Treasure

Isaiah 58:1-12

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Treasure

Are we God’s people? Have we committed ourselves to being the ones who follow God despite it not being cool and sometimes we have to sacrifice what we want for what He wants? Isn’t that what we are here for today? We remember that we are created from dust and to dust we shall return. We remember that if God had not breathed the breath of life into us we would be nothing at all.

In Isaiah, God is pretty disappointed with his people over their fasting rituals, but more than that it is their lack of love and appreciation that has God shaking her head and saying, “If only you would listen to my commands I would give you everything”. But the people do not do that. Instead, they pretend to follow the fasting rituals, pretend they are interested in God’s ways, but then they follow a different path entirely. They choose to go their own way rather than God’s way. God is disappointed in their hypocrisy.

It is like when the United States government begins to finally consider cutting spending and one of the ideas is to change the dollar bill to a coin because it could save us $5.5 billion dollars, Americans who were yelling about overspending all of a sudden gripe about pockets jingling and how they prefer the dollar bill to a coin. We’re hypocrites. Instead of embracing an idea that would save us money, we cling to the old dollar bill that is no longer economically healthy for us to keep.

It is the same thing when Christians talk about loving their neighbors and welcoming everyone who comes through the church door, but when someone very different from the congregation walks in, the people become uneasy and cold toward the person. They forget that God tells us to love everyone. Not everyone who is easy to love or everyone who is just like us. We are to care for every single person – especially those people who are hardest to care for.

A young widow with her three children wanted to attend a Christmas Eve service and so she dressed up her two sons and daughter and headed to the nearest church. When she went to walk inside, the pastor stopped her and began to speak to her. At first, she thought he was merely being friendly until he pointedly looked around and asked, “And where is your husband this evening, Ma’am?” When she said it was just her and her children attending the service the pastor told her, “We don’t welcome your kind here”. She hadn’t mentioned she was a widow because it was still so fresh of a wound that she knew she would have cried and tonight was about enjoying Christ’s birth. Not that it mattered to this man who felt he had the right to judge her and turn her and her young children away.

These passages we read today deal mostly with fasting practices, but behind the fasting is the point that we allow ourselves to become hypocrites in our religious practices. In Matthew, it warns us not to allow people to see us giving to the poor because it is no one’s business but God’s and our own. When you call attention to things like that, you do not give your money to help the poor or to be a good steward, you are doing it to bring yourself glory.

The same is true with fasting. If you show yourself as worn out and hungry, you will generate sympathy and admiration from those around you and Jesus says that will be your only reward. Instead, he says that we should put on our best clothes and act happy when we fast because then no one but God will know our sacrifice and we will be rewarded.

We fast not to bring attention to what good Christians we are, but because we are showing God our faithfulness. We are trying to relate to what Jesus has gone through. We are relating to our fellow human beings who go hungry at night, who do not have a roof over their heads and are persecuted for their beliefs. We fast not to show people what a great person we are but to remind ourselves that we are nothing but the dust of the earth that God has given life too. It is not about us, and it never has been.

We need to get over ourselves. We are to remember that the only treasure we require is what we have been given through our Lord Jesus Christ. Treasure is not gold or a house or a car. It is not a big diamond ring or a fancy office space. The real treasure in life is a family that cares about you, friends who would give you the shirt off their back if they knew you needed it. Treasure is knowing that just as Isaiah said, “You will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.” It is knowing that God is there for you. It is knowing that Jesus Christ became a man who lived, died and was resurrected so that you might have eternal life.

Treasure is knowing that Jesus became sin so that we may be forgiven for our sins. Ash Wednesday is about remembering we are nothing without God. We are nothing without Jesus Christ who sacrificed himself for us. We are nothing without the Holy Spirit who guides us and molds us into new creations. We are nothing without the God who loves and cares for us, the God who has breathed life into us and has forgiven us more times than we can count because we mean the world to our Creator. We are precious in God’s Sight.

During this Lenten season, take the time to fast and pray. Take the time to remember how little you would have if God was not with you. Give thanks that God remains faithful no matter how often we turn away and ignore his commands. Give thanks for Jesus Christ and for the blessing of a God that cares enough to bring suffering upon himself. Thanks be to God the Father, to Jesus Christ and to the Holy Spirit! Amen.

A Seed of Hope

Jeremiah 31: 31-34

Hebrews 5: 5-10

When the Babylonians razed the temple in Jerusalem and dragged King Zedekiah off in chains, they destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal faithfulness. The people of Judah faced a crisis! Not only had they lost power and prestige, freedom and security; they had also lost God – or at least the assurance of God’s faithfulness which perhaps is the same thing.

Because an unfaithful god is no better than no god, and maybe even worse!

These were the consequences of Israel’s disobedience to the law of God. The consequences of their wickedness were the overthrow of their nation, the leveling of the walls of Jerusalem that kept everyone feeling safe, and the destruction of the temple the very place where God rested, and to top it off they were then banished to Babylon! Their situation was extremely bleak and the prophet Jeremiah laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of the suffering people.

Sometime in our lives, we will know suffering. Some of us will suffer greatly and others of us will suffer less. In our bleakest of days, the worst knowledge we have is that sometimes we cause our own suffering. There are times when we have done nothing wrong and have followed all of the rules and yet we are punished for imagined sins. But the worst moments of our life is seeing the ruined rubble of that life falling down around us and knowing that we caused this destruction all by our self.

This is what the Israelites were experiencing. Jeremiah was not letting them off the hook. YOU caused this. YOU knew better for I have been preaching to you for years that this was going to happen and YOU ignored me!

Just when Jeremiah is really about to get on his high horse and flog everyone with his “I told you so’s”, God’s voice steps in and changes the whole tone of what happened to the Israelites. Yes, they are suffering because of what they have done, but, God promises that the day will come when God will make a new covenant with the people and it will be completely different from the past covenants! God promises that his covenant will change the way every one of us interacts with each other.

God promises to write the law not on stone tablets that can be written down and ignored, but on everyone’s heart. He promises that once again he will be their God and they will be His people. Even better, God promises that no longer will people talk about knowing God, but instead every person from the least to the greatest will know God intimately in a relationship unseen by one before this time! God promises to forgive them their every sin and promises to never remember those sins the people have committed.

What we read here is a prophecy that will come true hundreds of years later in the form of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah is predicting Jesus to the Israelites who have just had their freedom and rights taken away, and in this promise he tells them they will have a freedom and relationship with God unlike any they could have imagined. Jeremiah is bringing hope back to the people in the most unlikely of times.

He is reminding us that even the darkest moments of our lives have transformative moments if we give them to God. If we trust and believe in Jesus Christ, even the moments of suffering we bring upon ourselves can become a way for the greatest of miracles to begin. That is what happened here. In Israel’s darkest and most hellish of historical moments, there was birthed the seed of hope that would become our Messiah, the one we call our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who would offer us more than we could ever deserve.

In Jesus Christ, we are given the ability to know God deeply and truly. In Jesus Christ, we are given not just a second chance but a million second chances to make mistakes and learn and grow, and be forgiven for bumbling around like fools in the dark that have forgotten a light switch is right above us waiting to illuminate our path. In Jesus Christ, we are given the greatest inheritance, we are not just God’s creation anymore, but we are God’s children. We have the same rights and privileges that Jesus Christ has because we have been adopted into that relationship and through the Holy Spirit we are always and forever connected to God.

Take a moment to let that sink in. You are forever connected to God. Nothing you do wrong will ever take away that connection. Nothing anyone else does to you may take away the connection you have to the Lord. Through trials and tribulation, through your joys and exultations, through your moments of boredom and routine God’s heart and your heart are forever linked by the power of the Holy Spirit through the faithful sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The world may think you are a petty and an insignificant ant of a person without power or prestige, but to the Lord you are worth dying for. The world may think you have nothing to offer, but Jesus sees someone worth loving forever. The world may not have time for your heartaches and pain, but the Lord Jesus cries with you and shares in your suffering.

Lent is about a timeout in life, whatever may be going on in it, and assessing our relationship with Jesus Christ. It is about reminding ourselves of our purpose and destiny. Lent is about hearing that although we are in darkness now, the light of Christ reaches out to us and will save us from ourselves. We may fall and we may struggle and we may lose the battle now and then, but Jesus is by our side through it all and will bring renewal and hope back into our life when we need it most.

The beauty of our Savior God is that our hope never dies because it rests in Jesus and Jesus defeated death. Since we share Jesus’ inheritance that means we will defeat whatever would try to keep us away from the Lord and the peace we have in knowing we belong to God. Whatever burdens you carry; whatever heartaches keep you down; whatever stresses and anxiety keep you up at night may seem powerful and impossible to win. But this is the surety we have – Jesus Christ is by our side and that means these stresses and burdens are not carried alone.

We are called to give them to God and walk free of the burdens the world would place upon us. We are called to remember the words of Jeremiah that remind us that even the darkest and bleakest of moments give birth to hope when Jesus is by our side and in our hearts.

Amen. 

Chicken Alfredo & Artichoke Lasagna Rolls

I JUST INVENTED THE MOST AMAZING FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chicken Alfredo & Artichoke Lasagna Rolls

9 Lasagna noodles (boiled until almost al dente)
1 can (drained & chopped) Artichoke hearts
1 (6 oz) chicken breast (boiled and shredded)
1 cup of shredded Italian blend cheese
1 cup of 2% cottage cheese
1 jar of Alfredo sauce (I used a Roasted Garlic Parmesan one)
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and parsley flakes

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Mix cottage cheese with salt, pepper, onion & garlic powder and parsley until creamy (all lumps may not be gone).

Mix the artichokes and chicken together, add some salt and pepper to it.

Take a lasagna noodle, spread 1 TB of cottage cheese on it, add a TB of the shredded cheese, then add the chicken mixture. Roll up carefully and place in an 8x8 pan. Repeat until the pan is filled. Pour the alfredo sauce over top of the rolls.

Cover and bake for 40 minutes.

Each roll is 267 calories, 27 carbs, 19 grams protein, and 2 grams of fiber.

Notes: If you wanted them to be extra cheesy, add more shredded cheese to the top of the rolls after you put on the sauce. I was looking to keep the calories down, but I was very tempted!

The Ultimate Love Story

GENESIS 1: 1-5

MARK 1: 4-11

Did you know that biblical scholars like to debate if the first 12 chapters of Genesis truly happened or not? Actually there are whole books of the bible that are debated if they really happened as it was written or if they were taken from other religions and reworked as a part of our theology.

For some, knowing that one part of the Bible may not be completely accurate somehow makes the whole of the Bible less in their minds. For others, they do not look at the bible as a historical or scientific document and so it doesn’t matter if everything happened in that exact way.

The point of the Bible is not to tell us how long the earth has existed or how it was created. The point is to tell us that God had a hand in it all and that God cared enough to make this world a livable and beautiful place where we have dominion over the birds of the air as well as the animals on the land and in the seas. Does it matter if what we call one day in Genesis is 24 hours or a couple million years? Human beings only consider a day 24 hours because that’s how long it takes us do a full rotation as we revolve around the sun. God created the sun, therefore, what is a day to God? I don’t understand how that kind of minute detail takes away from what the Bible is trying to tell us.

God loves us. God created us. God created the world. God saw how lost we were and so God created a covenant first with Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob. When even that was not enough to help us along he showed us His power through Moses and gave us the Ten Commandments and gave us the Promised Land. When we still went astray, God finally decided to take matters completely into God’s own hands and became a human being for us.

God humbled God’s self and took on human flesh for US. That’s the point of the Bible. It is a divine love story that shows us how important and beautiful and significant we are to the most powerful being in the universe. If we quibble over details like if Jonah was truly swallowed by a fish or if the Magi got there when Jesus was a baby or a 2 year old or since the Bible is only so many thousands of years old then the earth can only be that old – we diminish and overlook the true point of it all. We also limit the power of our Lord and Savior and why would we ever want to do that?!

The point of the Bible is that it guides us closer to God. It shows us when we are at our darkest moments that we are not the only ones that suffer and hurt. It shows us that God knows the pain we feel intimately through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit who is there with us and experiencing it all over again because God loves us that deeply. God wants to be our parent and guiding force in this world. God wants to have a deep, intimate, unending relationship with every one of us and if that is not the most amazing thing you’ve ever heard then I need you to get up here and share what could be more amazing!

God, all powerful and all loving, cares SO MUCH about you – insignificant and disobedient and sinful you – that God lived and died for you so that you may join God in heaven and live forever in peace and happiness.

That is a miracle, my friends. It is the greatest miracle we will ever experience and we each get that miracle. Every person that believes in God gets to be with God.

Next week, I'm going to be baptizing a father and a son. There is such a special relationship between a father and his child. There is a bond there and next week it will be strengthened even further because on the same day we will make a promise to them and the father will make a promise to his son to walk this journey of faith with him every single day. The same way God sent Jesus to us and was with Jesus every step of the way, experiencing the pain and frustration and struggles of a human being so that God may truly understand who we are and why we do the things we do.

Baptism is an outward sign of an invisible event. Baptism is a recognition that God is with us all of our earthly days and lives inside us through the Holy Spirit. It is a welcoming into the family of Jesus Christ, we are adopted sons and daughters. In baptism, God becomes our parent and guiding light. Jesus shares with us his birthright and saving grace. We are welcomed into the bond between Father and Son – the ultimate love they have for each other - and we get to be smack dab in the middle of it!

The next time someone starts trying to debate the accuracy or empirical truths of the Bible with you, I want you to look at them and say it has nothing whatsoever to do with facts and everything to do with love. The love a parent has for their child. The love God had for Her creation and the love it took for the Son to do the Father’s bidding to save this world that had gone astray. The love Jesus had for us and for his Father to give up everything so that WE may receive everything. In that moment that Jesus hung from the cross, dirty and bleeding and gasping for a breath that wasn’t filled with pain, he cried out in a broken, ragged voice, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”

In that moment, as close as Father and Son had always been and will always be, Jesus had taken into himself every sin and disease and awful thing we have done and will do and he became those sins and took that awfulness and became UNRECOGNIZABLE to his own Father. In that one moment, there was no longer a communion between the two. And then Jesus died.

He went through all of that for us. God did that for us. The bible has nothing to do with science or history. It does not matter if you believe every single word or just most of what is written. What matters is that you understand the whole of the Bible is the greatest love story to ever be written. It is about sacrificial love and redemption for a world that did not deserve to be redeemed. No matter how dark our world looks at times, no matter how far off course it seems we may get – God will not let the darkness extinguish our light. God will not let us go.

Through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will always have a place with God as long as we want it.

The question is – do you want to be with God? Then show God’s love to everyone you meet because that is all God asks of us for this beautiful, amazing, and miraculous gift!

Amen. 

Searching for Epiphany

John 1: 1-18

Luke 2: 22-35

Epiphany

After the craziness of the Christmas season, it is tempting to take the next few weeks and just relax. To no longer think about schedules already overloaded with work, family, and friends and how we managed to squeeze in time to shop and wrap and decorate as well as worship. Christmas can be exhausting physically, but it is also mentally and emotionally draining on everyone. So it is tempting to forget what comes right after Christmas, which is Epiphany.

Epiphany is the time after Christmas where we celebrate the visiting Magi, Jesus’ incarnation and baptism, his transfiguration, as well as his first miracle at the Wedding in Cana. In other words, Epiphany shows the world how God came to be with His people through Jesus Christ.  This is a very special time for Christians, but because so many are exhausted from the holidays we often do not take time to appreciate the way God came to be with his people. Jesus Christ is not a figurehead for God. He is not the poster child of the Divinity although some people like to think of him that way.

Jesus is God, made flesh. That means everything he experienced when he became a human being, God the Father also experienced. When Jesus was thirsty, God was thirsty. When Jesus was a child, he had a child’s frustrations of learning how to tie his shoes, write his name and read the scriptures just as our children have to do. Jesus became dirty and was probably yelled at by Mary when he did something she didn’t like.

When he became older, perhaps he had pimples and oily hair like a teenager. Maybe he tripped a lot because his feet grew faster than the rest of him just like other teenage boys. And as an adult, he struggled with his spirituality and humanity and the way they seemed to war against each other, just as we do. Jesus was tempted by the devil just as we often are tempted. Jesus is like us, but Jesus IS God.

And that means everything he went through, God experienced as well which brings a whole new meaning to the words, “God with us”. One of the best scriptures that describe the Epiphany of God being with us is in Luke2: 22-35 when Simeon finally sees the Messiah.

When Joseph and Mary presented Jesus to the Temple of the Lord, there was a man there named Simeon. Simeon was a faithful Jew who had been promised to see the Messiah before he passed from this life into the next. It does not say so in the passage, but perhaps Simeon was tempted to worry that he had been mistaken about God’s promise or that he had missed the Messiah because Simeon was now an old man. He had seen his family raised in the Jewish faith and now they were busy having their own children. A lot of time had passed and still the Messiah had not come. Sometimes when God makes a promise to us, we are tempted to rush the promise into fruition. We want things now rather than later. This is a human trait that comes straight from Adam and Eve. We want what we do not have and we often feel we deserve everything that God has to give, rather than being happy with what we are allotted.

So it is not inconceivable that Simeon was perhaps worried that he would die before seeing the Messiah. But finally, one day the Holy Spirit moved him to go to the courtyard of the holy temple. This part of the story is also interesting because it does not say that the Spirit tells him why he is to go there or even what the Messiah looks like. Isnt that often the way the Holy Spirit works with us as well? God often does not speak in a discernable voice that an ear can hear, but instead we feel the Lord speaking to us.

Sometimes we feel the need to call a friend we haven’t spoken with in over a year and when we do, we find out that he lost his job and feels bereft. Sometimes the Spirit will tell us not to take the shortcut we always take and later we find out there was an accident on that road. And there are other times when we feel the Spirit telling us something and we never know why. Those are the easiest times to dismiss the idea of God talking to us, because we do not see why God would tell us to do something even though we were sure at the time.

So there is Simeon, standing in the temple courtyard, unsure of why but hoping that this time he will get to see the Messiah. What do you think he thought the Messiah would look like? If God suddenly appeared in front of us right now, how would you picture God? Is God a man or a woman? Is he Caucasian, African American or Asian? Tall or short? Does God have a commanding, royal air about him or her or is God kind and compassionate looking? What does God wear? Pricey clothes from a designer boutique or faded Levis and tennis shoes?

All of these questions would have been going through Simeon’s mind as well. It makes us ask the same question of how will we know when we see Jesus? Simeon saw a young couple with a small child. There were probably many such couples. But he unerringly picked out Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. He followed his heart, he followed the Spirit where it led and even though Jesus was probably different in every way that Simeon had pictured the Messiah, he found Jesus and knew he was seeing the Messiah.

Sometimes God works in ways that are completely opposite of the way we would work. Many of us like to think that God is logical and rational, but if you ask an atheist God is anything but logical and rational. God does things differently from us so we need to work with God. We need to be open to new ideas or since the season is upon us, small epiphanies that take us where we need to be. This is a new year with new goals.

Not every thing that will happen this year will be good, logical or happy. We are going to see violence, war, natural disasters and the death of innocent people. Through all of those things, God is working. Our every day life filled with endless routine and the constant demand of time and energy from us, God is working. Simeon stayed faithful through the good as well as the bad and he was rewarded with seeing the Messiah with his own eyes before he died. We too are rewarded with glimpses of our Messiah in our life.

It is up to us if we believe what we see. It is up to you to decide what you believe. It is up to you to have faith in God’s promises as Simeon had faith. The Lord has promised us many things, not the least of which is salvation through Jesus Christ. But the Lord also promises us new bodies and new life just as Jesus received a new body and life. The Lord promised that death is not the end, that this life we live here is merely the beginning of our time with God. And that is what the Epiphany season is all about - our time with God. It is about how the Lord has come to be with us, and our response to Jesus Christ.

You do not live and die alone as many people have said in the past. You live and die with God. Take time this Epiphany season to see what God is up to. Take time to see where God is in your life, but remember, you can only see Jesus if you are looking and listening for him.

Amen.

Take a Risk - Be Like Jesus!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Procrastination and Transformation

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