Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ –
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’’ Matthew 4:1-4
With the coming of the month of March, our liturgical calendar transitions from Epiphany to Lent. Epiphany was a season of proclamation and revelation, as Jesus was revealed to the Gentiles, was baptized, and began his teaching and healing ministry. Lent, by contrast, is a time of introspection, self-examination, and repentance. In a sense, in Epiphany we journey beyond ourselves outward in faith to share Christ with our neighbors. Lent, by contrast, is about the journey inward, as we examine our lives in the light of the cross of Christ.
During this season of Lent, I would encourage each of us to re-connect more deeply with our faith in Jesus. This year’s United Church of Christ’s Lenten devotional booklet, called “The Jesus Diaries”, offers thought-provoking mediations on the question “Who is Jesus to me?” from a variety of writers. See the article later in this newsletter for more information. In addition, as in past years, the Bridesburg Council of Churches will offer a series of Wednesday night Lenten services, beginning with Ash Wednesday on March 9 at Bridesburg Methodist. The services will rotate among the Bridesburg churches according to the schedule later in this newsletter; Emanuel Church will host services on Wednesdays, March 30 and April 13.
I’d also encourage us to be alert for signs of God’s presence in our every day lives. The Gospel for March 6 (Transfiguration Sunday), tells of a time when Jesus invited Peter, James and John for what started out as a mountain hike, but ended up as an encounter with the divine, as Jesus was revealed to them in a new way. (The Scripture reference is Matthew 17:1-9.) Our experience may not look like that experience, but if we are alert, we may find that God is present in our daily encounters with family, friends, coworkers, or in the ordinary events of the day. To quote Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
“Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only those who see, take off their shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
During this season of Lent, may we be alert to those times when we, too, stand on holy ground.
See you in church!
Pastor Dave
Bridesburg Council of Churches Lenten Schedule
(All Wednesday evening services at 7 p.m.,; most services are preceded by soup and/or refreshments)
March 9 (Ash Wednesday) Bridesburg Methodist
March 16 Bridesburg Baptist
March 23 Bethesda Methodist
March 30 Emanuel United Church of Christ
April 6 Bridesburg Presbyterian
April 13 Emanuel United Church of Christ
April 22, 1-2 pm Good Friday Service, Bridesburg Presbyterian
April 23 9:30 a.m. Easter Egg Hunt Bridesburg Presbyterian Churchyard
April 24, 7 a.m. Easter Sunrise Service Bridesburg Baptist
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Don't Worry?
(Scriptures: Isaiah 49:8-16a, Psalm 131, I Corinthians 4:1-5, Matthew 6:7-15, 19-34)
This Sunday’s Gospel reading is the last we’ll hear for a while from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. While we may have been comforted three weeks ago by the Beatitudes, for the past two Sundays Jesus has offered some very difficult sayings, telling us not only not to commit adultery and kill, but also not even to entertain lust or anger in our minds, not even to allow lust and anger to linger in our thoughts, but to let go of them without hesitation. Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell us to overcome our instincts for survival so that God can give us the gift of a love that will go the 2nd mile, a love that will extend beyond our friends to our enemies, a love willing to do good unto all. By now, we may feel that Jesus have gone from preaching to meddling, as the saying goes.
With this Sunday’s reading, we may think that Jesus has completely taken leave of his senses, that he’s gone from asking the impossible to ranting nonsense. After all, in this awful economy, when people are being fired left and right while the rich just get richer, how can we possibly take Jesus seriously when he tells us not to worry where our next meal is coming from? It may seem that Jesus has lost touch with reality. But I’m here to say that the opposite is true – Jesus is, figuratively speaking, jumping up and down trying to draw our attention from the distractions of our daily lives to the ultimate reality of the Kingdom of God.
I began the Gospel reading a bit earlier in Matthew 6 than the lectionary reading indicated, in order to include the Lord’s Prayer. We will pray the Lord’s Prayer following the sermon, as we do every Sunday when we worship here. It’s such a familiar prayer that it’s tempting to just recite it by rote, as if we were talking in our sleep, not unlike school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as nothing more than a jumble of syllables, with no real meaning. When treated like this, it becomes background noise, losing its power to transform our lives. But in our reading, Jesus lifted up several thoughts in connection with the Lord’s Prayer. First of all, it’s quite short and simple. Jesus specifically taught his followers not to heap up long, empty prayers full of flowery words, as if to try to impress God. But Jesus also says, in this connection, that our heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask. The prayer “give us this day our daily bread” is not intended to remind an absent-minded, forgetful, fumbling God: "Yo, don’t forget to feed us!" Rather, it’s to remind us of our utter daily dependency before God. At the end of the prayer, Jesus lifts up the necessity of forgiving the offenses of others, as we have been forgiven by God.
And then Jesus goes on to speak of what we do with the blessings with which God has blessed us. Do we, in our greed and our anxiety about tomorrow, hang onto them with a deathgrip, or do we make our blessings available to others. Jesus’ talk about “treasures in heaven” is his way of speaking of almsgiving, or sharing our treasure with the poor. When Jesus contrasts treasures on earth with treasures in heaven, he’s contrasting the behavior of hanging onto our wealth, vs sharing it with others.
And then Jesus speaks of the frustration of serving of trying to serve two masters who would pull us in opposite directions: inevitably we’ll love one and reject the other. Inevitably one master is not going to be happy with us. In the same way, serving Mammon – figuratively, the god of money, that which for many represents prosperity and comfort – will lead us to neglect our relationship with God, just as serving God will inevitably lead us not to be invested in our own prosperity and comfort.
Fortunately Jesus does not leave us, in the words of the old Mary McGregor song, “torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool…..” – he gives us a definite shove in the direction of serving God, and letting the other stuff happen as it happens. Just as Jesus said in his lead-in to the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus again reminds us that God already knows we need food and clothing and shelter, and that if God lovingly provides for lilies and sparrows that are here today and gone tomorrow or next week, how much more so will God lovingly provide for our needs. Jesus knows that if we’re freed up from our obsessive focuses on ourselves, our own needs, our own wants, our own wants that pretend to be needs, we’ll be liberated to love God and neighbor. In a society that’s obsessed with looking out for number one – and that describes the society of Jesus’ day, as well as our society and pretty much every human society on the planet before or since – Jesus is trying to build an alternative society in which, with the real number one, God, already looking out for us, we can care for the welfare of others.
“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or wear…” – that would pretty much put out business the advertising industry, which succeeds precisely by getting us to worry about just those things, and more. Meanwhile, it’s a measure of how utterly co-opted by American materialism, how utterly sucked into the world’s way of doing things, much of our country’s religious establishment is that, by and large, most churches aren’t even trying to create that alternative society of which Jesus spoke. By and large, conservative churches and religious leaders support political leaders who are trying to shred what remains of our country’s social safety net, trying to destroy whatever ability those on the margins of our society have to better themselves. Exhibit A is what’s happening in Wisconsin, with the newly-elected governor and legislature engaging in union-busting tactics. And this trend has spread to other states, with the enthusiastic support of many in the church, who try to let themselves off the hook of their guilty consciences by handing out a few food baskets at Christmas. What are folks supposed to live on the rest of the year? The wealthy of our time, have increased their wealth by distracting folks like us, by setting up state workers and union members as scapegoats and telling us that these scapegoats have life too easy, meanwhile the wealthy are picking our back pockets while our attention is diverted. America today has the greatest inequality of wealth that we’ve had in nearly 100 years – and it’s growing. Talk about powers and principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places!! And many TV and radio preachers, rather than combating this spiritual wickedness, instead work to get their share of the action, leading their supporters to send in whatever little money they have left, mopping up anything their listeners may have left over. All of this blatant greed is million miles away from anything Jesus preached. While many of our conservative churches try to make morality all about sex, certain kinds of sex, anyway – under the title of “family values” – but are strangely silent on the topic of wealth and the greed that comes with it – Jesus seldom spoke about sex, but was an absolute pain in the neck on the subject of money, going on and on about the spiritual danger of greed. The United Church of Christ, for our part, has echoed Jesus’ message about the need to overcome greed, to share our treasure with the poor, but we’re a voice crying in the wilderness, heard by few, ignored by most. As has been said in various ways by many different people – from Gandhi to German Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Pearl S. Buck to Hubert H Humphrey – “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” By that measure, I’d have to say our American society is failing that test, miserably. Not only are we as a society failing, we’re not even trying to get it right.
Having reminded his listeners that as God cares for the grass of the fields and the birds of the air, God will care for us – having told us what we shouldn’t obsess over, Jesus tells us what we should focus on – and it’s what we sang about during the offering: Seek first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness, and all this other stuff will be added to us. Now the kingdom of God is not just some ethereal realm, pie in the sky by and by when we die. Seek first the kingdom of God – where the last, the least, and the lost are cared for, where nobody is left to drop out of the bottom of society, where love of God is inseparable from love of neighbor, even those neighbors we may not like very much, who make us uncomfortable, who make our skin crawl – those are the neighbors God has commanded us to love. Remember the words of our reading from Isaiah, which tell us what our purpose is: “I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, "Come out," to those who are in darkness, "Show yourselves." They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.” This is a picture of how God wants us to live, and how God wants us to act toward those on the margins of our society. This is a picture of the Kingdom of God, which will be fully realized at the end of time – but which we begin to experience here and now as followers of Jesus, as disciples of Christ.
Seek first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and not our own comfort and convenience. Seek first the kingdom of God, not just when the sun is shining and the birds are singing – Jesus has no need of fair weather friends – but when it’s stormy weather, when we have to plod through puddles and slog through snowdrifts to seek it. May we at Emanuel Church not be fair weather friends to Jesus, but seek first God’s kingdom, that our neighbors here in Bridesburg and our neighbors far away may receive the blessings of God….and that in being a blessing to others, we too may be blessed. Amen.
**************
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Bridesburg. www.emanuelphila.org
This Sunday’s Gospel reading is the last we’ll hear for a while from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. While we may have been comforted three weeks ago by the Beatitudes, for the past two Sundays Jesus has offered some very difficult sayings, telling us not only not to commit adultery and kill, but also not even to entertain lust or anger in our minds, not even to allow lust and anger to linger in our thoughts, but to let go of them without hesitation. Last Sunday we heard Jesus tell us to overcome our instincts for survival so that God can give us the gift of a love that will go the 2nd mile, a love that will extend beyond our friends to our enemies, a love willing to do good unto all. By now, we may feel that Jesus have gone from preaching to meddling, as the saying goes.
With this Sunday’s reading, we may think that Jesus has completely taken leave of his senses, that he’s gone from asking the impossible to ranting nonsense. After all, in this awful economy, when people are being fired left and right while the rich just get richer, how can we possibly take Jesus seriously when he tells us not to worry where our next meal is coming from? It may seem that Jesus has lost touch with reality. But I’m here to say that the opposite is true – Jesus is, figuratively speaking, jumping up and down trying to draw our attention from the distractions of our daily lives to the ultimate reality of the Kingdom of God.
I began the Gospel reading a bit earlier in Matthew 6 than the lectionary reading indicated, in order to include the Lord’s Prayer. We will pray the Lord’s Prayer following the sermon, as we do every Sunday when we worship here. It’s such a familiar prayer that it’s tempting to just recite it by rote, as if we were talking in our sleep, not unlike school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as nothing more than a jumble of syllables, with no real meaning. When treated like this, it becomes background noise, losing its power to transform our lives. But in our reading, Jesus lifted up several thoughts in connection with the Lord’s Prayer. First of all, it’s quite short and simple. Jesus specifically taught his followers not to heap up long, empty prayers full of flowery words, as if to try to impress God. But Jesus also says, in this connection, that our heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask. The prayer “give us this day our daily bread” is not intended to remind an absent-minded, forgetful, fumbling God: "Yo, don’t forget to feed us!" Rather, it’s to remind us of our utter daily dependency before God. At the end of the prayer, Jesus lifts up the necessity of forgiving the offenses of others, as we have been forgiven by God.
And then Jesus goes on to speak of what we do with the blessings with which God has blessed us. Do we, in our greed and our anxiety about tomorrow, hang onto them with a deathgrip, or do we make our blessings available to others. Jesus’ talk about “treasures in heaven” is his way of speaking of almsgiving, or sharing our treasure with the poor. When Jesus contrasts treasures on earth with treasures in heaven, he’s contrasting the behavior of hanging onto our wealth, vs sharing it with others.
And then Jesus speaks of the frustration of serving of trying to serve two masters who would pull us in opposite directions: inevitably we’ll love one and reject the other. Inevitably one master is not going to be happy with us. In the same way, serving Mammon – figuratively, the god of money, that which for many represents prosperity and comfort – will lead us to neglect our relationship with God, just as serving God will inevitably lead us not to be invested in our own prosperity and comfort.
Fortunately Jesus does not leave us, in the words of the old Mary McGregor song, “torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool…..” – he gives us a definite shove in the direction of serving God, and letting the other stuff happen as it happens. Just as Jesus said in his lead-in to the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus again reminds us that God already knows we need food and clothing and shelter, and that if God lovingly provides for lilies and sparrows that are here today and gone tomorrow or next week, how much more so will God lovingly provide for our needs. Jesus knows that if we’re freed up from our obsessive focuses on ourselves, our own needs, our own wants, our own wants that pretend to be needs, we’ll be liberated to love God and neighbor. In a society that’s obsessed with looking out for number one – and that describes the society of Jesus’ day, as well as our society and pretty much every human society on the planet before or since – Jesus is trying to build an alternative society in which, with the real number one, God, already looking out for us, we can care for the welfare of others.
“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or wear…” – that would pretty much put out business the advertising industry, which succeeds precisely by getting us to worry about just those things, and more. Meanwhile, it’s a measure of how utterly co-opted by American materialism, how utterly sucked into the world’s way of doing things, much of our country’s religious establishment is that, by and large, most churches aren’t even trying to create that alternative society of which Jesus spoke. By and large, conservative churches and religious leaders support political leaders who are trying to shred what remains of our country’s social safety net, trying to destroy whatever ability those on the margins of our society have to better themselves. Exhibit A is what’s happening in Wisconsin, with the newly-elected governor and legislature engaging in union-busting tactics. And this trend has spread to other states, with the enthusiastic support of many in the church, who try to let themselves off the hook of their guilty consciences by handing out a few food baskets at Christmas. What are folks supposed to live on the rest of the year? The wealthy of our time, have increased their wealth by distracting folks like us, by setting up state workers and union members as scapegoats and telling us that these scapegoats have life too easy, meanwhile the wealthy are picking our back pockets while our attention is diverted. America today has the greatest inequality of wealth that we’ve had in nearly 100 years – and it’s growing. Talk about powers and principalities, and spiritual wickedness in high places!! And many TV and radio preachers, rather than combating this spiritual wickedness, instead work to get their share of the action, leading their supporters to send in whatever little money they have left, mopping up anything their listeners may have left over. All of this blatant greed is million miles away from anything Jesus preached. While many of our conservative churches try to make morality all about sex, certain kinds of sex, anyway – under the title of “family values” – but are strangely silent on the topic of wealth and the greed that comes with it – Jesus seldom spoke about sex, but was an absolute pain in the neck on the subject of money, going on and on about the spiritual danger of greed. The United Church of Christ, for our part, has echoed Jesus’ message about the need to overcome greed, to share our treasure with the poor, but we’re a voice crying in the wilderness, heard by few, ignored by most. As has been said in various ways by many different people – from Gandhi to German Christian martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Pearl S. Buck to Hubert H Humphrey – “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” By that measure, I’d have to say our American society is failing that test, miserably. Not only are we as a society failing, we’re not even trying to get it right.
Having reminded his listeners that as God cares for the grass of the fields and the birds of the air, God will care for us – having told us what we shouldn’t obsess over, Jesus tells us what we should focus on – and it’s what we sang about during the offering: Seek first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness, and all this other stuff will be added to us. Now the kingdom of God is not just some ethereal realm, pie in the sky by and by when we die. Seek first the kingdom of God – where the last, the least, and the lost are cared for, where nobody is left to drop out of the bottom of society, where love of God is inseparable from love of neighbor, even those neighbors we may not like very much, who make us uncomfortable, who make our skin crawl – those are the neighbors God has commanded us to love. Remember the words of our reading from Isaiah, which tell us what our purpose is: “I have kept you and given you as a covenant to the people, to establish the land, to apportion the desolate heritages; saying to the prisoners, "Come out," to those who are in darkness, "Show yourselves." They shall feed along the ways, on all the bare heights shall be their pasture; they shall not hunger or thirst, neither scorching wind nor sun shall strike them down, for he who has pity on them will lead them, and by springs of water will guide them.” This is a picture of how God wants us to live, and how God wants us to act toward those on the margins of our society. This is a picture of the Kingdom of God, which will be fully realized at the end of time – but which we begin to experience here and now as followers of Jesus, as disciples of Christ.
Seek first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and not our own comfort and convenience. Seek first the kingdom of God, not just when the sun is shining and the birds are singing – Jesus has no need of fair weather friends – but when it’s stormy weather, when we have to plod through puddles and slog through snowdrifts to seek it. May we at Emanuel Church not be fair weather friends to Jesus, but seek first God’s kingdom, that our neighbors here in Bridesburg and our neighbors far away may receive the blessings of God….and that in being a blessing to others, we too may be blessed. Amen.
**************
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Bridesburg. www.emanuelphila.org
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
"Leapin' Lizards!"
(Scriptures: Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18
I Corinthians 3:10-23 Matthew 5:38-48)
You may remember the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings, based on the books by J R R Tolkien. Sauron, the evil one, forged the One Ring, which gave great power over others to anyone who wore it. However, with the power of the ring came corruption and domination by Sauron – it was Sauron’s “one ring to rule them all.” Those who hoped to use the powers of the ring for good, even those with the purest of intentions, even those who may have wanted to use the power of the ring to overthrow the evil Sauron, found themselves irresistibly drawn to acts of domination, violence, the ways of death. The only way to break the power of the ring, and ultimately to defeat Sauron, was to destroy the ring, to throw it into the fire so it could be melted and never be restored.
Tolkien’s stories – and JRR Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic – could almost be taken as allegories to illustrate Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, which form our Gospel reading for today. In our reading today, Jesus continues to draw a contrast between the former ways of doing things and the new life within the Realm or Reign of God. We have a series of contrasts between the way life has always been – “You have heard it said of old, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; you have heard it said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” These former ways are drawn from Torah – mostly, anyway; the “hate your enemy” part is not – but mostly from the Bible of Jesus' day. And they had a place: allowing the people eye for eye, tooth for tooth would restrain them from taking the eyes and teeth, not only of the offender, but of his whole family – after all, an eye for an eye is better than ten eyes for an eye, ten teeth for a tooth.”
But Jesus is calling his hearers to a standard of conduct that goes far beyond keeping a running tally of all the people who have offended against us, far beyond having some people on our “good” list and others on our “bad” list.
Researchers studying the mind have compared our brains to those of other animals. While human brains are much more developed than those of animals, there are some parts of our brains that are said to be very similar to those of lizards and other reptiles. This part of the brain is said to control much of our automatic or instinctual behavior – making sure we breathe and eat, but also controlling our ability to monitor our environment for potential danger, or to take advantage of something or someone else’s weaknesses, our impulse to fight or flee when we’re threatened, our desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain, our desire for safety and security – in a word, our survival instincts. Behavioral researchers sometimes say that people who behave in a selfish, angry way, as if they were being attacked or their survival was otherwise being threatened, that these people are thinking with their lizard brains. And those lizard brains, or survival instincts, are there for a reason. They’re really good at keeping us alive. The problem is, they’re really, really bad at telling us how to live peaceably with other people, how to share, how to cooperate, how to be friends, how to love, how to live in community. If we act as if our existence is a tooth and claw fight for survival with everyone around us, people will not line up to be friends with us. We’ll survive, but our life will be a lonely lifelong running battle with everyone and everything around us, until we moment we draw our final breath.
Much of the behavior that Jesus classifies under “you have heard it said” is behavior that appeals to our lizard brains. Examples: If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you back. You take my parking spot; I'll key your car. After all, we tell ourselves, that’s only fair. But, as it has also been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth produces nothing but eyeless, toothless people. The new life Christ offers can’t be built on that petty “tit for tat” sense of “fairness”, can’t be built on “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Jesus is asking his listeners to rise above their basic survival instincts, their lizard brains, to behave in ways that show that Christ is in us, that we are living the new life of those who are part of the Realm of God. It’s a life in which we act with love toward those who treat us with contempt. It’s a life in which we do not respond to evil with more evil, but, as Paul says, to overcome evil with good. We cannot use violent words or actions and then say that the ends justify the means, that we can use violent, hateful methods to coerce people into behaving as we wish. To build on the Lord of the Rings analogy with which I started, those who sought to use the power of the One Ring, even with the best of intentions, were inevitably corrupted and enslaved by the power of the ring. In the same way, when we act in death-dealing ways, even with what seem like noble intentions, both our actions and ourselves will be corrupted in the process. Or as the rather troubling saying goes, when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into us.
We can overcome hate, not be returning the hate, but by acting in love. Or as Edwin Markham wrote, ‘He drew a circle that shut me out – heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that took him in. In the same way, if someone compels us to go one mile with them, one response would be to kick and scream and drag our feet all the way. Another response would be to make the choice – a free choice now, not coerced, of going a second mile with them.
Overcoming hate with love is not a quick process. Nor is it free of pain. It can be quite costly. In an age that loves instant fixes, this is not one of them. It’s not like a sledgehammer smashing the walls of hatred and injustice. It's more like a bush sprouting near a wall, whose roots and branches eventually crack and break through the wall. In the same way, love can overcome hate, not by answering violence with violence, but by slowly and steadily sprouting and growing and undermining and ultimately overwhelming it.
When we hear Jesus say, "Love your enemies," we likely want to start making a list of exceptions: surely Jesus didn't mean (Muslims, gays, immigrants, fill in the blank....) But that is part of the “love your neighbor but hate your enemy” way of thinking that Jesus explicitly rejected and wanted his followers to get past. Any determinations about who is outside the circle of God’s love are God’s alone to make, emphatically not ours, and it is deeply, even profoundly sinful to exalt ourselves to the point where we attempt to take on prerogatives that are God’s alone – indeed, that’s the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount does not give us permission to hate anyone. We are to treat everyone as a beloved child of God. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan cast as a neighbor a despised foreigner who would have been considered an enemy by Jesus’ listeners. So even our enemy is our neighbor. Even those with whom we have profound and bitter disagreements, even those who have hurt us badly, even those we consider great sinners before the Almighty – we are to love and even to go before God in prayer for them. No exceptions.
What does it look like? We might remember Gandhi’s nonviolent leadership of India’s independence movement, or the black civil rights struggle in our own country. Those protesting the status quo were very effective at making their views known. But they did so non-violently, and they did so in a way intended to appeal to the best in others, even in those whose views were most steadfastly prejudiced. Now, this is not a soft, sappy, warm and fuzzy, romantic kind of love that would pretend that our enemies haven’t hurt us. Indeed, it’s not about us and our feelings at all. Rather, it’s about willing ourselves to demonstrate a durable love that keeps on going despite the hurt. These methods do not promise instant success, and our culture is much more enamored of solving problems quickly by shooting people and blowing things up. This kind of love is costly – of those who worked for India’s independence and of those who marched for civil rights in our country, many were injured; some were killed. But many have found that nonviolence witness, however costly, is the way to social change, not to demolish an enemy, but to overcome the enemy with good. Sometimes what seems like the long way ‘round may be the short way home.
A word to those in abusive relationships: it must be said that Jesus’ words have been misused by those who abuse spouses and partners and children, to keep those they abuse in their place. These are difficult, incredibly painful situations. Sometimes the sins of others have hurt us so badly that for our own survival, we need to leave the situation. I do not believe Jesus calls us as Christians to be punching bags for the amusement of others or doormats for abusive people to wipe their feet on. Even so – even though we may need to get ourselves out of these situations, may need to get some emotional or even physical distance from an abusive relationship or break it off for a time – maybe for a very long time – we should do so in a way that does not leave us seething for the rest of our lives in anger and bitterness toward that person. Even at a distance, we can pray for those who have hurt us, that God will heal the situation and change their hearts. There may be times when that’s all we can do – but these costly prayers can be powerful when brought before the throne of Grace. Where we cannot for our own health and safety be with an abusive family member, our prayers can go the distance.
Jesus concludes this section of his sermon by saying, “Be perfect.” (To which I'm apt to snark, "sure, I'll get right on it....") He’s not using the word in the sense of saying “don’t make any mistakes ever,” but rather, the sense of being complete, wholehearted, not doing things halfway. Luke’s version of the text – in Luke 6: 36 quotes Jesus as saying, “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” And in Jesus’ parable of the rich young ruler, after the young man had told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments, Jesus says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and come, follow me.” Jesus’ words “be perfect” are about being merciful, generous, abounding in love even for those who are utterly unloveable. It looks impossible – and from a human standpoint, it is impossible. We cannot do any of this work on our own. It is only by God’s grace that we are given the new life in Christ that enables us to live in accordance with the words of Jesus. And, yes, sometimes our lizard brains will take over, and we’ll behave in ways that are selfish, greedy, vengeful. Fortunately, God likewise does not take eye for eye, tooth for tooth, return sin with sin. We are called to take our sins to the Lord in prayer, to take our sin to the throne of grace and leave it there.
I’ll close with a poem by Kent Keith, called “Anyway,” which was adopted by Mother Teresa and put on the wall of her children’s home in Calcutta. Some of you have heard it before. For this morning, I’d like us to think of it as a dialogue between our self-centered, fearful survival oriented lizard brains and the Spirit of Christ within us.
"People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway."
Amen.
********
Emanuel United Church of Christ welcomes you to worship with us at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings. We're on Fillmore St (
I Corinthians 3:10-23 Matthew 5:38-48)
You may remember the movie trilogy Lord of the Rings, based on the books by J R R Tolkien. Sauron, the evil one, forged the One Ring, which gave great power over others to anyone who wore it. However, with the power of the ring came corruption and domination by Sauron – it was Sauron’s “one ring to rule them all.” Those who hoped to use the powers of the ring for good, even those with the purest of intentions, even those who may have wanted to use the power of the ring to overthrow the evil Sauron, found themselves irresistibly drawn to acts of domination, violence, the ways of death. The only way to break the power of the ring, and ultimately to defeat Sauron, was to destroy the ring, to throw it into the fire so it could be melted and never be restored.
Tolkien’s stories – and JRR Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic – could almost be taken as allegories to illustrate Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, which form our Gospel reading for today. In our reading today, Jesus continues to draw a contrast between the former ways of doing things and the new life within the Realm or Reign of God. We have a series of contrasts between the way life has always been – “You have heard it said of old, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; you have heard it said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” These former ways are drawn from Torah – mostly, anyway; the “hate your enemy” part is not – but mostly from the Bible of Jesus' day. And they had a place: allowing the people eye for eye, tooth for tooth would restrain them from taking the eyes and teeth, not only of the offender, but of his whole family – after all, an eye for an eye is better than ten eyes for an eye, ten teeth for a tooth.”
But Jesus is calling his hearers to a standard of conduct that goes far beyond keeping a running tally of all the people who have offended against us, far beyond having some people on our “good” list and others on our “bad” list.
Researchers studying the mind have compared our brains to those of other animals. While human brains are much more developed than those of animals, there are some parts of our brains that are said to be very similar to those of lizards and other reptiles. This part of the brain is said to control much of our automatic or instinctual behavior – making sure we breathe and eat, but also controlling our ability to monitor our environment for potential danger, or to take advantage of something or someone else’s weaknesses, our impulse to fight or flee when we’re threatened, our desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain, our desire for safety and security – in a word, our survival instincts. Behavioral researchers sometimes say that people who behave in a selfish, angry way, as if they were being attacked or their survival was otherwise being threatened, that these people are thinking with their lizard brains. And those lizard brains, or survival instincts, are there for a reason. They’re really good at keeping us alive. The problem is, they’re really, really bad at telling us how to live peaceably with other people, how to share, how to cooperate, how to be friends, how to love, how to live in community. If we act as if our existence is a tooth and claw fight for survival with everyone around us, people will not line up to be friends with us. We’ll survive, but our life will be a lonely lifelong running battle with everyone and everything around us, until we moment we draw our final breath.
Much of the behavior that Jesus classifies under “you have heard it said” is behavior that appeals to our lizard brains. Examples: If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. You hurt me, I’ll hurt you back. You take my parking spot; I'll key your car. After all, we tell ourselves, that’s only fair. But, as it has also been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth produces nothing but eyeless, toothless people. The new life Christ offers can’t be built on that petty “tit for tat” sense of “fairness”, can’t be built on “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Jesus is asking his listeners to rise above their basic survival instincts, their lizard brains, to behave in ways that show that Christ is in us, that we are living the new life of those who are part of the Realm of God. It’s a life in which we act with love toward those who treat us with contempt. It’s a life in which we do not respond to evil with more evil, but, as Paul says, to overcome evil with good. We cannot use violent words or actions and then say that the ends justify the means, that we can use violent, hateful methods to coerce people into behaving as we wish. To build on the Lord of the Rings analogy with which I started, those who sought to use the power of the One Ring, even with the best of intentions, were inevitably corrupted and enslaved by the power of the ring. In the same way, when we act in death-dealing ways, even with what seem like noble intentions, both our actions and ourselves will be corrupted in the process. Or as the rather troubling saying goes, when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into us.
We can overcome hate, not be returning the hate, but by acting in love. Or as Edwin Markham wrote, ‘He drew a circle that shut me out – heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that took him in. In the same way, if someone compels us to go one mile with them, one response would be to kick and scream and drag our feet all the way. Another response would be to make the choice – a free choice now, not coerced, of going a second mile with them.
Overcoming hate with love is not a quick process. Nor is it free of pain. It can be quite costly. In an age that loves instant fixes, this is not one of them. It’s not like a sledgehammer smashing the walls of hatred and injustice. It's more like a bush sprouting near a wall, whose roots and branches eventually crack and break through the wall. In the same way, love can overcome hate, not by answering violence with violence, but by slowly and steadily sprouting and growing and undermining and ultimately overwhelming it.
When we hear Jesus say, "Love your enemies," we likely want to start making a list of exceptions: surely Jesus didn't mean (Muslims, gays, immigrants, fill in the blank....) But that is part of the “love your neighbor but hate your enemy” way of thinking that Jesus explicitly rejected and wanted his followers to get past. Any determinations about who is outside the circle of God’s love are God’s alone to make, emphatically not ours, and it is deeply, even profoundly sinful to exalt ourselves to the point where we attempt to take on prerogatives that are God’s alone – indeed, that’s the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount does not give us permission to hate anyone. We are to treat everyone as a beloved child of God. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan cast as a neighbor a despised foreigner who would have been considered an enemy by Jesus’ listeners. So even our enemy is our neighbor. Even those with whom we have profound and bitter disagreements, even those who have hurt us badly, even those we consider great sinners before the Almighty – we are to love and even to go before God in prayer for them. No exceptions.
What does it look like? We might remember Gandhi’s nonviolent leadership of India’s independence movement, or the black civil rights struggle in our own country. Those protesting the status quo were very effective at making their views known. But they did so non-violently, and they did so in a way intended to appeal to the best in others, even in those whose views were most steadfastly prejudiced. Now, this is not a soft, sappy, warm and fuzzy, romantic kind of love that would pretend that our enemies haven’t hurt us. Indeed, it’s not about us and our feelings at all. Rather, it’s about willing ourselves to demonstrate a durable love that keeps on going despite the hurt. These methods do not promise instant success, and our culture is much more enamored of solving problems quickly by shooting people and blowing things up. This kind of love is costly – of those who worked for India’s independence and of those who marched for civil rights in our country, many were injured; some were killed. But many have found that nonviolence witness, however costly, is the way to social change, not to demolish an enemy, but to overcome the enemy with good. Sometimes what seems like the long way ‘round may be the short way home.
A word to those in abusive relationships: it must be said that Jesus’ words have been misused by those who abuse spouses and partners and children, to keep those they abuse in their place. These are difficult, incredibly painful situations. Sometimes the sins of others have hurt us so badly that for our own survival, we need to leave the situation. I do not believe Jesus calls us as Christians to be punching bags for the amusement of others or doormats for abusive people to wipe their feet on. Even so – even though we may need to get ourselves out of these situations, may need to get some emotional or even physical distance from an abusive relationship or break it off for a time – maybe for a very long time – we should do so in a way that does not leave us seething for the rest of our lives in anger and bitterness toward that person. Even at a distance, we can pray for those who have hurt us, that God will heal the situation and change their hearts. There may be times when that’s all we can do – but these costly prayers can be powerful when brought before the throne of Grace. Where we cannot for our own health and safety be with an abusive family member, our prayers can go the distance.
Jesus concludes this section of his sermon by saying, “Be perfect.” (To which I'm apt to snark, "sure, I'll get right on it....") He’s not using the word in the sense of saying “don’t make any mistakes ever,” but rather, the sense of being complete, wholehearted, not doing things halfway. Luke’s version of the text – in Luke 6: 36 quotes Jesus as saying, “be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” And in Jesus’ parable of the rich young ruler, after the young man had told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments, Jesus says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and come, follow me.” Jesus’ words “be perfect” are about being merciful, generous, abounding in love even for those who are utterly unloveable. It looks impossible – and from a human standpoint, it is impossible. We cannot do any of this work on our own. It is only by God’s grace that we are given the new life in Christ that enables us to live in accordance with the words of Jesus. And, yes, sometimes our lizard brains will take over, and we’ll behave in ways that are selfish, greedy, vengeful. Fortunately, God likewise does not take eye for eye, tooth for tooth, return sin with sin. We are called to take our sins to the Lord in prayer, to take our sin to the throne of grace and leave it there.
I’ll close with a poem by Kent Keith, called “Anyway,” which was adopted by Mother Teresa and put on the wall of her children’s home in Calcutta. Some of you have heard it before. For this morning, I’d like us to think of it as a dialogue between our self-centered, fearful survival oriented lizard brains and the Spirit of Christ within us.
"People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway."
Amen.
********
Emanuel United Church of Christ welcomes you to worship with us at 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings. We're on Fillmore St (
The Heart of the Matter
(Scriptures: Deuteronomy 30:15-20
I Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-37)
Are there any fans of the TV show “Law and Order” in the house this morning? Every episode begins with a standard introduction: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” This introduction pretty much sets the agenda for the show – for the first half of the show, more or less, we watch the police investigation, and for the second half, the criminal trial plays out. Both sections of the show have their twists and turns, but the unfolding of the trial can often be infuriating, as decisions about the inclusion or exclusion of evidence often turn on technicalities. Often both the district attorney and the defense lawyer know perfectly well that the defendant is guilty – at least of something – but the whether the jury gets to see various pieces of evidence depends on the manner in which the evidence was obtained, how a witness was interrogated, that sort of thing. These rules of evidence are in place for good reasons – we don’t want police breaking down the doors of random citizens at 4 in the morning, we don’t want false confessions extracted under torture or people locked away for life on false evidence planted by police. But lawyers on both sides of the trial are experts at exploiting loopholes in the wording of statutes or case law to include or exclude pieces of information from a trial.
This morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The ministry of Jesus represents the reign of God breaking into a world corrupted by sin. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is an extended description of life within the Kingdom or Reign of God. As Christians, we live in a time of transition, when God’s reign is already present, but not fully – we’re caught in the tension between God ruling now, but not yet fully. Because of this tension, Jesus’ description of life under the Reign of God will likely make us rather uneasy….we recognize the utter righteousness of what Jesus says, and yet it is far beyond our tendency to want to settle, not for what is best, but for what is “good enough to get by”.
Jesus teachings on murder and adultery begin with the basics, both for his original listeners and for us. The Ten Commandments, which most of us learned as children, include the words “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Even those with little or no religious training know that killing and adultery are wrong. But here’s where our inner lawyer wants to argue us into settling for obeying the letter of the law….for example, I don’t think anyone here has murdered anyone in cold blood, I hope not anyway, so we can claim obedience to that commandment against killing. Mission accomplished! But Jesus goes beyond the mere letter of the law, to speak of the intent of the law, the spirit of the law, we might say. Murder destroys our relationship with the one killed; once we’ve killed someone, it’s obviously not possible to relate to that person again. There’s no putting the pieces back together again, no turning back the clock. But Jesus says that anger and insults break relationship in the same way that murder does. Perhaps there’s some family member from whom we’re alienated, with whom we’ve stopped speaking, and if someone asks about that person, we respond, in words from the HBO series the Sopranos, “he’s dead to me.” That’s a bit of a cliché, but let’s let those words sink in…..“He’s dead….to me.” Any relationship I had with that person is dead, and as far as I’m concerned, the person himself may as well be six feet under. Anger and insults are the first steps on a slippery slope that, if followed to its conclusion, leads to murder. So for Jesus, staying in relationship, even with a difficult person, is key: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” This is why our order of worship places the confession of sin and assurance of pardon so early in the service: before we can be open to truly hearing God’s word and responding with praise and offerings, we need to restore our relationship with God and neighbor by confessing our sin, not just in private to God, but publicly, as the gathered body of Christ.
In the same way, Jesus starts out with the familiar words of the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Again, our inner lawyer wants to get into technicalities about whether this act or that act constitutes sex or adultery, into technicalities about what the meaning of “is” is. But Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law, to the intent of preserving relationship. Jesus recognized that fantasizing about someone other than our spouse or partner, has the potential to go from thoughts to actions, to breaking up a family or household. Fantasies are about pictures, about surfaces, about what’s on the outside; they have nothing to do with really knowing another person, their hopes and dreams, what makes the other person tick. A lasting relationship can’t be built on the shifting sand of fantasy. And again, Jesus is all maintaining relationship. We might also remember that, in Jesus day, there was little safety net for an unmarried woman, so for a man to divorce his wife – and that’s generally the way things worked back then – would be to condemn her to poverty and misery for the remainder of her life. So Jesus’ prohibition of divorce was also about social justice for wives. He wouldn’t give his listeners – and won’t give us - an easy out to divorce a spouse just because, “the old grey mare just ain’t what she, or he, used to be, many long years ago….” We'd like to think that in the church, things would be different - but recent headlines show that church folk can be among the worst offenders.
In our Epistle reading, Paul saw the squabbles of the Corinthian church as a symptom that they were still spiritually immature, in need of milk and pablum rather than solid food. It’s about helping us mature in our faith, growing to the point where, in Paul’s words, we can stomach solid food rather than milk, meat rather than pablum. Our reading from Deuteronomy offers us a stark choice: life and prosperity, or death and adversity. God calls us to choose life, to speak and live in ways that are lifegiving, that build up rather than tear down, that keep us in relationship rather than separating us into warring camps.
The bottom line of Jesus’ sermon is the two great commandments: love of God, love of neighbor. It’s about preserving our relationships with God and neighbor, forthright relationships in which we say what we mean and mean what we say, where “yes” means “yes” and “no” means “no”, relationships transformed by the saving, lifegiving love of Jesus Christ. As Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote, “the holiest object presented to your senses, next to the blessed sacrament itself, is your neighbor.” And so Jesus’ sermon is, ultimately, about recognizing the sacred presence of God, not only within the walls of the church, but in our neighbor, our coworker, our children, our spouse – the sacred presence of God in each of us, a sacred presence not to be leered at or sneered at or dismissed. And this sacred presence of God is also within our neighbors, here in Bridesburg, and wherever God may lead us. May we honor God’s presence in all with whom we come in contact. Amen.
***********
Come join us for worship at 10 am at Emanuel UCC. We're on Fillmore St (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
I Corinthians 3:1-9 Matthew 5:21-37)
Are there any fans of the TV show “Law and Order” in the house this morning? Every episode begins with a standard introduction: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories.” This introduction pretty much sets the agenda for the show – for the first half of the show, more or less, we watch the police investigation, and for the second half, the criminal trial plays out. Both sections of the show have their twists and turns, but the unfolding of the trial can often be infuriating, as decisions about the inclusion or exclusion of evidence often turn on technicalities. Often both the district attorney and the defense lawyer know perfectly well that the defendant is guilty – at least of something – but the whether the jury gets to see various pieces of evidence depends on the manner in which the evidence was obtained, how a witness was interrogated, that sort of thing. These rules of evidence are in place for good reasons – we don’t want police breaking down the doors of random citizens at 4 in the morning, we don’t want false confessions extracted under torture or people locked away for life on false evidence planted by police. But lawyers on both sides of the trial are experts at exploiting loopholes in the wording of statutes or case law to include or exclude pieces of information from a trial.
This morning’s Gospel reading from Matthew is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The ministry of Jesus represents the reign of God breaking into a world corrupted by sin. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is an extended description of life within the Kingdom or Reign of God. As Christians, we live in a time of transition, when God’s reign is already present, but not fully – we’re caught in the tension between God ruling now, but not yet fully. Because of this tension, Jesus’ description of life under the Reign of God will likely make us rather uneasy….we recognize the utter righteousness of what Jesus says, and yet it is far beyond our tendency to want to settle, not for what is best, but for what is “good enough to get by”.
Jesus teachings on murder and adultery begin with the basics, both for his original listeners and for us. The Ten Commandments, which most of us learned as children, include the words “thou shalt not kill” and “thou shalt not commit adultery.” Even those with little or no religious training know that killing and adultery are wrong. But here’s where our inner lawyer wants to argue us into settling for obeying the letter of the law….for example, I don’t think anyone here has murdered anyone in cold blood, I hope not anyway, so we can claim obedience to that commandment against killing. Mission accomplished! But Jesus goes beyond the mere letter of the law, to speak of the intent of the law, the spirit of the law, we might say. Murder destroys our relationship with the one killed; once we’ve killed someone, it’s obviously not possible to relate to that person again. There’s no putting the pieces back together again, no turning back the clock. But Jesus says that anger and insults break relationship in the same way that murder does. Perhaps there’s some family member from whom we’re alienated, with whom we’ve stopped speaking, and if someone asks about that person, we respond, in words from the HBO series the Sopranos, “he’s dead to me.” That’s a bit of a cliché, but let’s let those words sink in…..“He’s dead….to me.” Any relationship I had with that person is dead, and as far as I’m concerned, the person himself may as well be six feet under. Anger and insults are the first steps on a slippery slope that, if followed to its conclusion, leads to murder. So for Jesus, staying in relationship, even with a difficult person, is key: “So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” This is why our order of worship places the confession of sin and assurance of pardon so early in the service: before we can be open to truly hearing God’s word and responding with praise and offerings, we need to restore our relationship with God and neighbor by confessing our sin, not just in private to God, but publicly, as the gathered body of Christ.
In the same way, Jesus starts out with the familiar words of the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Again, our inner lawyer wants to get into technicalities about whether this act or that act constitutes sex or adultery, into technicalities about what the meaning of “is” is. But Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law, to the intent of preserving relationship. Jesus recognized that fantasizing about someone other than our spouse or partner, has the potential to go from thoughts to actions, to breaking up a family or household. Fantasies are about pictures, about surfaces, about what’s on the outside; they have nothing to do with really knowing another person, their hopes and dreams, what makes the other person tick. A lasting relationship can’t be built on the shifting sand of fantasy. And again, Jesus is all maintaining relationship. We might also remember that, in Jesus day, there was little safety net for an unmarried woman, so for a man to divorce his wife – and that’s generally the way things worked back then – would be to condemn her to poverty and misery for the remainder of her life. So Jesus’ prohibition of divorce was also about social justice for wives. He wouldn’t give his listeners – and won’t give us - an easy out to divorce a spouse just because, “the old grey mare just ain’t what she, or he, used to be, many long years ago….” We'd like to think that in the church, things would be different - but recent headlines show that church folk can be among the worst offenders.
In our Epistle reading, Paul saw the squabbles of the Corinthian church as a symptom that they were still spiritually immature, in need of milk and pablum rather than solid food. It’s about helping us mature in our faith, growing to the point where, in Paul’s words, we can stomach solid food rather than milk, meat rather than pablum. Our reading from Deuteronomy offers us a stark choice: life and prosperity, or death and adversity. God calls us to choose life, to speak and live in ways that are lifegiving, that build up rather than tear down, that keep us in relationship rather than separating us into warring camps.
The bottom line of Jesus’ sermon is the two great commandments: love of God, love of neighbor. It’s about preserving our relationships with God and neighbor, forthright relationships in which we say what we mean and mean what we say, where “yes” means “yes” and “no” means “no”, relationships transformed by the saving, lifegiving love of Jesus Christ. As Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote, “the holiest object presented to your senses, next to the blessed sacrament itself, is your neighbor.” And so Jesus’ sermon is, ultimately, about recognizing the sacred presence of God, not only within the walls of the church, but in our neighbor, our coworker, our children, our spouse – the sacred presence of God in each of us, a sacred presence not to be leered at or sneered at or dismissed. And this sacred presence of God is also within our neighbors, here in Bridesburg, and wherever God may lead us. May we honor God’s presence in all with whom we come in contact. Amen.
***********
Come join us for worship at 10 am at Emanuel UCC. We're on Fillmore St (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Blessed
(Scriptures: Micah 6:1-8 Isaiah 58:1-12
I Corinthians 1:18-31 Matthew 5:1-20)
One of my challenges growing up was my eyesight – as long as I can remember, I’ve been very nearsighted, blind as a bat nearsighted. When I was very young, anything more than a foot or so away from me was a blur. Peoples’ eyes and mouths looked like empty sockets. When I threw a ball or a frisbee, it went out of focus so quickly that I thought it just disappeared, vanished into another dimension. Of course, if someone threw the ball back, the ball would magically appear out of nowhere about a foot away from me, usually far too late for me to catch – in fact, the ball would usually bonk me on the head. Which may explain a few things about me. It wasn’t until I was in grade school and realized that the other kids saw things on the blackboard that I couldn’t see, that I got fitted with my first set of coke-bottle thick glasses. And all of a sudden, with glasses on, I could see so much more. Peoples’ faces were so much more pleasant to look at, with different eye colors and bright shiny teeth. I could see all the way from one end of the playground to the other. In a way, that was both a gift and a challenge – on one hand, it was like a whole new world opening up before my eyes; on the other, I no longer had my lousy eyesight as an excuse for why I couldn’t catch a ball.
This morning’s gospel reading begins a series of readings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today’s reading, of course, is from the Beatitudes, that familiar part of the sermon on the mount that begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and goes through a series of “blessed” statements – blessed are those who mourn, the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers, the pure of heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and so forth. It’s one of those passages of Scripture that, because it is familiar, is easy to overlook when we read it – “move along, nothing to see here”. Or we might smile a bit if we remember one of the Monty Python movies from a few years back, which depicted some folks seated at the edge of the crowd straining to hear Jesus’ words, as they thought they heard Jesus dispensing such pearls of spiritual wisdom as “Blessed are the cheesemakers, blessed are the Greek…..”
I would caution us to resist the temptation to dismiss the beatitudes as “old hat – been there, done that” – and to listen to them with fresh ears, as if hearing them for the first time. For they point us toward a new way of living as a disciple of Jesus, a new way of living that turns the wisdom of the world upside-down.
You don’t need me to tell you that the ways of the world don’t bear much resemblance to the way of life advocated in the Beatitudes. While the Beatitudes may resemble something we might tell small children – play nice, share your toys, don’t boast, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…. – by the time we’re through childhood, we realize the world has a very different set of beatitudes – “blessed are the strong, for they shall crush the weak; blessed are the merciless, for they shall get their way…..blessed are the litigious, for they shall win big settlements; blessed are the aggressive, for they will push their way to the front of the line – on television and radio, certainly, blessed are those who stir up public anger, fear, and distrust, for their audience will grow and multiply.” The wisdom of our society says to look out for number one - that once you’ve got your share of the pie, or maybe even more than your share, the rest of the world can go to perdition. In fact, the Beatitudes are a direct challenge to the ways of the world, a series of reversals of everything the world tells us.
If we think about what it would mean to live our lives by the Beatitudes, we may come to the conclusion that to be a follower of Jesus means to be a sap, to be a doormat. And we’d be wrong. Jesus has no need of doormats. In fact, the last thing Jesus wants is for us to cave in to the world’s way of doing things. Jesus wanted – and Jesus wants – his followers to model a different way of living from that of the world – to be counter-cultural. In the words of our Gospel today, we are to be salt and light, driving out the forces of decay and darkness. But we can’t be salt and light if our lives are indistinguishable from those of our neighbors.
It would be wonderful if the church could model the beatitudes, provide a demonstration of what a society based on the beatitudes would look like – but often there’s little to distinguish the church from the rest of society. The theological conviction that our salvation depends on God’s grace alone, that we cannot add anything to God’s grace or do anything to help earn our salvation – a true statement in itself - for all too many Christians is distorted into a license to ignore Jesus’ teachings on how we should live, Jesus’ call for our lives to contrast with those of our neighbors. For many, even salvation itself becomes a matter of selfishness – I’ve prayed a little prayer for forgiveness and have gotten my free pass into heaven – my ticket to paradise has been punched - and so I can abuse those around me all I want. It was to these that Gandhi was reported to have said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Both of our Old Testament readings – Micah 6 and Isaiah 58 – speak to this issue. In both of these readings, the chosen people are complaining that, though they’ve been so “faithful”, so “devoted” in their religious observance, God does not respond.
“Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" God, can’t you see how religious, how very faithful we are? But God responds that their “religious devotion” is selfish: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” Sounds like many “good Christians” who go to church on Sundays and make everyone around them miserable from Monday to Saturday. Micah tells what God wants: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” And Isaiah gives many vivid images of what God wants;
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”
As hard as I may try to tell myself that my relationship to Christ is a private matter, between Jesus and me, Micah and Isaiah tell me – tell us - that we cannot be in right relationship with God if our relationship with our neighbor is broken. God doesn’t want God’s people to live in compartments, loving God on Sunday and abusing neighbor Monday through Saturday. Rather, we are to live with integrity, being the same person every day of the week, letting our faith direct our actions every day, not just on Sunday. Love of God and love of neighbor – the two great commandments – are inseparable.
Our reading from I Corinthians reminds us the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of the world. In a sense, because of the power of sin in the world, we see life as if in a funhouse mirror – our priorities distorted out of shape – sort of like the blurry, distorted world I saw before I got glasses. Passing things like power and possessions are magnified all out of proportion, and eternal qualities such as justice, mercy, and hospitality shrink to almost nothing. We’ve lived in that distorted, funhouse world all our lives. If we’ve based our lives on that funhouse mirror image that the world gives us, when Jesus holds up the Beatitudes as a mirror to show how twisted up our lives really are, and how much better they could be and should be, the picture Jesus shows us may look out of shape, ominous, threatening. But if we are one of those Paul describes in I Corinthians – one of those perhaps not well-schooled in the wisdom of the world, not a mover and shaker in society, not coming from a prominent family, not apt to be profiled on “Wealth TV” or “Lifestyles of the rich and famous” – we are those most open to hearing God’s call. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.
The last verses of Matthew’s Gospel may give us pause: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." This sounds like an invitation to try to work our way into heaven, to earn our salvation, but that’s not where Jesus is coming from. The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, can only be a gift from God, not something of our own creation, the gift of God’s spirit described by Paul: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him"— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” On the other end, when God gives us a gift, we’re expected to make use of it.
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” May we here at Emanuel not use our many challenges as an excuse to hide our light under a bushel, but boldly be a lampstand from which God’s light can shine in this beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has set us. Amen.
******************
Please join us on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (just off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
I Corinthians 1:18-31 Matthew 5:1-20)
One of my challenges growing up was my eyesight – as long as I can remember, I’ve been very nearsighted, blind as a bat nearsighted. When I was very young, anything more than a foot or so away from me was a blur. Peoples’ eyes and mouths looked like empty sockets. When I threw a ball or a frisbee, it went out of focus so quickly that I thought it just disappeared, vanished into another dimension. Of course, if someone threw the ball back, the ball would magically appear out of nowhere about a foot away from me, usually far too late for me to catch – in fact, the ball would usually bonk me on the head. Which may explain a few things about me. It wasn’t until I was in grade school and realized that the other kids saw things on the blackboard that I couldn’t see, that I got fitted with my first set of coke-bottle thick glasses. And all of a sudden, with glasses on, I could see so much more. Peoples’ faces were so much more pleasant to look at, with different eye colors and bright shiny teeth. I could see all the way from one end of the playground to the other. In a way, that was both a gift and a challenge – on one hand, it was like a whole new world opening up before my eyes; on the other, I no longer had my lousy eyesight as an excuse for why I couldn’t catch a ball.
This morning’s gospel reading begins a series of readings from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Today’s reading, of course, is from the Beatitudes, that familiar part of the sermon on the mount that begins, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” and goes through a series of “blessed” statements – blessed are those who mourn, the merciful, the meek, the peacemakers, the pure of heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and so forth. It’s one of those passages of Scripture that, because it is familiar, is easy to overlook when we read it – “move along, nothing to see here”. Or we might smile a bit if we remember one of the Monty Python movies from a few years back, which depicted some folks seated at the edge of the crowd straining to hear Jesus’ words, as they thought they heard Jesus dispensing such pearls of spiritual wisdom as “Blessed are the cheesemakers, blessed are the Greek…..”
I would caution us to resist the temptation to dismiss the beatitudes as “old hat – been there, done that” – and to listen to them with fresh ears, as if hearing them for the first time. For they point us toward a new way of living as a disciple of Jesus, a new way of living that turns the wisdom of the world upside-down.
You don’t need me to tell you that the ways of the world don’t bear much resemblance to the way of life advocated in the Beatitudes. While the Beatitudes may resemble something we might tell small children – play nice, share your toys, don’t boast, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I’m telling you why…. – by the time we’re through childhood, we realize the world has a very different set of beatitudes – “blessed are the strong, for they shall crush the weak; blessed are the merciless, for they shall get their way…..blessed are the litigious, for they shall win big settlements; blessed are the aggressive, for they will push their way to the front of the line – on television and radio, certainly, blessed are those who stir up public anger, fear, and distrust, for their audience will grow and multiply.” The wisdom of our society says to look out for number one - that once you’ve got your share of the pie, or maybe even more than your share, the rest of the world can go to perdition. In fact, the Beatitudes are a direct challenge to the ways of the world, a series of reversals of everything the world tells us.
If we think about what it would mean to live our lives by the Beatitudes, we may come to the conclusion that to be a follower of Jesus means to be a sap, to be a doormat. And we’d be wrong. Jesus has no need of doormats. In fact, the last thing Jesus wants is for us to cave in to the world’s way of doing things. Jesus wanted – and Jesus wants – his followers to model a different way of living from that of the world – to be counter-cultural. In the words of our Gospel today, we are to be salt and light, driving out the forces of decay and darkness. But we can’t be salt and light if our lives are indistinguishable from those of our neighbors.
It would be wonderful if the church could model the beatitudes, provide a demonstration of what a society based on the beatitudes would look like – but often there’s little to distinguish the church from the rest of society. The theological conviction that our salvation depends on God’s grace alone, that we cannot add anything to God’s grace or do anything to help earn our salvation – a true statement in itself - for all too many Christians is distorted into a license to ignore Jesus’ teachings on how we should live, Jesus’ call for our lives to contrast with those of our neighbors. For many, even salvation itself becomes a matter of selfishness – I’ve prayed a little prayer for forgiveness and have gotten my free pass into heaven – my ticket to paradise has been punched - and so I can abuse those around me all I want. It was to these that Gandhi was reported to have said, “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Both of our Old Testament readings – Micah 6 and Isaiah 58 – speak to this issue. In both of these readings, the chosen people are complaining that, though they’ve been so “faithful”, so “devoted” in their religious observance, God does not respond.
“Day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God. "Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?" God, can’t you see how religious, how very faithful we are? But God responds that their “religious devotion” is selfish: “Look, you serve your own interest on your fast-day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist.” Sounds like many “good Christians” who go to church on Sundays and make everyone around them miserable from Monday to Saturday. Micah tells what God wants: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” And Isaiah gives many vivid images of what God wants;
“Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”
As hard as I may try to tell myself that my relationship to Christ is a private matter, between Jesus and me, Micah and Isaiah tell me – tell us - that we cannot be in right relationship with God if our relationship with our neighbor is broken. God doesn’t want God’s people to live in compartments, loving God on Sunday and abusing neighbor Monday through Saturday. Rather, we are to live with integrity, being the same person every day of the week, letting our faith direct our actions every day, not just on Sunday. Love of God and love of neighbor – the two great commandments – are inseparable.
Our reading from I Corinthians reminds us the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of the world. In a sense, because of the power of sin in the world, we see life as if in a funhouse mirror – our priorities distorted out of shape – sort of like the blurry, distorted world I saw before I got glasses. Passing things like power and possessions are magnified all out of proportion, and eternal qualities such as justice, mercy, and hospitality shrink to almost nothing. We’ve lived in that distorted, funhouse world all our lives. If we’ve based our lives on that funhouse mirror image that the world gives us, when Jesus holds up the Beatitudes as a mirror to show how twisted up our lives really are, and how much better they could be and should be, the picture Jesus shows us may look out of shape, ominous, threatening. But if we are one of those Paul describes in I Corinthians – one of those perhaps not well-schooled in the wisdom of the world, not a mover and shaker in society, not coming from a prominent family, not apt to be profiled on “Wealth TV” or “Lifestyles of the rich and famous” – we are those most open to hearing God’s call. The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom.
The last verses of Matthew’s Gospel may give us pause: Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." This sounds like an invitation to try to work our way into heaven, to earn our salvation, but that’s not where Jesus is coming from. The righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, can only be a gift from God, not something of our own creation, the gift of God’s spirit described by Paul: "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him"— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.” On the other end, when God gives us a gift, we’re expected to make use of it.
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” May we here at Emanuel not use our many challenges as an excuse to hide our light under a bushel, but boldly be a lampstand from which God’s light can shine in this beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg in which God has set us. Amen.
******************
Please join us on Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (just off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
Saturday, January 29, 2011
A Mountain of A Sermon (for a snowy Sunday)
(Note: Services at Emanuel United Church of Christ are cancelled tomorrow, January 30, 2011, due to the icy streets and lack of cleared parking near the church. In lieu of a sermon, the article below is from Emanuel's February 2011 newsletter.)
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ –
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them.” Matthew 5:1-2"
Our Gospels for the month of February all come from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, found in the 5th through 7th chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. This sermon contains many well-known, beloved passages of Scripture, such as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) and the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). It also contains some words that may make us very uncomfortable, such as “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:22) It contains many challenging words about the difficult demands of being a disciple of Jesus: turning the other cheek, going the second mile, praying for enemies (Matthew 5:38-48). Perhaps a summary of the sermon can be found in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Jesus’ words called his disciples to a way of life radically different both from that of the religious establishment of the day and that of the Roman empire which occupied and exploited the residents of Galilee and Judah. Likewise, Jesus calls us, who read these words some 2,000 years later, to a way of life radically different from that of our neighbors. We should not read them as a call to try to work our way into heaven – that work was done by Jesus at the cross, and God’s grace is sufficient. On the other hand, these words call us to reject the “easy believism” of our day which says that if we make an occasional “nod to God” prayer, we can be as arrogant, angry, greedy, gluttonous, lustful, ______ (fill in the blank) as we want, confident that God will let us off the hook in the end. To this way of thinking, Jesus responds, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) Perhaps these words from the Apostle Paul will help us interpret Jesus’ words: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2) It’s about letting go of our own will and our own agendas, and letting God transform our lives. In the words of the old hymn, “Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way/Thou art the potter, I am the clay….” And when we stumble and need forgiveness, we can be reminded that “God isn’t done with us yet.”
While Jesus’ words give us much to ponder, for our small congregation, Jesus’ call for us to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16) can both challenge and encourage us. A small amount of salt can preserve meat and add flavor to our dinner. A small candle can bring light in the darkness, as we demonstrate every Christmas Eve when we sing “Silent Night” and hold up our small candles. And, as we’ve discovered (perhaps to our frustration) this winter, many small snowflakes can have a big impact! In the same way, God can use our congregation for good in ways much larger than our small membership would indicate. The challenge is not to hide our light under a bushel – not to despair at our small numbers – but to be faithful with what God has given us, and to surrender ourselves to God’s service.
See you in church! (but not on Jan 30!)
Pastor Dave
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ –
"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them.” Matthew 5:1-2"
Our Gospels for the month of February all come from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, found in the 5th through 7th chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. This sermon contains many well-known, beloved passages of Scripture, such as the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11) and the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). It also contains some words that may make us very uncomfortable, such as “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.” (Matthew 5:22) It contains many challenging words about the difficult demands of being a disciple of Jesus: turning the other cheek, going the second mile, praying for enemies (Matthew 5:38-48). Perhaps a summary of the sermon can be found in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Jesus’ words called his disciples to a way of life radically different both from that of the religious establishment of the day and that of the Roman empire which occupied and exploited the residents of Galilee and Judah. Likewise, Jesus calls us, who read these words some 2,000 years later, to a way of life radically different from that of our neighbors. We should not read them as a call to try to work our way into heaven – that work was done by Jesus at the cross, and God’s grace is sufficient. On the other hand, these words call us to reject the “easy believism” of our day which says that if we make an occasional “nod to God” prayer, we can be as arrogant, angry, greedy, gluttonous, lustful, ______ (fill in the blank) as we want, confident that God will let us off the hook in the end. To this way of thinking, Jesus responds, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) Perhaps these words from the Apostle Paul will help us interpret Jesus’ words: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2) It’s about letting go of our own will and our own agendas, and letting God transform our lives. In the words of the old hymn, “Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way/Thou art the potter, I am the clay….” And when we stumble and need forgiveness, we can be reminded that “God isn’t done with us yet.”
While Jesus’ words give us much to ponder, for our small congregation, Jesus’ call for us to be salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16) can both challenge and encourage us. A small amount of salt can preserve meat and add flavor to our dinner. A small candle can bring light in the darkness, as we demonstrate every Christmas Eve when we sing “Silent Night” and hold up our small candles. And, as we’ve discovered (perhaps to our frustration) this winter, many small snowflakes can have a big impact! In the same way, God can use our congregation for good in ways much larger than our small membership would indicate. The challenge is not to hide our light under a bushel – not to despair at our small numbers – but to be faithful with what God has given us, and to surrender ourselves to God’s service.
See you in church! (but not on Jan 30!)
Pastor Dave
Friday, January 28, 2011
Fishing
(Scriptures: Isaiah 9:1-4, I Corinthians 1:10-18,Matthew 4:12-23)
Today’s Gospel reading gives Matthew’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The preceding Scriptures have built up to this point – Matthew’s birth narrative, the angels’ proclamation to Mary, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt to escape Herod, the baptism by John, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, which we’ll read about a few weeks from now in Lent…all these are ways in which God the Father prepared Jesus for ministry. So much of God’s grace has poured into Jesus, and now Jesus begins to pour out that grace for humankind as he begins his earthly ministry.
For Matthew, apparently John’s arrest was the catalyst for Jesus beginning his own ministry. Matthew brushes past it so quickly – “now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested” – but we’re not only given a note about the news of the day, but also a foreshadowing of coming danger, a sense that the danger faced by John will later be faced by Jesus. Jesus responds to the news by moving from his childhood home of Nazareth, to move to Capernaum, along the sea of Galilee. The events of the day lead Jesus out of his comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory – but Matthew also tells us that God’s hand is in all this, as the areas formerly settled by the Hebrew tribes of Zebulon and Naphthali, which had centuries ago been overrun by the Assyrians and were considered “Galilee of the Gentiles” have seen the great light of Jesus. As so often happens, what the human powers that be intended for evil, God used for good. And as Matthew tells the story, Jesus’ preaching picks up where John the Baptist’s preaching left off – “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
And then Jesus, who by John’s arrest was led out of his comfort zone, proceeds to call others out of their comfort zones. He encounters the brothers Simon and Andrew casting a net into the sea. There’s no mention of a boat, so perhaps we’re to understand that they have none. They’re just doing what they do every day for a living. That day was unfolding like the day before and the day before that….until along came Jesus, telling them, “follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” We’re told that immediately – no hesitation – they left their nets and followed Jesus. The three encounter the brothers James and John. We’re told that they’re in a boat with their father, Zebedee – Mark’s version of the story also mentions hired men – so perhaps we’re to understand that this family is a bit better off than Simon and Andrew’s family. Again the call from Jesus, and again they immediately leave everything – the hired men, the boat, their father – immediately, no hesitation - leave all that’s familiar to follow Jesus.
As I read this, I’m struck by the use of the word immediately. Just like that, they drop everything and follow Jesus. I try to imagine Jesus stopping by the accounting department and saying, “Follow me, and instead of counting beans you’ll be counting new believers.” Or imagine Jesus stopping by your workplaces – the lab, the tax office, the collection agency, the insurance company – with the call, “Follow me.” We’re risk-averse, cautious….likely before following Jesus, many of us would be tempted to start asking about life insurance and health insurance and a retirement plan. “Hey Jesus, do you offer a 401K?” But from Andrew and Simon and James and John, none of that – just willingness to drop everything and follow. Perhaps the call of Andrew and Simon and James and John is a sort of visual demonstration of the Isaiah text “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” They were just fishing, just doing what they did every day – and then Jesus came, the light dawned, they followed the light, and their lives were never the same.
Like Simon and Andrew and James and John, Jesus likewise calls for us here at Emanuel to fish for people. We’re called to gather disciples for Christ. It would be nice if people would just walk in the door – and truth to tell, a few do, now and then – but often expecting people to just find their way to us would be like Simon and Andrew standing on the shore with their net spread out on the sand, waiting for the fish to jump out of the water toward the beach and land in their nets. Fishing doesn’t work that way – the net has to be where the fish are. And if we are to attract people to Christ, we need to be where they are….which may mean leaving our comfort zones….leaving the beach, venturing out into deep water, and letting down our nets.
What does it look like, to leave everything behind and follow Jesus? I think of the young couple from Denver, Colorado, Patrick and Kim Bentrott, whom the UCC had sent as medical missionaries to Haiti, and who were there during last year’s earthquake. Their website address was in the bulletin for a month or so last year. Their lives in Haiti literally turned upside down as the tremors crumbled nearly all of facilities at the medical clinic they served, and they often felt completely overwhelmed at the magnitude of the need in front of them – but they were where God needed them, and they touched many lives. A year later, they’re back in the United States, with two adopted Haitian children, but keep in frequent contact with the land they served and loved intensely.
We read accounts like that of the Bentrott’s ministry in Haiti, and think that it’s so far outside our experience that we can’t hope to do anything like that. To which I’d respond, not necessarily so. Today we see the beginnings of Andrew’s and Simon’s and James’ and John’s walk with Jesus. We know that at the end of the path were the beginnings of the early church, and martyrs’ deaths for all but maybe John. But in between those first steps of obedience in today’s Gospel and the end of their path, were countless small steps of obedience, countless small acts of stepping out in faith, of taking small risks that led to taking greater risks. And there were many missteps and stumbles along the way – James and John trying to get the seats next to Christ in glory, Peter denying Christ. And after every stumble, they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and started out anew on their journey with Jesus. All of this came through the prompting of the Spirit – and yet these followers of Christ had hearts open to the Spirit’s leading.
A small personal testimony: my journey to serving here at Emanuel and to seminary has been a very gradual one – joining Old First church downtown – and I used to take the train in from the suburbs - slowly trusting the members there enough to become active, eventually taking on some roles leading worship and serving on their governing board, risking doing some hospital visitation even though I wasn’t sure I could handle standing next to someone on his deathbed, taking some licensed ministry courses, hanging out here at Emanuel, and eventually taking a big deep breath and enrolling in seminary. A long journey, over 20 years or more, with lots of self-doubt along the way – am I really called to be a pastor....I can’t go back to school, I’m almost the oldest person in my classes; my mind can’t pick up and retain all this new material like it could when I was in my 20’s. Back then I had a mind like a sponge; now it's like trying to soak up water with a brick. And yet trusting God that, if this is what God’s calling me to do, God will make a way for it to happen.
And so I’d challenge each of us, and challenge us as a congregation to take some risks, venture out of our comfort zones, and follow Jesus, and allow Jesus to teach us to fish for people. It doesn’t mean we all have to pick up and move to Haiti or Timbuktu or wherever. It may mean something as simple and as crucial as inviting a friend or family member to church – something as simple and beautiful as standing by someone going through a difficult time and offering a word of hope when all they feel is despair – as simple and as caring as visiting a sick friend and reminding them that Jesus loves them.
“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” May we at Emanuel Church carry the light of Christ to our families, our friends, our neighbors, and especially to our beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
*************
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson)
Today’s Gospel reading gives Matthew’s account of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. The preceding Scriptures have built up to this point – Matthew’s birth narrative, the angels’ proclamation to Mary, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt to escape Herod, the baptism by John, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, which we’ll read about a few weeks from now in Lent…all these are ways in which God the Father prepared Jesus for ministry. So much of God’s grace has poured into Jesus, and now Jesus begins to pour out that grace for humankind as he begins his earthly ministry.
For Matthew, apparently John’s arrest was the catalyst for Jesus beginning his own ministry. Matthew brushes past it so quickly – “now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested” – but we’re not only given a note about the news of the day, but also a foreshadowing of coming danger, a sense that the danger faced by John will later be faced by Jesus. Jesus responds to the news by moving from his childhood home of Nazareth, to move to Capernaum, along the sea of Galilee. The events of the day lead Jesus out of his comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory – but Matthew also tells us that God’s hand is in all this, as the areas formerly settled by the Hebrew tribes of Zebulon and Naphthali, which had centuries ago been overrun by the Assyrians and were considered “Galilee of the Gentiles” have seen the great light of Jesus. As so often happens, what the human powers that be intended for evil, God used for good. And as Matthew tells the story, Jesus’ preaching picks up where John the Baptist’s preaching left off – “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
And then Jesus, who by John’s arrest was led out of his comfort zone, proceeds to call others out of their comfort zones. He encounters the brothers Simon and Andrew casting a net into the sea. There’s no mention of a boat, so perhaps we’re to understand that they have none. They’re just doing what they do every day for a living. That day was unfolding like the day before and the day before that….until along came Jesus, telling them, “follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” We’re told that immediately – no hesitation – they left their nets and followed Jesus. The three encounter the brothers James and John. We’re told that they’re in a boat with their father, Zebedee – Mark’s version of the story also mentions hired men – so perhaps we’re to understand that this family is a bit better off than Simon and Andrew’s family. Again the call from Jesus, and again they immediately leave everything – the hired men, the boat, their father – immediately, no hesitation - leave all that’s familiar to follow Jesus.
As I read this, I’m struck by the use of the word immediately. Just like that, they drop everything and follow Jesus. I try to imagine Jesus stopping by the accounting department and saying, “Follow me, and instead of counting beans you’ll be counting new believers.” Or imagine Jesus stopping by your workplaces – the lab, the tax office, the collection agency, the insurance company – with the call, “Follow me.” We’re risk-averse, cautious….likely before following Jesus, many of us would be tempted to start asking about life insurance and health insurance and a retirement plan. “Hey Jesus, do you offer a 401K?” But from Andrew and Simon and James and John, none of that – just willingness to drop everything and follow. Perhaps the call of Andrew and Simon and James and John is a sort of visual demonstration of the Isaiah text “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” They were just fishing, just doing what they did every day – and then Jesus came, the light dawned, they followed the light, and their lives were never the same.
Like Simon and Andrew and James and John, Jesus likewise calls for us here at Emanuel to fish for people. We’re called to gather disciples for Christ. It would be nice if people would just walk in the door – and truth to tell, a few do, now and then – but often expecting people to just find their way to us would be like Simon and Andrew standing on the shore with their net spread out on the sand, waiting for the fish to jump out of the water toward the beach and land in their nets. Fishing doesn’t work that way – the net has to be where the fish are. And if we are to attract people to Christ, we need to be where they are….which may mean leaving our comfort zones….leaving the beach, venturing out into deep water, and letting down our nets.
What does it look like, to leave everything behind and follow Jesus? I think of the young couple from Denver, Colorado, Patrick and Kim Bentrott, whom the UCC had sent as medical missionaries to Haiti, and who were there during last year’s earthquake. Their website address was in the bulletin for a month or so last year. Their lives in Haiti literally turned upside down as the tremors crumbled nearly all of facilities at the medical clinic they served, and they often felt completely overwhelmed at the magnitude of the need in front of them – but they were where God needed them, and they touched many lives. A year later, they’re back in the United States, with two adopted Haitian children, but keep in frequent contact with the land they served and loved intensely.
We read accounts like that of the Bentrott’s ministry in Haiti, and think that it’s so far outside our experience that we can’t hope to do anything like that. To which I’d respond, not necessarily so. Today we see the beginnings of Andrew’s and Simon’s and James’ and John’s walk with Jesus. We know that at the end of the path were the beginnings of the early church, and martyrs’ deaths for all but maybe John. But in between those first steps of obedience in today’s Gospel and the end of their path, were countless small steps of obedience, countless small acts of stepping out in faith, of taking small risks that led to taking greater risks. And there were many missteps and stumbles along the way – James and John trying to get the seats next to Christ in glory, Peter denying Christ. And after every stumble, they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and started out anew on their journey with Jesus. All of this came through the prompting of the Spirit – and yet these followers of Christ had hearts open to the Spirit’s leading.
A small personal testimony: my journey to serving here at Emanuel and to seminary has been a very gradual one – joining Old First church downtown – and I used to take the train in from the suburbs - slowly trusting the members there enough to become active, eventually taking on some roles leading worship and serving on their governing board, risking doing some hospital visitation even though I wasn’t sure I could handle standing next to someone on his deathbed, taking some licensed ministry courses, hanging out here at Emanuel, and eventually taking a big deep breath and enrolling in seminary. A long journey, over 20 years or more, with lots of self-doubt along the way – am I really called to be a pastor....I can’t go back to school, I’m almost the oldest person in my classes; my mind can’t pick up and retain all this new material like it could when I was in my 20’s. Back then I had a mind like a sponge; now it's like trying to soak up water with a brick. And yet trusting God that, if this is what God’s calling me to do, God will make a way for it to happen.
And so I’d challenge each of us, and challenge us as a congregation to take some risks, venture out of our comfort zones, and follow Jesus, and allow Jesus to teach us to fish for people. It doesn’t mean we all have to pick up and move to Haiti or Timbuktu or wherever. It may mean something as simple and as crucial as inviting a friend or family member to church – something as simple and beautiful as standing by someone going through a difficult time and offering a word of hope when all they feel is despair – as simple and as caring as visiting a sick friend and reminding them that Jesus loves them.
“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” May we at Emanuel Church carry the light of Christ to our families, our friends, our neighbors, and especially to our beloved neighborhood of Bridesburg. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson)
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