Love and Sin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Be Peter!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Food for the Body and Soul

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

Lord, Feed My Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Prayerful Communication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

A Different Kind of God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen. 

God is Enough

Genesis 22: 1-14
Matthew 10: 40-42

God asks a lot from the people that dare to believe in something greater than themselves. Many nonbelievers think being a Christian is all about love and forgiveness. They aren’t wrong, but it’s not the whole picture to what it means to be a faithful, active disciple of Jesus Christ. Throughout the last 3.5 years I have made it a point over and over again to remind all of you that we are a called people. That Jesus expects us to continue to follow him whether we are 8 years old or 80.

Helen Smith used to ask me all the time, “I don’t know why I’m still here. What is the point of my existing in this place, living out my life in a chair?” And I reminded her of the many people who stopped by to see her smile and grab a piece of candy she kept out for them. I reminded her of her roommate, who for the longest time was comatose and so whenever she spoke, Helen wrote down what she said and read it to her family when they’d come visiting every week. And then, when the lady came out of her comatose state, they became good friends that talked late into the night. Helen brought people hope until the day she died. Helen was a faithful disciple.

It wasn’t an easy choice that Helen made. She had her bad days. She had her doubting days. And then I’d come to visit and I’d remind her of these things and she’d say, “I guess you’re right. I never thought of it that way.” She’d remind ME of my reason for being a pastor – to help people see things in a new way. It’s a circle of trust and faith and doubt and pain and back to love and forgiveness and trust and faith. It’s a circle that we need others to help us with because being a Christian is about being in community with one another. You cannot be a Christian by sitting home alone.

Abraham and Sarah’s story is one of my favorites in the bible. It’s actually the first sermon I ever preached to all of you, my candidating sermon. The idea of this older couple, in the twilight of their lives, daring to believe such an audacious claim made by a God that doesn’t fulfill the promise made to them for another 20 years just astounds me. Their faith is a miracle. Their lives are a testament to what it means to follow wherever God would lead, no matter how crazy it seems to everyone else and sometimes to ourselves as well!

Then they have this beautiful, miraculous child and God isn’t done testing their faith. Hadn’t they been through enough with Hagar and with 20 years of waiting, and Sarah’s bitterness and Abraham’s foolishness? But no, God wasn’t done teaching them. He calls out to Abraham and tells him he must sacrifice his child, his precious Isaac that he’s waited 90 years to receive.

He didn’t tell Sarah what God had called him to do, you can bet on that! He didn’t even tell Isaac for when Isaac asks where the sacrifice is Abraham merely replies, “God will provide” to him. Abraham tells Isaac to lay down upon the altar and because he loves his father, he obeys. Abraham ties him down the way he would an animal and raises the knife high above his son’s heart.

What thoughts were racing through his mind? Were tears running down his face? Was the knife slick with his sweat as his arm trembled from the regret and pain he was feeling? Could he look upon his son’s face as he went to plunge the knife into his heart or did he look away, unable to bear seeing the life seep from his son’s eyes?

We know the ending of this story is a happy one. Abraham and Isaac had no idea. All we know is that Abraham’s faith is so radical and intense that he’s willing to let go of the one blessing he’s waited his whole life to receive. Are we that faithful to God?

I want you to think of your greatest blessing. Is it your child? Is it your family? Is it your career? Is it your ability to provide a roof over your head when you grew up dirt poor? Is it the respect of the community after a life of disrespect from your peers? Is it your ability to read and write and educate yourself when no one thought you’d amount to anything? Picture your blessing in your mind. And now picture being asked to let it go; to destroy it in the most horrific and intimate of ways.

Could you do it? Could you let go of your greatest blessing because God has asked you to?

Why did God ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son? Well, this is the same God that sacrificed his own Son, Jesus for all of us. Is that why God did it? Was it a tit for tat sort of thing? Is God sadistic and cruel and vengeful? No.

God asked Abraham to remember that Isaac is a blessing provided by God. God was asking Abraham if now that he had received the ultimate gift from God, would he continue to follow and be faithful to what God has called him to do? God was asking if Isaac was gone, would Abraham also be gone or was Abraham’s faith and belief in God so strong that nothing could break the bond between God and him?

The point of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is NOT the blessings we receive. It’s not just about the love and forgiveness and good things. God calls us to be faithful based on the one blessing that God gave the world – the blessing of His Son who died to bring us into an eternal relationship with the Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit. And that’s what we ask ourselves today: If God asked us to give up our greatest gift, the best blessing we ever received in our lives – would we, could we obey?

God doesn’t actually ask us to give up what we’ve been given, but God does ask us to love God more than we love everything and everyone else in our lives. The only way to love God more is to be willing to let go of what keeps us from God. If you love your spouse more than God – then your spouse is your god. If you love your child more than you love God – then your child is your god. If you love your career or your car or your friends or alcohol, gambling, and drugs more than you do God – then they are your god. Whatever you don’t think you can’t live without and refuse to part with – that is a barrier between you and your Father in heaven.

It doesn’t mean you have to give it up forever, it’s about being willing to sacrifice the temporary for the eternal. It means giving your blessings into GOD’S hands to keep rather than trying to hold on to them yourself. What God has given, God will protect. We need to let go of our possessive hold and instead trust that Jesus has a purpose and plan for every one of us. Even the bad things have a purpose because from ashes of our old life and ways, gives birth the beautiful gifts of tomorrow.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ means trusting that God is all the blessing we need in our lives, and everyone/everything else is icing on the cake. And we all know cake is sweet enough, which means God is enough without the extra blessings. When we understand and act like God is all we need – we are free of worry and guilt and fear as we try to hold and protect what God has blessed us with. We are free to give those blessings back to God for God to protect and hold onto. We are free to just be disciples of Jesus and we will be happier for it.

Amen. 

A Disciple's Cross

Genesis 21: 1-14
Matthew 10: 24-39

The passage we read today leaves us asking several questions because of the nature of what Jesus was telling the disciples. It doesn’t sound like the Jesus we have come to expect and that is what we will be looking at this morning.

What does it mean to be like Jesus? These words were directed at Jesus’ twelve disciples and now they are directed at us. A disciple is another word for a person who is willing to learn. A disciple is willing to ask the hard questions and to look inside as well as outside of oneself to become more like their teacher. Our teacher is Jesus and so first we must ask ourselves, what does it mean to be more like Jesus Christ?

Jesus normally appears to be a harmless man who is gentle and kind, but in today’s passage, Jesus blows this idea clear out of the water when he says, “I have come not to bring peace.. but a sword”. Why would Jesus say something so surprising? Apparently, there is peace and then there is true peace that God would like to give to us. Perhaps Jesus is telling us that the demands of being his disciple can sometimes feel like a sword that cuts through lesser loyalties and makes quick work of our flabby, commonsense morality that we have adopted to fit better into society.

Because let’s face it, if Jesus was truly the person we always try to portray him to be: kind, gentle, without a divisive bone in his body who merely wants to bring humanity closer to God then how did Jesus manage to always get into so much trouble during his three years of ministry? What made people call him such names like the prince of demons? Why would following Jesus wreck families as he implies in verse 36? And how, if Jesus was always kind and gentle and nonthreatening did he manage to get himself crucified?

We like to blame society for all of this. We like to think that the people back then were uneducated and ignorant and we would never have done anything like they had. WE would have seen that Jesus was God’s Son. WE would have known that Jesus came to save us. WE are nothing like THEM! But we are. We are exactly like them. Jesus is the one that is different. Jesus is the unexpected; he is the surprise ingredient that changes everything. Jesus was concerned about furthering God’s kingdom on earth and kingdom work, it turns out, is more controversial and subversive than the more conventional kindness we tend to associate with Jesus.

And if Jesus is controversial and offensive, how much more so will we as his students be? We are told to be more like Jesus and in doing so that means following in Jesus’s footsteps. Jesus was concerned about making God’s kingdom more visible to the world. As his disciples, our duty is to make the world see God more clearly and more often. True discipleship is the art of seeking the kingdom with a single-minded determination and letting the chips fall where they may. It means sometimes we WILL cause offense and we WILL say things that have people backing away from us. It means that sometimes we WILL suffer for the sake of the Kingdom just like Jesus did.

If we as a church and as Christians manage to walk through life without offending anyone or rubbing anyone the wrong way with our beliefs then we need to ask ourselves if we are truly following Jesus or are we following our own desires and that of the world? Jesus was not always peaceful and calming to the society. He got angry and he said things that made people upset and he even wielded a whip to get his point across to those that had corrupted the ways of God. Where should we be wielding a whip in today’s world?

The other question we have to ask ourselves about today’s text is what Jesus has against families? In the passage today, Jesus seems to want families to be against each other which seems at odds with Jesus’ own relationship to his Father in heaven! Well, the first people to read the book of Matthew were faced with enormous pressure to reject Jesus Christ as their savior. Perhaps these words were meant for them to bring them some comfort when their families turned their backs on them for their beliefs.

However, Jesus has more to say on families in other parts of the New Testament that are not favorable either! Jesus is not thinking about family values, but rather kingdom values and they are not always the same. There are many stories where Jesus is depicted as being in conflict with his own family such as when he tells the people around him that they are his mother and brother and sister when his family wants to speak with him.

Jesus insists that those that follow him put the Kingdom and kingdom values first above everything else. He is more concerned with the righteousness of God than keeping the peace between man and wife and parent and child. Transferring our loyalty only to God and God’s kingdom is going to cause friction between those we call our family and ourselves.

It’s not easy hearing criticism from your family about following God, but anyone who is a true disciple will hear these words from the ones that swear to know and love you the best. I didn’t realize the depth of truth in this passage until I became a pastor and my family suddenly realized my time was no longer theirs to command. I cannot even tell you how often I have had one of my sisters get angry with me and then mock my calling to make me feel bad that I’m not doing what they want me to do.

It’s not easy following Jesus and it’s not always easy to put aside our family loyalty and love to take up the cross that Jesus has asked us to carry. It requires sacrifice and it requires determination and it requires a willingness to be hurt and sometimes even abused by the ones that swear to love us unconditionally. The truth is that Jesus loves us more than anyone else ever will and our loyalty belongs to Him. We follow Jesus even to the places that we do not want to go and even when it might hurt to do so.

But in the doing we recognize that the one we call our Father in Heaven is helping us to become better people, and is trying to make the world a more peaceful place. When we keep our hearts focused on the ultimate outcome, we’re better able to accept the pain and heartache that the present offers us when being a disciple of Jesus gets tough. Because the truth is it will be tough sometimes, but Jesus promises that it will all be worth it. And a true disciple believes their teacher and through the doing of what our teacher says, we learn Jesus has spoken truthfully. When we stop trying to be what society tells us we should be and start being the person Jesus has called us to be – we have more peace and happiness and a lot less worry and doubt.

Take up your cross, the unique cross that Jesus has called you to and keep in mind that although the going will get rough at times, if you live true to your calling as Christ’s disciple – God’s Kingdom will be made visible to every person you come in contact with. You will be the instrument God uses to bring peace and hope and love into the darkest and most bitter parts of the world, and that is worth the sacrifices we make to have it happen!

Amen.