The Prodigal Problem

The parable of the prodigal son is quite possibly one of Jesus’ greatest hits. I think it shows Jesus’ true genius as a story teller as we all can relate to either the prodigal son or the older brother. It could easily have been called the “tale of two brothers.” But what does this story really mean? What does it tell us about the kingdom of heaven that it is supposed to be describing?

Let’s start with the first son, the younger son known as the prodigal.

We are not told why he decides to leave, but he demands his share of the inheritance and leaves. Kenneth Bailey, a scholar of Middle Eastern Culture, states that this idea would make a first century audience outraged. To demand an inheritance is pretty much wishing the father were dead! Jesus’ audience would have been immediately hostile to this character. The father would be perfectly justified in banishing this brat forever with no inheritance. However, the son gets the money and leaves with no trouble from his dad.

Maybe some of us can relate to this character. We feel like we can take over the world, that we are independent and need no one’s help and if it were offered we’d prolly resent it. We can achieve our own goals and destinies thank you very much and as soon as the world notices me, I’m going to be a rock star, or a movie star, or even someone like Paris Hilton who is famous and everyone knows her but we’re not sure why we know her.

But things don’t work out like that. The son fritters away the inheritance and has to eke out an existence as a swineherder. Even the pigs seem to manage better than he does. It is likely that Jesus’ audience wouldn’t have felt the least bit sorry for him. Serves him right, they’d think. That’ll teach him. Yet the son has a change of heart, in a beautiful bit of poetry, the author of Luke writes in Greek “The son came to himself.” He remembered who he was and decided that if he was going to tend pigs for the rest of his life and live in humiliation, he would rather do it at home with people he knew. So he came back.

Here is where many Christians really connect to the story. They talk about their born again experience. Some even remembering the exact time and date that they came back to the family. When I was a chaplain in the hospital this past fall I heard a few of these stories. One man was in for a knee replacement and stated that while he was in a lot of pain, it was nowhere close to the amount of pain he caused his family. You see he was a drug addict and had been in and out of rehab many times. He had many siblings and had been staying at his sister’s for a few weeks and everything was going great. He knew he had to get it right this time because this was prolly the last sibling that would take him in.

One day the sister gives her brother $50 to go get groceries as she couldn’t get to the store with all her kid’s events going on, you know soccer practice, dance recitals and such. So the guy goes out with his list and is feeling pretty good as he knows he’s trusted and has responsibility to feed the family. He’s feeling so good that he thinks that it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a little six pack on the way to the store. Just to celebrate. What harm could it do? Needless to say he never made it to the grocery store. He spends three days drunk and walking the streets. He doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t really eat, he just drinks. It is when he’s in an adult-video store with a bag of heroin that he “comes to himself.” He told me, laying there in his hospital bed, that as he looked up to the ceiling right before putting the needle in his veins that he saw blood on the ceiling. Little dots and splatters right over his head on the ceiling.

He said the blood spots meant that other people had come here before and shot heroin into their veins like he was about to. He said it was at that moment that he could no longer deny the reality of his situation. He had failed himself, his sister and her family, and all of his siblings and parents. He had learned that he lacked the wisdom, the strength, and the resources to fend for himself and to fight the addiction, just like those who had made the blood spots before him. It was right there where he said yes to Jesus, spent 6 months in rehab, and came out clean. He has been an evangelical Christian now for 10 years and has been clean ever since. He has reunited with his family and makes a ritual of bringing some bread or snacks over to his sister’s house  at least once a week so he won’t forget what he did.

In evangelical cultures, we often hear of these dramatic conversions, but we also hear about them at Trinity. Why, don’t we say every week that “No matter where you’ve been, no matter where you’re going, right now, during this hour you’re home?” That appeals to the born-agains in the crowd, the prodigals who left and then came back. Maybe we didn’t listen in Sunday school and found we needed some guidance after college. Maybe many of us were just bored with church until a friend brought us along to this one that’s not like anything we thought church could be! This place is fun! People laugh in service! Sing great songs, clap! And most of all people care about one another and what’s going on in the world.

The prodigal’s father does the unexpected here, just as Trinity does to many people, maybe even did to us. When the father saw the return of the son, he runs out and hugs and kisses him. He welcomes him home without asking where he has been. He offers a hug and not a lecture. Here the son’s journey was not simply geographical, it was relational. There is a spiritual homecoming in this moment and it’s very powerful.

Well….That’s all fine well and good but what about those of us who have been in church our whole lives? It’s nice that people realize that they need God in their lives but what about those of us who never left? Who have always believed in God? Those of us in the “once born crowd?”

What about those of us who identify with the older brother?

I sure can relate to the older brother. I would be mad too, seeing my wayward brother come home after wishing my beloved father dead. He deserved everything he got and more! Where’s the justice?! This line of reasoning, applied to the hospital story sounds like this: Well, I didn’t have to shoot up heroin to know it’s a bad idea. I never had to leave church to find out how cool it is. I never had this silly “born again” experience and frankly I think that these people are making it up for attention. How are we to know if they are serious and if they will stick around this time?

It’s kinda like that relative who always shows up late if they show up at all. This person could be a sibling, aunt, uncle, cousin, whoever, that when you throw a party, your parents and grandparents seem to have their eye on the door the whole time before this person shows up. It’s almost like you’re not even in the room. When this prodigal person shows up, they are the center of attention. After the party, none of the remarks are made about the prep that went into the food, the decorations, the great guest list, and let’s not forget the amazing iTunes playlist you spent hours on. All that is said about the party is how nice that prodigal Patty or Paul showed up.

WOW.. now that I think about it, this all sounds really bitter, resentful, and angry. So maybe both sons were lost… The first went to look for freedom and happiness in a distant country and got lost doing so but the older one who stayed home also became a lost man. On the outside he did all the things a good son is supposed to do, but inside, he wandered away from his father. He did his duty, worked hard every day, and fulfilled his obligations but became increasingly unhappy and unfree.

I am an oldest child. Oldest kids, psychologically speaking, often feel like they have to be the role-model. They seek to please and are obedient and dutiful, so says the Bowen Family Systems profile, but there are exceptions. Their biggest fear is that they will be a disappointment to their parents. They develop a certain envy toward their younger brothers and sisters who seem to be less concerned about pleasing and much freer to do their own thing. I confess this as my own nature, as I have a fascination for those who buck the rules. I never had the courage to simply run away. In some ways, I envy the prodigals.

How do I know the prodigal’s brother thought this? Where do I read in the text that all this was going through the older brother’s head and heart? It’s right at the moment when he is confronted by the father’s joy at the return of his younger brother, an anger erupts and boils to the surface. In that moment, when he leaves the party and heads outside it becomes glaringly obvious that a resentful, proud, unkind person; one that had remained deeply hidden comes out. The older brother represents the Pharisees and Scribes in this story, those convinced of their righteousness while Jesus was hanging out with sinners.

Why is there so much resentment among the just and the righteous? There is so much judgment, condemnation, and prejudice among the saints. There is so much frozen anger among we who are concerned about avoiding sin. We have the mindset and the ethical knowledge to act as guides and help people, but instead we point fingers. We get on our soap boxes instead of down in the trenches.

Who are you in the story? The repenting prodigal or the bitter older brother? Reminder, there is no happy ending to this story, we don’t know if the prodigal cleaned up his act or if the older brother came back to the party. Well, maybe that points to a third option, being the father.

This whole story started in response to Pharisees and scribes complaint that Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” They had to face the facts and choose how they would respond to God’s love for the sinners. So the third option is being the father. Whether we are the younger son or the older, Jesus is calling us to become the father. The father offers grace and forgiveness. He understands both of his sons and calls them both home, into a relationship with one another. Just as Jesus did to those sinners and saints in his world, leper and Pharisee, tax collectors and scribes, Gentiles and Jews all ate at one table.

Maybe, if you’re an older child, you're worried that Jesus is giving people permission to go out and do all kinds of terrible things as long as they walk in afterward and take the free gift of God's forgiveness. I don’t think it works like that. Once prodigals experience this type of love, you don’t forget. Jesus has the father say only one thing to the older brother: "Cut that out! We're not playing good boys and bad boys anymore. Your brother was dead and he's alive again. The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not bookkeeping.”

That’s the name of the game from here on out, resurrection. That’s good news! Now we can say, No Matter where you’ve been, no matter where you’re going, right now, because of this hour, we can throw aside our judgment and become the father, and welcome each other home. AMEN.

Bibliography

Capon, Robert. Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace. Grand Rapids, MI : Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997.

McGrath, Alister. Redemption. Minneapolis. Fortress Press, 2006.

Nouwen, Henri. The Return of the Prodigal Son: A story of homecoming. New York: Double Day, 1992.

Signs on the Journey

Given at Emmaus UCC, in Vienna, VA, January 17, 2010

I can't believe it's been three years since we moved! When we were preparing to leave for Lancaster, Rev Bill said, "See you in three years, visit when you can!" So here's your visit, three years later! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Luke Lindon, and I am in my last year at Lancaster Theological Seminary. My wife and I joined here in 2004. We thank you for your support, your gifts when Eve was born, and for still sending us the Happenings newsletter. Thank you for keeping me in care, and allowing me to speak today.

I want to start today by quoting that old song… "Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs." For a large part of my life I've been looking for signs. Now I'm training to be a minister and interpret them for a living. All sorts of signs; spiritual, cultural, and more.

The wedding at Cana where Jesus turning water into wine is one of the 7 miracle stories found in John, and it is unique only to John. Before seminary I would have said, it never happened. I would have led with "How did Jesus turn that water into wine?" and then spent the whole sermon talking about how it can't be done. I love science. I like to think of myself as rational. Or what our fellow UCCer Rienhold Niebuhr coined, a "Christian Realist."


That would mean that all miracle stories are just metaphors for something else. Like the calming of the sea and walking on water is just showing how a non-anxious presence can calm people down and how purity of purpose guides a group. Nothing more. I mean, the bible was written by a pre-scientific people. Sure they had their own science and technology, but not like ours. They didn't have germ theory –they thought disease was caused by "demons." They didn't have any concept of gravity or a round earth, or that we orbit the sun and not vice versa. Let's be rational here… right?

So what's the meaning of this story then? Did Jesus spike the punch to appease his nagging mother? Or was Jesus a party animal? Or did he pull a fast one and actually serve water to people who had been drinking for three days… I mean… after all, weddings back in the day were a community event lasting 3 to 5 days. The whole town came out and celebrated and if you ran out of food or drink then you lost status with the community. So what Jesus helping them save face? What type of image of Jesus does this present?

All of this doesn't seem to satisfy. It is missing something. The image of Jesus we get is at best something out of the movie Talladega Nights where a character states that he likes "to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party."

Now, I'm not so much concerned with "how" Jesus did what he did. I'm more interested in "why?" Asking how questions miss the story, obscure the story. The HOW question look for the nugget of truth in the form of facts and verifiable data … this analytical approach loses the story by focusing on the bits and pieces and the narrative disappears.

Let's start with what we're given. There was a wedding, Mary asks Jesus to help out, he states his time has not yet come, Mary gathers up some servants and says "Just do whatever he tells you to" and Jesus tells them to collect water in six stone jars and when tasted by the party planner, he claims that it's the best wine yet. Only a few people know what Jesus did, his disciples and those who got the water. It's also good to note that the word Miracle isn't used for this story… "signs" is.


Signs are what the author of John calls them. Signs… We moderate and progressive Christians tend to shy away from the term miracles. It's too subjective… not rational enough… they are just random and meaningless supernatural violations of the laws of nature. But, the word "miracle" can be reclaimed in terms of our experiences of God's transforming presence in our lives. These unexpected quantum leaps of divine energy can change our bodies, minds, spirits, and even natural processes. Signs can change a life...

Take for example how Kate and I even arrived at Emmaus.

We had moved to VA in the winter of 2004 after I had graduated college early. Kate was working in Gaithersburg, I was in Springfield and we were living by the Capitol One building, about halfway between both. My company had a location here in Vienna as well and I passed Emmaus countless of times. I always noticed the sign. It had messages that were funny… relevant… memorable. But I never stopped in.


It was Kate who had the idea to start going to church. I was content just reading about the various world religions and learning how to sell, emphasis on the sell stuff. I really wanted nothing to do with church because we all know that Christians are anti-evolution, homophobic, "global-warming-is-a-myth" nut jobs. Yet I trudged along checking out various churches, you name it, we tried it. I knew deep-down, we needed a community. A local community to volunteer with and make friends in, and get to know this area better. None of these churches seemed right, something was off at each one.

I was somewhat relieved at this, it confirmed what I thought I knew about church. But Kate is persistent. She somehow found "Flock Finder.com" and we both answered a survey and it suggested to come here… We took it as a sign that we should visit the church with the Sign. We visited on children's Sunday and they did my favorite parable at the time, the parable of the sower. At the end, we got ice cream sandwiches. They weren't too pushy and seemed happy to have us. On our way out the door, like in every other church we had gone to, someone presumably pressing for membership stopped us. Skip Wolfe asked how we liked the children's play and said that not all Sundays were like this. We thanked him for the ice cream and said we'd enjoyed ourselves, and then we braced for the part where Skip would guilt us into returning or put us in charge of something so we would have to come back. Skip said simply, "We hope you come back. Finding a church is like a relationship, you'll just know when it's right." Then he walked away. We were floored. In the car on the way home Kate said, "That's exactly what my church would say." And we've returned as much as possible after joining in the summer of 2004. We've been hooked ever since.

At that moment, Skip unknowingly performed a sign. He transformed me into a church goer. Emmaus, over the course of the next 3 years performed another sign. You transformed for me what it means to be Christian. You transformed me from a church goer to a church minister who wants to further this type of church. I want to plant other Emmauses.

The signs we saw at Emmaus were like the sign Jesus performed at Cana. It was very low profile. Very few people knew about it. It was at the wedding, in very insignificant town, in front of the servants. Jesus welcomes the outcast, the insignificant. Just as Emmaus welcomed us, newcomers, entry-level folk, people likely to leave the area in 3 to 5 years as is common around these parts. Yet we were welcomed here.

You have renewed my faith and taught me that there are other types of Christians out there. You have taught me that the Christian life is about following this radical spirit-filled person, this Jesus of Nazareth. We now follow with great joy this subversive sage who draws people into an inclusive community where compassion is the key component, not reason, not purity, not entertainment. Compassion is beautiful and you can find it in the poems of Hafiz, Rumi, Mary Oliver, or in the Tibetan Singing bowl, or Jazz music, or in pop culture, or at Starbucks or an Airport waiting line.

While we cannot describe the mechanics of Jesus' transforming water into wine, just as I can't fully articulate what Emmaus has done to and for me and my family. We can, however, let our imaginations wander as we imagine an interdependent world of lively and creative energies. Our task as Christians then is to be "living signs" that enable other people to experience the miracle of their giftedness and empower them to "let their light shine" in blessing the world.

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs! Can't you read the signs?

Start Where You Are: Sermon on Luke 3:7-18

Sermon given 12-8-09, in Santee Chapel at Lancaster Theological Seminary.

I’m here to confess. I am here to stop being a member of John’s “Brood Of Vipers.” I hope you, my colleagues and professors of Lancaster Seminary will accept my confession… here it goes…

I have a name of my study where I type all my papers. I call it “The Death Star.”

I named it after I learned about the theological world of the sinner. I wanted to blow it up like Darth Vader did to the planet Alderaan. Like John I wanted to lay an ax to its root and throw it in the fire because no good fruit can come of this world.

Here I am thinking I’m Mr Diversity. I’ve received diversity training from my under-grad and in my work experience. I’ve had customers who were from all parts of the world thanks to Washington D.C.’s diverse population. I’m on the committee on diversity here and claim friends from all sides of the political and theological lines… But John is calling me out here… You see, growing up , I was taught to read judgment passages like John not as being about some fictional “them” like the Pharasees or Roman soldiers, but addressed directly to me. How am I like a viper?

Here in this academic setting, we’re forced to operate a little differently from how we would in a church. Here I’m more apt to jump and challenge any logical inconsistencies I find in others theology. I lay in wait, just like a snake, and strike when something stupid hits my ears. I am called to defend my point of view, logically and with evidence. I use this method quite often but it can turn into a defensive stance, guarding my position. I could do this easily with John and his words from the gospel.

He doesn’t challenge the existing social order. John doesn’t tell the tax collectors to end their relations with the occupying power but just take what they should. To solders, not to give up their jobs and live a life of peace, but not to be bullies and to be content with their pay. John seems to never even consider the possibility of there being an unjust wage! I have a ton of problems with this… well.. I would have a ton of problems if it weren’t for my time at Lancaster General Hospital this fall, working as a hospital chaplain.

In the hospital, you can’t be a viper. You can’t lie in wait and jump all over the theology of patients and show how your theology is superior. That would be abuse and Lancaster General wouldn’t have you as a chaplain for long. I find that I keep coming back to a phrase I’ve learned from a book by Pema Chodron that I’ve used a lot while in CPE. This phrase is the core of what I think John is talking about in today’s scripture.

Start where you are.

4 simple words that are loaded with possibility. This means to know where you have been; in my case single mother upbringing in Appalachia Ohio, 12 years of catholic school, and my experiences in school and in D.C. That sense of history has helped me locate where I am now and what I’m feeling. Here’s an example of what I mean:

One of my firsts requests was for pastoral support up on the 5th floor of the hospital. I enter to find a woman in her mid-40s who immediately asks if I’m ‘born again and saved.’ This is one of my buttons and I feel my anxiety rise. My first visit and it’s someone who is from the sinner world. I feel my judgment welling up and my mind goes into battle mode… but my seminary training kicks in, esp. thanks to the MS sequence, and I turn judgment into curiosity.

I ask why she would like to know. We then spend the next half hour in one of the coolest conversations I’ve had in a long while. I find out she’s has heart trouble because she’s overweight but she’s also joined a small group in her church to help deal with this, a Weight Watchers support group. She tells me she’s a new Christian, having being born again April 17th, 2009.

After awhile, she requests for prayer and I pray and immediately afterwards she starts giving me pointers on how the prayer could have been improved. Her criticism made me very angry. I said to myself “how dare she teach me a lesson about prayer! For years she has lived a carefree life and that’s what’s landed her artery clogged hiney here in the hospital! Meanwhile, I’ve been steeped in prayer my whole life and I can honestly say there is not one day I haven’t prayed. Now she’s converted, she is trying to tell ME, ME THE SEMINARIAN, THE HOSPITAL CHAPLAIN, THE FUTURE PULIZER PRIZE WINNER? how to behave?! Does she know my GPA?”

I offer up a silent prayer… not to John the Baptist… but to the one who neither John nor I am fit to touch the sandals of. I thought “Jesus… help me out here. I don’t want to chase this newly found sheep from your flock, but I’m greatly tempted. This is exactly the type of follower of yours that drives me nuts and gives me second thoughts for pursing this call you gave me.”

Jesus said “Trust. Have faith. You have nothing to defend here…You know how to start where you are…but can you start where she is?” I know how to start where I am… can I start where she is?

That’s when I felt a strange warming of the heart. Right there I felt what John was talking about, this wasn’t a baptism by water that john offers… this is beyond that. This is a baptism by fire. I found compassion for this woman.


I ask her to pray for me. She offered a much different prayer than I offered, ladened with Father language and that dreaded HE pronoun that I despise. But she blessed me. I got past my issues; I stopped listening to content and went after the meaning. Afterwards I asked questions where the meaning wasn’t clear to me. The conversation was great! We had a great time! She told me as I was saying goodbye that I was “covered in the blood of the lamb.”

Normally I would run screaming from the room and straight to a shower to try to get the blood off. But that woman was paying me the highest compliment she knew how to articulate.

I am honored to have received her blessing. It is something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life and one I hope to honor.

Every time I feel my complaints start to rise, things like “Why aren’t they seeing me? I’ve worked so long, did so much, and have so much wisdom to offer and this person isn’t listening! They haven’t even considered my point of view! Why do they not thank me, invite me, honor me etc?” I remember to start where I am. I’ve been there; I’ve already traveled those roads. I’m centered and I’m now able to look for intersections where I can meet the other person. I am able to stop the self-perpetuating and counterproductive cycle of complaint and self-rejection and I’m able to embrace the other person. Right where they are. Right at the cross roads where our stories meet.

What this style does is follow in exactly the type of religious experience John is pointing to. John is talking about a religion that is beyond our control. Because it arises from a responsiveness to what God is doing among us, such experience cannot be channeled or domesticated to our tastes. There is mystery, God acts in ways that defy explanation or institutionalization. God calls for genuine repentance and a commitment to the life-style of a covenanted people. Our experience of God is always as Spirit and Fire. Moving and burning.

This baptism of fire gives you a molten heart. The grace of God, presented and offered by Christ Jesus melts all divisions. When others come with the nay-saying, it is our love, our concept of baptism of a fiery grace melts any and all divisions. You wanna divide on denominational lines, sorry, grace covers it all. Gender, race, sexual orientation, political preferences? In Christ there is no Jew or Greek, Democrat or Republican, Straight or Gay, White or Black or Asian or Hispanic, we are something else. You can’t even divided on Christians and Non as we are all mud and flame, created by God. You can’t divide along theological worlds anymore for all are incarnate within you! I’m now finding myself in the bizarre situation of embracing and being taught by the world of the sinner.

When we lay down our need to be affirmed, to defend our closely guarded positions, this leaves us vulnerable to this grace. Being vulnerable is key here whether you’re a scholar teaching these strange students. Or student in a learning situation with these strange sounding scholars. Or a staff member surrounded by excited and self-focused students and scholars? Starting where you are and looking to meet the other is wonderful testament to absolute grace. It says, "It’s done." It doesn’t say, after this if you do something, then you’ll be OK. It says, "You’re saved now," not because you did something or thought something or figured something out, but you’re saved now because Jesus says so. It isn’t religion that makes you OK with God, its God who does it. The sacraments are not religion. They do not cause something to happen. You don’t change the wine in the Eucharist into the blood of Christ, the presence of Christ. You just put up a sign in which you say, he is present in this sign as he is present in all things, including us. When we hold up the bread and wine before communion and say, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." That means that the whole world is changed, changed by Christ.

So now when I’m asked in the hospital, “are you born again? Are you saved?” I say “Yes. And it happened almost 2,000 years ago when a babe was born in a manger.” This advent, I ask you to consider, how would you answer that question?

Guest Sermon by Agent Smith

I met Agent Smith through LTS's Leadership NOW program for young adults. Agent Smith traveled this summer to Thailand with Leadership NOW. This is a sermon he gave to his congregation about his trip (i added the pretty pictures!) I am always amazed by the profound wisdom I encounter with Leadership NOW and you'll find this sermon particularly enlighted.

also a message to pastors: WAKE UP! LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR PEWS! LET THEM HAVE A VOICE! thank you.

and now without further delay, I present Agent Smith:

This week, as a part of the seasons of creation, we are talking about mountains… Mountains that are offer “mountain top experiences”.

The idea of using mountains as a metaphor was a challenge for me.

It was hard to know which way to go with it...In some ways, a mountain is a good thing…being on a mountain can be inspiring…energizing...refreshing…and relaxing all at the same time. The Bible is full of stories of people having visions while up in the mountains.

But, trying to climb a mountain can be exhausting and discouraging and maybe even dangerous.

And then again, being on a mountain gives you a different vantage point…your place on the mountain impacts your view on the world. And that’s the first thing I wanted to talk about.

In Thailand, we had some of those experiences; most of them were related to the hospitality of the Thai people. Thai people have always been known for their respect and hospitality, and the reason for that is because it used to be a law.

Now that they have realized that there are some people who have bad days and have a hard time being nice to every Westerner they see, the laws are no longer in place but this way of thinking is still very much a part of their culture. The laws were known as the “Sakdina System” a system with points.

Just imagine a pyramid, no wait, how about a mountain? Ok, well on this mountain there are different levels, and on each level there is a group of people, like farmers, beggars monks and elephant trainers. The number of points you have depends on your occupation, who you are related to, and who you work for.

Down in the valley of the mountain are the beggars, and peasants with 1-5 points, and at the base of the mountain you can find the farmers with maybe 10 points. Ok, so move up the mountain, you can see merchants and gas station owners with 50-100 points. And about half way up the mountain you see elephant trainers with 300 points, and then you see the king’s elephant trainers with 600 points.

Now you look up and see the royal family with maybe 1000 points. The king on the other hand is even further up, he has infinity points, but he is still not at the very top… up in the clouds above the peak are the monks and novice monks. But there is one group I left out… the “Farangs.” (tourists like you or me.)

To Thai people, we Farangs are nothing but selfish pigs with money to spend. People who come just to take what they want and leave... Although these Farangs are looked at like this, they have a lot of points so they are treated with a lot of respect. We westerners the Farangs, have 800 points on the “Sakdina system”, only because we help to support the Thai economy.

It is hard to have the, well let’s call it the Thai mentality, when here in America, the way to get respect, is to dress to impress, or have a lot of money, or a big house… all of those big _physical things_. Comparing the two ways of thinking is something that is hard to wrap my mind around.

The difference really jumped out at me recently. I’ve been doing some research about how people “do church” So, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been snooping around at a local mega church. The American way of getting respect was demonstrated when the minister opened his sermon like this. …

This young, hip guy walked onto the stage all decked out in 3 huge diamond rings and a silver necklace, then the first thing he said was, “Ok, so everyone, I want you to check out these awesome kicks, these are probably the coolest shoes ever worn by a minister, these are the coolest things out, are they not?” This statement, for some reason, bothered me for the rest of the night. Especially because one of topics of his sermon was about not caring what other people think about you. He talked about people who have eating disorders, people who self harm, and all of these other things people might do to try to impress other people. I’m not exactly sure why it bothered me so much, but it did. I seriously almost raised my hand to tell him about a story from Thailand. A story about a monk, a monk who told us about his pair of shoes.

One day this monk found that his shoes were old ripped and torn (not just out of style) so he decided that he should invest in a new pair of inexpensive shoes. So, the next week a man selling shoes walked by and the monk pounced! He bargained, and bargained and bargained, until the monk could actually afford the shoes.

The price for his new pair of shoes 100 baht, not 100 dollars but a little over three dollars; this was still a high price for the monk, because monks do not have paying jobs. So the monk went back to his temple wearing his semi-shiny new shoes and as the tradition there, he left them outside the temple for the night.

So the next morning he got up, and went to the front of his temple, and could not find his shoes, he looked and looked and looked, and could not find them anywhere! He assumed that someone must have stolen them, and he has yet to have seen those shoes again. The way he looked at that situation was surprising. He saw it as him donating money to the poor shoe salesman, and that the person who stole the shoes, might have needed them more than he did.

I have to wonder if the minister at the mega church would look at it that way if someone stole his expensive Italian leather shoes. I doubt it.

I wish that I could look at things like that, the next time Josh wants to play the x-box while I’m playing… I’ll just pretend he does not have hours upon hours that he can play, and I will think, wow, he might never have a chance to play x-box again… Well, I don’t know about that, but one thing I do know for certain is that Thai people deserve respect, respect that they will not accept because they feel like we deserve more respect, just because we are Farangs.

Whenever we went to market, we always saw Farangs with their wallet in hand, ready pay their way through the city of Chang Mai to get the best experiences that money can buy … climbing that mountain of fun experiences.But they were turning their backs to the valleys…the valleys full of blind people sitting down in the middle of the street, singing into an old beat up amp with traditional Thai music playing along, Or turning their backs to all of the Thai children that are different in some way, turning their back on those valleys and pretending they are not there, the valleys located at the bottom of their mountain, valleys filled with poverty and despair.

While in Chaing Mai we heard stories about children, different children, children with Down’s syndrome. These kids are usually hidden away into their parent’s house so that no one knows about this child.There are some cases like that still here in America, but it’s rare, but in Thailand, it happens, and it happens often. Children with Down’s syndrome are often hidden from society, with hopes that their family will not have to explain to their friends and family what is “wrong” with their child.

We went to a place called the Healing Family Foundation, which run by people who have family members with Down’s Syndrome and similar conditions. It is a place for children and adults with this type of special need to go during the day. While they are there, they learn work skills so can make a little bit of money and have fun group activities for exercise. In my eyes, that place, is a mountain within a valley. It is a place where they are loved and cared for and learn to climb their own personal mountains.

I’ll tell you about another valley that people want to ignore that I experienced in Thailand. Our group was headed up a mountain and we came upon some people selling paintings. I stopped for a quick moment…because one thing you don’t want to do in a valley is to get separated from your group….I saw a couple of paintings that I thought Joshua might like, so I bought them. We weren’t in a major touristy area so they weren’t overpriced. I turned around and about a half dozen other people who had paintings literally started running after me…While they were saying “You buy Cheap” They were also saying “My children have nothing to eat. My children need to eat. You buy. You buy.”

People want to ignore the valley of severe poverty and the huge differences between the “haves” and the “have-nots” that is growing bigger all the time.

But, back to my trip with the group up the mountain…I rejoined the group and we went to a Buddhist temple at the top of the mountain. We were given the opportunity to be blessed by a monk. A lot of people have seen that picture and some were confused by it. I wasn’t praying to the monk or to Buddha or anything like that, I was opening myself up to receive the blessing that he had to offer. Even though we couldn’t understand each other with words and, even though he is a Buddhist and I am a Christian, I had a real mountain-top experience in that moment. I could feel that he cared for me. That he wanted the best for me and he gave that blessing without expecting anything in return. I will never forget that moment. Under normal circumstances…..as in when I’m not trying to write a sermon, When I think of mountains, I think of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

And I love the Blue Ridge Mountains. Maybe it’s because of going to the church retreats every year. Maybe it’s because of our many trips to EB Fox’s campground near Boone. Maybe it’s because of fly fishing for trout in Valley Crusis. Maybe it’s because of our annual trip to find our Christmas tree. While I like the real mountains, I’m not too crazy about some of the metaphoric mountains that I face and I’m sure you face, too.

You know how I mentioned that trying to climb a mountain can be exhausting and discouraging and maybe even dangerous?? As a teenager, I have Algebra mountains, I have Spanish mountains. I have acne mountains. I have “trying to understand the female mind” mountains. I have relationship mountains. As an adult, you might have employment mountains or health mountains or trying-to-do-too-much mountains.

I have to admit it. Sometimes it gets depressing. You’re struggling to climb one of those mountains and, just when you think you’ve made it to the top, you realize there is more to climb or you slide back down the hill or somebody who’s further up the mountain knocks the rocks loose and, here comes an avalanche.

One of the things I learned in Thailand is that the Buddhist monks are expert metaphoric mountain climbers. How is that? They are always learning…always in training. They spend a lot of time praying, too. And, they live in community with others…They are ready to help whoever needs help and they are ready to accept help, too.

I think that’s how they deal with their mountains.

Now, there are certainly differences between Buddhism and Christianity but I think that, we as Christians, can learn some things from the Buddhists.

We can be Seekers, always looking to learn more and be better at what we do

We can be Prayers, always asking God for strength and wisdom

We can be family to one another, always ready to give and willing to receive

We can be grateful for our blessings, & realize that the journey is part of the reward

We can be responsible, because we share ownership of this world and need to take care of it

We can be confident we know we are not alone as we struggle up that hill.

Instead of complaining to God about how big our mountains are, we can boldly tell our mountains how big our God is.

Instead of complaining about how far we’ve got to climb to get to the top of the mountain, we can concentrate on what we’ll be able to see when we get there.

Instead of trying to reach the top on our own, we can tie ourselves to our brothers and sisters in Christ so, when they slip we can help them and, when we slip, they can help us.

How we look at a mountain is our choice. How we respond to the mountain is our choice. How we look at a valley is our choice. How we respond to a valley is our choice.

Let us pray…
Gracious God. Help us to see the mountains for what they are. Help us to see the valleys for what they are. Help us to think, to act and to be according to your will.
Amen

Walk by Faith

American Idol judge Simon Cowell is also the creator of a show called Britain’s Got Talent. He wasn’t having a good day at auditions this past April. “God this is horrible.” He said before the show went to break. When it came back from commercial, Simon was greeted by a middle-aged lady who looked… well, like nothing special. Susan Boyle looked homely and she’s from nowhere special. Simon immediately dismissed her, but since he had to talk to her, he punctuated all his questions with eye rolls, shrugs, and a body-language that said “Oh please.”

How many of you have heard Susan Boyle sing? Was it what you were expecting? [Watch the video here]

Susan sang. The crowd went NUTS for her singing and the judges just stared at the song bird that landed on the stage. Simon… well not just Simon, everyone was expecting failure. It’s the oldest sin in the show-biz book, judging a book by its cover.

In today’s scripture we hear one of Paul’s greatest pieces of wisdom, “We live by faith, not by sight.” Susan Boyle is the embodiment of this phrase. She showed a sexist, ageist, fashion-concerned world what it means to live by faith. In her short 90 second performance, she offered a one woman antidote to all the cynicism that had engulfed the world during this recession. She wasn’t a greedy banker, or corrupt politician. She wasn’t in this for fame or fortune. She had no interest in being another celebrity or raking in piles of cash. She had spent her entire life dreaming of being a professional singer and she had faith that she could do it despite being the full-time care-taker of her mother, despite not looking the way the world expects, despite never going 60 miles from her hometown; Susan had a gift and she had confidence in this gift. She knew it would take her places beyond her wildest dreams. She walks by faith.



We’re steeped in a world that loves what it sees. We are in a world that lives almost exclusively by sight. My college degree was in advertising, so I was set to make my career selling things to you all by sight alone. Doctors Michael Brower and Warren Leon state that “The average American is exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a day, and globally corporations spend over $620 billion each year to make their products seem desirable and to get us to buy them.”

Living by sight means that you have to have the new product, wear the deodorant that gets you the girls, but make sure that you’re wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, and completely defining yourself by appearance. If the world was like advertising would have you believe, then one paper towel can hold a bowling ball. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris. Household cleaning products hold the key to personal fulfillment. Medieval peasants would have perfectly straight teeth. And if you buy this SUV, you can take it off-road, it will never get dirty, and you’ll never drive in traffic, ever.

Living by sight is SO limited because we so often get it wrong. We misunderstand or misinterpret things which are right in front of us and get too concerned with just staying on the surface of what we know. Here are some examples:

In the year 100, Roman engineer Julius Sextus stated “Inventions have long since reached their limit and I see no hope for future developments.”

In 1893 a journalist wrote “Law will be simplified over the next century. Lawyers will have diminished and their fees will have vastly been curtailed.

In 1895, a teacher wrote to a father of one of his students that this student… this Albert Einstein “will never amount to anything.”

In 1949, a computer scientist stated that “It appears we have reached the limits of what is possible to achieve with computer technology.

The head of the patent office in the 1960s wanted to close up shop because everything had already been invented.

I could go on and on. The world is chock full of examples of living by sight.
So how does this concern you? When you pick up your paper or watch the news, it’s easy to fall into despair. Shootings at the holocaust museum, global warming, war, famine, bail outs, company layoffs, the list goes on and on. Paul is seeking to remind us of where we get our purpose and direction from. Sight, Paul argues, is the surface layer; faith is the insight that gets below the surface to goodness, truth, and love.

However, living by faith and sight can be done at the same time. Sight and insight operate together as they do in looking at a painting, where we see not only the forms and colors of the scene but also its beauty. To see beauty, it takes insight. It’s easy to see the beauty in the Hollywood actor or actress, much harder to see it in Susan Boyle or our neighbors. That takes insight. Beauty is something which cannot be measured or completely understood, but we know it when we see it through our insight, through our 6th sense which is our faith.

Walking by faith does not mean that we walk entirely in the dark by a kind of blind trust. It doesn’t mean taking what the bible says, what authorities say, what institutions say literally and unchallenged. A struggle takes place. An interested investigation launched. Remember Doubting Thomas?

There will be times when we have to walk by the light of our faith with only the memory of the insights that were once clear to us. Walking by faith doesn’t mean that once you have an insight, that’s the final and absolute truth… no. We as Christians believe in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit moves and guides and changes and challenges us and provides us with new insights… some of which contradict the old.

Walking by faith is asking questions and questioning the answers. This form of inquiry in many ways resembles the scientific method. But science fails to address such important human concerns as sorrow and joy, suffering and love.
Walking by faith doesn’t mean you’re standing still. Resting on old answers. When we walk by faith we follow the Spirit and Christ. Jesus walked the walk.
He was born out of wedlock. He hung out with the wrong crowd. He was from some backwoods town and couldn’t possibly amount to anything. He was put to death in his culture’s most shameful way and yet here we are 2,000 years later still talking about him, calling him the Son of God.

Walking by faith takes a lot of courage and effort and many just don’t want to do it. But there is power in it. It is a power that the world doesn’t really understand, not really, because there’s no guarantee. In fact, it actually looks like losing. The power of walking by faith is a paradox; it’s power that looks like weakness. More than that, it is not guaranteed to stop all evildoers. It might, of course, touch and soften their hearts. It enables you to recognize God’s power positively at work in the world.

This way of living comes at a price. It can leave us with the sense that we don’t know the answers after all, that we are much further from knowing than we’d ever realized before. This humble way of living shows us that there are many more angles by which to examine life than we ever imagined. As the ancient rabbis said, “Those who say they know are much further away from the answer than those who say that they don’t know.”

Take care to distinguish between externals and internals. Question your snap judgments and check to see if they hold water. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and swims like a duck externally, internally that duck may think it’s a flying tiger or a Tyrannosaurus Rex. That frog maybe a prince in disguise. Just like Susan Boyle who looks as plain as the day is long, but inside has the voice of an angel. Jesus, who looked like a backwoods carpenter well he’s divine. He’s the way, the truth, and the light. AMEN.

“The Greatest Sermon Ever Preached”

This is the greatest sermon ever preached. Seriously, this is the greatest sermon you will ever hear. And if you don’t believe me, well; you’re just a bunch of doubters. You bunch of Doubting Thomases. Doesn’t this story say “Don’t Doubt!?”

Are you ashamed or justified in your doubting? Maybe being a Doubting Thomas is a good thing. Being critical is just a part of life, we question and discern all the time. By looking at the Gospel of John, we will see that Thomas wasn’t doubting, but more critical of what his friends were saying.

I’m not sure why Thomas gets the label “doubter.” Just a glance at the Gospels and you can see the disciples doubting all over the place. While Jesus was alive, they doubted he could feed the multitude, doubted they would survive the storm on the sea of Galilee. Doubted that they would ever deny that they even knew Jesus. Then Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried.

Almost immediately, Mary Magdalene took up the doubt. She went to the tomb, not because she was going to greet the risen Lord, as Jesus told his disciples more than once that he would come again, but to prepare Jesus’ body for death. She was shocked to find the empty tomb and even more shocked to see the risen Jesus.

She ran and told the disciples. The Gospel doesn’t say what the disciples said to Mary… but their actions speak for themselves. They immediately run to the tomb to verify the story, doubting Mary’s story and Jesus’ promise to come back.
Then Jesus shows up in the upper room and the author makes sure to note that Thomas wasn’t there. When Thomas gets word of Jesus’ resurrection, he does what everyone else has been doing the whole time. He doubts.

But his doubt is a little different than the others’. This is more than a playful challenge we give to our friends like “Hey, I won front row tickets to the Coldplay concert at Hershey” which the natural response would be “No way, really? Nah… How?!” This goes deeper. This goes to the level of interested investigation.

Thomas is searching for details, facts, and he leads a careful examination. He has a lot at stake here. Are his friends trying to pull some first century practical joke? Are they getting his hopes up just to crush them? But Thomas stays with the disciples because he’s interested. I mean we’re talking about the teacher who expanded Thomas’ faith beyond the limits he thought possible. This is the person who was unlike anyone he had ever met, teaching others how to love God and love their neighbors as themselves. This Son of God who taught him that people are people, in spite of the fact that they are lepers, Samaritans, tax collectors, prostitutes, or just plan sinners.

Thomas sticks with his interested investigation for a week. I wonder what went on in that week. Did the other disciples plead their case with Thomas? Did they each take turns giving personal testimonies? Did they talk about how Jesus looked, what he said to them, how they knew it was Christ? Were these conversations calm or shouting matches? The Gospel does not give us these details.

Thomas gives the disciples an obstinate challenge. It can be viewed as demanding, defiant, or spiritually ambitious. The challenge is a familiar one in the Greek-speaking world. What is recorded in the story is “I will never believe” but the full quote is “If I don’t examine, I will never believe.”

Only Jesus can provide the answer to Thomas’ challenge. Jesus appears and offers to give Thomas exactly what he asked for. Thomas just answers “My Lord and My God.”

“My Lord and My God.” This phrase can be uttered so many ways. I often hear it uttered at seminary in a variety of ways, mostly in the negative way. Seminary is a hard place. Seminarians are asked to lead their own interested investigations of faith. Many have come into seminary believing certain things and they are uncomfortable with the examination part.

“My Lord and My God, I have to examine that?!”

I’ve heard it uttered many times by my classmates that they sometimes feels like they are losing Jesus more than they’re finding him.

Then I come to Trinity. It seems to be the stereotype that Christian churches don’t challenge their members or try to teach them new things… like those very things the minister learned in seminary. NOT HERE. Instead of trying to spare you the pain, I think Nancy wants you to join her. She asks those in the Bible studies and also those in worship, through her sermons to consider things way outside our personal experience.

Trinity is also a diverse group of people, all who grew up in various denominations. We have ex-Catholics sitting next to ex-Methodists, who sit next to ex-Charismatic Pentacostals who are next to ex-Brethren. In talking with one another, we hear things that are light years beyond our traditions and personal theologies. We speak with our fellow members whose own style of Christianity can be so vastly different from our own. We wrestle, we read, we discuss and most of all we ask, and we ask and we ask. And our questions are met with more questions.

But there are times.

In the midst of reading, in the midst of wrestling, in the midst of these strange conversations with our friends and church family… there are times.
During the sermon, preached by someone who has dedicated their lives to the study of the gospel, to the study of the Old Testament, to the study of preaching both… there are times.

Even in our strongly held opinions, even in our demanding, defiant, or spiritually ambitious challenges to God… there are times.

There are times when the curtain is pulled back. There are times when our interested investigations end and all we can do is echo Thomas’ words… “My Lord and My God.” Words best said in a voice filled with wonder and awe. We are getting these glimpses of the divine all the time, and it’s not through the answers we have, it’s through the questions we carry!

At the end of the story, Jesus doesn’t condemn Thomas. There is no attempt to shame him for his challenge. Jesus gives him what he needs to believe. In Thomas’ wonder and awe Jesus says to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”



We can pick up on these revelations if we stick to our interested investigations. We will only see Jesus if we get out into the world and are engaged by it. We will only see Jesus if we challenge and continue to be challenged by his example! So make a joyful noise unto the Lord, read your bible, pray at home with your door shut, and pray at your local food banks and soup kitchens! Attend a Bible study, or enter into conversation about the sermon with a friend or pew-mate. When two or three are gathered, Jesus is in our midst, and the Holy Spirit is always with us. Through our interested investigations we might just be able to see Jesus in our world around us.

AMEN.

For everything there is a season

Science is finding out new things about time. Humans have been interested in time for as long as we’ve been writing. The writer of Ecclesiastes reflected on time just as our modern scientists are doing today. What the writer, these scientists, and we gathered here at Trinity know about time is that it doesn’t stop.

And, I don’t know about you, but I’m angry about this.

I’m angry that time stretches out for an eternity and it will not stop for me, and I’m assuming you are too. We only get a fraction of eternity. Time keeps on marching on and we’re all too aware that it will one day leave us behind. Time takes away our childhood, our pets, and eventually us. And there are no two ways around it. We human beings are in time; we're defined by its limits. But from the midst of time we have a sense for eternity. We have inklings of something more. All we get are glimpses of this place. Every now and then we see that there is something more beyond just us, our watches, calendars, Blackberries, and history books. We’re frustrated by our mortality and Lent and Ecclesiastes don’t help that feeling. We hate being reminded of how short our lives are.



We humans run around stressed out about time. There should be more time! We have things to do, things to accomplish, goals to reach, more money to get because we have more things to buy. We are a funny bunch. For everything there is a season, so says the wise writer of Ecclesiastes, but we wish that weren’t true. For some of us who are happy, we’re guilty about that and think we should be sad. For those of us who are suffering, we think we should be happy, so we don’t offend those jerks who are content. If we’re poor, we want to be rich… if we’re rich, we could always be richer. It’s all overwhelming! So much to do! And death is always just around the corner; it could sneak up on us at anytime. And there should be someone to protect us from death, but this person, this, GOD, isn’t doing their job.

We sometimes get an image of God as some sort of divine air traffic controller, choreographing all our takeoffs and landings, responsible for everything that happens to us. But when we find ourselves in the wreckage of one of life’s crashes… we often wonder if the giant air traffic controller in the sky is napping, negligent, or just plain mean.

But God is not protected behind glass, high in a tower above us, manipulating the world on a divine computer. We are not separated, God is here with us. I think I can only describe this through means of camp legend of a boy’s rite of passage into manhood.

The father takes the son into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.

He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold. It would be the only way he could become a man!
Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm. We, too, are never alone. Even when we don't know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. Just because you can't see God, doesn't mean God is not there. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to God.

We walk by faith, not by sight. Our faith is hard and it is questioned all the time. Some would like to tell you that once you become Christian, the road will become smooth. But it isn’t. Our lives are like a bumpy road. We sometimes find ourselves in a pothole that’s in a bigger pothole! Our faith then, tells us where we’re at. It tells us whether we should be trying to get out of a pothole or watch out for that curve up ahead. Our faith tells us to take note of where we are. Our faith tells us to notice what season we’re in.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. Whatever season you’re in, God is with you. If you’re in the winter of your discontent, if you’re sick, in a troubled relationship, in mourning at the death of a relationship, God is just as much with you as if you were in summer. Ecclesiastes’ answer to all of our limited, short, crazy, chaos-filled lives is to be content and enjoy ourselves as long as we live. Ecc 3:13 says we should enjoy God’s gift, we should eat and drink and take pleasure in our toil. This can be hard sometimes because Chaos keeps coming into our lives. And even time itself is relative.

Einstein taught us that for each person, time passes at different rates, we perceive time differently. If I had a watch on, and Pastor Nancy had a watch on and she happened to be going at the speed of light, her watch would have a very different time on it than mine would. That’s an extreme example, but I bet if we took a poll of the congregation, not even four of us would be in the same season, the same time of our lives. Some are grieving over the loss of a job, some are fearful about their future, some are anxious, awaiting news of a diagnosis, and some are excited to bring new life into the world. We are all in different seasons, different times, and Lent asks us to take account of what season we’re in, with no layers over our answer, just a stark and honest look at ourselves amid the chaos. And there is always chaos.

Scripture states that God created the world out of chaos and it keeps breaking back into creation and causes havoc with our order. God took a great chance with this beautiful creation that surrounds us. Our parents took a great chance at having us because they knew chaos is dangerous. Chaos destroys the created. But the creative order itself is creative. Creation keeps changing just like the seasons keep rolling along, each one similar, but not quite the same. Everything changes, the world is sand. But blessed is the person who realizes this and creates anyway. To reframe a parable, blessed is the one who builds on sand knowing what will happen, than the one who builds on rock thinking it will last forever.

This is the nature of being creative amidst the chaos of the world. God didn’t design the chaos any more than we did. The chaos is what it is. The miracle is that good and beautiful things can happen even in the midst of it. All of our art and music IS designed to bring truth and beauty and yet it can bring wrenching tears. The children we decide to bring into the world to share in life’s joy will also share in life’s sorrow. The friendships we create will bring great joy, but only at the risk of causing real pain from time to time. Seasons change. And for everything, there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven.

That’s the secret of Lent and Ecclesiastes. It’s the secret that our pets know, that I learned from the book Marley & Me. A dog or a cat does not care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give them your heart and they will give you theirs.

The secret is that in the "less" there is "more." The less we obscure what is truly important with bitterness, animosity and cynicism, with striving for the next goal, for checking off the next box on your life’s plan. Lent and Ecclesiastes ask us to be more aware of the promise of possibility and new life. They remind us that every single day of our lives, we are asked to walk in the way of love over hate, courage over fear, and hope over hopelessness. Do not dwell in the past; do not dream of the future, concentrate your mind on the present moment, no matter what season you’re in. Give God your heart, and you’ll find God has loved you always.

Works Cited
Scott Hoeze’s sermon "Setting Eternity" found at http://www.calvincrc.org/sermons/topics/ecclesiastes/eccles3.html

Paraphrase of “Parable” by Joe Pintauro from the books Kites at Empty Airports.

Theology for Preaching: Authority, Truth and Knowledge of God in a Postmodern Ethos by Ronald J. Allen, Barbara Blaisdell, and Scott Johnston pages 80-85.

Paraphrase from Marley and Me by John Grogan

Reverend Bill Federici, from an email about Ash Wednesday and Lent

BENEDICTION! (dvd extra)

And here’s another secret. It’s a math secret. Our fraction of time that we spend here on earth is a little itty bitty piece of infinity. If you take “forever” and divide it in half, it’s still forever. Divide that half by 3/4, it's still forever!This is good news as we believe in being part of forever! Time is infinite and we get but a fraction of it in our earthly form, and then our season changes and we go onto something else. Jesus assures us that we should fear not! For in his Father’s house there are many rooms! So take note and own where you are at, what season you’re in, and live fully into that season. Take joy that you get all of time, all of forever, and you get to enjoy it in many forms, in many seasons of life and thereafter. What a joy that we all may be in different seasons, but we get to share this time together.

Go forth and be reminders of this message of eternity in the name of our Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer. AMEN.

Reflections from today

today didn't go as planned in any sense of the word. Pastor Nancy called at 7:10 and said she had the flu and i had to cover today. yikes!

so we found a really good sermon written by Dr. Susan Fleming McGurgan you can read it here. but i added a few things that i would like to highlight here.

Mark’s Gospel hurls us,
ready or not,
into a lonely and barren wilderness—
a desert—
where everything
either bites
or burns
or stings.

Sometimes, the wilderness can feel a lot like home.

The single mom, stretched so thin that she almost disappears, knows the desert of exhaustion and guilt.

The rejected child, watching silently from beyond the playground, knows the desert called Loneliness.

The convict, numb to the brutality that surrounds him, knows the desert of violence and regret.

The person who has just realize their sexuality and now must come out of the closet, not knowing how their friends and family will react. This is the desert of fear and alienation.

Our nation is in a desert. With two wars, a collapsing economy, and a two party system that is not on speaking terms, we are now in the desert of an uncertain future.

We know the truth about deserts, don’t we?

The truth is; Jesus has been there first.



It was nice to have the support of my wife and the congregation at Trinity Reformed. It affirmed that this is my call and that i can wing it if needed. good day today, despite a sick pastor and the chaotic beginning.

A Compassionate Anger

Today’s Scripture lesson is Mark 1:40-45 as found in The Message Bible.

A leper came to him, begging on his knees, "If you want to, you can cleanse me."

Deeply moved, Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, "I want to. Be clean." Then and there the leprosy was gone, his skin smooth and healthy. Jesus dismissed him with strict orders: "Say nothing to anyone. Take the offering for cleansing that Moses prescribed and present yourself to the priest. This will validate your healing to the people." But as soon as the man was out of earshot, he told everyone he met what had happened, spreading the news all over town. So Jesus kept to out-of-the-way places, no longer able to move freely in and out of the city. But people found him, and came from all over.

We’re in high school forever. We’ve all had to endure the strange, awkward teenage years and go through this experience. As one person put it, High School is the mouse race that prepares you for the rat race. In fact, every ten years we gather in survivor groups and try to figure out what the heck it was all about!! I will use this shared experience--some of you are still going through this time--to talk about today’s gospel lesson.

I think it’s safe to say that most of us (aside from a lucky few) were literally a sack of hormones and confused emotions. We see in the gospel TEXTS that Jesus had some confused emotions. I say TEXTS with an S, plural, meaning MORE THAN ONE TEXT. If you gather up all the ancient texts of Mark 1:40-45, you’ll discover that they say Jesus had three different reactions to the leper. The text we heard this morning says that Jesus was “moved with compassion”. I would imagine that would sound like this… “Yeah I choose..”

Another text says Jesus was moved with pity. Here I picture Jesus looking at the man, with tears welling up in his eyes saying “Yeah…… I choose.” And the third reaction is Jesus was moved with ANGER. ANGER? “OHHH Yeah… I CHOOSE!” That’s quite a variety of mixed emotions! So which is it? Compassion, pity or anger? What’s at stake?

There was A LOT at stake, not only for Jesus, but esp. for the leper. You see, people were scared to death of leprosy. And in Jesus’ time, Leprosy just meant Skin Disease. Imagine that, if you had bad acne, warts, goiters, or even what we know as leprosy, you were made into an instant outsider. The law in Leviticus was clear: “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ And he shall live alone, his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” (Lev. 13:45-46)

So if you had leprosy you lost everything — job, family, place in the community — everything. The leper who approaches Jesus shows his desperation by breaking the law, by coming into the city, and getting close enough to Jesus that he could talk to him. He’s lucky he wasn’t stoned. I picture that Jesus is just surrounded by people and this leper shows up and the people just part away from him… they can’t believe their eyes! I’m thankful we here in the modern world don’t have any lepers… if someone like that showed up here, right now, we’d all jump up to help them, wouldn’t we? I don’t think we would… and I’m reminded of a similar story from my high school experience.

There are always groups in high school. There are the jocks, the smart kids, the in-crowd who were all beautiful and talented and everyone wanted to be like. I know most of you here were in the in-crowd, right?… lucky dawgs. I wasn’t so special... I was in the class of kids who were the ‘tweeners, those people who were somewhat tolerated by the cool kids, but there was just enough weirdness to keep us in our own separate group. Then there was the untouchable class in high school. Those are the modern day lepers of the high school culture. There was one kid in particular at my high school, his name was Bob.

Bob was from a really poor family. He was working part-time jobs all the time, so his grades suffered. He always had a worn and dirty look. I remember his ears sometimes would just be caked with dirt. He was really asocial. One day Bob is walking the halls with his books in his distracted manner and he trips and spills, books flying out. To make matters worse, it’s in front of the prettiest girl in high school, Katie.

Now Kate (my wife) didn't go to my school, so we had to play the hand we were dealt, and the queen in our deck was Katie.

Katie is surrounded by her friends who upon seeing who is lying at their feet immediately scatter and screech “EEEWW!!” An untouchable is in their midst. But Katie doesn’t flinch. She bends down and starts to collect Bob’s books. He looks around… everyone is watching the situation unfold and everyone is just as shocked as he is. He collects himself and stands up just in time to accept his stack of books from Katie. Just as Katie hands the books to Bob, she reaches out and squeezes his arm and says “It’s gonna be alright Bob.” Then she walks on and a heated discussion follows with Katie yelling at her friends and asking them why they didn’t help her. Bob goes about his day, but I noticed a little spring in his step. Now I wish I could say that there was a great change in Bob’s life from that day forward but this is a true story… and ideal endings are few and far between. Bob ended up going to the public school mid-semester, and I haven’t been in touch.



This is the modern story of what’s going on in our gospel text. Katie felt all of those emotions, I’m sure, Compassion, Pity, and Anger. Compassion at the outcast lying at her feet, pity at his helpless situation and that no one was helping him, and that filled her with anger and she acted! This too must have been Jesus’ feelings… it’s shown in his response.

Jesus’ immediate response—to touch the man and then declare his choice to heal him—reflects his belief of wholeness, embodied in his ministry of good news, hospitality, and inclusion. Jesus’ mission, as noted in John’s gospel, “I have come that they might have life, and have it abundantly” is an explicit challenge to all people who think sickness of mind, body, and spirit results from God’s will and divine punishment. Jesus NEVER blamed the victim for her or his ailment. Illness was an opportunity for healing rather than judgment, guilt, or blame.

Jesus was fully human, he could feel the exact range of complex emotions we do. Jesus felt a compassionate anger. Jesus wasn’t mad at the man or at his request. Maybe he was angry at the social situation the man found himself in. Both anger and compassion are related emotions: both arise from a strong sense of connection with or on behalf of others. Our care for others can inspire righteous anger toward unjust social systems and the ongoing practices of racism, sexism, and all the other –isms. This holy, compassionate anger, can inspire us to imagine and, then, enact alternatives to what’s currently unjust and harmful, whether in a family, congregation, community, or nation.

So if you ever hear or think that someone is suffering because of something they’ve done, or you think that about yourself, I’m here to say that Jesus would disagree with you. You are included as a child of God regardless of the social stigma. The stigmas of sick, poor, widow, orphan, uneducated, or whatever so-called disgrace you or others put upon you has been lifted. Jesus welcomes us all into a new community, smashing down barriers that divide. Let us, as the community of Christ, follow his radical example.

If you see injustice… whether it is starvation, mistreatment on the basis of race, gender, or ANY OTHER DESIGNATION, stand up! In God’s kingdom there are no lepers! If you’re black, white, Hispanic, native, Jew or gentile, you’re welcomed into community! Jesus doesn’t care how the authorities tell you how to act, or how the authorities divide us up. You. Are. Welcomed.

What social laws are dividing us up today? What is keeping us apart? What is holding us back? Let’s get a compassionate anger at these injustices in the world… and let’s do what Jesus would do! Let us take the example of the leper and tell the world! AMEN!



Resources

Anchor Bible Commentary, C.S. Mann “Mark” page 219.

Bruce Epperly’s commentary found at http://www.processandfaith.org/lectionary/YearB/2008-2009/2009-02-15.shtml

Dr Jeffery K London’s sermon “The Laughter Barrel” found at http://www.lectionary.org/Sermons/London/OT/2Kings_5_Laughter.htm

God in the Unexpected

The Gospel for today, Simeon and Anna meeting the Holy Family has two themes I will cover today. The two themes are God in the Unexpected, and Life has Suffering. I'll cover God in the unexpected first.

We stumble on God in unlikely places. In the mall, at our New Years party, in the grocery isle. God is truly in all, through all, and above all. But sometimes we have to be awakened to the possibility. God in the unexpected. Even in the city dump.

In a recent episode of my favorite NPR show RadioLab, they talked about what they find in dumps. In New York, they are burying garbage in manmade hills. Imagine what some future archeologist will find decades from now. A current archeologist dug down and took a core sample about 50 feet down in one of these massive "landfill hills" and do you know what he found? God? No, a Ten year old hotdog.

However the concept of making hills out of garbage isn't new, nor is it unusual. We've been burying garbage for a while. In a few days I'll be going to Egypt, but let's go there now! Well not now, but to Egypt 1898. Two archeologists from Oxford noticed some strange sand dunes. They just didn't look like the other ones. They are strange and irregularly shaped. They found huge quantity of baskets, pottery, clothing, the MOTHER LOAD! Undisturbed mounds of 10 centuries worth of trash. The biggest find was all of the ancient paper… In fact the first piece of paper they pull out is a Lost Saying of Jesus.

Imagine, standing in a desert, in a 1,000 year old trash dump, and the first thing you pick up is the words of Jesus Christ. Here you are standing on a sand dune, reading words of Jesus no one's ever heard before. The first saying out of this dump "He who knows the all, but fails to know himself, lacks everything." Forget the 10 year old hotdog! Here is something not heard or read about for 2,000 years. It's not even alluded to! Jesus states that Heaven, the kingdom of God is spread out all over the world, but we don't see it. We're surrounded by it, but don't see it. [i] I think this exactly the Jesus I know, it fits with the story we do know.

God in Garbage dumps. God in unexpected places. These archeologists didn't expect to find God there in an Egyptian dump! And I bet, neither did Simeon or Anna when they first looked at the baby of the poor carpenter and the woman he "got pregnant" out of wedlock.

Here is Simeon, an old man who somehow got it in his head that he was going to see the messiah. Here is Anna, a faithful servant who isn't expecting much, just to live out her days in the temple, worshiping God. Along comes this poor couple. How do we know they're poor? The family offers a sacrifice and the details of the sacrifice are interesting. Two turtledoves or two young pigeons are to be offered if the family couldn't afford a lamb. Mary and Joseph are poor! Poor but observant Jews.

Imagine how many babies Simeon has seen in his quest. I bet he looked at every baby that came into the temple. If I had Simeon's mission to see the Messiah, I would be ready to quit after my tenth baby. Simeon was faithful, he trusted God and stayed in it. Who knows how long he was in there, how long he waited, but he knew he had found the messiah when he saw Jesus. I would imagine Simeon was a little shocked. I have no idea what Simeon thought the messiah would be, but it couldn't be this little child from this poor family. The messiah was to be from the House of David, ROYALTY! A great military leader, the prophecies say nothing about a baby from a poor family. We have words of Christ in the dump and the Messiah in a Poor Baby.

Simeon does something odd though. He gives a beautiful hymn of praise to the family and to the baby, Simeon is SO happy but then he throws in this sadness. And Simeon's words to Mary say "Sword will pierce your heart" meaning, her heart will break. Simeon is foreshadowing the cross.

Wait, wait. This story is just the gospel writer foreshadowing the cross, nothing more. It's not relevant to our lives today. Some dude meets a baby in the temple, who cares? What's the point? There's no God here, this is just a 10 year old hotdog part of the Bible.

Of course God is here in the story and it is still relevant today. As you may know, Kate and I are pregnant. Well, she's pregnant and I'm responsible… what I mean to say is that we're expecting our first child. The kid is still in utero and we've already had an army of Simeon's and Anna's.

These modern prophets start off just like Simeon's hymn, with joyous praise, "you're going to have a baby! That's great! Congrats! That child will be the apple of your eye. You'll be great parents." But just like Simeon, there's also a note of dread. From the funny like "Oh I'm sorry Kate, now you're going to have two children to deal with, your husband and your baby." Then there's the saddeness. One particular message keeps playing in my mind from a particular Simeon. He said "You raise your kids, and all is well. The terrible twos aren't that terrible. You get them talking and out comes this little personality, and it's great you love it. Then you have to send the kid to school and your heart breaks a little bit. But then you realize that the manners you taught them are working out. Then one day, ugh, the school sends home this person… this happens around 13 or 14… this stranger who looks like your kid, sounds like your kid, but doesn't act like your kid. Talks and acts impolite, is very selfish, THAT is when your heart will break."

That's something to tell expectant parents. But this Simeon is right! And I'll further that message. Throughout your life, not just one sword is going to pierce your heart. Life, after all, is terminal. As one philosopher Van Wilder put it, "Don't take life too seriously, no one gets out alive." One day, everyone you know will die.

So what's the point? You may ask. Why remind us of our mortality, thanks a lot Debbie Downer!

It is easy for me to say standing up here in front of you. God is great and God is good, found in trash heaps and in little babies. How sweet! Some religious traditions try to make excuses for these hard times – talking about the mystery of God or even suggesting that God does these things for reasons we will never know, or because we’ve sinned or done something wrong – THOSE traditions don't go down the road of hard questions. But we're not that kind of church. THIS tradition asks hard questions – feels hard feelings – and tries to make sense out of hard truths. And one of the hard truths about illness, accidents and calamities and death is that… it doesn't make sense. It isn't fair… and it hurts like hell.[ii]

It's easy to stand here and say Jesus is Christ and use images of riches and glory all devoid of the suffering of the story. We don't often talk about the blood of Jesus at Trinity and I think that reason is twofold. First is because we don't subscribe to a "blood atonement theology" and second is that we're uncomfortable with the physicality of Jesus. Jesus was human, and what he went through on the cross HURT and it was terrible and it caused him a lot of pain and those around him even more pain. So much so that his best friends couldn't even watch their friend suffer and die. Isn't that true of us? Don't we stay away from grieving and dying people sometimes, not because we don't care, but because we care too much? But here within the announcement of the Messiah there is also an announcement of the tragedy. "A sword will pierce the heart of Mary". To recall a movie title, there will be blood.

In this life there will be blood, and tears and pain. From my time here at Trinity, since June, I have seen pain and suffering. In our tradition of Christianity we sometimes say that the authentic follower of Jesus is NOT the person with all the answers – or all the degrees – or even the best words. No, the real follower of Jesus is the one who knows how to feed the sheep. To feed the sheep of our world demands compassion – and patience – and tenderness. It requires being true and real and humble. One person said that if you are going to feed the sheep of this world you can't be too full of yourself. Like communion bread you have to be taken – and blessed – and broken and shared.[iii] You don't need to have the right words, in fact, I've learned that words are the least important thing! Just be there, be present, be that someone who stands and offers the hug, or handshake or meal to a family who is hurting.

We think we need some Hollywood scene and say the right thing in a beautiful, eloquent speech. No, you don't. You just need to be present and listening.

A professor of theology at seminary once told me a story about how good wine is made. There are a few spots where good grapes can be grown because the climate in America is too perfect.

"Too perfect?!" I asked, "Perfect grapes make bad wine?"

"Yes," He responded, "For great wine to be made the grapes have to suffer. Suffering adds depth and builds character."

This is what life will do to your spiritual character. It adds character and depth. And you will suffer and wrestle with new concepts. New joys and new tragedies. However, the community here will help you through it. The community will help and although we might not understand it, we will get through it. This too shall pass.

Jesus said, "I am the vine…" (John 15:1) so that makes us grapes! We will be crushed, and stomped, and bruised, but we have each other and God is there and we can make something great! God is there even in the unexpected tragedies of our lives. We have the grace of God and the example of Jesus and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. When tragedy strikes, we're allowed to say OUCH and ask for help.

When i think of a good grape, Mother Teresa and Dalia Lama springs to mind, but the main example is a more personal one. I think of my GMA Bet. She was always positive and hopeful despite suffering with Rhuematoid Arthritius. I never heard her ask why did this happen to me? Christians get so focused on the why we lose focus. Our Muslim and Buddhist brothers and sisters don't ask this, they take it as a given that there will be suffering. They don't even bother to ask why, they just focus on dealing with it. This is something we do well to remember. It's not about hoping there won't be suffering, it's how we respond to it. As Nancy quoted in one of her sermon's this year, "10% of life is what happens to me, 90% is how i react to it." [iv]. When turmoil engulfs our lives, we should remember that Christmas is a never-ending story. Christmas is a reminder that “God so loved the world..” and God loves us. [v]

We don't love because it's easy or because we won't get hurt. We love despite it all. We love because you and I are here, now, it could have been otherwise. Jesus never said that following him, or even life for that matter, would be easy… he just said it would be worth it. AMEN.



________________________________________
[i] Radio Lab "Detective Stories" 9-11-2007, http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2007/07/29
[ii] RJ from "Saying Good-bye to Vicki" http://rj-whenlovecomestotown.blogspot.com/2008/12/saying-good-bye-to-vicki.html
[iii] RJ Again, dude was on it in this post!
[iv] Nancy quoted Charles Swindoll.
[v] Charita Goshay "Christmas is a never-ending Story" Canton Reposititory, 12-25-08. This 'n' that.