Rejected

1 Samuel 8: 4-11
Mark 3: 20-35

Every one of us has experienced rejection in some form or another. That is what makes these two passages we read today so powerful. We can really relate to what is happening to each person and we can feel their pain and confusion like it was our own. The Mark text is particularly interesting because we see both an extreme acceptance as well as rejection and how Jesus deals with both are important.

Jesus enters a home with his disciples to sit down and eat a meal after a long day. They had walked many miles and helped many people. So many people, in fact, that now a large crowd has gathered outside of this home. Close your eyes and picture this.

It’s dusk and you’re sweaty and dirty and hungry. You’ve been up since dawn and you have not had a moment of rest or alone time all day long. People have clamored to be healed and to be taught, wanting more from you even as you try to give them more. You walk into this home, hoping for a moments respite to eat and wash the dust of the day from your person. Instead, as you sit down to eat this meal you hear the people gathering outside. Their voices are loud, jarring; preventing conversation from occurring inside the house. Then you hear a knock on the door and you try to ignore it, but it just gets louder as does the talking and cries for help.

Jesus’ family hears about the commotion his actions have caused in the town and they are angry and scared. They’re angry because they are worried about what Jesus’ actions will cause to happen to not just him, but to them. They are scared that the crowds will turn on Jesus and turn on them if he does not live up to their expectations. They do not understand what is driving Jesus. They do not understand what possesses him to make such a spectacle of himself in their tiny town. Talking to each other, his family decided that Jesus must not be thinking straight and so they go to tell him what he should be doing.

Mark, in two sentences, puts Jesus in an awkward position. Here in the first sentence we see a crowd of people that adore Jesus and what he has done for them, so much that he cannot even eat a meal in peace. In the very next sentence we see Jesus and his mission rejected by his own family. We have obsession from strangers and dismissal from loved ones. Jesus is in the middle of a battle and neither side offers him rest and comfort.

Jesus walks outside, ignoring the dinner he had wanted to enjoy just moments before and greets the crowd. Inside of the crowd are a group of Pharisees who believe Jesus to be casting demons out using Satan’s name. Another rejection by the very people who should recognize him as the Messiah, but are too wrapped up in their own lives and jealousy to understand the truth.

At this point, what would you have done? We all have days like this, where it appears as if the world is coming down upon our shoulders and all we want to do is take a moment to relax and instead, more is heaped upon us. If you were Jesus, would you have walked away or would you have stayed to help?

Jesus stayed. He began to teach the people in an effort to get them to see how ridiculous their argument against him truly was. He says, “How can Satan drive out Satan?” We can almost see the Pharisees thinking frantically, “If you’re possessed by a demon, you can probably get other demons to listen to you and that’s how you heal the people.” But what Jesus is saying in modern terms is if you have an infection, and you go to the doctor to be healed; does the doctor give you another infection to drive out the first one? No. The doctor gives you an antibiotic to rid your body of the poison infecting you.

But Jesus is making another point as well. If Satan drives out his own demons from people, then he is dividing his resources and therefore he will lose. Also, if Jesus is not possessed by a demon then he has truly healed the person. Jesus has neatly trapped the Pharisees in their own web of jealousy because with what Jesus says here he clearly points out that no matter if Jesus is possessed by a demon or not, Satan cannot possibly win since he would be hurting his own cause.

At this point, Jesus’ mother and brothers arrive and when someone tells him that they are there, he says that here in this crowd are his mother and brothers and sisters. He says all who do God’s will are his family. This, now, is Jesus appearing to reject his blood family and accepting his spiritual family. On the surface it seems as if Jesus rejects those who would reject him and he accepts those who accept him.

Could Jesus really reject his own family in favor of strangers who won’t even let him eat a meal in peace? How are we as Christians supposed to understand this, should we too reject our family in support of strangers?

Jesus is making a point to everyone. The ones in the story that are doing God’s will are Jesus, the disciples, and the crowd that are so hungry for God’s word that they cannot even let Jesus rest for a moment. The ones who are opposing God’s will are the Pharisees who are telling lies out of jealousy and his own family who refuse to understand what Jesus is here to do. Jesus was not rejecting their caring and concern; he was rejecting what would happen if he gave into those cares and concerns. If he listened to his family and went with them back to their home, God’s will would not be done.

Jesus refused to meet with them not because he didn’t love them, not because he didn’t appreciate their love for him; he refused because to do so would be to go against God. What Jesus is telling all of us is that he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. He did not come to live an easy and peaceful life; he came to cause strife and discord. If the people were stirred up and anxious, that meant they were thinking and feeling and living. Jesus was not after a meek and passive group of followers. He wanted people who had a passion for God’s word and a drive to hear it no matter the time or place.

The church is a place where we can either choose to be active participants and eagerly listen and watch for God’s word, or we can be passive and restrained in the way we worship and love God. Jesus may understand why his family is so upset with him, he may understand why they do not want him to do the things he is doing, but he does not let that stop him. If he let them stop him, he would be going against God. Sometimes we must choose to do the radical and crazy thing instead of the calm and rational because it is the RIGHT thing to do. Sometimes we must choose to do God’s will over humanity’s even if they think we are ‘out of our minds’ like Jesus’ family considered him to be.

As we look at our lives and at our church, which group are we in the story? There are some that would be in the group that could not leave Jesus to eat a meal in peace, but I have a feeling more of us would have been nodding and approving of his family coming to take “Jesus in hand” because that boy was out of line. I could see many of us thinking that Jesus was causing unnecessary trouble.

Christianity has evolved over the many centuries since Jesus was teaching the disciples. Religion should evolve and change and adapt to the new circumstances otherwise it would grow stale. However, I have to wonder if we have tamed and watered down our faith to such an extent that Jesus would have rejected it as he rejected his family’s good intentions. After all, many of the things we do are done with good intentions, but Jesus seems to care more about God’s will. Shouldn’t we as well?

Amen.

Made Clean

Isaiah 6: 1-8
Romans 8:12-17

The passage in Isaiah is a very well known text to most Christians. The song of Holy, Holy, Holy is used by many denominations during Communion and the hymn, “Here I am, Lord” comes from this text. It is a scripture passage that speaks of glorious things, Isaiah sees God and the Seraphim and he is so overcome with God’s holiness that he becomes completely awakened to his own uncleanly state.

There is so much raw emotion in this vision of Isaiah’s that it can be overwhelming to us readers. Here we see the need to acknowledge our sins, and we find that God has an answer to our unworthiness. We read about how Isaiah is cleansed and as soon as he is, God begins to call him to new and glorious things. With his heart now pure, Isaiah can say without subterfuge, “Here I am, send me”.

Isaiah shows us all the need to realize our guilt and sinfulness. When he has his vision of God who is so big that only the hem of his robe fills the temple, he is besieged by God’s glory. There are winged creatures flying everywhere, singing praises to God and Isaiah for the first time sees himself clearly.

 Isaiah probably considered himself to be a good person. He probably thought he was a good Jewish man who loved God and was willing to do what God commanded him. He may have even prided himself on keeping the commandments and knowing a lot about the Old Testament.  At the moment of this vision, everything Isaiah knew about himself was flipped on its head.

 Face to face with God, Isaiah knew he was not a good person. He understood for the first time that the things he had always prided himself on, were not relevant. If we are created in God’s image, Isaiah was seeing a very distorted view of who he was and who he should be. It made him cry out in pain and despair, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips!”

There is a seminary professor who often told his classes that he compared people to the two brothers in the Prodigal Son, the good son being the one that stayed to help his father with the farm and the bad son being the one who leaves the farm in search of adventure. At the end of the story, the prodigal comes back and is welcomed with open arms by the father, and it is the good son that stayed that watches on the periphery as the bad son is given such a warm welcome. The professor stated that it is not the people who know they are sinners that he worries about, it is people like the brother in the story who consider themselves good people and yet are not in the Father’s embrace.

There are many people who consider themselves Christians and to be fairly decent folk. They are the ones that fulfill their responsibilities, they go to work and come to church and they help others. The danger in being a person that is relatively good, is that sometimes we forget to depend on God. We forget that a sin is a sin and so even if we are not out stealing or killing people, that holding grudges, lying, and spreading gossip are also sins. Compared to what some people have done, they may seem minor and insignificant.

It is Isaiah that reminds us during this vision that he is just like us sitting in these pews. He was a good person; he was like the older brother in the story who fulfilled his responsibilities. And yet, when face to face with God, Isaiah could recognize that he was still unclean.  He is a sinner. We may not like acknowledging it and we certainly try to pretend to others that it isn’t true, but we are all sinners in this room. We have all done things that when we come face to face with God, we too will cry out, “I am a person of unclean lips!”

But God knows that. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God sees you. God knows you. There is no hiding the truth from Him. And so when we cry out our guilt and shame and remorse, when we confess our sinfulness, in that moment we are freed from it. Isaiah confessed his guilt and his people’s guilt and the Seraphim flew to him with a live coal and placed it upon his lips, making him clean.

All it takes is a confession, an acknowledgement that we are far from the perfection of God and that is when God takes mercy upon us. This is why we confess our sins within the first ten minutes of church. Once we have confessed our guilt, we are given the freedom to worship God in peace. We are free to open ourselves up to the Spirit of God so that our souls may be refreshed. We are reminded of the gift Jesus gave to us when he died for us so that our sins would be forever washed away. In those moments of confession and pardon, we go from being outside the Father’s arms to being held securely in His embrace.

For Isaiah, after his confession and cleansing he is then able to hear God clearly. Now, in that moment of righteousness, he hears God say, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Isaiah lives among a people of unclean lips, he has been cleansed but they have not. God has given a gift to Isaiah by making him righteous, and now God has called Isaiah to help the rest of his people to also be righteous.

It is not enough for just one person to be saved. God wants us all to be saved. This is the reason for all the prophets and why Jesus was constantly sending his disciples out to spread the Good News. This is why his last command before ascending to heaven was to tell the disciples to spread the Gospel to all four corners of the earth. Jesus did not sacrifice himself for just the Jews. God did not send his son for just those of us sitting in church today.

Every person is worthy of being saved. Every person has the ability to receive eternal life. Every person deserves the chance to choose God or to walk away. That means for every person saved, that is another person God will ask, “Whom shall I send? Who will go?” God tries to send us all out, but how many of us are willing to go?

Not everyone is given the task Isaiah has been given. God is not asking everyone in here to become pastors or missionaries. God is asking each of us to not hide our light, the light of the Spirit given to us on the day we said, “I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.” God is asking us to not be afraid to be different from the crowd. God is asking us to think for ourselves and to pray to Him for guidance instead of the world. God is asking us to not be meek but instead to own who we are in Christ. God is asking us to be willing to step out of our comfort zones and to stand by Him.

God wants us to love Him as he loves us. God is asking us to not be ashamed of Him or to be ashamed of being a Christian. If we are to change the way the world looks at Christianity and Christians, then it has to be through what we say and do. If we stand idly by while others call themselves Christians and then do ungodly things, we are letting God down.

I’m a Christian and I don’t hate Muslims. I’m a Christian and I don’t judge others. I’m a Christian and I try to always love others. I’m a Christian and I have gay and lesbian friends. I’m a Christian and I believe in pro-choice. I’m a Christian and I try not to be a hypocrite.

The world is tired of Christians saying they follow the bible and Jesus, and then they do the complete opposite. People are angry at our inability to see our own sinfulness. People are angry that the bible shows Jesus as loving and accepting, and yet his followers are often the most judgmental and hardheaded of people.

The only way to change the world’s perception of us is to make sure we acknowledge our sins. The only way to be different is to admit that sometimes we don’t have all the answers and that God needs to lead the way. The world will not accept us or Jesus if we cannot say, “Woe is me! I am a person of unclean lips!” because they will see we are liars. We are lying to ourselves, to them, and to God when we pretend we are better than them. God wants us to admit our faults and then move ON so that we can help others as we have been helped.

God’s calling to us all now, “Whom shall I send? Who will go?” Are you willing to give as you have received? Are you willing to bless as you have been blessed, or will you forever be a hypocrite?

Amen.

Breathing Life into Dry Bones

Ezekiel 37: 1-14
Romans 8: 22-27

Ezekiel was a prophet who had many visions given to him by the Lord. The vision we read about today is one of the more famous visions he had. There is something so eloquent and poignant about seeing a valley full of dried bones. The image speaks of death, vast devastation of a people, and it is heartbreaking.

But the vision does not end there. Suddenly, Ezekiel hears God’s voice speaking to him, asking him, “Son of man, can these bones live?” After I hear this question, my instinct is to answer it with a yes or a no. However, Ezekiel is a much wiser person and responds, “Sovereign Lord, only you alone know.”

This is humanity’s fatal flaw. We think we have the answers to life’s questions. We think we know what is coming next and so we prepare ourselves and we do things in a certain way, because we are positive in what we know. Look at how we live our lives. If we eat healthy and exercise, we are told we will live longer. If we buy the latest cars with the newest safety technology, even if we crash, we will be okay. If we get hurt in the crash, we have health insurance so that the doctor can make us better. But if the doctor doesn’t make us better we have disability insurance so that we won’t have to worry about starving on the street. If we do die, we have life insurance to help support our family when we’re gone.

For every eventuality, for every possible outcome of life, humanity has tried to find an answer. We have tried to fix the world so that it is a safer, kinder place where there is less stress and worry. That is what all these insurances and safety features and alarm systems and internet websites are all about. Information and help at the click of a button or the exchange of money. It is our attempt to answer the questions that God poses to us. “Son of man, can these dry bones live?” But Ezekiel is not like that. Ezekiel acknowledges that even though he is looking at a valley of death that he cannot stop or fix, that if God wills these bones to live, then they will live.

What God has Ezekiel do next is nothing short of silliness. God tells Ezekiel to prophesy to these dead, dry bones. There is no point to prophesy to something dead – it is long gone from this world. There are no ears to hear, there are no eyes to see, there is no brain to understand the prophesying. It is completely ridiculous for Ezekiel to go out there and begin to preach the Word of God to these dry bones.  It is a waste of time, resources, and effort.

Wait. I’ve heard these words before. I’ve said them and had them said to me. When a church wants to shoot down an idea these are the first words out of our mouths. “There is no point” “It’s a waste of time” “They won’t listen anyway” “People will hate us and ignore us or worse.” “We can’t help them without using up a lot of valuable resources.”

Since when has God ever asked a person to do something that made sense or didn’t seem like a waste of time, money, and resources? God never makes sense. God is always asking people in the bible to do crazy things and it is only when they DON’T listen that things go wrong. It is people like Jonah who thinks he knows the right answer, who thinks the people of Nineveh deserve to go to hell and so he runs from his duty and ends up in the belly of a whale. It’s people like Abraham who tells the Pharaoh that Sarah is his sister and not his wife because he’s afraid to be killed and then ends up bringing a plague on the Pharaoh’s house when God becomes angry.

Every time we ignore God’s commands, we make matters worse. This is a nice building we have here, but it is only a building. What we do inside of it, what we do outside of it is what makes it a church. We carry the Spirit of God with us and when we all walk into this church - that is when it becomes a holy place. We forget that. We forget too much about what Jesus has taught us in our effort to keep up a building when what we need to be keeping up is the world around us.

Ezekiel does not question God’s command. He begins to prophesy to those dry, dead bones. Then he watches in amazement as they begin to take on life and form. The bones connect with other bones and then muscles and sinew appear, and then flesh to cover them. But still, Ezekiel notices that there is no breath in these bones that now have flesh upon them. There is still something missing.

Most churches today are like these flesh covered bones. They have some sort of life and substance to them, but there is something missing. Why are so many churches failing? Why, when I look around at this church do I see an obvious generation gap? For as many answers as we have come up with to solve life’s problems, there is still misery in this world. There is still heartache and pain and loss. In previous generations the place to go to be relieved of that burden, even for a little while, was church. Why has that changed? Why have we allowed that to change?

Our church is luckier than a lot of other churches. I use the word luck on purpose. Our most faithful members are getting older, our most dedicated committee members are getting older and are ready to put down the reigns. In the last fifty years we have been lucky enough to have someone to step up and take those reigns when it was needed. But as I look around this church, I wonder how long that can last without new people. How long can a church go on without new blood, new life to make this building into a sacred place?

Ezekiel noticed something was missing from those flesh covered bones. He looks to the Lord and the Lord tells him to prophesy again, this time to the wind that will breathe on these bones and bring them back to full life. And so he does and sure enough, there stood a vast army of people, no longer dry and dusty bones.

Often in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God is referred to as wind, breath, or wisdom. What was missing from those bones was the Spirit of God, the very breath that God breathed into Adam when he created him at the beginning. And so God tells Ezekiel to prophesy and God would bring life and spirit back into those dry bones.

Then God explains exactly what this vision is all about to Ezekiel. These dry bones are the people of Israel who have long been dead because they are without God’s Spirit, but God is about to change all of that. He is about to bring them back to life, to save them and give them what they have been missing.

I think what is missing from the churches of today is God’s Spirit. We talk about the Holy Spirit, we mention her briefly here and there but we do not take much notice of what the Spirit is doing. We do not look around at the church and wonder where new possibilities could be created. We do not look at the people around us in church and ask, “How has their week gone?” We do not open our eyes to the problems that exist outside of these walls, problems we could help alleviate. Instead, we have made church all about us.

Jesus never intended Christianity to revolve around individuals or a building. This is a manmade invention. God has been generous enough to bless many of the things we attempt to do, but obviously the church is failing. The worldwide church has faltered in Western cities and towns. People do not care about going to worship. They do not care about God on Sunday or any other day of the week. People do not know what Jesus has done for them.

Whose fault is that? We tend to place all the blame for big things on God, but it is not that simple and never has been. It is time we step up to the plate; it is time to take responsibility for our actions, or rather our non-action. We have let society down as we became too involved in finding answers instead of asking questions. We need to be more like Ezekiel who looks to God and says, “Lord God, only you know.” And then when God gives him a task – Ezekiel does it. He does it without searching for another answer. He does it without wondering about time, money, and resources. He listens, he hears, he obeys.

This is something the church has long failed at. It is time to change.

Amen.  

The Power of God

Acts 4: 5-12
1John 3: 16-24

Why does something so good, cause so much trouble? The something good is the healing of the lame beggar in Jerusalem. The man began the day as a panhandler, lying pitifully in the dust outside the temple, and he ended the day walking like a new man, leaping, and praising God. At last, a little good news to put in the newspaper.

But no, this apparently wonderful healing set up a chain reaction of misunderstanding, resistance, and opposition. First, those who witnessed the healing misunderstood what had happened. Peter had summoned the healing – “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” – but the people assumed that Peter had caused the healing. They assumed that he and John were powerful, shaman like healers. Peter had to straighten out the people’s theology, telling the amazed crowd, “It wasn’t our power at all that caused this healing, but the power of God and the power of faith in the name of Jesus”.

Peter kept on preaching, proclaiming the resurrection from the dead, and that provoked even more trouble, stirring up a hornet’s nest among the temple officials. By nightfall, Peter and John were under house arrest and, if that were not enough, the next day Peter and John were called on the carpet and interrogated by essentially the entire family of the high priest. One would think that the healing of a desperately needy man would evoke hallelujahs all over town, but instead we see theological confusion, widespread suspicion, and a nasty crackdown by the authorities.

Peter and John have been arrested by the Sadducees, who are very annoyed because they have been teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. For us 21^st century people to understand more about this passage, we need to know a little more about Sadducees and their beliefs.

Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection of the dead, but that isn’t the only problem here. Peter and John have also healed a man in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, causing some five thousand people to believe what they are hearing about this Jesus. Sadducees knew that Romans do not ignore crowds of five thousand agitated Jews. The Sadducees are in fact among those whom the Romans hold responsible for keeping such crowds from forming. Peter and John are not just doctrinally out of bounds. They are also dangerous to the peace of Jerusalem and, more than that, to the Pax Romana, the peace guaranteed by Rome.

When Peter stands up to defend himself, the first brilliant thing he does is to reframe the charge against him. A good deed has been done to a man who was sick. He and John have done a mitzvah, an act of kindness. What is the big deal? Of course they have not done it under their own power, any more than Peter is speaking under his own power. He is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.

This leads us to what the real problem was for the Sadducees and for Rome. The power these two men had was the same kind of power Jesus had and it scared them. It was the power of the Holy Spirit, they were filled with a higher, nobler purpose than those around them and it showed. They had the ability to do amazing, wonderful things and they were bringing the people together in a way that caused them problems. They needed to be stopped - immediately.

If we fast forward to today, where are we at? Where is the power that Peter spoke with so confidently? If the church is filled with the Holy Spirit, where are our acts of power in Jesus’ name? Peter and John were in a lot of trouble because they were following Jesus’ commands. The truth is that Jesus’ teachings are still controversial today even after two thousand years of people repeating his words; the message inside of them hasn’t sunk in.

The world still resists God. The world does not want to hear what Jesus has to say which means if we are following Jesus, we will be doing controversial things according to many people, perhaps even our own family.

When I decided to become a pastor, I was working for a successful company and had just been given a significant pay raise and elevated to a more demanding position. I told my family I wanted to go to seminary and that it was expensive. Then I told them that when I get out, I’d be making around the same amount as I’d just been given. My whole family was upset. Why go to school and incur all those loans to make the same amount of money I’m making now? It made no sense to them.

In the world’s point of view, a person goes to school to get an education which will help them get a better paying job than they had before the schooling. It’s the advice I would and have given to others. However, for me, at that point in my life, the advice was wrong. What I needed to do was not the logical or practical choice. It was the least practical choice, but it was also a choice that saved my soul.

That high paying job and better position was slowly killing the joy in my heart. God saved me by calling me away from there. The whole three years in seminary, my family was still skeptical about this decision. They thought I was crazy to do it. It’s only now, 18 months into my first call that some of them have come around and see what I saw from the beginning.

The Holy Spirit is not just a voice that tells us what is right and wrong. The Holy Spirit is God. The Holy Spirit will never lead us to the same path as the world and if our church is to be the united church of Jesus Christ the only way for us to walk is among the fallen. It is at the fringes of society that Jesus found his followers. It is at the fringes of society the Holy Spirit is leading us too. Our path is not an easy one.

If we are too easily accomplishing our goals, then we have not set the bar high enough. If we are able to walk away from church and not think about God for the rest of the week, we are not fulfilling our Christian mission. If we do not challenge ourselves, we will not grow. If we do not grow, then we will die.

The church is not a place to come and sit for an hour and feel good about ourselves. The church is the place we go to for direction and guidance for the week. The church is the place where God is supposed to reside, where our hearts should be strangely warmed, and a voice should speak so loudly in our ear that we cannot ignore its voice.

Peter and John helped to found Christianity by not ignoring the voice of God. They walked a fine path between the world and Jesus, and it often got them beaten, and thrown in jail, and eventually killed. They, who knew Jesus personally, were not treated with gentleness. If we are to follow Jesus, we must be prepared for the world to hate us and we must be prepared to stand up to the injustices the world will try to force us to be a part of.

And when we are asked by whose authority we do these things, we will shout, “It wasn’t our power at all that caused this, but the power of God and the power of faith in the name of Jesus”.

Amen.

Locked Doors and Disbelieving Hearts

Acts 4:32-35John 20: 19-31

How many of you have a lock on your door and use it every day? How many of you have alarms for your houses and for your cars? I’d say a fair few of us use locks to help keep bad things out and keep good things in. We have been raised to think that everything of value should be locked up and kept away from prying eyes.

A few years ago I watched a show called Reba and in it, her ex-husband decided to put an alarm on the house for her. Instead of using a professional, he and his son in law decide that they can do it themselves. They take a couple days to work at it and when they are ready to test it out, they tell the youngest son to pick a password and to type it in. Then the ex-husband said, “Now, when you pick this password you cannot tell ANYONE what it is, this is very important, do not tell ANYONE.” The son agrees not to tell and picks a password and types it in. Then when they go to test the alarm, sure enough it begins to shriek and the man turns to his son and says, “Okay, tell me what the password is.” The son refuses so the man says it again. Again, the son refuses to tell him. The alarm continues to shriek loudly. “Why won’t you tell me?” the man yells in frustration. The son replies, “Because you told me to not tell ANYONE, so that means you too, Dad.”

We often try to lock away not only those things we find valuable in this world, but ourselves too. That is where we find the disciples in this passage of John. They are terrified because their Messiah is dead, and they are miserable because one of them betrayed Jesus, one of them denied him, and the others ran away when he needed them most. They are sitting locked in a tiny room, trying not to get too upset at the way their lives have suddenly been ruined.

They had left their jobs, their homes, and their families to follow Jesus. And now Jesus is gone. Killed by the very Roman Empire he was supposed to overthrow; killed by the synagogue leaders who seemed so harmless when Jesus was preaching in their midst. The shock and anger, the self-pity and sadness must have hung thick in the air. They probably didn’t speak much, but when they did it was probably with sharp bursts of words before silence reigned again. They were utterly lost and alone.

Suddenly, Jesus appeared and said into that heavy silence, “Peace be with you”. The passage says the disciples were overjoyed to see Jesus. That word does not seem like a big enough word to describe what they must have felt as they saw his hands and side and realized this really was Jesus, their Lord. How would you have felt at that moment?

They went from a moment of utter hopelessness to the complete opposite – joy. Joy is filled with promise, excitement, laughter, and hope. Some of them must have been overwhelmed as well as overjoyed. Not only was Jesus standing before them, appearing suddenly in a locked room, but then he goes on to say, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Then he breathes on them and tells them he is breathing the Holy Spirit upon them, which means if they forgive anyone’s sins, God forgives their sins; but if they do not forgive them, God will not either.

There they were, ten men locked in a tiny room and filled with despair, and then in one moment of revelation they have been given the power to forgive a person’s sins. In two short paragraphs, John has created a complete turnaround; a total transformation for these ten men. Jesus changes everything.

This is true for our own lives as well. Some of you have probably been Christians your whole life. Others of you came to Jesus later on. But whether you have been a Christian since a child or an adult, we all have experienced doubt and disbelief. We all have tried to lock ourselves away from the world so that nothing and no one can hurt us. We try to insulate ourselves from the rest of humanity and we wonder why we’re miserable when we do that. We put up walls and we think awful thoughts and we judge others in an attempt to keep ourselves safe.

What are we keeping ourselves safe from? Jesus must have wondered the same thing when he appeared to the disciples not once but twice in a locked room. Nothing will change or get better if we stay hidden away. We will learn nothing if we do not step out of our comfort zones. Jesus challenges the disciples to leave the locked room and begin a new journey. Jesus reminds them that he did not call them to be hopeless, but he called them to bring hope to the world. That cannot happen if they remain stationary. It cannot happen if they remain locked into four walls.

Jesus is also calling us. I told you that last week. Just as he gave the disciples a job, a mission, Jesus has also given us one. We come to church for many reasons. Some of us come for a peaceful hour of singing and companionship with fellow believers. Some of us come to worship God and to remember that God is with us. Some of us come to remember we are not the Messiah, Jesus will save people and our job is to point the way to Jesus. Some come because their parents made them and now they make their children come.

Whatever reason brings you here, it is what you leave with that matters most. The disciples came into that locked room without a mission and without any hope in their hearts. They left that room with joy, filled with a new purpose and a new goal. They were no longer useless or empty. Jesus had filled up all those empty places with the Holy Spirit so that when they came upon scary moments after Jesus ascended to heaven, they were not left without an anchor. They left that room changed. Forever.

Do we leave church as changed people? Do we accept the Holy Spirit into our hearts the way the disciples did? Has the Holy Spirit transformed our lives or do we ignore that voice that speaks to us so quietly?

We may not lock ourselves into the church, but we often lock away our hearts from others. We tell ourselves that putting money in the offering plate is enough. We tell ourselves one hour of the week to worship God is plenty. We tell ourselves that a prayer before bed at night is enough communication with God. We tell ourselves a lot of things.

But what does Jesus say when we stop talking? What has Jesus called you to do when you stop making excuses? You may not be locked into a tiny room like the disciples were, but if you are ignoring God, then you are locked away from Him. WE are the ones that put up the walls and we are the ones that turn the key. God loves us so much that he took on human flesh to save us. God has opened Himself up completely, through Jesus; God is completely vulnerable to us.

His arms are wide open, waiting for us to receive Him, and God has given us a choice whether to run to Him or walk away. When Jesus calls us to spread his word and to do good works in his name, he is asking us to accept the Holy Spirit as he once asked the disciples to accept. Jesus is reminding us that if we are to call ourselves His followers, then we need to remove the chains from our hearts and be open to others. Instead of turning away, Jesus is asking us to show the world how much he cares by caring for the world.

Will you leave this church with an open heart, or will you leave with your heart closed?

Amen.

I Have Seen the Lord! - Easter Sermon

Isaiah 25: 6-9
John 20: 1-18

Why did Jesus have to die? I asked my bible study the other day, “If Adam and Eve had never fallen by eating the apple, would we still need Jesus?”

What is interesting about Adam and Eve’s story is that there is no timeline. We never know how long it was before Eve was tempted by the snake. They could have been in the Garden for fifty years before that happened. The truth is it doesn’t matter if it was fifty days or fifty years, it would have happened eventually. It would have happened if it had been you and me in the Garden rather than Adam and Eve. Human beings are easily led off course.

On Good Friday we finished the last segment of the video, “24 Hours that Changed the World” and in it, Adam Hamilton spoke about John’s version of the Resurrection. That is the bible passage we read today. In it, the author makes several references to Jesus being buried near a garden and Mary Magdalene even mistakes Jesus as a gardener at first. Hamilton believes that the author does this to remind us of Adam and Eve. We are taken right back to the very beginning of creation when Jesus rises from the dead.

Jesus restores what was lost that day; the connection to God that had been missing for so many years. Last week I described what happened when Jesus died for us and was risen from the dead to my Confirmation class. I told them that Jesus is like the peanut butter and jelly in the middle of two slices of bread. Without him, God is up in heaven looking down on us and we are standing on earth looking up at God. We are unconnected and out of touch, but with Jesus mediating between God and humanity, there is a connection and spark. He connects us together.

Now, when God looks upon humanity, He sees his Son and loves us. When we look for God, we see Jesus and his compassion for us, and we love Him. Jesus has restored humanity to God so that we can speak with God, and even walk with God once more.

Jesus had to die so that we could live - one death for many. The scripture in John tells us that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early that Sunday morning and found Jesus gone. She didn’t understand that he had risen from the dead; she thought that Jesus’ enemies had stolen his body. Jesus had many enemies during his life. What is so scary about his enemies is that they were church going people. They were the pillars of the community and they hated Jesus and his ways.

Jesus died because the Pharisees and the Sadducees could not afford to let him live. Jesus used their fear of him to further his own cause which was his own death, but they didn’t know that. They killed him out of greed and fear and envy. Jesus was a dynamic person with a powerful speaking ability; he had a way with words and could illustrate his points so that everyone could understand even if they had to think about it for awhile.

Jesus did not teach like the others priests. He taught as if he had real knowledge of God. He was not repeating scripture to sound knowledgeable; Jesus would quote scripture as if he had been there when it was written. He was not rigid with the laws as the Pharisees were as shown when he allowed his disciples to pick grain on the Sabbath to eat. He understood human desires and weaknesses better than those who sinned and forgave it, as shown when he stopped the people from stoning the adulterous woman.

Jesus was turning the Jewish religion on its head. He had a new teaching for the people that threatened the Sanhedrin and all those Jewish leaders were scared and angry. They had allowed the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy to become so entrenched that there was no longer room for growth and renewal in their faith. They had stopped depending on God for answers and looked only to the laws for what to do. This is the way it has been done for hundreds of years, how dare Jesus try to change it now?!

When we look around the Christian faith and see all the many churches with their less than full sanctuaries on Sunday morning, I have to wonder if we have fallen into the same trap that the Sanhedrin fell into. Have we allowed outdated traditions and ways of doing things to stifle the Holy Spirit? Have we clung so fiercely to our past that we no longer have a future? If Jesus came today and looked around our church and the churches in this area, would he have the same condemnations to make that he had for the Jewish council?

When we allow ourselves to fight over whether to have communion monthly or weekly, when we fight over whether to allow women to be leaders and pastors, when we fight over whether to allow ex-cons in the church, when we fight over whether gay people should have positions of authority in church, when we fight over baptizing children or adults, I have to think that Jesus would shake his head in sadness and say, “Have you learned nothing from the past?”

Jesus loved everyone. Jesus gave everyone a chance to come to him. No one was turned away. No one was told that they couldn’t be part of his disciples. Not the lame, the blind, or the crippled. Not the prostitutes or the tax collectors, not even the Pharisees and the Sadducees were turned away. Jesus accepted the Gentiles even though most Jews would have considered them unclean. We nitpick over certain bible passages trying to figure out if a gay person can be a Sunday school teacher while children go hungry at night. We nitpick over baptism, when some people have no roofs over their heads. We fight over giving money to this project or that one when Jesus is probably yelling in the background, “JUST GIVE!”

Easter is supposed to be about the lighter side of Christianity. We’re supposed to all sing Alleluia and He is Risen! However, Easter is also about redemption. It’s about remembering that Jesus has accepted us into his family, Jesus died for all of us. He suffered terribly, was humiliated over and over, he was spit upon and treated like a criminal so that we could be reconciled to God, so WE could be given grace and eternal life.

How do we respond to that? Is it enough to just shout Alleluia one day out of the year, or should we be doing more? I can’t imagine that Jesus’ idea of being a Christian is a half-hearted yell on Easter morning. That’s a rather bland and pale imitation of the Christianity the disciples helped to create. After seeing Jesus that day, after speaking with Him, they were changed forever. And they acted like it.

We Christians have become a rather lukewarm and pale imitation of what Jesus meant for us to be. We ignore the helpless, we ignore our church, we ignore our God who is calling us to Him.

Mary didn’t recognize Jesus until he called her by name. He said, “Mary” and then she saw, she knew him as Lord. Jesus is calling your name. Jesus is calling us to a vibrant and exciting Christian life, one that is not always easy but it is much better than the faith we’ve shown in the past. Will you heed Jesus’ call or will you turn away? Will you shout, “I have seen the Lord!” or will you quietly walk out of here and pretend that God has never called your name?  

Amen.

The Briefest Glory

Isaiah 50:4-9a
Mark 11: 1-11

Palm Sunday is often treated as the feel good Sunday of Lent. Many churches have the children do plays and wave palm branches around, singing happy songs of hallelujah. However, Palm Sunday holds a lot more meaning when we think about what is coming next, Good Friday. In the passage of Mark, Jesus is the only one that knows the ending to the story.

Jesus is the one that orchestrates his triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the last time. He sends two of his disciples into town, telling them they will find a colt that has never been ridden. He tells them to untie it and bring it to him and if anyone tries to stop them, say, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.”

The two men go into town and find everything to be just as Jesus had told them. They untie the colt and bystanders ask them what they are doing and when they give Jesus’ response, they are allowed to take the donkey. The colt represents several things. A donkey was often ridden by warriors and kings to signal they came in peace. A donkey that had never been ridden is fit for ceremonial use.

Jesus is making a statement that only makes sense to those who know what is going to happen later in the week. The honored Jesus is also the humiliated Jesus. As he rides by these people, who are laying down palm branches and their own clothing, shouting Hallelujah and Praise be to God, we are left to wonder what is going on in Jesus’ mind. What would be going on in our own minds?

This happy entry into Jerusalem does not diminish the fact that Jesus knows he will soon die a violent death. Is he reveling in the moment, or is he cynically looking down upon those who lift him up today, but will spit upon him tomorrow? Is he rejoicing with the people as they shout Hosannas to God or is his heart filled with a combination of pity and compassion for he knows their hearts are not true to God?

How would we feel if we were Jesus? How would we react to this throng of people and the situation?

Jesus’ statement is one of dignity and power despite what some may think. Jesus has come to fulfill his Messianic destiny. He will change the world; he will triumph over Rome and the High Priests of the temple. He does so not in the way the people want or expect the Messiah to do it. They expected blood and death and war.

Jesus comes in peace. Jesus comes in love. Jesus sacrifices his own happiness and wellbeing and his own relationship to God the Father to save the world. The people wanted a Messiah that was more like a king, who would take over and tell them what to do. Jesus allows the people to feel and think what they want, to act on their own wishes rather than his.

God’s love for humanity is unlike human love. Human love is too often selfish and greedy, and the things we love about others are often the things we take pride in ourselves. But God sees our sinfulness, he knows the skeletons in our closet, and he does not turn away. God does not love only the good things about us, because of what Jesus did for us, God loves everything about us.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “The end justifies the means”? For Jesus, this couldn’t be less true. A human, can justify performing the same atrocities committed against them to win a war or to accomplish a goal. For many of us, we may see no other alternative, no other solution if we want to succeed.

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the Hunger Games, it is a book written by Suzanne Collins for teenagers and young adults. The movie was just recently released as well. In this book, Ms. Collins is making some very powerful statements about humanity’s character. In the book, after the United States fell because of all the things scientists have warned us about for years, a new government rises up called Panem. There were 13 districts to Panem, and some of the people decided to rebel against the strict laws and rules of the new government. The government won the war and completely destroyed the 13^th district and created the Hunger Games as a message to the people to never go against the government.

The hunger games forced each district to offer up one boy and one girl from the age of 12-18 to play in the games to the death. There is only one winner out of 24 children. It is to serve as a reminder of what the government can and will do to the people if they ever again think of rebelling. Well, after seventy-five years, a rebellion does begin. The leader of the rebellion chooses to make some awful choices to win the war, performing the same hideous acts that the people were rebelling against - all in the name of winning the war. The end justifies the means.

Jesus could have had the same mentality as many of us would have. God could force his will upon us at any time he chose. He created us, he can command us. But God’s love is not like human love. God’s love is selfless rather than selfish. God’s love is pure rather than tainted with greed and desire. God’s mission was not tainted by an obsessive need to win at all costs. God sent his Son to DIE so that we could be saved.

Jesus knew from the day he was born, that someday he would die an awful death for all the people he encountered in his life. Whether they spit upon him or spread cloaks for him, Jesus died for them all. By selflessly giving up his life, Jesus created Christianity because the disciples he left behind were changed for all time by what he had done. Jesus could have taken up a sword and fought his way to victory. He could have sent hordes of angels down to smite his enemies. Instead, with ultimate love and peace, he saved the world with only one death – his own.

What was Jesus thinking about as he rode into Jerusalem on that donkey? I’m not sure, but I do know that whatever he was thinking about, his thoughts and motives were much more pure than our own would have been.

Amen.