Fear and Love

Jer 1: 4-10
Hebrews 12: 18-29

The scripture we read today in Hebrews is a confusing text because it seems to be filled with contradictions. Like last week, we are met not with a loving God, but one that causes Moses to tremble with fear and who's voice shakes the heavens. And yet, in this passage we also see the God we have come to expect, the one full of forgiveness and love for God's wayward creation.

Which God is our God - the one that makes the mountains and heavens tremble in fear or the one that inspires reverence and awe for the promises that have been made and kept in Jesus' name?

God is all things. There is no choice here because the God that can make us tremble in fear is also the one that loves us beyond all imagining. Jesus understood that sometimes we needed to be fearful in order to respect the message he was trying to convey to us. It is why last week he talked about reigning fire down upon all of us when normally he is telling us to forgive 77 x 7 times.

There comes a moment in each of our lives when we need to shape up. There is something we are not doing well or deliberately not doing at all. Perhaps there is someone you dislike and so you avoid them day after day. Maybe it's even a family member or was a close friend until you had a disagreement. Perhaps you have been cutting corners at work and hoping no one would notice that things have not been going well for some time.

Perhaps you've been ignoring your spouse and have taken advantage of the idea that they'd always be there for you instead of appreciating them. Perhaps you have been working so much and such late hours that your children never see you and you never make it to any of their extracurricular activities. Perhaps you have been ignoring that ache in your chest or that pain in your hip or that your weight has been getting higher year after year.  

God reminds us in this passage that although we are blessed with the promise of life after death forged in the blood of Jesus Christ, that does not mean we should get lazy. Because it's not only in our personal life that we need to shape up. In the church we are called to act like a blessed people which means creating ways for others to be blessed by God. It means sharing our love for God with others. It means stepping out of these walls to make a difference in our town, our nation, and the world. God does not want a bunch of people that merely sing songs of love and forgiveness and generosity. Jesus calls us to BE all of those things as well.

Yes, God is the one that makes us tremble in fear as well as reverence. Jesus is our judge as well as our savior. We need him to be. We need to know that it's not okay to sit back and relax all the time. These passages in the last few weeks are a stick prodding us in the backside and telling us to get moving. It's time to act! It's time to make a change in the world!

This doesn't have to be some huge, momentous event. Some of the most amazing things have happened because a person started small. There was a young boy that wanted to make a difference in his community and so he began to shoot basketball hoops to raise money to help others. He'd ask for a donation for every three point shot he made and people sponsored him. Then one day, he got a friend to join him. And another joined. One day, the whole school decided to shoot hoops for charity. Now schools all over the nation do it. This kid just wanted to help others and so he looked at what he was good at and he used it to make a difference. He had no idea that he was going to begin something that would change a lot of lives. All he knew is that God had called him to help others and this was his way of helping.

Don't assume because of your age or gender or your set of skills that God isn't calling you to help others. In Jeremiah today we read about his call by God. Jeremiah tried to use excuses to get out of being God's prophet as well. "I'm too young! Too inexperienced!" and God responds with the most amazing words, "I knew you in the womb and have been calling you to this since that moment." God created you. God breathed life into you. If you think God does not know your skill set and what you can and can't do then you're kidding yourself. God knows you. God still wants you to do something to help others, and has been calling you to do so from the moment of your creation.

Whether it is icing cookies for the funeral today or setting up chairs for the spaghetti dinner this fall, or whether it is creating a program that will one day make the nation sit up and notice- Jesus wants you to help make the Kingdom of God a little more real to those who are hurting. That's our true calling as a church. We are here to remind the world that there is more to life than pain. There is a beautiful life full of peace, forgiveness, and love waiting for all of us. And the more we remind others of this gift of salvation, the more we are reassured as well.

We all need to remember that we're not alone in this world. We all need those connections that sharing the Gospel provides for us. We all need more of Jesus in our life and less of our own egos. Moses was one of the greatest people in the bible and he trembled in fear before the Lord. Today we should take a moment to be amazed by the God that moves mountains and who's voice shakes the heavens, and remember that our calling is not something we should be able to ignore.

Amen. 

From Hypocrite to Disciple

Jer 23: 23-29
Luke 12: 49-56

Where is the Jesus that talks about love and reconciliation? The man who is always preaching forgiveness and compassion? The one who a few weeks before yelled at the disciples for wanting to reign down fire upon the villagers and is now speaking of wanting to bring down fire himself? We are left wondering what has happened to make Jesus so cold and harsh.

Earlier in Luke, we are told that Jesus is now on his way to Jerusalem. He knows where he is heading and what is coming. Perhaps the reality of it has made his words harsher than they have been before, but there is more to these words that seem out of place with the kind Savior that is often depicted in the scriptures.

Jesus loves the world, but Jesus knows us too. Jesus knows that as much as we want to be good and kind people that follow his ways, we will often and gloriously fall short of his goals. Does that mean we are going to be punished for it? This passage seems to say BEWARE! DANGER! there is a cost to being Jesus' disciple!

How many of you have been Christians your whole life? How many of us have sat in these pews all these years and heard sermon after sermon, and how many of us have read the bible in Sunday school and at home and in church? We know things about Jesus and being his disciple that others do not know. Jesus is holding us accountable for that knowledge. This passage is a serious warning to all who proclaim to know Jesus, but do not act like they know him.

Back before the Civil War, there was a man named James who thought slavery was wrong. He treated his slaves as workers, paid them wages, and did not beat or abuse them. One day, another plantation owner came to his house yelling and screaming about an escaped slave and how he had run toward James' lands. "Help me find that sorry excuse for a slave!" the owner yelled at him and so they went out searching for the escaped slave. They began to question the James' slaves and discovered the person was there on the plantation. She had heard about the way he treated his slaves and had wanted to escape her barbaric owner because she was pregnant, and knew that she would be beaten when her production went down.

When James' saw this woman crying, his heart hurt for her, but the other owner immediately demanded the woman back and yelled that those slaves of James' that had hid her should also be punished. James did not agree, for these two slaves had become his good friends and he understood why they had hid this pregnant woman. He knew this was wrong, but he let the other man drag the three slaves to the field and watched silently as they were stripped naked and tied up. When he was handed the whip to beat his slaves with, he hesitated. The other owner continued to scream abuse and slowly James' hand raised and came down upon the back of this man he had once called a friend and had looked in the eye as an equal.

This is a shocking story. It's barbaric and horrific and it's a true story. These things happened a lot before the Civil War. They happened afterward too. The message of the story isn't only about slavery and how wrong it is though, the message of this story is that James did not agree with the treatment of slaves but allowed himself to be coerced into doing what he knew was wrong. Every time we say we know the Gospel message that talks about equality and forgiveness and then we turn upon another person like a rabid dog - we have become the hypocrites Jesus calls these people in the passage. Hypocrites like James.

We know what is wrong and what is right. James knew as well, but we often let society dictate to us what we should do. We listen to voices that are not God's. We follow humans instead of Jesus. Then, like guilty children trying to escape punishment, we try to pretend we did not know it was the wrong thing to do.

We may be able to convince those around us that we did not know the truth, but Jesus knows what is in our hearts. When we ignore the need to care for the sick and shut-in; when we fail to create programs for our children and youth; when we forget to love those that others hate - we fail in our Christian duty. We can say we didn't know that God meant help THOSE people and we didn't know that Jesus wanted us to reach out even MORE, but we're lying. We knew. We just didn't care enough. We just couldn't bring ourselves to put us last and others first.

We put out excuse after excuse and hope it will be enough to dull God's voice in our hearts. Jesus tells us that he is headed toward a baptism by fire - he is about to die to make life after death possible for us. He shows us what true sacrifice and real love are all about. In the face of such love and sacrifice our excuses become pitiful. Jesus is deliberately shaming us in this passage because he does not want to see us fall into these traps.

Because Jesus sees in each of us the greatest of possibilities. Jesus sees everything you could do and be, and treasures the person you are whether you know your potential or not. Inside some of you he sees the heart of a true caregiver; one who can bring comfort to the loneliest of shut-ins and the most hurt of lost people. Inside some of you he sees the secret administrator who could organize the church from top to bottom with a couple weeks of work. Inside some of you he sees the actor or the artist; the ones who have the ability to come up with new ways of making worship and programs more interesting for all of us. Inside some of you he sees the quiet person who doesn't think they have any talents at all, but you're the first one to volunteer to bake a pie for a funeral or to offer your day to help clean up an event.

God sees you. The beautiful parts as well as the ugly ones, and God wants for you all that is good. Jesus is warning us not because he wants to be harsh and critical, but because he does not want us to become hypocrites. He does not want us to fail to help those that need us. He does not want us to look at him on Judgment Day, and try to explain away our indifference and lack of love for others. God is Our Father in heaven who wants to warn his wayward children of the dangers of self-service.

Although Jesus is harsh in this passage, we must remember what comes next. He may be disappointed with those around him who have excuses galore for the way they act and treat others, but still Jesus goes to the cross for them (for us!). He accepts the beatings, the accusations, and as they spit and ridicule him he continues to pray to God for the people's redemption. Jesus is our Judge and our Savior. It is never too late to get back on the path that he has set out for us. That is what grace is all about - loving forgiveness for all that seek it.

Today what I want you to take away from this passage and sermon is that God loves every single part of you. Jesus sees inside of you the person you hide from everyone else - the good and the bad. And if we let ourselves listen to the Holy Spirit whispering in our hearts and ears, we have the ability to stand proud on Judgment Day and tell Jesus with a happy heart that we have done everything we could to make the world a better place; that we have shared the Gospel with as many that would listen; and that we have no regrets about how we lived out our lives as His disciple.


Amen.

It's More Than Believing

Genesis 15: 1-6 Luke 12: 32-40

The two passages we read today both begin the same way, "Do not be afraid". Someone a lot more industrious than me has counted how many times in the Bible it says, "do not fear" and it added up to 365 times and the common response to that is - that means there is a "do not fear" for each day in the year. It's important for us to understand why Jesus and the prophets are continually telling us to not be afraid.

Abram was consumed with the need to have an heir to pass along his legacy. He wanted a child that could show the love and care for the things he had built and he wanted a child to continue his family line. God wanted Abram to have a child because through that son a whole nation of people would be born. People that were born to help bring about the salvation of the whole world through Jesus Christ.

It is because Abram stopped being afraid that the Bible exists. It would have been a short book without his faithful following of God into places most of us do not want to go. Abram had a great life and a lot of treasures he had accumulated in his long life with his wife Sarah. He listened to a voice talking to him and he heard the promises this voice made and he responded to them. He decided to stop fearing the future, and instead he believed in the promises that seemed impossible and improbable.

Through the faith and persistence of Abraham and Sarah, and their long years of traveling, trouble, and toil they were given the gift they had waited 90 years to experience. They gave birth to a son, Isaac. From Isaac was born Jacob who gave birth to the 12 sons that make up the tribes of Israel. From the birth of the tribes of Israel came Moses who listened to God and they were delivered from Egypt and found refuge in a new land, the land we call Israel today. And down through the line of sometimes sinful and sometimes faithful people, eventually there was born a young male child to a virgin and her carpenter husband. The birth of Jesus Christ was only possible because of thousands of faithful people who went through mental, emotional, and physical hell at times to make it possible.

These people and their faithful response to God's voice is why this church exists. They heard and understood what God was saying to them when a voice cried out, "Do not be afraid! I have a plan!"

Every church in the world experiences fear at some time or another. We all worry about our future and the life of the church. Sometimes the fear is tangible, we can practically taste the tension in the air. There are other times when it is not a fear so much as a worry in the back of our minds. These two passages are given to us today because we need to stop fearing and start praying.

We are here today because we believe in the promises Jesus has made to us. We believe that God loves us. We believe that God gave us Jesus to bring us back into righteousness. We believe that Jesus sent us the Holy Spirit so we would never be alone in the world. Always, we have a mediator that will help us through life. We are here because we are told that it's not just enough to believe in the promises, but we must respond to them. We are here because the promises are so wonderful that we are compelled to worship God, we want to give thanks for our life! We also are here to work together to help others share in what we have been given.

Some would consider God selfish. God is selfish because Jesus is not content with just us coming to heaven when we die. Jesus wants every single person in the world to be in heaven with us. God wants us all, and that is our mission - to help make sure everyone receives the promise of eternal life. I guess we can call it a possessive love. Jesus loves all of us and therefore he wants to spend eternity with every single one of us which is why the very last command he gives to the disciples (and therefore to us) is to spread the Gospel to every corner of the earth.

We don't always like hearing that though. We don't love everyone the way God loves everyone. There are people we truly dislike and the idea of spending eternity anywhere near them makes us cringe. How do we as individuals get past such thinking to be caring toward even those we do not like? How as a church can we get past our dislike for other denominations, and other religions to see the people the way God sees them?

We may not always like it, but we are called to put aside our fear and distrust of these people we've taken a dislike to and to help them to get to heaven with us. There are things God is calling us each to do and calling our church to do that we are not going to like. We need to get over it. We need to stop doubting our abilities. We have been called to share God's love. It's time to get organized and do it

. Abram could have talked about being faithful until he was blue in the face. Talking only gets a person so far. Abram had to accept that what God said was true and then he acted. He RESPONDED to God's promises and he gave up his own comfort to help make our salvation possible. He had no idea that's what he was doing. All he knew is that if he listened to God that something great was going to happen.

Isn't that the same promise that Jesus offers us today? Jesus promises good things to those that follow him. He can and will make us fishers of people. First, we must believe it is possible. Stop being afraid. Stop doubting. Stop worrying. These fears only destroy our possibilities of making a difference. Begin to believe. Have the audacity to be bold in your faith! Jesus is here with us and willing to help us become so much more than we ever were before!

What are we being called to do? What is Jesus whispering to you in your heart? Do not let your fears drown out God's voice! It doesn't matter your age, it doesn't matter your gender, it doesn't matter what you have done in the past or didn't do - Jesus IS talking to you. Jesus IS calling this church to new and better things.

It's up to you. You can listen and become the church that changes our community for the better or you can ignore Jesus and watch our church become nothing more than a pretty building people walk by. I know many of you feel it - that this church has great possibilities. We have the ability to be something great and life changing for those that have never heard of Jesus Christ. But it will only happen if we work together and stop fearing the 'what-ifs' and instead embrace the promises of God. It's time for us to believe and respond faithfully. Just as we depended upon Abraham and Sarah's faithful response to God; someone out there is depending upon us.

Amen.

Rich Toward God

Hosea 11: 1-11

Luke 12: 13-21

What does it mean to be "rich toward God"? Many preachers would use this text to implore the congregation to give more generously because you cannot take the money with you when you pass away. However, I think there is more to this passage than just giving money to the church or charities. Despite the fact that we are behind in our budget, I'm learning that although I may worry about such things privately, it is not what we should worry about as a congregation.

Money is important. It is important to make our budget, but that cannot be the focus or our purpose as a church. What is the point of being open if our main concern is staying in the black? We might as well close our doors, give our assets to the poor or another church if that is all we are concerned about. It all comes back to what Jesus says at the end of this passage in Luke. "This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves, but is not rich toward God."

Again, it leaves me to ask, what does it mean for a person to be rich toward God? What does it mean for a congregation to be rich toward God?

It is important for us to pay attention to what we worry about the most. Whatever we spend the most time on in our meetings and our committees are the things we consider our mission and purpose. The rich landowner was concerned with himself. If we go back to the passage and read it again we will notice an abundance of me language when the landowner talks. He does not think about the Lord who has made this abundance possible. He does not think about those who are less fortunate than him and do not have anything to eat let alone excess grain to store. He does not even take a moment to think about selling the grain to others, but instead he wants to tear down his perfectly good barns to create bigger ones to store all that he has. He wants to sit back and count his grain, and enjoy a life of leisure.

Now, some of you may be wondering what is wrong about storing up for leaner months. Don't we all buy an extra toothbrush or the big jug of oil when it's on sale? We all tend to buy the 3 cans of corn instead of just the one we need at the moment because it's cheaper and we know eventually we'll need it. There's nothing wrong with that at all. However, we also know of people whose lives revolve around storing up as much as they can for themselves and giving nothing back to those who might need it.

Jesus warns us that we must be careful in how we let wealth and abundance distract us from our purpose here on earth. We are meant to live together; to share together; to love each other. If each of us sits in our houses busily counting our stored treasures then we are not experiencing the life God has given to us.

In the story of the 3 Little Pigs, each one builds themselves a house and goes to live in it while happily congratulating themselves on how successful they are to own their own home. Then along comes that wily wolf and he huffs and puffs and blows down the straw house of the first pig, and then he comes to the second pig's house made of sticks and he blows down that house. When he comes to the third house, made of brick, he cannot get in and with the three little pigs working together, they manage to defeat the wily wolf when he tries to get them by coming down the chimney.

Why am I telling you this old fairytale? Because the three little pigs are just like us. We go out into the world trying to make something of ourselves and we get so caught up in making everything just right and in having something bigger and better than everyone else that we lose sight of God. We stop giving thanks for God's blessing and begin to congratulate ourselves. We get comfy in our little houses with our treasures surrounding us whether they are that 50 foot television or the many pieces of jewelry we've accumulated in our life and we forget the big picture.

There are people out there that need us. What we have, we have been blessed with by God. We do not have to give everything up to prove our love for God, but we are told that unless we learn to be rich toward God, we are dead inside. The same is true for this church. Until we learn to be rich toward God, we are a dead church. We come here on Sundays, we show up for our meetings and yet we are not truly living until we make a difference in our community. Our church life cannot revolve around how to make budget no matter how tight it may get, and honestly, it's pretty tight right now.

If we want to be a vital church, a growing church, a church that means something more than just a pretty building people pass by; then we need to be vital people who understand the blessings Jesus has given us are not for us alone. We need to open our doors. We need to be inviting, always welcoming, and inclusive. We need to reach out and ask the community to come here and ask them what they want from a church. The most amazing part of it all is how much things will change and how great we will all feel once we begin to do this.

Change is hard, but it brings benefits with it. The grace and glory of God are given to those who show mercy and love to the people around them. We are a rich congregation compared to many. However, sometimes we do not act very blessed. We phone in the motions and wonder why nothing changes. It's time for us to remember what we were created for and what our purpose is as a congregation. Some of you are tired and feel like you have done your fair share.

But Jesus reminds us in this parable he does not care much about what is a person's fair share. The first person to talk to Jesus in this passage asks him to tell his brother to give him his 'fair share of the inheritance' and Jesus instead shares a parable about a rich man whose major concern was about himself and his fair share, and at the end of the story proclaims that man is dead inside.

Being a Christian is hard work. The whole bible talks about how hard it is to be a loving, faithful disciple and how it wears  a person down. We have work ahead of us. We have a lot left to do here at Trinity. Many of us want to go back to the 'glory days' when the church was always filled. I want to remind you that we can have glory days again, but it comes with work. We cannot just pray people into these pews. We need to reach out to them. We need to love them and each other. We need to stop bickering about the petty things and instead concentrate on what it means to be rich toward God.

If we only do what will benefit our life, if we only help out to make ourselves look good, if we deny help because we've 'been on that committee before' then we are not being rich toward God, but rich toward our self. These are hard words to hear, I know, because they apply to every single one us including myself. We all phone it in some times. We all do the bare minimum to scrape by for another month or another year when we get tired. Jesus is calling us on this attitude. He is reminding us that if we want to be alive then we must live a life that gives constantly toward others and not just ourselves.

We need to stop thinking of ourselves, and only of how change will affect "me or I" and instead think about how our church may become something truly spectacular when we start following Jesus' ways of being rich toward God. Perhaps when we learn how to do that, we will see that our glory days are not in the past at all, but they were always in our future.

Amen. 

A Deceptive Philosophy

Hosea 1: 2-10
Colossians 2: 6-15

Have you ever heard the phrase, "That boy (or girl) was raised right."? It's an expression we use for people who have been taught manners, courtesy, gentleness, and respect. They are what some refer to as the old-fashioned values and as the years go by it seems like less and less of our people have the same values that the previous generations had.

When and how being respectful and kind went out of style is debatable, but it appears the whole country has been infected with this distorted sense of right and wrong. It comes from not being grounded and rooted in Jesus Christ. The writer of Colossians comes out and tells us what is wrong with today's society as a whole. We have swallowed a deceptive philosophy. We have allowed our traditions and values to be eroded in the face of technological advances and immediate access to news and information.

Sometimes it seems like the more we know about the world, the less we truly understand about it. We hear about a tragedy such as the Trayvon Martin case and everyone chooses a side and defends that side to the death with hearsay. Although the information is available, we have been exposed to so much information that we have allowed ourselves to be told what to think by our news channels and newspapers and our fellow facebook friends. We listen to the 30 second sound-bite instead of watching the three hour court interview and think we are educated on the subject.

Can you imagine how Jesus would have been portrayed in today's news media? With his long hair, white robe, and sandals he would have been pronounced a hippie or a new ager. With the radical words of forgiveness in the face of great pain, he would have been called a liberal anarchist. With his talk of love and commitment to God and country; he would have been called an old-fashioned conservative. The media would have had a field day with Jesus! They never would have been able to pin him down and so therefore he'd probably be considered wishy-washy in his opinions despite the overall theme of love, forgiveness, and acceptance that is the basis of everything he talks about in the New Testament.

They would have decimated his mother Mary for being unwed when getting pregnant with him. They would have made Joseph seem like a savior or a fool for marrying her and knowing the baby wasn't his own. They would have interviewed his siblings and looked for all of his weaknesses and all of his strengths. The media would have destroyed Jesus' family and privacy. A man who rarely got any of that to begin with would have had all of his peace taken from him if he had lived in today's time.

And we allow it. We gobble up the gossip magazines and we turn on the reality tv. We choose our news stations and defend its obvious bias toward one affiliation or another to the death. We no longer want news that shows both sides of the story equally. We no longer want the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We have become conditioned to a deceptive philosophy that everything there is to know can be told to us in short clips and news articles, and we now have enough information to form an opinion on someone we've never met and a situation in another country that we have never experienced.

Our old-fashioned values about courtesy and respect do not seem to hold any weight when we're busy making judgments about people and situations that we only know the bare bones about. Jesus encountered a woman one day, a Canaanite woman and as they talked, he basically called her a dog. His own Jewish bred bias' were showing through in that moment, he was after all, both fully human and fully divine. He had limitations just as we do.

The difference is that Jesus knew when to admit to defeat and he knew how to admit he was wrong. Think about that. God knows when to say, "I'm sorry, that was wrong of me." The proof is in the story of the Canaanite woman. Jesus just finishes saying, "I came only to feed the lost sheep of Israel. It is not right to feed the children's bread to the dogs." and she responds with, "Even the dogs eat the crumbs from the master's table!" It is in that moment that Jesus realizes he has done the wrong thing. He has allowed what was probably a long, hot day to keep him from seeing this woman as a sister and instead he allows his Jewish upbringing to raise a fence between them.

However, faithful people do not allow things like fences to keep them from the truth. This woman's faith allows her to humble herself before Jesus, knowing that it is only he that may save her daughter's life. In her humility, she makes Jesus aware of his excessive pride and in that moment Jesus sees that faith in God can be found in every human being no matter their station, their gender, their creed, their color, or their orientation. Faith is not something we just have but is a gift granted by God and cemented through the works and word of Jesus Christ.

This Canaanite woman had faith in a benevolent God who loved all of God's creation including some little woman and her sick daughter. Her faith reminded Jesus of his mission on earth. And her faith should remind us that we cannot think to know the world just because we have read about it. We do not know the people in the Gaza Strip and we do not know the people in Egypt. We do not know if Zimmerman or Martin or perhaps both of them were the culprits that night. However, we hear things and we decide that we have the ability to judge the situation and we stick to our decision with tenacity.

What we need to remember is that every media source has a bias and an agenda. They are appealing to a certain group of people in what they air and how they portray it. If we do not expose ourselves to more news sources we end up with a biased viewpoint.  Jesus shows us that. The writer in Colossians warns us against being so narrow-minded and also reminds us that truth comes from one source - God.

We need to ground ourselves in our love for Jesus Christ. We take too much comfort and pride in the things we think we know and how educated we think we are about the world. What I'm here to tell you is that we know nothing until we have lived it and experienced it. We do not know the hunger and desperation of the people in Gaza and how they may not be Hamas, but secretly they understand why Hamas does what it does since they all have been shut off from the world and resources and opportunities. We do not know what is like to be under a militant regime despite our grumblings that America has fallen downhill, and some people's thinking that the politicians are trying to take away all of our freedoms. The truth of the matter is that in the United States we have the power to fight back if that is true. Whether we choose to exercise that right or not doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And therefore we have NO idea what it is like to live in a country where to rebel means your family is slaughtered while you are thrown in prison for life. We have no idea what is like to live in Mexico with the cartels and the poverty and how desperately the people dream for a better life and so they come to America. Instead we talk about how it's a mess down there and we need to put up some fences to keep those people away from us. Like America wasn't started with the same dreams those Mexican men and women are using to make their way here.

We allow ourselves to become deceived by human perceptions and limitations. We forget God. We forget Jesus. We forget the Holy Spirit's guidance. We forget to be kind, gentle, respectful and courteous, those old-fashioned values we love seeing in others, but forget to use ourselves at times. It's time we get back to praying for people instead of judging and gossiping about them. It's time for us to show understanding and compassion instead of indifference and a lack of empathy. Every person we meet has a story that began long before we ever heard of them. We need to pay attention to the whole story and not just the 30 second clip we've seen so far before we make a decision about them.

We have hurt too many people by being hasty. Thankfully, Jesus shows us the way toward redemption and salvation. May we learn how to follow his ways.

Amen.

Are We Martha or Mary?

Amos 8: 1-12
Luke 10: 38-42

When Jesus decided to drop in on Martha and her sister Mary, Martha’s first impulse was to get something going in the kitchen. In doing this, she was being faithful to the tradition of hospitality begun long ago when Father Abraham welcomed three guests into his tent. Just as Abraham turned to Sarah to assist with the duties of hospitality, Martha expected Mary to do the same. Martha’s expectations did not include Mary’s plopping down on the rug at Jesus’ feet and leaving all the work for her.

That is however, exactly what her sister did. Mary was in no hurry to come into the kitchen. While Martha was flipping through cookbooks, boiling the water, chopping up the vegetables, and setting the table for three, Mary settled down at the feet of their friend and guest, attentive to what he was saying. In fact, by sitting at Jesus’ feet, Mary had taken the posture of a disciple. Who could blame Martha for banging a few pots and putting the plates on the table with steady thumps?

Perhaps Jesus heard the bustling around back there and, after a while, even the muttering. Martha was not a person who kept her feelings under a tight lid. Since Jesus was pretty sharp at gauging what was going on in people’s hearts, he knew what the muttering was all about, long before Martha’s frustration exploded into words, but he waited until Martha spoke.

“Lord,” Martha began, “don’t you care..” showing that Mary wasn’t the only one under scrutiny here – “don’t you care” she repeated, and then the gaze fell on her sister Mary, “that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?”

As a matter of fact, Jesus did not care. I like to think he smiled when he said, “Martha, dear friend, you are worried and distracted by many things.” This is an important moment to notice in the story. He is not going after Busy Martha, but Worried and Distracted Martha. He is speaking to his dear friend Martha, who has worked herself into a state of anxious distraction over the meal she wanted to have for him. She has focused her frustration not only on her sister but now also on her friend and guest, and lost sight of the one she significantly calls “Lord”. Jesus is gently calling her to refocus. Hospitality is not primarily about the food because what is more important is the focus on the guest and making them feel welcome and cared about.

Mary has chosen to focus on her connection to God who is the good in the world. Through Jesus we act with effectiveness and are grounded in love and compassion. You see, Martha has become so distracted in being hospitable that she has forgotten her guest and began to concentrate solely on her own needs and desires. As she prepares the meal, without any help from her sister, she begins to resent her sister and Jesus too. She resents the work she is putting in, and the hot kitchen that is making her sweat and ruining her hair and staining her clothes while Mary and Jesus sit comfortably talking in the other room.

In trying to make Jesus welcome, Martha inadvertently does the opposite with her distracted busyness. Mary has taken the time to ask their guest to sit down and put his feet up. She has inquired about his journey and all the people he has met along the way. She has taken the time to connect to Jesus and allow him to feel comfortable in their home. Martha has forgotten to take the time to connect with her guest before she began to get busy.

Now what can that tell us about our lives in the church? First of all, each of us has a role to fulfill. Some of us are excellent listeners while others of us are fabulous behind the scenes. We need to appreciate what each of us can do and not take it for granted. However, it is also a reminder to each of us that sometimes we get so focused on a problem or so caught up in that we have guests that we begin to scramble around to prepare a meal or get them comfortable, and we have forget to take a moment to connect with them.

We see this most especially in struggling churches when a new person arrives. Suddenly, the person is swarmed with people that want to show them the best places to sit and to show them the wonderful nursery in case they have children and the fellowship hall where all the pictures are and they are so caught up in doing that they forget to listen. Churches also do that with their programs and committees. If there is a problem we can address it by creating a new program! Or let’s have a meeting about it! Or better yet, let’s form a committee that is a subcommittee of that other committee.

We get frazzled and nervous and anxious and distracted, so we begin to do things. We run around with our arms in the air as our feet move us from place to place and our minds spin with words and grumbles and complaints. We become just like Martha when we need to be like Mary. There will be time for action soon enough. Sometimes the best thing we as a church and as individuals can do is to step back and do nothing. Sit down beside your guest and listen to where they have come from and where they are heading. Sit down and discuss with the people having the problem in our church and see what might be done before trying to do it. Listen and connect instead of acting without thought.

We need to reconnect. As a church and as people we need to stop doing things all the time and instead take a moment to listen. What does this church want for its future? What do you want for your life? How are we keeping ourselves and our church close to Jesus? Are we praying enough? Are we reading scripture and meditating on it? Are we praying several times a day and during our meetings and creating opportunities to talk about what we have learned?

Jesus rebukes Martha when she comes to him asking if he cares because of course Jesus cares about Martha and what she is feeling, but he does not care about the food she is preparing. That is just busy work. Jesus wants Martha to take time to be with him; to laugh and love with him instead of running around grumbling. Jesus knows his time on earth is precious and finite, just as our time on earth is precious and finite.

This summer we have been asked to take some time and listen to our hearts and listen to the people outside these walls of the church before we begin any major changes to what we do here. First, we must LISTEN to our community if we want to be able to CONNECT with them. We cannot assume we know what they need because other churches have tried that and failed. Now is our time to prove that we can stop with the distracted busyness and instead take a moment to talk and laugh and connect with the people we want to invite into our church home.

Grange Fair is coming up soon. That is a time when the whole community comes together to enjoy the fair and each other. That is a great time to start listening and asking questions of the people around you. It’s a great time to bring up how Trinity is making some changes and wants feedback. Ask your children that do not come often and ask your cousin who has never been here. Ask your neighbor who seems spiritual but never attends church. What would it take to make them come here? What is the most important thing they want from a church?

As a church that wants to welcome new people into it consistently, we need to stop running around grumbling and instead take a moment to listen. What does the outside world want from Trinity? What do we want for the outside world? And most important of all – what does God want for all of us?

Amen

Rediscovering Sam's Story

Amos 7: 7-17
Luke 10: 25-37

How many of you have heard the parable of the Good Samaritan more often than any other story in the Bible?

It is one of the most popular parables, and for a good reason. If we are looking for the heart of the Gospel message; if we want to know what is important to Jesus – this story tells us everything we need to know in 12 short verses. The problem is that we know it too well. It has lost some of its power because of how many times we have heard it spoken to us and to others.

When 9/11 occurred we were all shocked and horrified. We never thought anything like this could happen and there were movies made and songs written about how we will always remember this tragedy and where we were when it happened. Before 9/11 I used to hear about when JFK was assassinated; where my mom was at the moment she found out and how horrible it was to hear. But after awhile, although we do remember the impact 9/11 and the JFK assassination had upon us, it no longer shocks and wounds us. Time and the retelling of the story, reliving the memories take away the sharpness of the emotions we first experienced.

The same can be true of certain well-known passages in the bible. They become so familiar to us and so comfortable that we no longer hear them with the same intensity we did the first couple times we listened to them. What is there left to learn from the story of the Good Samaritan? We know everything we could possibly have learned from previous times of hearing it. There is nothing new here. Right?

Wrong. Instead of telling you a feel good story about a Samaritan who sees a man beaten up on the road and selflessly gives his time and money to making him well when not even a clergy person could be bothered, I want to tell you a different story.

I want to tell you a story about a man named Sam who was having a bad day. He woke up late for work, his boss yelled at him when he got there and docked his pay which means his children will go hungry tonight, and as he is walking home he can feel blisters forming on his heels from his new sandals. Sam is not a happy man. He’s hurting, he’s tired, and he just wants to get home and put his feet up, and forget this day ever happened.

How many of us can relate to Sam? I sure can. We’ve all had those kinds of bad days and it always seems like at the end of such a day, something else is bound to go wrong. Sure enough, Sam stops at the top of the mountain road to adjust his sandals upon his aching feet, and he watches a scene unfold before him. There is a clergy man walking down the road and he stops for a moment when he comes to a bundle of rags heaped on the side of the road. The clergy stoops over and looks at this heap of rags for a moment before looking around wildly. Sam watches as the clergy then looks up at the sky before deliberately skirting right by the bundle.

Sam thought that was odd. What was the big deal about some old clothes by the side of the road? He kept walking and as he did he saw another man, a Levite from the look of his clothes which is a man of great learning of Jewish law from the priestly tribe of Israel. This man also comes upon the bundle and stops for a moment. The Levite looks at the bundle, nudges it with his foot, and then jumps back before practically running down the road. How odd, Sam thinks.

Now Sam is much closer and he is very curious about what is beside the road. As he approaches he thinks he sees it move. This mystery has completely distracted Sam from his bad day. He is caught up in the moment. When Sam is beside the bundle of rags he realizes it is not what he thought at all, but a man badly beaten and bleeding. He was huddled into a ball like people do when they are seriously hurt or in pain. The ragged, bleeding man suddenly groans and Sam hears, “Help me.”

Sam has a choice. He could step back and pretend he never heard those words, and keep walking to his house where his wife would have a drink and dinner waiting for him, or he could help the man.

Let us take a step back for a moment and ask ourselves what we would do.

We just heard that a man who has promised to be God’s faithful, loving servant has passed this man by. We know that a Levite, a man from the priestly tribe and well versed in Jewish law has also walked away from the bleeding man. We know that the man is half dead and therefore whoever hurt him means business. What if they come back to finish the job and see us helping him and decide to hurt us as well? What if we help the man and he dies anyway? What if we help the man and we get blamed for his half dead state and end up in prison? It seems like no matter how we look at it, staying to help this guy is going to cause us nothing but trouble. It’s already been a bad day; why allow this man who was stupid enough to get beaten up and almost killed to ruin the rest of it?

We should walk on by. Just like the clergy and Levite guys. No one will know. No one will care. We’re Samaritans, this man is a Jew. We’re not friendly. We’re not allies. This man would spit on us if he was healthy. We should leave. Now.

Sam thought all of these things - just like we would think most of them. When we take a story we’ve heard many times before and reduce it to, “The Samaritan helped his enemy and we should be like him” we lose the power of the story. We forget the sacrifices being made. We lose the ability to sympathize with the Samaritan, with Sam.

Many of the choices we make in our lives are easy. No, I’m not going to run that stop sign. Yes, I’m going to feed my children today. No, I’m not going to eat that piece of pie. Every now and then, though, life throws us a curve ball. We’re going about our day and suddenly, we hear voices raised and then a thud and a crash. We come running out of our house or workplace to see someone beating another person with a baseball bat. No one else is around and it’s up to us. Do we help or do we pretend we saw nothing? Helping means sacrifice. It means possibly getting mixed up in something we don’t want to be mixed up in. Helping may bring harm to our body, our mind, our life, and our family’s life.

A few weeks ago, there was a man who saw a little girl drowning in a river. Instinct kicked in and the man dove into the river to save the little girl. The river was not deep and he hit his head and broke his neck, paralyzing him from the neck down. A couple weeks later, he died in the hospital with his family by his side. This is a true story. There is risk in being a hero. There is a cost to be paid. Sometimes we know what the cost is and sometimes we do not.

Sam chose to help the bleeding man. He picked him up and carried him upon his aching back with his blistered feet to the inn. He paid for food, lodging, and medicine. Then he promised to come back and pay for anything extra the man needed before going home to his family. Sam didn’t have the money to be able to do that, but he did it anyway. Not because it was just about being a good person. Not because the man muttered help me. Not because he watched two other men walk away. Sam helped because he saw himself in that ragged, bleeding man.

For the briefest moment, all those doubts and fears that were filling Sam’s mind cleared and he saw a human being in need, and he saw how easily that could be him laying there dying along the side of the road. Who would help Sam if this had been him? Who will help you when you wreck your car or when a fire begins in the basement of the house or when you’re getting robbed by gunpoint?

The people that help are the ones that do not see the differences in each of us. The people that make a difference are the ones that do not let doubts and fears keep them from being responsible citizens. These people are the ones who hope that if that was them laying there bleeding, someone would have compassion for them. They hope that another will see the human being and not their skin color or the way they dress or their accent or choice of sexual partner.

Jesus reminds us that we are not only called to pray for others, but to have mercy upon them. Mercy requires sacrifice and forgiveness and love. Sam the Samaritan stopped his internal monologue of complaints about his crappy day and his crappy life to see the pain of someone else. He allowed someone else’s hurt to be more important than his own. He sacrificed his happiness and well being to make another comfortable and protected.

It’s not something we like to hear, but that is what Christianity is about. It means sacrificing our own happiness, health, and well-being when we see someone in need. Jesus did it for us, and now we do it for others. That is what it means to be a Good Samaritan.

Amen.