LAF

Psalm 126
Philippians 3: 4b-14

Paul had a past. We all do. Paul’s past is one that most of us would envy because he could claim with absolute truth that according to all the laws in the Old Testament – he was a righteous man. The law often condemns us as sinful people, but Paul could claim to be righteous and good. He had been raised to follow the laws of God religiously and was an educated man who stood by his beliefs when they told him that these people who call themselves Christians were an abomination.

They considered this man Jesus to be God’s Son and for such an atrocity they must be put to death. Paul was within his rights as a Pharisee to condemn every Christian to death. He persecuted them and he slept at night the sleep of the holy and righteous. He knew he was right and they were wrong. He knew that he upheld God’s laws while they mocked them, and tried to change them to suit their own views. They deserved to be punished and he would make sure they were condemned for their attempts to change what had been sacred for thousands of years.

There is a lesson here for every generation of Christians that came after Paul. Paul, who knew he was right because he was following exactly what the Bible said. Christians were the evil ones who were corrupting what was holy and pure by calling this Jesus person God’s Messiah. Now we know what happens to Paul, once called Saul on the road to Damascus. He had a come to Jesus awakening. He was shown that sometimes we can follow the bible exactly, we can follow the laws of the land to a T, and we can be wrong.

Paul’s past is a cautionary tale reminding us that sometimes when we think we are most right, we are completely lost. As your pastor, I’m supposed to stand up here and reassure you I have all the answers. I’m supposed to tell you that I’ve read the whole bible and I follow it exactly. I can’t tell you that. I don’t have all the answers and I haven’t read the whole bible yet, and there are some parts I don’t follow. None of us do.

I believe the bible is a guide for us. I think it is here to instruct us and help us find Jesus, and keep us as close to him as we can be as we go through life. However, it is not the only source we have to find God in our lives, and we all know it doesn’t have every answer we need in life. The bible was written before global warming. The bible was written before we had illegal aliens. The bible was written before guns and gun laws. When I come across a problem that I know the bible doesn’t have an exact answer on, I look to Jesus. What did Jesus concentrate on in his life and his teachings? What does he constantly tell us to do when we are in doubt or scared or hurting?

The same thing Paul tells us in this passage of Philippians. We need to look to God, we need to pray for our answers, we need to have faith that God will deliver us not because of our faith, but because of the faith of Jesus Christ who died for us all. Paul is trying to remind us that despite our past, despite our lack of knowledge or understanding, that we are not alone. We are not here without resources or left without power. Paul reminds us we will not get to heaven through our own goodness. We will get there because of Jesus Christ; because God wants every person to be saved.

It’s too easy to condemn. We condemn ourselves, we condemn those around us, and we condemn the people that are different from us. We look at people with sin in our eyes instead of love. We look at ourselves the same way. We forget that Jesus wanted peace and justice more than he wanted anything else. He preached love and forgiveness, not only for others but for each of us.

Lent is meant to clear out the cobwebs and the dust bunnies in our souls. We need to take the junk out of our hearts and minds and put it on the curb to be thrown away forever. Junk like thinking its okay to hate someone because of something they did. Cobwebs like old memories that keep you from forgiving someone in your life. The dust bunnies that are half baked ideas on what God wants from us and expects from us.

You know what God wants from you? Love. It is absolutely that simple. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. If we could take out all of our insecurities and misinformation, all of our doubts and anger that accumulates as we live our lives, we would be children again. Children who only know how to love. Children don’t learn hate and fear and anger until we teach it to them. That’s a sobering thought. We teach our children how to put up stumbling blocks that keep them from God.

Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to unlearn it by pointing to the Bible and Jesus. Paul’s past reminds us that we can only be certain of one thing - Jesus. In Jesus Christ we are forgiven. IN Jesus Christ, we know God’s love and acceptance. In Jesus Christ we have eternal life.

That’s all we can say for certainty. Where in the bible does it say that we have to put up purple altar cloths during Lent and to wear white at a wedding? Where does it say that Lent should be forty days and has to be before or during Spring? Where does it say that we must sprinkle water on babies or dip adults in streams for baptisms? Where does it say that we should not allow women to be pastors or that children cannot take communion to the people in the pews? Where does it say that we should hate Muslims because of what someone else did or where does it say we should deny equal rights to gay people?

The Bible is a great guide for us. It’s going to show us the way a lot of the time and help us to sort out our hearts when things get tough and crazy. But according to the Old Testament, Paul once called Saul was a righteous man who was allowed to persecute Christians. The Bible is not God. It points toward God. When we find ourselves condemning people. When we find ourselves hating each other and even our self, we need to remember Jesus and what he constantly taught us. Love. Acceptance. Forgiveness.

Those three words make the acronym LAF. Laughter is given to those who are happy. Happy people are the ones that have learned to love, learned to accept differences, and learned to forgive others and themselves for not being perfect. If you do not remember anything else from this Lenten season, remember to LAF. Love, Acceptance, Forgiveness.

Amen. 

Resurrection of the Body

The resurrection of the body is something we say in the Apostle’s Creed but how many of us truly understand what it is we are professing to believe? It seems an impossible proclamation and indeed, there were some even in Jesus’ time that did not believe we would be raised from the dead. There are people in modern times that joke that the resurrection of our bodies means we will all be zombies, and we all know zombies are not real; therefore the resurrection of the body cannot be real.

Many of you probably think the resurrection of the human body began as a belief because Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. That is true, but that is not the whole story. To understand why the resurrection is such an important and vital part of our faith as Christians, we must start at the beginning of the story. It began with a man named Adam who was given the blessing of being the first human created by God. When Adam disobeyed God and ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, his sin condemned all of humanity to death. He broke the covenant God had made with humanity.

The Old Testament is full of covenantal stories between humanity and God with the same results. Humans fail to keep up their end of the covenant and they put their salvation in jeopardy.  God did not give up on us though. We are his beloved creation and God was continually trying to save us despite our best efforts to destroy ourselves through sin. Finally, God sent his Son to form a covenant that could not be broken because it was forged in the blood of Jesus Christ. It was forged in the blood of the Son of God. Through Jesus’ sacrifice we are freed from death.

This covenant will always exist. Does that mean everyone will be raised from the dead? I cannot answer that, what I can tell you is that every person has the potential to be raised from the dead to live in harmony with God because of what Jesus Christ did for us.

Perhaps during Communion you have uttered the words like, “Christ is died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again” and your pastor will say that is the mystery of our faith. It is indeed an amazing mystery that we proclaim in our creeds. Resurrection from the dead. Life after death. Look around this room for a moment and look at all the different people in here. Some are young, some are old. Some are fit and some are not as fit. Some of us have gray hair, some of us don’t have gray hair yet, and some of us cover up our gray hair. The mystery of our faith is that because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us and his victory over death, we are given the assurance of life after death. The form we are given is what we call a resurrected or glorified body.

What will these glorified bodies of ours look like? We know they won’t be exactly like the body we have on the day we die. It won’t be completely different, but we know they will be changed.  I’d like to put in for a 5’10 frame and the ability to run long distances without getting winded – but I know that isn’t realistic. We know our body will change in some way because every person that first sees Jesus after he is Risen does not recognize him right away. When he encounters Mary she thinks he is the gardener until he says her name. When he encounters the two men on the road it is not until he breaks bread with them that they see it is Jesus with them.

So something will be different. I think we all hope for a body that will not give out on us and one that will be healthy and fit. We know we won’t be completely different because Jesus still had the marks on his body from his death. Thomas put his hands in Jesus’ side and touched the wounds on his hands. We won’t be unrecognizable, but we will be changed.

Why is it so important to believe in the Resurrection of the body? Paul tells us exactly why in 1 Corinthians. He tells us that without Jesus being raised from the dead, there is no hope for us. There is no life after death without a resurrected Jesus. Jesus promises to us that everything he has done, everything he has been given as the Son of God has also been given to us – which is why we can call ourselves children of God.

That means that if Jesus has been raised from the dead, then we too shall be raised from the dead. They go hand in hand and the moment we try to say no to one, we say no to life after death. We take away our hope. The resurrection of Jesus and us is a reassurance that death, entombment, and conflict are not the end of all things, and that life has meaning over and above our individual lives and attachments.

The reality of life on earth is pain. Pain and incompleteness are human conditions that we can never overcome on our own. In Jesus’ resurrection and in stating our belief in our own resurrected bodies, we are acknowledging that healing, fullness of life and perfection are only achieved through the divine. In Jesus we have both the human and the divine. Jesus brings us together; Jesus takes the painful human existence and defeats our hopelessness by rising from the dead, and promising us that we too will be raised. Death does not defeat us; there is life still to be lived. IN OUR BODIES there is life to be lived. We will be perfected, we will be made whole and we will be given glorified bodies to live in.

Paul reminds us that without this belief we are left hopeless with no promise of eternal life. Salvation comes through the forgiveness of sins in the form of a resurrected body. We are told what Jesus has we too will be given. What Jesus has is a resurrected body.

Amen.

Jesus and the Government

Isaiah 55: 1-9
Luke 13: 1-9

Impatience. The world appears to be afflicted with the worst case of impatience. Sometimes it is easy for us to think that this is a new phenomenon because of how much the world has changed. It has become a world of immediacy. A world where what we want can be found at the click of a few buttons or a phone call to make an appointment or a quick trip into town. When we want fresh bread there is no more waking up at 4am to begin the yeast and the waiting for the bread to rise, punch it down and wait for it to rise again before baking it. When we want clean clothes or a particular shirt for the day, a quick wash and dry has us in our favorite outfit within the hour instead of it being an all day event of washing and hanging it to dry. Didn’t plan dinner? Make a call and order takeout or reach into the freezer and quickly defrost that hamburger for meatloaf.

Perhaps there is a new urgency to our impatience, but it has always existed. Look at Jesus and the Galileans. The Galileans were upset at what the Roman authorities had once again done to make them inferior citizens. While offering sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem, Pilot had some of the people cut down. Their blood mixed with that of the sacrifices being offered which made all the sacrifices unclean and unacceptable. There was a threefold insult to the Jewish people done by the Romans.

First, violence was committed in the holy temple. Second, it was violence against their countrymen who had journeyed up to offer sacrifices. They were on pilgrimage and doing holy acts when they were unjustly cut down. Third, because of the violence and blood spilled every person in the temple was traumatized and their sacrifices made unclean.

The Galileans wanted Jesus to be as upset and righteously angry as they. They were looking for the one who would fight for them; the one who would raise his voice and rally the people to revolt against the Roman authority. They were tired of the persecution. They were tired of the unjust acts and violence constantly committed against them. They were tired of being little more than pawns in a political game.

Can we not relate? Here in America we profess ourselves to be free and yet we too are used like pawns. We too are victims to a government of people that while it states in our Constitution is “by the people and for the people” it is no longer made up of regular people like us, and rarely works for the good of the citizens. We turn on the television and we see another impasse, another sequester, another potential economic collapse and we are WEARY. I no longer listen. I hear enough to know what is going on and then I turn it off because I have had it. I am tired of all the parties and their agendas. I am tired of all the posturing and stand offs.

This is not a government that works. This is a government in gridlock that pretends they are working. We are their pawns and everyone is grumbling and impatient. If we came to Jesus with our righteous anger and impatience, what would he say to us? Let us look at what he says to the righteous anger and impatience of the Galileans.

Jesus turns and looks at the people coming to him and he does not tell them that their anger is wrong. He does not tell them to ignore the injustices and the wrongs committed by those in power. Instead, he turns his attention to the only thing that really concerns him - the state of our souls. Jesus does not want us to be defined by our enemies or those who would work against the greater good of humanity. Instead of joining in on the anger and judgment and contempt the Galileans were feeling toward their government, Jesus asked them to look inside of themselves.

He asks, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” It is very easy for us to sit in judgment of others, especially others who are perceived to have more power than we do.

It is easy to feel contempt and belittle the efforts of those in the government. Jesus reminds us that we are not here to judge or belittle. Our hearts are to be concerned with making the world a better place. Our minds should be on God’s Word which is always concerned with forgiveness and love. Our spirits should be turned toward the Holy Spirit which sweeps through the world as a refreshing breeze bringing relief and new thoughts to a weary world.

Jesus reminds us that when it comes to judging the sins of others it is best to keep our minds centered on our own sinfulness. Could we do any better? In our anger and impatience do we condemn every senator and representative when there are some that are working to change the way the government deals with these issues? What good does our contempt and impatience do? I know what it does do.

It creates division. It creates chaos. It creates separation from friends and family and neighbors. Half of my family is republican and the other half is democrat. When we get together for family gatherings there is always someone that has to mention the state of the government. It starts out friendly enough, but soon people are arguing passionately and upset with each other. On Facebook people put up things that are constantly political so eventually someone says something and that escalates into an internet war of who’s right and who’s wrong. In the office there are the people that blame the democrats for the job layoffs while the democrats blame the republicans for creating the mess in the first place.

What’s the point of it all? All this blame does one thing – it causes people to get upset and be hurt. Is this what Jesus would want of us all? No. Jesus is telling us, “Look inside yourself when you feel like judging someone. You have enough sins to keep you busy for years rather than worrying and fighting with others.” But Jesus does not leave it there. Not only does he make us self-reflect with his questions, but then he tells us a story that reminds us why this is all so wrong and petty.

Jesus tells us the story of the fig tree that does not bear fruit and the gardener that begs the owner not to cut it down, but let the gardener keep trying for another year to help the tree bear fruit. Only then, the gardener argues, should the owner cut it down. WE are the fig tree! Jesus is the gardener and the owner is God the Father.

Jesus reminds us that we are not as fruitful as we think. We are not as grateful and good as we presume. There are areas of our lives where we fall short of the glory of God and we do not bear the fruit of the Spirit. We are not patient, kind, gentle, loving, or sincere all of the time. He gently reminds us that instead of concentrating on what can only divide us and makes us less fruitful, we need to remember that as the gardener, he is always petitioning for us. Jesus is our advocator, he is the one that goes before the Father and asks for more time to help us become better people. Without Jesus’ intervention we would be doomed to hell.

Jesus tells us that there is nothing good to be found in anger and impatience whether it is justly deserved or not. Jesus tells us that instead we should concentrate on helping ourselves to be more productive Christians and the rest will fall into place. It took 300 years of Christians preaching “look inside yourself and let the rest be up to God” for those seeds to be fruitful. 300 years and Christianity swept through the known world and no longer was the people oppressed and hated.

God has a plan that is millennia in the making. There will be justice and mercy and peace in this world. It begins with US. It begins with each of us taking a look inside of ourselves and making who we are align with who Jesus is as our Savior. If every person did the same thing, Jesus is letting us know that the world WOULD be peaceful and just. Our government would not be corrupt or failing in any way. We COULD trust the representatives and senators to be, “for the people” once more.

Do not grumble about what you cannot fix. Instead, look inside yourself and fix what is broken so that your example may become the change this world needs.

Amen.