what to do when we’re frightened, but there’s a key point that most of us seem to miss. You see, in this passage, Peter calls out to the Lord, and then he waits for the Lord to reply before he does ANYTHING. He waits!

How often do we wait to have our prayers answered? Sometimes we pray DURING the storms of our life instead of BEFORE them like Jesus did. We pray the way the disciples did, the way Peter does when he begins to sink – we say LORD HELP US! Jesus prayed before the storm ever began, before the wind even hinted at how fast it was going to whip around them and he was able to be the calm voice of reason that says, “Do not fear for I am with you.”

So not only does Peter wait for Jesus to answer him before he does anything, but then when Jesus says to him, “Come”, Peter FOLLOWS Jesus’ directions and steps out of the boat and into the water. We all can remember a time when we knew God was speaking to us and we decided not only to ignore God’s voice, but then to do what we wanted instead. We prayed to God, we heard God and then we did what we wanted instead like stubborn fools.

You see, we fear so many things. We fear not only being forgotten by God, but we fear what God would have us do as well! God does not call us to sit safe and comfortable in these pews Sunday after Sunday. He does not call us to do the same things we were doing 20 years ago! Matter of fact, if we are doing the exact same missions as we did 20 years ago or even 5 years ago – then we are stagnant. We are not listening to the Holy Spirit in our hearts, we are not paying attention to where Jesus is and we are not following our Father’s command to spread the Gospel to every corner of the world.

I’m not saying that there aren’t great things that we can do every single year for all of Trinity’s existence. I’m saying that God calls us to try new things and to expand our horizons and to reach out to ALL kinds of people. Form a prison ministry that offers prayers and bible readings to inmates and clothes for when they get out. Once a month, join up with the UCC church in State College and walk the campus to offer students a chance to learn about God. Get in on Grace’s Kumba stuff and offer to host it here at Trinity whenever needed or form a yoga ministry that offers prayer and meditation along with fitness. Create a praise band and once a month hold a praise worship to reach out to younger people.

Fear and exhaustion hold us captive. Peter may have begun to sink as he noticed the high winds and the tossing waves, but he was the only one of the disciples brave enough to even try to be faithful to Jesus. He was the only one, and as soon as he called out to Jesus, Jesus lifted him up and did not allow him to sink. Peter did not fail. Peter was strengthened by his experience and Jesus may have asked him why he began to doubt, but it wasn’t to chastise him. It was to make Peter think about what he had accomplished before he allowed fear to take over his mind.

What can we accomplish here when we let go of the fear? What have we already accomplished by being brave and bold in a world that tells us to shut up and sit down? I’m leaving here, with the hope and prayer that the next pastor you choose takes you to the greatest heights you’ve ever known, but the only way that can happen is if you allow that pastor to lead you into new places. You’re going to have to do things in new ways. Forget the past. Let it go and embrace your future.

Begin to pray and begin to listen and begin to trust that God has a great plan for all of you. There is so much promise and hope in this church that you could bring a lot of people to Christ by being the loving people you are – but by doing it in new ways. Don’t be disheartened. Don’t be afraid. Trust that God has a great plan for you. Trust God and listen to what God is telling you to do and then DO IT! Do not let fear have you sitting paralyzed in the boat or in these pews. Be Peter, the brash and bold man who dared to walk on water because Christ told him to walk to him! It was Peter that helped all the disciples go from being huddled in the boat, terrified of everything around them, to worshipping God and giving thanks! Be Peter!

Amen.

Food for the Body and Soul

Isaiah 55: 1-5
Matthew 14: 13-21

Lord, Feed My Soul

Our two passages for this week speak to us on a very elemental level. They are about never being thirsty or hungry again. With rising food and fuel costs lately, it would be pretty great if we would never have to buy another thing to eat or drink again. Isaiah tells us that even those who have no money may come and buy milk, wine and bread with no cost to them. All they have to do is give their ear to God, come to God and you will have all you will ever need.

We spend a lot of time and energy trying to make enough money to feed our children and ourselves. We work forty, fifty, seventy hour weeks and we cut coupons and go on double coupon days to the grocery store. We check out all the shopping inserts and sometimes we visit several different places because while this place has the best dry goods prices, this place has better quality and cheaper meat. Then when we bring our food home we spend a lot of time and energy preparing the food.

Apparently, the older we get the more our lives revolve around meal times. I know this to be true because I have done a very impartial and professional survey that involves my grandmother. Basically, every time I visit my grandmother I have noticed her first real question to me is always, “What do you want to have for supper?” and the whole time I am at her house she is constantly asking me if I want something to eat, if she can make or bring me something and what does she think we should have that night for dinner. Now, if my grandmother was a big woman, I could understand her fascination with mealtime, but she’s a little bitty woman who doesn’t even eat all that much.

What is it about food that our minds constantly come back to it? Why does Jesus so often speak of food to his followers and why is there not just one story where Jesus feeds mass quantities of people, but there are two stories of him doing it in the Bible? In the next few weeks the Old Testament passages are about Moses and how he frees the Hebrews. While they are in the desert where there is no food or water to be found, they constantly complain to Moses that they’d rather be slaves because at least then they had food and water. Then when God provides manna to eat and dew to drink, they quickly become bored with these offerings and complain that at least as slaves they had variety. Then God provided them with other food.

Jesus understands our preoccupation with food and water. We pretend we are high above the animals of this world, but when it comes down to it we are just creatures that walk upright and have thumbs. We need to eat and drink to survive. We understand this on a primal level and our body and mind continually reminds us of our needs. Food and water are necessary to our continued existence. God understand all of that, after all, God did create us.

These two passages are definitely speaking of food and water in a physical sense, but as in all the scriptures there are many meanings behind these simple words. When the disciples realize the time, they go over to Jesus and remind him that these people are far away from home. They want the people to go home and eat so that they may eat as well. It has been a long day and they are bone weary. We can all appreciate how they must be feeling.

After a long day at work, often we just want to come home, eat a quick meal and then relax. But Jesus, who has been working hard all day as well, doesn’t seem to feel the same way as the disciples. He replies to their request by saying, “They do not need to go away. YOU give them something to eat.”  The disciples, whose minds are on the physical food, are absolutely incredulous. It is as if when we got home from our hard day of work and anticipating a quick meal, we are told by our spouse that we are having a houseful of guests and so put on an apron and help them rummage up some food.

The disciples’ minds immediately think of the impossibility of it and are probably secretly hoping when Jesus realizes how little they have to feed their own bodies that he will give up his crazy idea. But no, Jesus is not thinking of the physical side of things. Jesus had had one heck of a day and his mind was on the spiritual. He found out his cousin and fellow prophet, John the Baptist had been killed and when he went to grieve in private, a huge crowd – five thousand men, women, and children followed him. Instead of being angry and lashing out as we would have, Jesus had compassion and began to heal their sick. Then, instead of grasping on to the excuse the disciples were offering him, he said, “No, we will feed them. They do not need to leave.”

Jesus understood something we seem to only understand vaguely, if at all. These people needed fed in more ways that just bread and fish. They needed fed by the hand of God. They needed to be with someone who cared for them completely. Jesus, compassionate and sensitive to their needs, fed them the healing grace of God as he cured their diseases and then he fed them food to strengthen their bodies. Jesus does the same for us today. He hears our prayers and provides us with the ability to make it through our work day so that we may have money to buy what we need. Jesus hears our prayers for healing and also offers us his grace to get through each day.

The cynics will say that this miracle is impossible. You cannot take two fish and five loaves of bread and feed five thousand people until they are full. They will say that the law of matter is quite clear which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed, merely transformed. If you start with two fish and five loaves, no matter what you do to them they will only ever produce the same amount of food equal to their matter.

I’m not here to tell you this really happened or not. I believe it did, you may believe that it is a metaphor that Jesus feeds us in many ways. What I will tell you is that if you want to never be thirsty or hungry again, if you want peace in your life – Jesus will be your chef. There is a reason so many of our good memories revolve around a meal. This is when we commune with each other. This is what makes us different from animals. Not that we can talk, but that during a meal we share our food and we share pieces of ourselves with our fellow diners.

Jesus fed the people by offering them healing and by offering them bread and fish. Our mission can be no different. We open our doors and we welcome in everyone that would come in, but we also welcome everyone that will never walk in these doors. Our mission as Jesus’ church is to feed the hungry – those who are starving for the Word of God and the ones who are starving for bread and water too. If we do one and not the other, then we are not following Jesus. Jesus was never a halfway person and we cannot afford to be either.

Amen.

Prayerful Communication

1Kings 3: 5-12
Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52

Many of us pray for what we feel we are missing in our lives. We pray for good health, lots of wealth and good fortune, and we pray quickly for others to receive what they need as well. Sometimes our prayers stem from our neediness or our greediness, and other times they well up from deep inside of us like wordless groans full of pain and anguish and despair. There are no words really, at times like this, there is just those feelings that so overwhelm us that our thoughts swirl with no sense and our voice is lost.

In those times, I believe, is when the Holy Spirit takes over our prayers. God doesn’t need perfect word choices or good English to understand what we desire most in our hearts. God doesn’t even need words to know what we want to pray for, what we desperately wish we could voice, but sometimes find ourselves without proper articulation.

What God does need is for us to keep the ways of communication open between us and Jesus. The best way to do that is through prayer. We need to speak to God and God wants to speak to us. It’s weird if you think about it, that God wants to speak to any of us. What is so interesting about you or me when compared to all that God knows, has done, and seen? It is very hard to imagine that anything we could say would be scintillating to God. It is also hard to imagine that God doesn’t already know exactly what we need or want and how we are going to phrase our request, so what’s the point in praying if God already knows?

This kind of reasoning is the rationale behind why some of us do not pray very often. When we do take the time to squeak out a prayer it is short, to the point, and it becomes the very thing we fear it is – boring to us and boring to God. God doesn’t want Reader’s Digest prayers from us. Of course God knows what we need and want, the reason for prayer is so much bigger than requests or asking for favors. Prayer opens up our lives.

This is what Solomon teaches us in the 1Kings passage we read today. Although God had created Solomon and was a blessed man, he still managed to surprise God when he asked not for money or power, but instead he asked for divine wisdom to rule God’s people. God not only heard and answered Solomon’s prayerful request, God also gave Solomon the things he did not ask for because that is what happens when we start to pray and communicate more with God. We find blessings begin to surround us everywhere we go because our spiritual eyes are opened.

Prayer creates a mystery, a living link between God and the person praying. They are linked by the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. Just as the Spirit offers up wordless groans when we have lost the words we need in the depths of our emotions, Jesus offers up those perfect words and a pure heart so that when God hears the prayer through Jesus, we are not left as audacious sinners begging for crumbs from the master’s table, we are elevated up into the realms of heaven and are able to stand with our head high. The prayers we pray in Jesus’ name become a conversation with God instead of a servant begging its master for favors.

Do you see the distinction? This is what Jesus did for us. This is the reason we come to worship and why we pray. How could we not pray after such a gift has bestowed upon us? We are able to have a conversation with God. God listens to us, God hears us and God responds to us. It’s glorious!  We matter to God. If you do not matter to any other person in this world, you matter to God. You have worth and value in God’s eyes. That is worth praying just to say thank you.

There are many kinds of prayers. I love the Psalms because they are basically prayers that were sung by various people. Many of them were attributed to David, Solomon’s father. You’ll find as you read the Psalms that each one offers up things to God that many of us have forgotten how to offer to anyone, let alone to God. There is vulnerability, anger, despair, happiness and frustration in many of these Psalms. The people who wrote them weren’t afraid to give God all of their ugly feelings; they never curbed their tongue so as not to yell at God when they were angry with what God had done to them. But they also gave to God the flip side; they shared their joy and happiness with God.

It’s sad that often we forget to pray when we are happy. When we are content and moving along well in life, God seems to take a step down the ladder of importance. However, the moment we are in trouble, our thoughts find God like a beacon. Perhaps that is the human condition, to be concerned with God and the afterlife when we face our own mortality and frailty, when we face how helpless we really are in the world. When we are happy we feel in control of our surroundings and if we are in control then we do not need any help from God.

The point of prayer is not just about getting help. As I said, prayer opens up the mystery of the divine into our very ordinary and un-divine lives. When we pray in Jesus’ name, many of us do it out of habit perhaps not even knowing why anyone does it to begin with. We pray in Jesus’ name because there is power in that name. If we prayed in our own name, it would be just us against all the world’s ills. But we pray in Jesus’ name because Jesus is God made flesh, Jesus is the divine entering into the ordinary and making it extraordinary. We pray to remember that it is by God’s grace that we have anything at all. We pray because it pleases God and it pleases our own soul.

Prayer is communication with God. Therefore prayer is the meeting of the divine soul with the human soul. It’s a brief moment where we are no longer stuck here in the muck and mire of sinfulness, but we get to experience the beauty of salvation because we are with God. And when you look at prayer like that, the more often we pray the better chance we have of staying away from those things that tempt us. Instead, we could say with confidence that sin has died inside of us and that the Spirit is strong within us.

Open yourself up to the mystery of your faith by praying to God in Jesus’ name. Every day, every moment that you can, open yourself to God’s love through Jesus Christ. The prayer does not even have to be in words that anyone else would understand because God understands even our wordless thoughts. Through prayer we become closer to God and God’s love begins to shine within us like a priceless diamond in the sun. Every single one of us needs the gift that Jesus gave by dying for our sins so that when we pray we may do so with confidence and clarity, knowing that God hears our words. Enjoy that gift, embrace it and use it often.

Amen.

A Different Kind of God

Zechariah  9: 9-12
Matthew 11: 16-19, 25-30           

In the scripture today, Jesus tells us that his yoke fits well when we put it on and what he means is that instead of filling up our lives being busy all the time and trying to create our self-worth from how many things we accomplish in a day and how many people are our friends and how many likes we get on Facebook – Jesus tells us that the yoke he will give to us is made specifically for us and it will bring MEANING to our lives instead of just busyness. Because that is what we all want. We want to mean something. We want to leave a mark on the world and know that when we’re long gone, those who loved us still remember us.

Jesus brings meaning and purpose to our lives. Rather than filling up on useless endeavors that mean nothing in the long run, we need to fill our lives with the words of Jesus Christ, fill our lives with the voice of the Holy Spirit, and we need to fill up on the love God the Father has for all of His children. This is where meaning and purpose truly exist for us.

Every time you choose to do something good for your community; every time you forgive someone for something they did to you; every time you show compassion while everyone else is showing anger – you proclaim your witness to the love of God born out through the birth and death of Jesus Christ and continued through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Your life and your decisions may very well be the only Gospel some people ever read.

Think about that for a moment. When you proclaim yourself a Christian, you label yourself and YOU decide what people will think about a Christian by the way you treat them and by what you say to them. There are so many people who have never or barely ever cracked open a bible. YOU are the only living witness to the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

John, tried to show God to the people by being very ascetic and Jesus tried to show them God by being very friendly. Both were shot down by the people that thought they knew the Old Testament and knew God, but they were embraced by the people who didn’t know much about the OT, although they desperately wanted to know God. In today’s world, you can bet the same holds true.

We, in these churches like to think we know Jesus and know the ways of the Holy Spirit and that we know the love of God the Father. And we do to a certain extent just like the scribes and Pharisees did. However, you can bet that if Jesus came back today, that he would deliberately be the opposite of everything we’ve ever imagined him to be. Jesus was always breaking our preconceived ideas of what God is all about; as well as our ideas of what a Savior is supposed to be.

Back in the Pharisees time they were looking for a warrior on a horse that would lead a great army and cut down the Roman Empire. What do we expect Jesus to be now? The great humanitarian? Or is Jesus the emo kid with the black hair and spikes in his chin and piercings everywhere? Is Jesus the dirty, homeless man we passed by without a thought? Is Jesus the illegal immigrant just trying to save his family from a life as awful as the one he lived? Is Jesus the lesbian woman with cancer trying to get her lifelong partner death benefits when she dies? Is Jesus the black teenager trying to escape from the gangs he grew up in and was told he could never escape from by everyone in his life? Is Jesus the young woman dressed provocatively because she bases her self-worth on how many glances she receives because no one ever bothered to love the real person she is inside?

Jesus comes to us in many forms and in many ways. He rarely is what we expect him to be because we are limited by our own biases and preconceived ideas the way the Pharisees were when they encountered Jesus and John. Where are we blinded? It’s important for us to recognize our own failings and lack of imagination because it helps us grow into better people that accept the failings in others.

It’s easy to judge. We see in this passage that the scribes and Pharisees had judgment down to a T – and let’s be honest – so do we. However, we’re not called to be super critical and passive aggressive to our fellow human beings. We’re called to share the Gospel and that doesn’t always mean quoting scriptures at people. It’s about how you live your life. It’s about the words you choose to say that can wound or heal a person. It’s about taking a moment to help instead of hurt. It’s about offering real advice that is meant to help a person instead of using it as a way to put them down.

Every choice we make in both word and deed tells the world the kind of person we are and since we have proclaimed ourselves Christians – then we better recognize who Christ is so that we can follow his example. We cannot lie, hurt others, deliberately gossip, deliberately put them down, deliberately refuse to forgive mistakes, deliberately cause pain and think that non-Christians will want anything to do with Jesus Christ. They will run from God because we have shown them that God is a hypocrite that says “love and forgiveness and mercy” but then shows hatred, judgment, and pain when a person falls short of perfection.

Perhaps we need to take time to get to know Jesus all over again. Crack open that Bible and before you begin to read, ask God to show you where you have lacked imagination and forgiveness and acceptance. Ask God to show you more about who God is and what Jesus Christ is doing in this world today and then begin to read. Read with an open mind and heart. It’s what we need to do when we meet people as well. We need to listen with an open mind and heart. We need to find the beauty in each person because there is something beautiful and pure and good in everyone we encounter. They are God-made therefore they cannot help but have beauty inside of them.

When we start looking for the goodness in people, the flaws start to disappear. Stop criticizing and start loving – that is what Jesus calls us to do!

Amen.