The context of this service is an ecumenical Good Friday service in the Chapel of a large teaching hospital.
The texts are John 18 - 19
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People
It was the people in this story that struck me as I read the text. All the different kinds of people – a whole cast of characters – with a wide range of motivations.
First we have the groups of people:
The disciples, Jesus’ closest twelve.
The Roman soldiers.
The courts of the High Priest and Pilate.
The common people lurking in the High Priest’s courtyard.
The spectators on Good Friday come for a good execution and a bit of entertainment just as people have done from time immemorial.
And then we have the individuals, too many to list now:
Jesus, of course.
Judas, the disciple and the betrayer.
Peter, who is disciple, defender AND betrayer.
And Annas (the High Priest) and Pilate. So-called “leaders” who don’t seem to be doing a lot of leading.
I don’t know about you, but as a child I was taught to read all of these events as things that happened because Jesus needed to die for my sins. So, as I sat in church on Good Friday hearing these stories, there was a kind of inevitability about it all. In the same way that I knew how the story about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs turned out, I knew the story about Jesus praying in Gethsemane, judged by the High Priest and by Pilate and marched off to crucifixion.
It never really occurred to me that, in some very real sense, these events occurred because a number of people – both groups and individuals – made free choices. Free choices which led human beings to execute the Son of God. And as today’s reading reminded us, Jesus didn’t call down legions of angels to fight the legions of Caesar. He left the events of human history to the consequences of human actions.
Jesus died because an angry mob was looking for a scapegoat.
He died because the rulers of the subjugated people were frightened and thought it was better for one man to die than for the nation to suffer.
He died because the official representative of the Empire didn’t have the courage to do what he knew in his heart was right.
Yes, there is a sense in which all of this had to happen. Yes, he died for our sins, but he also died because of our sins.
The choices made by individuals over 2000 years ago killed Jesus. But I don’t think we’re off the hook. Unless any one of us can truly say that we would never be so frightened as to permit our government use individuals as scapegoats. That we would never give up one of our group in order that the group might survive. That we would never sacrifice another person on the altar of expediency. The human choices that were made by those individuals 2000 years ago are choices that we ourselves are very capable of making. And those choices killed Jesus.
Death
The other thing that struck me in reading this text was that it is a story about the death of a human being.
Of course, the Christian tradition affirms that Jesus was the Son of God, true God and true human being. But he was a human being. And I think that, historically, Christians have tended to forget this.
Often we tend to see Jesus as a kind of a Superhero, who shared all the qualities of God but was only masquerading as a human being. But the Passion story is also a story about a very human Jesus: a man who made sure that his mother would be looked after, a man who was thirsty, a man who looked death in the face and gave up his spirit.
And this particular human death reminded me of the deaths of other human beings that sadly happen here in the hospital, despite all the prayers and wishes of the people who love these individuals. Despite all the best efforts, choices and work by the medical staff here. Deaths that sadly sometimes happen despite all our best choices. And just like Jesus had all these different people surrounding him at the time of his death, so too do families often gather at the death of a loved one.
And that reminded me once again that, as a Christian, I believe in an incarnate God: a God who took on human form. Christianity does not tell us that we humans are a lower form of life who have to work very hard to rise up to the level of the divine. Christianity tells us that, by divine grace, God became embodied like us. Christianity tells us that, if we have seen Jesus, we have seen not only the invisible God but we have also seen who we are truly created to be as heirs to the New Creation.
Although the Christian church tends to talk about the Incarnation at Christmas, I think that here in this hospital we need the incarnate God – true God and true human – even more on Good Friday. When we see individuals facing times of pain, illness, trauma and death it’s good remind ourselves that God had a body. As human beings, we all need the Jesus who understood physical human suffering and who did not evade it.
This – embodied, suffering Christ – is The One who we need to be by our side when we are gravely ill and suffering. The embodied Christ is the One we need when we begin to wonder if God is so far off that God has no idea what we’re going through. On Good Friday, we are reminded that God became incarnate not just as a little baby but also as the Suffering Servant.
Conclusion
Today is Good Friday. I regret if you think I’ve spoken too much about death. Because, of course, we know the end of “The Jesus Story” and it’s not ultimately about death. The story of Jesus’ mission is ultimately about resurrection, about New Birth and New Life and a new Reign of God.
And Easter, of course, is the source of the sure and certain hope that we have in Christ.
But I do want to urge all of us not to jump too far ahead. As a devotion, let’s linger a bit at the events of Good Friday.
Let’s remember that human choices – the sort that we are all capable of making – put Jesus on the cross. And let’s remember to that Jesus also freely chose his suffering. A suffering which somehow unites God and humanity in a new and lasting coventental relationship. But a suffering that Jesus chose because of his deep and abiding faith that, ultimately in the final analysis, death does not dwell where God dwells.
This is the ultimate source of the Christian hope. This is the hope of Good Friday that points us toward the hope of Easter Sunday.
As we commemorate the death of Jesus this afternoon, I pray that the hope that we have in the embodied, crucified and resurrected Jesus will be with us all. Amen
Friday, April 22, 2011
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday 30 May 2010 - The Servant King
I was asked to supply-preach this morning on the general subject of "Memorial Day". I chose to use the assigned Epistle reading from the lectionary, Romans 5:1-11 but I departed from the lectionary for the Gospel reading and chose the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet from John: John 13:1-9
Introduction
I’d like you to imagine with me a screenplay for a television movie.
The main character in my imaginary movie is a CIA agent who I’ll call Josh. Josh has spent the last three years working on a case that is very important to the security of the United States. He’s been hot on the trail of a terrorist cell and he’s just managed to uncover a major attack that is about to go down in one of the biggest cities in the US. Josh has just found out the time and the place for this attack and he’s even found out who is responsible for its planning. Furthermore, Josh knows that the terrorist group is on to him and that they are sending operatives to kill him.
And then, the movie switches scenes. Josh is at home. Knowing that a group of thugs has been sent to assassinate him in the next few hours before the CIA can put effective protection into place, Josh has chosen to go home to his family of twelve sons.
And what does he do? Does he pack his bags quickly and tell his sons that their lives are in danger and that they should leave immediately? No.
Instead, he prepares and shares a lavish meal with them. He tells them to remember him and to always do what is right and that, if they do, they will find that he is always with them. All of this takes hours. It’s not even a rushed meal before a quick get-away. It’s a proper, lavish, sit-down meal. Then he tells each son that, before he goes, he’s going to spend some time with each one of them, leaving each son with a with a personal memory of him because they will probably never see him again. As Josh speaks first to one son and then another, he also washes that son’s feet.
And while each one-on-one conversation is going on, Josh’s sons get more and more panic stricken. “The terrorists are after him! It’s been something like six hours now since he found out they were coming for him! Why doesn’t he leave the house? Does he want to get killed?”
In the final scene of my screen-play, the terrorists burst into the house, take Josh away, try him and execute him. Josh dies and the movie ends.
I wonder if anyone here thinks I’d have a chance of selling this screenplay to a network? Don’t worry, I don’t think that I’d have much of a chance, either.
The story is weird.
Normally, we expect our heroes to get the bad-guy. Or, if they don’t get the bad-guy, we expect the failure in the story to point to some kind of deeper meaning. Even if the meaning is something like the futility of trying to do what’s right or the difficulty of human existence, we want some kind of meaning.
But this story seems, frankly, stupid. If I submitted it as a screen-play to a Hollywood producer, I suspect that the reaction would be “Another illiterate wannabe writer who can’t even tell a coherent story.”
So why did I tell you this story this morning? Because I wanted to try to replicate how stupid and incoherent the story of Jesus’ death would have sounded to most people in his time. For them, as for us - when we are not hearing a story that has already been interpreted for us by 2000 years of Christian tradition - saviors are heroes. Saviors are people who win battles, they are not people who lose. Saviors are people who wield power for good, not people who intentionally give up power and who try to win their battles by serving others. And most of all, savior-heroes do not walk willingly to their deaths.
There are numerous examples in the various Gospels of Jesus demonstrating an approach to power that is very different from the “worldly” view of power. When the disciples argued amongst themselves about who would be the greatest, Jesus told them that it was the least of this world who would be first in his Kingdom. When Jesus, Peter, James and John met Moses and Elijah on the mountain at the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to stay in that powerful and exalted place, but Jesus sent the disciples back down the mountain to serve his people. When the Roman soldiers were coming to get him, Jesus chose service over his own life. Not just the service of the Last Supper or the foot washing or his teaching, but the service of crucifixion.
From God’s perspective, there is something about service that is important to the story of salvation.
God Serves Us
The title of this sermon is “The Servant King” so you might have expected a sermon about how Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, how he served them in the hours before his crucifixion and how we should serve others too. Those are good ideas and I agree with all of them!
And tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we remember those who died in service to their country. So you could also have expected a sermon calling to mind our gratitude for the very real sacrifices made by everyone who has ever given up their life in service to their country. That’s also a good idea, which I agree with wholeheartedly, too!
But it seems to me that if Jesus the Messiah, King of King and Lord of Lords, was willing to be the Servant King, that there must be something in the idea of “service” that is central to who God is. There must be something in the concept of “service” that is central to the Gospel and to his Kingdom.
This morning’s reading from Romans brings home this idea when it says, in effect, that most people would find it difficult at crunch-time to die for someone within their own family or their own circle but that God was willing to die even for those who are outside his circle, for those who don’t know him, in order to give them the possibility of reconciliation with him.
So the first thing I want to do is to remind you that, in Christ the Servant King, God has served us. Hopefully, this isn’t a new piece of information for any of us. But sometimes we need to stop and meditate on the things we already know in order to carry the benefits forward into our daily lives.
In Christ the Servant King, God served us. When you stop to think about that, that’s really an awesome and amazing thing!
Martin Luther said that Jesus ultimate service to us was to gain victory over sin, death and the power of evil. Jesus conquered death not by destroying it with force, but rather by facing death. He conquered death by going through it and coming out the other side. In doing this, Jesus trusted that the character of God the Father was a character of Resurrection and Creation rather than a character of death and destruction and that resurrection would be the ultimate outcome of his death.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews uses the analogy of Jesus as a pioneer of salvation: Jesus forged the way through death to resurrection and, by making a path for us, made resurrection, salvation and reconciliation with God possible for us too.
Jesus served us. God serves us. The One who existed before the beginning of time who created everything out of nothing. the one who knew us in our mother’s womb who intentionally created me, who intentionally created you…He serves us.
For me, what is even more mind-boggling about the fact that Jesus died and rose again for me is that God wanted to do this. And if the Gospel of John is to be believed (John 1), God wanted to do this before the beginning of time.
So my first piece of good news this morning is: “God serves us”.
Service is Costly
But the thing about service is that it is costly.
Those who know me know that, for the last ten years or so, I’ve enjoyed discussing Christian theology on the internet. One of my internet acquaintances is a man who just retired this year after many years serving as a Chaplain in the British army. He told me that currently those people who are serving in the British armed forces are the most decorated soldiers since the Second World War.
And he was quick to emphasize that the British army has not “dumbed down” its service metals: these men and women are the most decorated soldiers since the second world war because they have faced the most harrowing combat situations since that time.
Now obviously, the US experience since WWII is somewhat different than Britain’s but I doubt that the combat conditions for current American soldiers is significantly different than for the British forces. I suspect that many of us may know of at least one person who has been deployed to a combat zone at least two or three times. And while many of us probably have a vague idea of what kind of a sacrifice this sort of experience must be, I suspect that those of us who haven’t had it probably can’t even begin to appreciate the enormity of it.
In the same way, I doubt that we can truly appreciate the enormity of God’s suffering as he reached out to reconcile us to him through Jesus.
And I also doubt that we appreciate how costly the sins of humanity continue to be to God as works through his faithful people to bring his Kingdom to fruition.
I believe that God works continually to bring justice and truth into the world, and that when God focuses on justice, his focus is restorative rather than punitive. God is not interested in bringing about the Kingdom by punishment, but rather in bringing about the Kingdom through restoration of those people and situations that have gone wrong.
But justice through restoration is far more costly than justice through punishment. Restorative justice requires forgiveness on the part of the one who is wronged and it requires the one who is wronged to let go.
The cost of restorative justice is borne by the one who is wronged, which is why many people will object that restorative justice is not justice at all.
And, believe me, I do not say this glibly or lightly. My purpose here is not to lightly tell you to forgive someone who has done a gross injustice to you or to suggest that it is an easy thing to do. My purpose here is rather to underline the pain, the difficulty and the costliness of coming to the point of being able to extend such enormous forgiveness. And when you can extend that forgiveness – IF you can – it is the ultimate service to the one who has wronged you as well as to others around you. It is the ultimate act of grace. And the person who you forgive is free and so are you.
That kind of difficult and costly forgiveness is what God does for us. As individual human beings and as societies, it often seems that we humans are engaged in an all-out effort to mess up God’s efforts to bring about his Kingdom. (That effort we put into messing up the coming of God’s Kingdom is called “sin”)
But, because of the service that Christ rendered on the cross, God forgives us over and over. Over and over, God takes us back into relationship with him.
And all of that is costly. My second point: Service is costly
Service builds Relationships
But it is ultimately the costly service that Christ rendered to humanity that makes a relationship between us and God possible. And it’s Christ’s service that also makes it possible for us to build relationships with each other.
That’s my third point for this morning: service builds relationships and so service is ultimately redemptive and restorative.
In serving us by dying and rising again, Jesus made it possible for all human beings to have a relationship with God. In ways that we don’t fully understand and never will this side of eternity, Jesus’ death reconciled us with God. His death forged the existence of forgiveness, reconciliation and a deep peace (Shalom) into the very fabric of creation.
As Christians, we believe that having a relationship with God in Christ is fundamental to being a Christian. And we also proclaim the Good News that God wants to have a relationship with every person who he ever created. And I think it is also logical to assume that God wants us to be connected in relationship to each other – to other human beings - as well as to him.
And service, I think it might be argued, is the ultimate expression of relationship. Because when we do acts of service, we are not asking the question “What can this relationship do for me?” but rather “What can I do for this relationship?” When we serve, we are looking outside ourselves. We are putting the needs of others before our own wants.
Service is an expression of the kind of self-giving love that Christians have always claimed is at the heart of the Gospel.
Those who have died for the sake of their country rendered a very real service to their country. But, ultimately, the Kingdom of God will not be built through war; rather it will be built through peace – God’s deep peace of Shalom that makes everything whole. The Kingdom of God will be built not through service to one group of human beings as it wages war against another group. Rather the Kingdom will be built through the Gospel understanding that Christians are called to serve all people just as Christ died that all might be saved.
Memorial Day originally began as a commemoration of the lives of those who died in the Civil War. About 617,000 individuals, which is about the same number of dead as all other American wars combined. And the date for the celebration of this holiday was originally set near the date of the reunification of the Union.
Whether or not it was intended to be a Christian gesture, I think that such a date indicates some understanding that God does not take sides in our human games of unforgiveness and non-reconciliation. If we are ever tempted to believe that God does not weep for the death of our enemies, we might ask ourselves the question “Which American lives did God fail to weep for in the Civil War?”
From God’s perspective, true service is not the kind of service that prefers one side over another. The foot-washing was more than just service to Jesus disciples, it was also an act of service to the entire world. Jesus served all of humanity because he trusted in God enough to understand that the way to conquer death was to be crucified and walk through death to resurrection.
Conclusion
As we celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, I pray that we will remember all those who gave up their lives in service to their countries. For those of us who have never had the experience of combat, I hope that we take its dangers and sacrifices seriously enough to be thankful to God for people who put their lives on the line in this way.
Although Memorial Day was originally supposed to be a holiday that commemorated those who have died, I think it is nonetheless also appropriate to also say “thank you” those who are currently serving their country; say thank you to them as well as saying “thank you” to God for them.
But I also pray this morning for peace and for the coming of the Kingdom of God. I pray that, as Christian people, we remember that peace (Shalom) rather than war will be a feature of God’s Kingdom. And service, self-giving and forgiveness are the hallmarks of God’s great Shalom.
And I pray that the peace that passes all understanding will keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of Christ. Amen.
Introduction
I’d like you to imagine with me a screenplay for a television movie.
The main character in my imaginary movie is a CIA agent who I’ll call Josh. Josh has spent the last three years working on a case that is very important to the security of the United States. He’s been hot on the trail of a terrorist cell and he’s just managed to uncover a major attack that is about to go down in one of the biggest cities in the US. Josh has just found out the time and the place for this attack and he’s even found out who is responsible for its planning. Furthermore, Josh knows that the terrorist group is on to him and that they are sending operatives to kill him.
And then, the movie switches scenes. Josh is at home. Knowing that a group of thugs has been sent to assassinate him in the next few hours before the CIA can put effective protection into place, Josh has chosen to go home to his family of twelve sons.
And what does he do? Does he pack his bags quickly and tell his sons that their lives are in danger and that they should leave immediately? No.
Instead, he prepares and shares a lavish meal with them. He tells them to remember him and to always do what is right and that, if they do, they will find that he is always with them. All of this takes hours. It’s not even a rushed meal before a quick get-away. It’s a proper, lavish, sit-down meal. Then he tells each son that, before he goes, he’s going to spend some time with each one of them, leaving each son with a with a personal memory of him because they will probably never see him again. As Josh speaks first to one son and then another, he also washes that son’s feet.
And while each one-on-one conversation is going on, Josh’s sons get more and more panic stricken. “The terrorists are after him! It’s been something like six hours now since he found out they were coming for him! Why doesn’t he leave the house? Does he want to get killed?”
In the final scene of my screen-play, the terrorists burst into the house, take Josh away, try him and execute him. Josh dies and the movie ends.
I wonder if anyone here thinks I’d have a chance of selling this screenplay to a network? Don’t worry, I don’t think that I’d have much of a chance, either.
The story is weird.
Normally, we expect our heroes to get the bad-guy. Or, if they don’t get the bad-guy, we expect the failure in the story to point to some kind of deeper meaning. Even if the meaning is something like the futility of trying to do what’s right or the difficulty of human existence, we want some kind of meaning.
But this story seems, frankly, stupid. If I submitted it as a screen-play to a Hollywood producer, I suspect that the reaction would be “Another illiterate wannabe writer who can’t even tell a coherent story.”
So why did I tell you this story this morning? Because I wanted to try to replicate how stupid and incoherent the story of Jesus’ death would have sounded to most people in his time. For them, as for us - when we are not hearing a story that has already been interpreted for us by 2000 years of Christian tradition - saviors are heroes. Saviors are people who win battles, they are not people who lose. Saviors are people who wield power for good, not people who intentionally give up power and who try to win their battles by serving others. And most of all, savior-heroes do not walk willingly to their deaths.
There are numerous examples in the various Gospels of Jesus demonstrating an approach to power that is very different from the “worldly” view of power. When the disciples argued amongst themselves about who would be the greatest, Jesus told them that it was the least of this world who would be first in his Kingdom. When Jesus, Peter, James and John met Moses and Elijah on the mountain at the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to stay in that powerful and exalted place, but Jesus sent the disciples back down the mountain to serve his people. When the Roman soldiers were coming to get him, Jesus chose service over his own life. Not just the service of the Last Supper or the foot washing or his teaching, but the service of crucifixion.
From God’s perspective, there is something about service that is important to the story of salvation.
God Serves Us
The title of this sermon is “The Servant King” so you might have expected a sermon about how Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, how he served them in the hours before his crucifixion and how we should serve others too. Those are good ideas and I agree with all of them!
And tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we remember those who died in service to their country. So you could also have expected a sermon calling to mind our gratitude for the very real sacrifices made by everyone who has ever given up their life in service to their country. That’s also a good idea, which I agree with wholeheartedly, too!
But it seems to me that if Jesus the Messiah, King of King and Lord of Lords, was willing to be the Servant King, that there must be something in the idea of “service” that is central to who God is. There must be something in the concept of “service” that is central to the Gospel and to his Kingdom.
This morning’s reading from Romans brings home this idea when it says, in effect, that most people would find it difficult at crunch-time to die for someone within their own family or their own circle but that God was willing to die even for those who are outside his circle, for those who don’t know him, in order to give them the possibility of reconciliation with him.
So the first thing I want to do is to remind you that, in Christ the Servant King, God has served us. Hopefully, this isn’t a new piece of information for any of us. But sometimes we need to stop and meditate on the things we already know in order to carry the benefits forward into our daily lives.
In Christ the Servant King, God served us. When you stop to think about that, that’s really an awesome and amazing thing!
Martin Luther said that Jesus ultimate service to us was to gain victory over sin, death and the power of evil. Jesus conquered death not by destroying it with force, but rather by facing death. He conquered death by going through it and coming out the other side. In doing this, Jesus trusted that the character of God the Father was a character of Resurrection and Creation rather than a character of death and destruction and that resurrection would be the ultimate outcome of his death.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews uses the analogy of Jesus as a pioneer of salvation: Jesus forged the way through death to resurrection and, by making a path for us, made resurrection, salvation and reconciliation with God possible for us too.
Jesus served us. God serves us. The One who existed before the beginning of time who created everything out of nothing. the one who knew us in our mother’s womb who intentionally created me, who intentionally created you…He serves us.
For me, what is even more mind-boggling about the fact that Jesus died and rose again for me is that God wanted to do this. And if the Gospel of John is to be believed (John 1), God wanted to do this before the beginning of time.
So my first piece of good news this morning is: “God serves us”.
Service is Costly
But the thing about service is that it is costly.
Those who know me know that, for the last ten years or so, I’ve enjoyed discussing Christian theology on the internet. One of my internet acquaintances is a man who just retired this year after many years serving as a Chaplain in the British army. He told me that currently those people who are serving in the British armed forces are the most decorated soldiers since the Second World War.
And he was quick to emphasize that the British army has not “dumbed down” its service metals: these men and women are the most decorated soldiers since the second world war because they have faced the most harrowing combat situations since that time.
Now obviously, the US experience since WWII is somewhat different than Britain’s but I doubt that the combat conditions for current American soldiers is significantly different than for the British forces. I suspect that many of us may know of at least one person who has been deployed to a combat zone at least two or three times. And while many of us probably have a vague idea of what kind of a sacrifice this sort of experience must be, I suspect that those of us who haven’t had it probably can’t even begin to appreciate the enormity of it.
In the same way, I doubt that we can truly appreciate the enormity of God’s suffering as he reached out to reconcile us to him through Jesus.
And I also doubt that we appreciate how costly the sins of humanity continue to be to God as works through his faithful people to bring his Kingdom to fruition.
I believe that God works continually to bring justice and truth into the world, and that when God focuses on justice, his focus is restorative rather than punitive. God is not interested in bringing about the Kingdom by punishment, but rather in bringing about the Kingdom through restoration of those people and situations that have gone wrong.
But justice through restoration is far more costly than justice through punishment. Restorative justice requires forgiveness on the part of the one who is wronged and it requires the one who is wronged to let go.
The cost of restorative justice is borne by the one who is wronged, which is why many people will object that restorative justice is not justice at all.
And, believe me, I do not say this glibly or lightly. My purpose here is not to lightly tell you to forgive someone who has done a gross injustice to you or to suggest that it is an easy thing to do. My purpose here is rather to underline the pain, the difficulty and the costliness of coming to the point of being able to extend such enormous forgiveness. And when you can extend that forgiveness – IF you can – it is the ultimate service to the one who has wronged you as well as to others around you. It is the ultimate act of grace. And the person who you forgive is free and so are you.
That kind of difficult and costly forgiveness is what God does for us. As individual human beings and as societies, it often seems that we humans are engaged in an all-out effort to mess up God’s efforts to bring about his Kingdom. (That effort we put into messing up the coming of God’s Kingdom is called “sin”)
But, because of the service that Christ rendered on the cross, God forgives us over and over. Over and over, God takes us back into relationship with him.
And all of that is costly. My second point: Service is costly
Service builds Relationships
But it is ultimately the costly service that Christ rendered to humanity that makes a relationship between us and God possible. And it’s Christ’s service that also makes it possible for us to build relationships with each other.
That’s my third point for this morning: service builds relationships and so service is ultimately redemptive and restorative.
In serving us by dying and rising again, Jesus made it possible for all human beings to have a relationship with God. In ways that we don’t fully understand and never will this side of eternity, Jesus’ death reconciled us with God. His death forged the existence of forgiveness, reconciliation and a deep peace (Shalom) into the very fabric of creation.
As Christians, we believe that having a relationship with God in Christ is fundamental to being a Christian. And we also proclaim the Good News that God wants to have a relationship with every person who he ever created. And I think it is also logical to assume that God wants us to be connected in relationship to each other – to other human beings - as well as to him.
And service, I think it might be argued, is the ultimate expression of relationship. Because when we do acts of service, we are not asking the question “What can this relationship do for me?” but rather “What can I do for this relationship?” When we serve, we are looking outside ourselves. We are putting the needs of others before our own wants.
Service is an expression of the kind of self-giving love that Christians have always claimed is at the heart of the Gospel.
Those who have died for the sake of their country rendered a very real service to their country. But, ultimately, the Kingdom of God will not be built through war; rather it will be built through peace – God’s deep peace of Shalom that makes everything whole. The Kingdom of God will be built not through service to one group of human beings as it wages war against another group. Rather the Kingdom will be built through the Gospel understanding that Christians are called to serve all people just as Christ died that all might be saved.
Memorial Day originally began as a commemoration of the lives of those who died in the Civil War. About 617,000 individuals, which is about the same number of dead as all other American wars combined. And the date for the celebration of this holiday was originally set near the date of the reunification of the Union.
Whether or not it was intended to be a Christian gesture, I think that such a date indicates some understanding that God does not take sides in our human games of unforgiveness and non-reconciliation. If we are ever tempted to believe that God does not weep for the death of our enemies, we might ask ourselves the question “Which American lives did God fail to weep for in the Civil War?”
From God’s perspective, true service is not the kind of service that prefers one side over another. The foot-washing was more than just service to Jesus disciples, it was also an act of service to the entire world. Jesus served all of humanity because he trusted in God enough to understand that the way to conquer death was to be crucified and walk through death to resurrection.
Conclusion
As we celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, I pray that we will remember all those who gave up their lives in service to their countries. For those of us who have never had the experience of combat, I hope that we take its dangers and sacrifices seriously enough to be thankful to God for people who put their lives on the line in this way.
Although Memorial Day was originally supposed to be a holiday that commemorated those who have died, I think it is nonetheless also appropriate to also say “thank you” those who are currently serving their country; say thank you to them as well as saying “thank you” to God for them.
But I also pray this morning for peace and for the coming of the Kingdom of God. I pray that, as Christian people, we remember that peace (Shalom) rather than war will be a feature of God’s Kingdom. And service, self-giving and forgiveness are the hallmarks of God’s great Shalom.
And I pray that the peace that passes all understanding will keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of Christ. Amen.
Monday, May 03, 2010
Sunday 9 May 2010 - Touchstone Moments
Text: Revelation 21:10; 21:22-22:5
Context: A Sunday morning Service of the Word at a large suburban church of mixed ages in Northeast Ohio.
Aim: Using the concepts of Resurrection and New Creation, to encourage members of the congregation to reflect on what the Christian hope means for them.
====
Old Covenant
Everyone loves a happy ending.
And in today’s Epistle reading we heard the happy ending at the conclusion of the book of Revelation, which in my more mischievous moments I sometimes call the book of Hallucination.
But that’s not really a fair description of Revelation because the images didn’t spring out of nowhere like a bad dream. The symbols come from the prophetic books of Hebrew Scripture and they would have been as familiar to the author’s contemporaries as the image of the cross is to us.
To those who were steeped in the prophetic texts of Hebrew Scripture, Revelation speaks of the fulfilment of God’s covenant with his people. The forces of darkness and the enemies of God’s people are overcome by God’s envoy, the Messiah, and a new covenant and a new world are established.
New Creation
The images in the book of Revelation speak to God’s people of redemption, resurrection and new life just as certainly as do the cross and the empty tomb.
But the story in Revelation is not simply a retelling of the Easter story. It reminds us that God promised his people this ‘happy ending’ – this New Creation –since he made a promise with Moses and Abraham.
This morning’s Good News is not only that God sent his Son to redeem us and make us his own. But we are also reminded that redemption is part of the plan that God devised for all of creation before the foundation of the world; it was not just an afterthought.
Now maybe this piece of Good News seems overly optimistic. We might legitimately ask the question whether this image of living in a world directly ruled by God is even remotely in touch with reality. After all, there is war, terrorism, natural disaster and widespread unemployment all around us.
The only problem with such an objection, though, is that most of us who live in the West today have never faced the sorts of tribulations that challenged the author of Revelation nor have most of us faced the severe persecutions that are described in the book. The vision of New Creation expressed in Revelation does not come from naïve inexperience of life’s realities; rather it is a vision of hope born from the school of hard knocks.
Ultimate Worth
Of course, most adults in any culture have had a hard knock or two. Like me, I’ll bet most of you know people who are currently struggling with major challenges like unemployment, family issues, illness or disability. Or you may be facing such a challenge yourself.
Different people deal with life’s trials in different ways but I never fail to be amazed by those individuals who are able to see the positive side of life despite the sometimes very negative circumstances that they face.
What is it about a tragedy or a serious challenge that often results in a person gaining a sharp perspective on what is truly important? It is often in times of great difficulty that we have such touchstone experiences that transform our perspective for the better. Our minds are stripped of unimportant concerns and we become capable of focussing on what really matters.
In order to gain such focus I sometimes imagine myself close to death saying ‘Thank God for…’ And most of us, no matter how pessimistic we are, understand how we are going to complete this sentence. ‘Thank God for community, friends, spouse, children, grandchildren.’ And, hopefully, ‘Thank God for his presence in my life.’ I suspect very few of us would say something like ‘Thank God for my possessions’.
Perhaps the tragedy of human life is not that each of us must at some point face difficult challenges. Perhaps the true tragedy is that it is easy to lose the sharpness of our touchstone moments when our lives are comfortable.
These touchstone moments are an opportunity for ‘little resurrections’. They are an opportunity to walk in God’s direction and to see small glimpses of our lives from God’s perspective. But first we need to die to those old perspectives where we cling to things, people and events that are not of ultimate meaning. Because, until we die to our old ways of thinking, there can be no resurrection into new life.
Real Hope
On this sixth Sunday of Easter, resurrection remains the Good News. Not just Christ’s resurrection in the first century and not just our future resurrection into God’s New Creation. But also those little resurrections in this life when our minds become sharply focussed on what it is in life that is of ultimate worth.
As we go from this place I pray that, whatever trials we may be facing, our lives will be guided by those touchstone moments that God has given to us. I pray that, in our everyday journey through life, our eyes will be increasingly opened and we will catch ever more frequent glimpses of the hope that God holds out to us. Amen.
Context: A Sunday morning Service of the Word at a large suburban church of mixed ages in Northeast Ohio.
Aim: Using the concepts of Resurrection and New Creation, to encourage members of the congregation to reflect on what the Christian hope means for them.
====
Old Covenant
Everyone loves a happy ending.
And in today’s Epistle reading we heard the happy ending at the conclusion of the book of Revelation, which in my more mischievous moments I sometimes call the book of Hallucination.
But that’s not really a fair description of Revelation because the images didn’t spring out of nowhere like a bad dream. The symbols come from the prophetic books of Hebrew Scripture and they would have been as familiar to the author’s contemporaries as the image of the cross is to us.
To those who were steeped in the prophetic texts of Hebrew Scripture, Revelation speaks of the fulfilment of God’s covenant with his people. The forces of darkness and the enemies of God’s people are overcome by God’s envoy, the Messiah, and a new covenant and a new world are established.
New Creation
The images in the book of Revelation speak to God’s people of redemption, resurrection and new life just as certainly as do the cross and the empty tomb.
But the story in Revelation is not simply a retelling of the Easter story. It reminds us that God promised his people this ‘happy ending’ – this New Creation –since he made a promise with Moses and Abraham.
This morning’s Good News is not only that God sent his Son to redeem us and make us his own. But we are also reminded that redemption is part of the plan that God devised for all of creation before the foundation of the world; it was not just an afterthought.
Now maybe this piece of Good News seems overly optimistic. We might legitimately ask the question whether this image of living in a world directly ruled by God is even remotely in touch with reality. After all, there is war, terrorism, natural disaster and widespread unemployment all around us.
The only problem with such an objection, though, is that most of us who live in the West today have never faced the sorts of tribulations that challenged the author of Revelation nor have most of us faced the severe persecutions that are described in the book. The vision of New Creation expressed in Revelation does not come from naïve inexperience of life’s realities; rather it is a vision of hope born from the school of hard knocks.
Ultimate Worth
Of course, most adults in any culture have had a hard knock or two. Like me, I’ll bet most of you know people who are currently struggling with major challenges like unemployment, family issues, illness or disability. Or you may be facing such a challenge yourself.
Different people deal with life’s trials in different ways but I never fail to be amazed by those individuals who are able to see the positive side of life despite the sometimes very negative circumstances that they face.
What is it about a tragedy or a serious challenge that often results in a person gaining a sharp perspective on what is truly important? It is often in times of great difficulty that we have such touchstone experiences that transform our perspective for the better. Our minds are stripped of unimportant concerns and we become capable of focussing on what really matters.
In order to gain such focus I sometimes imagine myself close to death saying ‘Thank God for…’ And most of us, no matter how pessimistic we are, understand how we are going to complete this sentence. ‘Thank God for community, friends, spouse, children, grandchildren.’ And, hopefully, ‘Thank God for his presence in my life.’ I suspect very few of us would say something like ‘Thank God for my possessions’.
Perhaps the tragedy of human life is not that each of us must at some point face difficult challenges. Perhaps the true tragedy is that it is easy to lose the sharpness of our touchstone moments when our lives are comfortable.
These touchstone moments are an opportunity for ‘little resurrections’. They are an opportunity to walk in God’s direction and to see small glimpses of our lives from God’s perspective. But first we need to die to those old perspectives where we cling to things, people and events that are not of ultimate meaning. Because, until we die to our old ways of thinking, there can be no resurrection into new life.
Real Hope
On this sixth Sunday of Easter, resurrection remains the Good News. Not just Christ’s resurrection in the first century and not just our future resurrection into God’s New Creation. But also those little resurrections in this life when our minds become sharply focussed on what it is in life that is of ultimate worth.
As we go from this place I pray that, whatever trials we may be facing, our lives will be guided by those touchstone moments that God has given to us. I pray that, in our everyday journey through life, our eyes will be increasingly opened and we will catch ever more frequent glimpses of the hope that God holds out to us. Amen.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Sunday Nov 1 2009 - Radical Hospitality
This was another "supply preaching sermon" and I was asked to speak on the topic of "Radical Hospitality". This was one in a series of five sermons preached on the five areas covered in UMC Bishop Robert Schnase's book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.
This sermon is not a precis of the chapter in Bishop Schnase's book although it draws from Schnase's work. This is a thematic sermon and I chose the following texts: Deuteronomy 10:17-21 and Matthew 25:31-40.
===
Introduction
Good morning everyone and thank you for your hospitality this morning in inviting me to join in your worship and share Scripture with you today.
And I guess it’s appropriate to thank you for your hospitality this morning because “Radical Hospitality” is the subject that I’ve been asked to speak on this morning. As I understand it, today is the second in a series of sermons on the subject of “the five practices of faithful congregations”.
But I expect that some of you may be wondering “What has hospitality got to do with the Good News of Jesus Christ?” It might seem somewhat obvious how being a hospitable congregation could help a congregation to grow and thrive, but you might not see a direct connection between hospitality and the message of the gospel.
God & Hospitality
So the first question I want to think about this morning is “What has hospitality to do with the good news that we proclaim as Christians?”
I don’t know what sort of images the word “hospitality” conjures up for you, but I expect that for most people, it conjures up images of dinner parties or maybe weekends away at a friend’s house.
But stop and think for a minute what hospitality meant to the people of the ancient near East. For a person from a nomadic desert culture, traveling from nomad settlement to nomad settlement, a question of hospitality might very well mean the difference between life and death.
It was usually the custom to allow a passing stranger to spend a night in your town or settlement, but then the expectation was that the person would move on. However, permission to camp overnight was by no means assured.
It was the normal social custom to view strangers with suspicion and as a potential threat to the community. (I wonder if that sounds familiar to us today?)
But remember our passage that we heard from Deuteronomy this morning: The reader is told that God himself loves the stranger and provides the stranger with food and clothing. And then God’s people are commanded to love the stranger because they themselves were strangers in Egypt.
“Loving” the stranger certainly goes beyond what we normally think of as hospitality in our society. The biblical concept of “loving” someone, as you probably know, is not just about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you; it’s about going further than that and actually putting their needs and welfare before your own.
And this is actually what the ancient custom of hospitality was all about. In the ancient near East, “hospitality” was an elaborate custom that included both testing and obligations on the part of the host and guest. Once the tests had been passed, the host and the guest were bound in a formal and permanent relationship that required both to look after each other in the same way that they would look after a member of their own family.
The guest was required to offer hospitality to the host if the need arose in the future and the host was always responsible for the safety of the guest. The host was required to do anything to secure the safety of the guest, even giving up his life in defense of the guest, if necessary.
I wonder if you hear an echo of any kind of familiar themes here?
I think that there is a very real sense in which we can say that God invites us as strangers and sinners into his Kingdom. In order to fully benefit from this Kingdom, we are invited to repent, just as the stranger is tested. And, as the host who is responsible for the welfare of his guest even if it means dying, God died in order to save us from the ravages of sin, death and the power of evil.
So, rather than having nothing to do with the message of the Gospel, I think that hospitality has much to do with it. God gives us undeserved and unimaginable hospitality and we are called as his children to give hospitality to others.
God welcomes the sinner and the stranger and calls us also to welcome the sinner and the stranger in response to his welcome.
In fact, we are called to love the stranger. We are called to extend a welcome that is not only friendly and hospitable but also to give a welcome that is risky, possibly dangerous, and which puts the needs of the visitor before our own needs.
I wonder how many church congregations actually manage to do this?
Radical Hospitality
I said earlier, that the title of this sermon is radical hospitality.
Why radical hospitality? Why not friendly hospitality? Or pleasant hospitality? Or nice hospitality?
I hope you are beginning to see that the nature of true biblical hospitality is radical; extreme, even. God’s hospitality in welcoming us into his Kingdom and offering salvation to us was costly. It wasn’t easy or “nice” and it wasn’t just friendly and pleasant.
And if we are going to communicate the height and depth and breadth of God’s love to other people in our own congregations, we too will have to engage in some costly hospitality.
A story is told of a Lutheran pastor in the former East Germany named Uwe Holmer.
Now, those of you who remember the East German regime know that to be a Christian in Eastern Germany was a risky business, let alone to be a Christian pastor. The regime discriminated against Christians and one of its policies was to make it impossible for the children of Christian parents to attend university or enter any of the professions which required a university degree.
Pastor Holmer and his wife had ten children, all of whom were denied university places and who had to make a living through manual labor. The person who was responsible for East Germany’s educational policy for 26 years was Margot Honecker the wife of East Germany's premier, Erich Honecker.
And then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the East German regime was toppled. Erich and Margot Honecker were seen by many people in East Germany as their enemies. They were indicted for criminal activities and evicted from their home. The Honeckers suddenly found themselves friendless, without resources, and with no place to go. No one wanted to have anything to do with the Honeckers.
It was at that point that Pastor Holmer’s family invited the Honeckers to live with them.
However, their fellow citizens were not terribly pleased with the Holmers’ hospitality. The pastor’s family received hate mail from the German public and many members of his church threatened to leave in protest.
The hospitality offered by Pastor Holmer was not just nice or even just noble. This was a radical hospitality. A risky hospitality. A dangerous hospitality that put him and his family at risk. This is an example of truly radical hospitality.
Wat on earth could cause a person to give shelter to people whose life’s work and ideals had directly hurt his children's futures? And what on earth could cause someone to continue to give shelter to them in the face of threats and abuse from fellow citizens? Nothing on earth. Only the peace and love of God that passes all human understanding could cause someone to do such a thing.
Radically Hospitable Churches
Are we capable of this kind of radical hospitality?
I’ve got to be honest with you. Part of me hopes that I could behave this way in the same circumstances and part of me hopes that I will never be tested in such a way. But yet, I am inspired by Pastor Holmer. His actions draw from me the highest form of admiration.
And I believe that if we think about this story as a sort of benchmark for “radical hospitality” then some ideas that we regularly throw around about “being a hospitable congregation” begin to pale in comparison.
In his book “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations”, UMC Bishop Robert Schnase defines radical hospitality like this:
I wonder how many congregations consider themselves to be friendly churches but whose caring and friendship is based on the fact that the members of the congregation have known each other for many years?
Sometimes being a new person in such a group can be like going out to dinner with a newly-married couple as they sit there staring into each other’s all evening. They may be friendly between themselves and they probably genuinely want to be friendly with other people, but they are too wrapped up in each other to think that their friends might be feeling excluded.
As a cradle Christian who has spent most of my life going to church, my bet is that many if not most congregations are like this. We feel certain that we are prepared to be friendly to new people but, really, we want them to fit in with what we’re already doing and conform to the established group behavior.
In the UK, a poll was taken recently which – among other things – determined that it took the average person about two years after beginning to attend a new congregation to feel that they really belonged. Two years! That means the new people have to make an incredible commitment. They have to attend church for two years feeling like they are strangers before they can begin to feel comfortable.
That’s certainly not radical hospitality. I’ll leave you to decide whether you think its “hospitality” at all. If it takes someone two years to feel that they belong in a congregation then that congregation is not living out any kind of active desire to welcome and care for new people.
Looking Outward
So what does it take to be a radically hospitable church? In his book, Bishop Schnase lists some practical ideas that I will mention briefly this morning since I want this to remain and sermon rather than a lecture on strategic change management.
But there is one thing that the Bishop’s suggestions all have in common and that is that every single suggestion is about looking outside of the congregation to the needs of those who are not members of the congregation.
And when we focus on people outside our group, we are focusing on serving others rather than on being served ourselves. Or, to put it another way, we are focusing on the biblical concept of love. We are focusing on what is good for other people rather than on what is good for ourselves.
So very briefly, what are some practical suggestions?
Bishop Schnase suggests that every group that meets in church, every committee, and every activity should be constantly thinking “How can we reach out to those outside our church? How can we make our activities more welcoming?” Even those individuals concerned with maintaining the building can reach out.
Are there facilities for young families to feel comfortable? Is the building accessible to those with mobility problems? A really simple thing like are all the rooms correctly labeled? Are Vacation Bible School or Sunday School classes run for the benefit of church members or for the benefit of children whose parents don’t come to church? Can the choir put on an activity that makes young families feel welcome? Does the congregation keep in touch with families who visit the church at Christmas and Easter and invite them to other events? At the most basic level, will people from outside the church be able to understand your bulletin if they read it?
The Bishop suggests that every group in church should think about one thing that they can do that focuses on reaching people outside the current members. And this attitude of reaching out should become an on-going habit. He notes that “Institutions produce what they are designed to produce.” And he is challenging us as Christians – because I don’t think that this is just a problem of the UMC – to design our “institutions” to be places where change and outreach are built into the fabric of how we do things.
Before I conclude this morning, I want to briefly tell you a story about a part of my training for the ministry. I was required by the British Methodist Church to attend weekend seminars on a monthly basis. These seminars were designed to teach us by example how to nurture the spiritual lives of our congregations.
Most participants attended for two years but every six months a group of people would leave the group and a new group of people would arrive. The whole system was designed to accommodate this change.
And I promise you that we didn’t really do anything differently than many good prayer groups or Sunday School or bible study groups do. We didn’t really do any strange activities that you might imagine when you hear the word “radical”. All we did was expect the group to change. We expected new people to arrive and we expected to make room for new people in the group and to offer them genuine hospitality. We expected that people we’d come to know and trust would leave and we expected to “let them go”.
We didn’t spend a lot of emotional energy resisting change and we didn’t invoke the silent mantra of many a congregation “Because God doesn’t change, the church must not change either.” All we did was look outward and welcome the new people instead of seeing them as threats or as individuals who upset our existing group dynamics.
Bishop Schnase suggests a relatively “simple” solution that each individual in a church and each group simply think about how they can welcome new-comers and my experience would suggest that it really is as simple as that. When we really begin to live lives that genuinely seek the welfare of others, our lives begin to bubble over with joy and freedom and we become very effective witnesses to the Good News of the Gospel.
Conclusion
The good news of Jesus Christ, Paul tells us, is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Or, to look at it another way, God offered us hospitality when we were still strangers.
In sending Jesus to die and rise again for our salvation, God was looking outside of himself to our needs. God said “These people need saving and I’m the only one who can rescue them.” He didn’t say “Oy! These people are messing up the beautiful order of my good creation! What is a Creator God to do?”
God doesn’t ask us to become holy before he invites us into his Kingdom. He doesn’t demand that we cease to be strangers and sinners before he offers us hospitality. Rather, he goes out into the highways and byways and invites strangers and sinners into his Kingdom and then he invites us to repent so that we can grow in holiness.
The good news is that God is eternally looking outside of himself to the welfare of others; we learn this when we practice the love of God in exuberant worship. The good news is that God gives us an exciting purpose to our lives: to look outside ourselves to the welfare of others; we learn this as we practice the love of our neighbor.
My prayer is that the reality of God’s hospitality for us will fill our hearts anew this morning. And I also pray that, filled with joy at the salvation we have been given and filled with thanksgiving at God’s hospitality we will go from this place determined to spread Christian hospitality to everyone we meet.
May God bless this congregation as you continue on your journey to be an evermore fruitful congregation. Amen
This sermon is not a precis of the chapter in Bishop Schnase's book although it draws from Schnase's work. This is a thematic sermon and I chose the following texts: Deuteronomy 10:17-21 and Matthew 25:31-40.
===
Introduction
Good morning everyone and thank you for your hospitality this morning in inviting me to join in your worship and share Scripture with you today.
And I guess it’s appropriate to thank you for your hospitality this morning because “Radical Hospitality” is the subject that I’ve been asked to speak on this morning. As I understand it, today is the second in a series of sermons on the subject of “the five practices of faithful congregations”.
But I expect that some of you may be wondering “What has hospitality got to do with the Good News of Jesus Christ?” It might seem somewhat obvious how being a hospitable congregation could help a congregation to grow and thrive, but you might not see a direct connection between hospitality and the message of the gospel.
God & Hospitality
So the first question I want to think about this morning is “What has hospitality to do with the good news that we proclaim as Christians?”
I don’t know what sort of images the word “hospitality” conjures up for you, but I expect that for most people, it conjures up images of dinner parties or maybe weekends away at a friend’s house.
But stop and think for a minute what hospitality meant to the people of the ancient near East. For a person from a nomadic desert culture, traveling from nomad settlement to nomad settlement, a question of hospitality might very well mean the difference between life and death.
It was usually the custom to allow a passing stranger to spend a night in your town or settlement, but then the expectation was that the person would move on. However, permission to camp overnight was by no means assured.
It was the normal social custom to view strangers with suspicion and as a potential threat to the community. (I wonder if that sounds familiar to us today?)
But remember our passage that we heard from Deuteronomy this morning: The reader is told that God himself loves the stranger and provides the stranger with food and clothing. And then God’s people are commanded to love the stranger because they themselves were strangers in Egypt.
“Loving” the stranger certainly goes beyond what we normally think of as hospitality in our society. The biblical concept of “loving” someone, as you probably know, is not just about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you; it’s about going further than that and actually putting their needs and welfare before your own.
And this is actually what the ancient custom of hospitality was all about. In the ancient near East, “hospitality” was an elaborate custom that included both testing and obligations on the part of the host and guest. Once the tests had been passed, the host and the guest were bound in a formal and permanent relationship that required both to look after each other in the same way that they would look after a member of their own family.
The guest was required to offer hospitality to the host if the need arose in the future and the host was always responsible for the safety of the guest. The host was required to do anything to secure the safety of the guest, even giving up his life in defense of the guest, if necessary.
I wonder if you hear an echo of any kind of familiar themes here?
I think that there is a very real sense in which we can say that God invites us as strangers and sinners into his Kingdom. In order to fully benefit from this Kingdom, we are invited to repent, just as the stranger is tested. And, as the host who is responsible for the welfare of his guest even if it means dying, God died in order to save us from the ravages of sin, death and the power of evil.
So, rather than having nothing to do with the message of the Gospel, I think that hospitality has much to do with it. God gives us undeserved and unimaginable hospitality and we are called as his children to give hospitality to others.
God welcomes the sinner and the stranger and calls us also to welcome the sinner and the stranger in response to his welcome.
In fact, we are called to love the stranger. We are called to extend a welcome that is not only friendly and hospitable but also to give a welcome that is risky, possibly dangerous, and which puts the needs of the visitor before our own needs.
I wonder how many church congregations actually manage to do this?
Radical Hospitality
I said earlier, that the title of this sermon is radical hospitality.
Why radical hospitality? Why not friendly hospitality? Or pleasant hospitality? Or nice hospitality?
I hope you are beginning to see that the nature of true biblical hospitality is radical; extreme, even. God’s hospitality in welcoming us into his Kingdom and offering salvation to us was costly. It wasn’t easy or “nice” and it wasn’t just friendly and pleasant.
And if we are going to communicate the height and depth and breadth of God’s love to other people in our own congregations, we too will have to engage in some costly hospitality.
A story is told of a Lutheran pastor in the former East Germany named Uwe Holmer.
Now, those of you who remember the East German regime know that to be a Christian in Eastern Germany was a risky business, let alone to be a Christian pastor. The regime discriminated against Christians and one of its policies was to make it impossible for the children of Christian parents to attend university or enter any of the professions which required a university degree.
Pastor Holmer and his wife had ten children, all of whom were denied university places and who had to make a living through manual labor. The person who was responsible for East Germany’s educational policy for 26 years was Margot Honecker the wife of East Germany's premier, Erich Honecker.
And then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the East German regime was toppled. Erich and Margot Honecker were seen by many people in East Germany as their enemies. They were indicted for criminal activities and evicted from their home. The Honeckers suddenly found themselves friendless, without resources, and with no place to go. No one wanted to have anything to do with the Honeckers.
It was at that point that Pastor Holmer’s family invited the Honeckers to live with them.
However, their fellow citizens were not terribly pleased with the Holmers’ hospitality. The pastor’s family received hate mail from the German public and many members of his church threatened to leave in protest.
The hospitality offered by Pastor Holmer was not just nice or even just noble. This was a radical hospitality. A risky hospitality. A dangerous hospitality that put him and his family at risk. This is an example of truly radical hospitality.
Wat on earth could cause a person to give shelter to people whose life’s work and ideals had directly hurt his children's futures? And what on earth could cause someone to continue to give shelter to them in the face of threats and abuse from fellow citizens? Nothing on earth. Only the peace and love of God that passes all human understanding could cause someone to do such a thing.
Radically Hospitable Churches
Are we capable of this kind of radical hospitality?
I’ve got to be honest with you. Part of me hopes that I could behave this way in the same circumstances and part of me hopes that I will never be tested in such a way. But yet, I am inspired by Pastor Holmer. His actions draw from me the highest form of admiration.
And I believe that if we think about this story as a sort of benchmark for “radical hospitality” then some ideas that we regularly throw around about “being a hospitable congregation” begin to pale in comparison.
In his book “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations”, UMC Bishop Robert Schnase defines radical hospitality like this:
“An active desire to invite, welcome, receive and care for those who are strangers so that they find a spiritual home and discover for themselves the unending richness of life in Christ.”Hospitality isn’t just about smiling at visitors who walk into the doors of our church. It’s about an active desire to welcome and care for new people.
I wonder how many congregations consider themselves to be friendly churches but whose caring and friendship is based on the fact that the members of the congregation have known each other for many years?
Sometimes being a new person in such a group can be like going out to dinner with a newly-married couple as they sit there staring into each other’s all evening. They may be friendly between themselves and they probably genuinely want to be friendly with other people, but they are too wrapped up in each other to think that their friends might be feeling excluded.
As a cradle Christian who has spent most of my life going to church, my bet is that many if not most congregations are like this. We feel certain that we are prepared to be friendly to new people but, really, we want them to fit in with what we’re already doing and conform to the established group behavior.
In the UK, a poll was taken recently which – among other things – determined that it took the average person about two years after beginning to attend a new congregation to feel that they really belonged. Two years! That means the new people have to make an incredible commitment. They have to attend church for two years feeling like they are strangers before they can begin to feel comfortable.
That’s certainly not radical hospitality. I’ll leave you to decide whether you think its “hospitality” at all. If it takes someone two years to feel that they belong in a congregation then that congregation is not living out any kind of active desire to welcome and care for new people.
Looking Outward
So what does it take to be a radically hospitable church? In his book, Bishop Schnase lists some practical ideas that I will mention briefly this morning since I want this to remain and sermon rather than a lecture on strategic change management.
But there is one thing that the Bishop’s suggestions all have in common and that is that every single suggestion is about looking outside of the congregation to the needs of those who are not members of the congregation.
And when we focus on people outside our group, we are focusing on serving others rather than on being served ourselves. Or, to put it another way, we are focusing on the biblical concept of love. We are focusing on what is good for other people rather than on what is good for ourselves.
So very briefly, what are some practical suggestions?
Bishop Schnase suggests that every group that meets in church, every committee, and every activity should be constantly thinking “How can we reach out to those outside our church? How can we make our activities more welcoming?” Even those individuals concerned with maintaining the building can reach out.
Are there facilities for young families to feel comfortable? Is the building accessible to those with mobility problems? A really simple thing like are all the rooms correctly labeled? Are Vacation Bible School or Sunday School classes run for the benefit of church members or for the benefit of children whose parents don’t come to church? Can the choir put on an activity that makes young families feel welcome? Does the congregation keep in touch with families who visit the church at Christmas and Easter and invite them to other events? At the most basic level, will people from outside the church be able to understand your bulletin if they read it?
The Bishop suggests that every group in church should think about one thing that they can do that focuses on reaching people outside the current members. And this attitude of reaching out should become an on-going habit. He notes that “Institutions produce what they are designed to produce.” And he is challenging us as Christians – because I don’t think that this is just a problem of the UMC – to design our “institutions” to be places where change and outreach are built into the fabric of how we do things.
Before I conclude this morning, I want to briefly tell you a story about a part of my training for the ministry. I was required by the British Methodist Church to attend weekend seminars on a monthly basis. These seminars were designed to teach us by example how to nurture the spiritual lives of our congregations.
Most participants attended for two years but every six months a group of people would leave the group and a new group of people would arrive. The whole system was designed to accommodate this change.
And I promise you that we didn’t really do anything differently than many good prayer groups or Sunday School or bible study groups do. We didn’t really do any strange activities that you might imagine when you hear the word “radical”. All we did was expect the group to change. We expected new people to arrive and we expected to make room for new people in the group and to offer them genuine hospitality. We expected that people we’d come to know and trust would leave and we expected to “let them go”.
We didn’t spend a lot of emotional energy resisting change and we didn’t invoke the silent mantra of many a congregation “Because God doesn’t change, the church must not change either.” All we did was look outward and welcome the new people instead of seeing them as threats or as individuals who upset our existing group dynamics.
Bishop Schnase suggests a relatively “simple” solution that each individual in a church and each group simply think about how they can welcome new-comers and my experience would suggest that it really is as simple as that. When we really begin to live lives that genuinely seek the welfare of others, our lives begin to bubble over with joy and freedom and we become very effective witnesses to the Good News of the Gospel.
Conclusion
The good news of Jesus Christ, Paul tells us, is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Or, to look at it another way, God offered us hospitality when we were still strangers.
In sending Jesus to die and rise again for our salvation, God was looking outside of himself to our needs. God said “These people need saving and I’m the only one who can rescue them.” He didn’t say “Oy! These people are messing up the beautiful order of my good creation! What is a Creator God to do?”
God doesn’t ask us to become holy before he invites us into his Kingdom. He doesn’t demand that we cease to be strangers and sinners before he offers us hospitality. Rather, he goes out into the highways and byways and invites strangers and sinners into his Kingdom and then he invites us to repent so that we can grow in holiness.
The good news is that God is eternally looking outside of himself to the welfare of others; we learn this when we practice the love of God in exuberant worship. The good news is that God gives us an exciting purpose to our lives: to look outside ourselves to the welfare of others; we learn this as we practice the love of our neighbor.
My prayer is that the reality of God’s hospitality for us will fill our hearts anew this morning. And I also pray that, filled with joy at the salvation we have been given and filled with thanksgiving at God’s hospitality we will go from this place determined to spread Christian hospitality to everyone we meet.
May God bless this congregation as you continue on your journey to be an evermore fruitful congregation. Amen
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Sunday Oct 11 2009 - On the Road to the New Jerusalem
In August 2009, I returned to the United States for family reasons after 20 years of living in the UK. I left the Northeast Ohio / Cleveland area in 1975 when I went to university, and I never expected either to leave the UK or to return to Northeast Ohio. But life brings us unexpected twists and turns along the way.
I am not currently employed as a pastor although I'm currently doing s small amount of supply preaching. Below is the first sermon I preached as a "supply preacher" in the US. I am switching to US dating and spelling conventions. The sermon is longer than many of the previous sermons on this blog due to different custom.
I was asked to preach this sermon in a series of sermons on the broad topic of "return from exile". (Ironic, isn't it?)
This is a thematic sermon and the texts used were Zechariah 8:1-8 and Revelation 21:1-7.
===
Introduction
Good morning everyone, and thank you for your hospitality here this morning and for inviting me to share in your worship and your meditation on Holy Scripture this morning.
Today is one of those instances that demonstrates what I believe is God’s sense of humor. As you heard earlier, I’m an ordained minister (“Elder”) in the Methodist Church of Great Britain and I lived in England for just over 20 years from 1989 until August of this year.
But I was born in East Cleveland and raised in Euclid. I left Northeast Ohio in 1975 to go to college and, as the years went on, I began to assume that I would never return to live in this area of the world. But my British husband and I moved to Hudson this past August to be nearer to my parents who are aging and need family near them.
And this morning is not only the first sermon that I have preached in American Methodism; it is also the first sermon that I have ever preached in the United States.
So you can see that today is something of a milestone for me, but I have to tell you that I do think it’s indicative of God’s sense of humor that the broad topic that I was asked to preach on is the topic of the Return from Exile.
Being From Somewhere – What Does it Mean?
Because a big question in my life recently has been: After 34 years away from Northeast Ohio, have I returned home or have I left home?
What, exactly does it mean to “be from” somewhere and how does “being from” a place shape our lives and who we are?
As I was preparing for this sermon, I immediately thought of Mr. Singh. Mr. Singh works at my local gas station just up the road. The first time I went into the gas station, he asked me if I was British and I explained my story to him.
Now it turns out that Mr. Singh was born in the Punjab, in India. I’m not sure, but I think he’s about my age. Mr. Singh came to this area of the world when he was ten years old. So he’s actually lived here longer that I have!
It starts you thinking: What does it mean to be “be from” somewhere? Especially in this day and age when people can move around very freely.
And I imagine that the Judeans who were returning to Jerusalem from Babylon might have understood this question of identity and “being from a place”. Because it took about a generation and a half for the Judeans to be able to leave Babylon and to make the journey back to Jerusalem.
So we can suppose that the vast majority of people who “returned” to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple had never lived in Jerusalem and they had never lived in a free Judea.
And I think that there is a parallel with us, as Christians. We are asked, as part of our Christian discipleship, to be part of God’s plan in building a New Jerusalem, but none of us have ever lived there.
So today, I just want to stop and take our bearings and ask the question: Are we still on course for our trip to the New Jerusalem? Do we, in fact, know where we are going?
Where is the New Jerusalem and what does it look like?
The New Jerusalem, of course, is a metaphor. And, like all good metaphors, it needs unpacking. Also, like all good metaphors, there are probably no Right Answers either. So I’m going to try to unpack it now with the caveat that this is my perspective. If you disagree with me, so much the better because it will get you thinking about what it is you believe.
The New Jerusalem
So, “The New Jerusalem”: Where is it? What is it? What does it look like?
Of course, the City of Jerusalem itself meant something important to those people who had been in Exile in Babylon.
Jerusalem – Zion – was the City of God. The place where the Temple was located and therefore the place where Judah believed their God physically dwelled. The dream of the Judeans (Southern Kingdom) in Exile was that they would return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, and once more Yahweh would dwell with them and he would be their God and they would be his people.
But, the thing is that, although you can go back to where you came from, you can’t go back to when you came from.
I can come back to Northeast Ohio, but I can’t come back to Northeast Ohio in 1975 and I can’t come back to Northeast Ohio as a 17 year old girl.
During the generation that Judah has been in Exile, Judah has begun to understand its God in a different light.
Judah’s original understanding of its God was that God was on their side; and we see this idea reflected in a lot of the earlier Old Testament literature. Judah thought that God was for Judah and against other people. Their God would defend them from other nations and he would smash their enemies, when necessary.
But then came the Exile. And what was previously unthinkable happened: Jerusalem was defeated and the people of Judah were suddenly confronted with a new reality.
And so, in much of the biblical literature dealing with the story of the Exile, we begin see the development of ideas like God using foreign powers and kings to carry out his will – something that was previously unthinkable. And we also see the development of the idea that God cares about righteousness and justice and – something that was really unthinkable before – that even foreign Kings can be viewed by God as righteous and just.
Slowly, in the post-Exilic and prophetic tradition, the idea developed that God was not just the God of Judah, but God was the God of all the world. Judah came to understand that God’s sovereignty was not limited to Judah but that his sovereignty was universal.
So here comes our first piece of Good News this morning: The City of God, the New Jerusalem, is a place to which everyone is invited.
Unlike Judah’s earlier understanding, God is not a tribal god. God is not against anyone; he is not against any sort of person. God is for everyone.
No matter who you are or where you are from God wants you to be a citizen of his New Jerusalem. No matter what language you speak, no matter what the color of your skin, no matter what your gender, your marital status, whether or not you are a respected member of your community, God wants you to be a citizen of his New Jerusalem.
God is not just the God of Judah or of the UMC or the Presbyterian Church. God is not just the God of men or women or white people or Native Americans or African-Americans. God is the God of all people.
Ad I don’t know about you, but I think this is really good news! This is the stuff that makes me excited. The gates of the City of God are always open. No one needs a visa to get in. As long as we live, God will never, ever stop inviting us into his New Jerusalem.
The New Jerusalem – a Place of Justice
Now I’m thinking that there might be some people in the congregation who are starting to squirm right about now.
I’m betting that some people might be thinking “Hold on a minute, here! If God invites everyone into the City of God, does that mean that God doesn’t care about right and wrong? Does that mean that God doesn’t care about justice?”
I’m thinking you’re thinking “Pam, if you start telling me that everyone is invited into the New Jerusalem, then what does that say about the existence of right and wrong? Are you trying to tell me that, in the New Jerusalem, anything goes?”
And this is our second piece of good news this morning: that God cares about justice and righteousness. God cares about right and wrong.
No, I’m not trying to tell you that anything goes in the New Jerusalem. I’m trying to tell you that the New Jerusalem is a place where victims can find justice and where the discriminated-against can find opportunity. The City of God is a place where power is not used for personal gain but for the good of the entire community.
This, by the way, is what much of Old Testament tradition tells us is the function of a righteous King: to pursue the good of the entire community and to make sure that the powerful don’t exploit those with less power.
This idea of a Just King is why the prophet Samuel warned ancient Israel not to replace God as its king with a human king, like the other peoples. Samuel warned that human kings would misuse power, send Israel’s sons to war and grab power and wealth for themselves. Which is precisely what happened.
But in the New Jerusalem, God’s people dream of a reign of perfect justice and righteousness where God is once again King.
And no doubt, this is also what the Judean people dreamed of as they returned to Jerusalem from Exile to rebuild the Temple and the City of God.
So the second piece of good news this morning is that the New Jerusalem is a place where God’s justice is the order of the day.
The Church’s Mission
You may, however, have noticed that God’s justice might not seem quite like our human notions of justice. Human justice often majors on punishing the wrong-doer. Human justice relies on the threat of punishment to keep society in order.
In the New Jerusalem, however, justice and righteousness are the order of the day because people’s hearts have been changed by God.
Because of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit of God changes the hearts of human beings so that we can accept God’s love and forgiveness, return that love to God and then pass it on to others. The reason that the New Jerusalem is a place where death will be no more and where mourning and crying and pain will be no more is because the hearts of its inhabitants have been converted to the love and service of God.
Now, you might be thinking “Hold on a minute here. You’re talking about the day when Christ will come again; you’re talking about the next life. And all this is fine and good and hunkey-dorey for the next life, but what about this life?”
ell, the thing is that I *am* talking about the day when Christ will come and I *am* talking about the eternal New Jerusalem. But I’m also talking about life here on earth. Because the New Jerusalem, the New Creation, the City of God is something that was inaugurated after the death and resurrection of Christ.
New Jerusalem may be “not yet”, but it is also now. It is both now and not yet.
The reason that there will be justice and righteousness in the New Jerusalem is because the hearts of its inhabitants have been converted to the love of service of God and humanity. And we – the universal church of Christ, those people of all denominations whose lives have been changed and transformed by the love of Christ – we are inhabitants of the New Jerusalem in the here and now as much as in the there and not yet.
As I think Pastor Jim is going to talk to you about next week, it is the job of the church – it is our mission - to build the Temple in the New Jerusalem. It is our job as the church to make the worship and love of God central to our lives. And, in consequence, it is our job to make love and service to our fellow human beings central to our lives.
We have been chosen to proclaim and witness to God’s love and forgiveness in both word and in deed. We are called to tell people of the love and forgiveness of God. And we are called to live as an example to others: to lives of righteousness, justice and truth.
And, for me, this is the third and final piece of Good News for this morning: That the church has an awesome, worthwhile and exciting mission; and that when we are empowered and used by the Holy Spirit, that God can change the world that we live in; God can change the lives of people around us.
And, I don’t know about you, but *I* find it exciting that the God-given purpose of my life is something so worthwhile. The God-given purpose of my life is to let God use me to transform the world. I think that’s awesome.
Conclusion
As we go from this place today, I’d like to remember what this New Jerusalem that we are traveling to looks like and to remember the Good News that we heard this morning.
So our first piece of good news is that citizenship in the New Jerusalem is open to everyone, no matter who you are, where you come from or what you have done in the past.God does not discriminate. Or, as they said in the old days, God is no respecter of persons.
The second piece of Good News that we heard this morning is that the New Jerusalem is a place where human lives are transformed and where God’s values of righteousness and justice reign. The New Jerusalem is a place where human hearts are converted to God’s standards and converted away from the standards of the world.
And the final piece of Good News that we heard this morning is that, as members of God’s Church universal, our lives not only have purpose, but they have purposes of eternal significance. When God entrusted us with the mission of being citizens of the New Jerusalem, he entrusted us with a mission that is both awesome and exciting.
And he promised us his Holy Spirit to help us in our task. The Church is not God; we are only God’s servants. We are God’s hands on earth. It is God who will finally build the New Jerusalem.
As we go forward into a new week, let’s remember where we are going. Let’s contemplate the awe and beauty of the New Jerusalem, but let’s also think and pray about how God might want to use us to build that City.
I pray that God will give each of us wisdom and insight as we contemplate our calling and I pray for that same insight for this congregation. And may the Spirit of God give you strength and courage to be his hands and heart in the world. Amen
I am not currently employed as a pastor although I'm currently doing s small amount of supply preaching. Below is the first sermon I preached as a "supply preacher" in the US. I am switching to US dating and spelling conventions. The sermon is longer than many of the previous sermons on this blog due to different custom.
I was asked to preach this sermon in a series of sermons on the broad topic of "return from exile". (Ironic, isn't it?)
This is a thematic sermon and the texts used were Zechariah 8:1-8 and Revelation 21:1-7.
===
Introduction
Good morning everyone, and thank you for your hospitality here this morning and for inviting me to share in your worship and your meditation on Holy Scripture this morning.
Today is one of those instances that demonstrates what I believe is God’s sense of humor. As you heard earlier, I’m an ordained minister (“Elder”) in the Methodist Church of Great Britain and I lived in England for just over 20 years from 1989 until August of this year.
But I was born in East Cleveland and raised in Euclid. I left Northeast Ohio in 1975 to go to college and, as the years went on, I began to assume that I would never return to live in this area of the world. But my British husband and I moved to Hudson this past August to be nearer to my parents who are aging and need family near them.
And this morning is not only the first sermon that I have preached in American Methodism; it is also the first sermon that I have ever preached in the United States.
So you can see that today is something of a milestone for me, but I have to tell you that I do think it’s indicative of God’s sense of humor that the broad topic that I was asked to preach on is the topic of the Return from Exile.
Being From Somewhere – What Does it Mean?
Because a big question in my life recently has been: After 34 years away from Northeast Ohio, have I returned home or have I left home?
What, exactly does it mean to “be from” somewhere and how does “being from” a place shape our lives and who we are?
As I was preparing for this sermon, I immediately thought of Mr. Singh. Mr. Singh works at my local gas station just up the road. The first time I went into the gas station, he asked me if I was British and I explained my story to him.
Now it turns out that Mr. Singh was born in the Punjab, in India. I’m not sure, but I think he’s about my age. Mr. Singh came to this area of the world when he was ten years old. So he’s actually lived here longer that I have!
It starts you thinking: What does it mean to be “be from” somewhere? Especially in this day and age when people can move around very freely.
And I imagine that the Judeans who were returning to Jerusalem from Babylon might have understood this question of identity and “being from a place”. Because it took about a generation and a half for the Judeans to be able to leave Babylon and to make the journey back to Jerusalem.
So we can suppose that the vast majority of people who “returned” to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple had never lived in Jerusalem and they had never lived in a free Judea.
And I think that there is a parallel with us, as Christians. We are asked, as part of our Christian discipleship, to be part of God’s plan in building a New Jerusalem, but none of us have ever lived there.
So today, I just want to stop and take our bearings and ask the question: Are we still on course for our trip to the New Jerusalem? Do we, in fact, know where we are going?
Where is the New Jerusalem and what does it look like?
The New Jerusalem, of course, is a metaphor. And, like all good metaphors, it needs unpacking. Also, like all good metaphors, there are probably no Right Answers either. So I’m going to try to unpack it now with the caveat that this is my perspective. If you disagree with me, so much the better because it will get you thinking about what it is you believe.
The New Jerusalem
So, “The New Jerusalem”: Where is it? What is it? What does it look like?
Of course, the City of Jerusalem itself meant something important to those people who had been in Exile in Babylon.
Jerusalem – Zion – was the City of God. The place where the Temple was located and therefore the place where Judah believed their God physically dwelled. The dream of the Judeans (Southern Kingdom) in Exile was that they would return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, and once more Yahweh would dwell with them and he would be their God and they would be his people.
But, the thing is that, although you can go back to where you came from, you can’t go back to when you came from.
I can come back to Northeast Ohio, but I can’t come back to Northeast Ohio in 1975 and I can’t come back to Northeast Ohio as a 17 year old girl.
During the generation that Judah has been in Exile, Judah has begun to understand its God in a different light.
Judah’s original understanding of its God was that God was on their side; and we see this idea reflected in a lot of the earlier Old Testament literature. Judah thought that God was for Judah and against other people. Their God would defend them from other nations and he would smash their enemies, when necessary.
But then came the Exile. And what was previously unthinkable happened: Jerusalem was defeated and the people of Judah were suddenly confronted with a new reality.
And so, in much of the biblical literature dealing with the story of the Exile, we begin see the development of ideas like God using foreign powers and kings to carry out his will – something that was previously unthinkable. And we also see the development of the idea that God cares about righteousness and justice and – something that was really unthinkable before – that even foreign Kings can be viewed by God as righteous and just.
Slowly, in the post-Exilic and prophetic tradition, the idea developed that God was not just the God of Judah, but God was the God of all the world. Judah came to understand that God’s sovereignty was not limited to Judah but that his sovereignty was universal.
So here comes our first piece of Good News this morning: The City of God, the New Jerusalem, is a place to which everyone is invited.
Unlike Judah’s earlier understanding, God is not a tribal god. God is not against anyone; he is not against any sort of person. God is for everyone.
No matter who you are or where you are from God wants you to be a citizen of his New Jerusalem. No matter what language you speak, no matter what the color of your skin, no matter what your gender, your marital status, whether or not you are a respected member of your community, God wants you to be a citizen of his New Jerusalem.
God is not just the God of Judah or of the UMC or the Presbyterian Church. God is not just the God of men or women or white people or Native Americans or African-Americans. God is the God of all people.
Ad I don’t know about you, but I think this is really good news! This is the stuff that makes me excited. The gates of the City of God are always open. No one needs a visa to get in. As long as we live, God will never, ever stop inviting us into his New Jerusalem.
The New Jerusalem – a Place of Justice
Now I’m thinking that there might be some people in the congregation who are starting to squirm right about now.
I’m betting that some people might be thinking “Hold on a minute, here! If God invites everyone into the City of God, does that mean that God doesn’t care about right and wrong? Does that mean that God doesn’t care about justice?”
I’m thinking you’re thinking “Pam, if you start telling me that everyone is invited into the New Jerusalem, then what does that say about the existence of right and wrong? Are you trying to tell me that, in the New Jerusalem, anything goes?”
And this is our second piece of good news this morning: that God cares about justice and righteousness. God cares about right and wrong.
No, I’m not trying to tell you that anything goes in the New Jerusalem. I’m trying to tell you that the New Jerusalem is a place where victims can find justice and where the discriminated-against can find opportunity. The City of God is a place where power is not used for personal gain but for the good of the entire community.
This, by the way, is what much of Old Testament tradition tells us is the function of a righteous King: to pursue the good of the entire community and to make sure that the powerful don’t exploit those with less power.
This idea of a Just King is why the prophet Samuel warned ancient Israel not to replace God as its king with a human king, like the other peoples. Samuel warned that human kings would misuse power, send Israel’s sons to war and grab power and wealth for themselves. Which is precisely what happened.
But in the New Jerusalem, God’s people dream of a reign of perfect justice and righteousness where God is once again King.
And no doubt, this is also what the Judean people dreamed of as they returned to Jerusalem from Exile to rebuild the Temple and the City of God.
So the second piece of good news this morning is that the New Jerusalem is a place where God’s justice is the order of the day.
The Church’s Mission
You may, however, have noticed that God’s justice might not seem quite like our human notions of justice. Human justice often majors on punishing the wrong-doer. Human justice relies on the threat of punishment to keep society in order.
In the New Jerusalem, however, justice and righteousness are the order of the day because people’s hearts have been changed by God.
Because of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit of God changes the hearts of human beings so that we can accept God’s love and forgiveness, return that love to God and then pass it on to others. The reason that the New Jerusalem is a place where death will be no more and where mourning and crying and pain will be no more is because the hearts of its inhabitants have been converted to the love and service of God.
Now, you might be thinking “Hold on a minute here. You’re talking about the day when Christ will come again; you’re talking about the next life. And all this is fine and good and hunkey-dorey for the next life, but what about this life?”
ell, the thing is that I *am* talking about the day when Christ will come and I *am* talking about the eternal New Jerusalem. But I’m also talking about life here on earth. Because the New Jerusalem, the New Creation, the City of God is something that was inaugurated after the death and resurrection of Christ.
New Jerusalem may be “not yet”, but it is also now. It is both now and not yet.
The reason that there will be justice and righteousness in the New Jerusalem is because the hearts of its inhabitants have been converted to the love of service of God and humanity. And we – the universal church of Christ, those people of all denominations whose lives have been changed and transformed by the love of Christ – we are inhabitants of the New Jerusalem in the here and now as much as in the there and not yet.
As I think Pastor Jim is going to talk to you about next week, it is the job of the church – it is our mission - to build the Temple in the New Jerusalem. It is our job as the church to make the worship and love of God central to our lives. And, in consequence, it is our job to make love and service to our fellow human beings central to our lives.
We have been chosen to proclaim and witness to God’s love and forgiveness in both word and in deed. We are called to tell people of the love and forgiveness of God. And we are called to live as an example to others: to lives of righteousness, justice and truth.
And, for me, this is the third and final piece of Good News for this morning: That the church has an awesome, worthwhile and exciting mission; and that when we are empowered and used by the Holy Spirit, that God can change the world that we live in; God can change the lives of people around us.
And, I don’t know about you, but *I* find it exciting that the God-given purpose of my life is something so worthwhile. The God-given purpose of my life is to let God use me to transform the world. I think that’s awesome.
Conclusion
As we go from this place today, I’d like to remember what this New Jerusalem that we are traveling to looks like and to remember the Good News that we heard this morning.
So our first piece of good news is that citizenship in the New Jerusalem is open to everyone, no matter who you are, where you come from or what you have done in the past.God does not discriminate. Or, as they said in the old days, God is no respecter of persons.
The second piece of Good News that we heard this morning is that the New Jerusalem is a place where human lives are transformed and where God’s values of righteousness and justice reign. The New Jerusalem is a place where human hearts are converted to God’s standards and converted away from the standards of the world.
And the final piece of Good News that we heard this morning is that, as members of God’s Church universal, our lives not only have purpose, but they have purposes of eternal significance. When God entrusted us with the mission of being citizens of the New Jerusalem, he entrusted us with a mission that is both awesome and exciting.
And he promised us his Holy Spirit to help us in our task. The Church is not God; we are only God’s servants. We are God’s hands on earth. It is God who will finally build the New Jerusalem.
As we go forward into a new week, let’s remember where we are going. Let’s contemplate the awe and beauty of the New Jerusalem, but let’s also think and pray about how God might want to use us to build that City.
I pray that God will give each of us wisdom and insight as we contemplate our calling and I pray for that same insight for this congregation. And may the Spirit of God give you strength and courage to be his hands and heart in the world. Amen
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Wednesday 29 July 2009 - Live, love, learn
This was the last sermon I gave at my post in the Kidderminster and Stourport Circuit; it was given at an ecumenical service of Holy Communion that worshiped together every Wednesday.
The sermon is based on John 12:1-8.
===
Introduction
Today the church celebrates the festival of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Our Gospel reading for today contains all three of these characters as well as Jesus, but it also contains another character: Judas.
If you were going to make a film out of this morning’s story, I reckon that you could turn this into quite an uncomfortable scene.
Lazarus has just been raised from the dead in the previous chapter and, although the text doesn’t say it explicitly, we imagine that Jesus is having a celebratory meal with these friends who he loves. Mary then does something that would be as embarrassing as someone in our society hiking her skirt up to her thighs.
In my imaginary film I can just see Judas portrayed as a model of calm and sensibleness, looking at Mary with an attitude of pity and announcing: “The money you spent on all the drink you’ve just poured down yourself could have been given to poor”…
So when Jesus opens his mouth to speak, we expect that he’s going to take Judas’ part and tell Mary to calm down and stop making everyone uncomfortable. But instead Jesus tells Judas to leave her alone. And the narrator tells us that Mary’s heart is right with God and that Judas’ is not.
Resurrection
Although today is the feast of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, it’s the character of Judas who is the foil that helps us learn from the example of these three siblings.
Let’s think about the difference between the Judas and Lazarus to start with. Lazarus has experienced resurrection and Judas has not.
None of us has any idea of what it would feel like to be resurrected, but there are people in our culture who have had near death experiences. It seems to me that one universal outcome of such experiences is that people often have a sense of the true meaning and the true value of life.
I imagine that Lazarus might feel that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. He’d lost his life but now he’s found it again and every moment, every day, every taste of food, every drink, every moment shared with a loved one is a sweet and joyful bonus.
Judas, I imagine, thinks that life is much more serious than this. Life is about freedom from political oppression and Judas will stop at nothing to get it.
But although Judas is serious and apparently lacking in a certain degree of empathy, we are also told that he is not straight. Judas’ serious outlook toward life did not prevent him from stealing from the common purse.
Lazarus, along with Jesus, is on the right side of resurrection.
The readers of this story are invited to be on the right side of resurrection as well: the poor will always be with you until the resurrection of the dead and the kingdom of God has come.
Turn your sights to the day when God’s children will live in true freedom. Be like Lazarus and live the resurrection life today.
Workers for the Kingdom
Then we have Martha.
Poor old Martha; I always think she gets a bit of a raw deal. Martha does all the work of the kingdom behind the scenes and, although she always gets mentioned, the picture I have of her is as some sort of generic worker-bee.
And it’s the Marthas – male and female – who are the backbone of the Church, and often the backbone of society’s army of carers. People who quietly do the work of God asking for no recognition or reward who often influence the lives of many for good.
Here again, though, is a contrast with Judas.
I imagine the Judas thought of himself as working for the coming of the Kingdom of God. But I suspect that he also wanted that kingdom to come in a blaze of earthly glory. And I somehow doubt that he would have been content to fade into the background.
Martha, unlike Judas, understands what the real work of the Kingdom is. We are called to be like Martha. When we work, we work for Jesus and for the Kingdom of God. We do not work for personal glory or gain.
Prophets for the Kingdom
And then we have Mary.
Mary the sister who sits at the feet of Jesus learning from him. But Mary who also embarrassingly proclaims her love for Jesus in today’s text.
Mary is something of a prophet. She is happy to ignore what is normally expected in society in order to learn from Jesus. And she is happy to embarrass herself in order to proclaim the profound truth about Jesus: Against all expectations of what the Messiah will be like, Jesus will have to die in order rise again.
The Messiah does not look like what the world expected. The Messiah will not bring about the Kingdom of God the way that the world expected.
That, of course, is the great contrast between Judas and Mary.
Judas insisted that Jesus must follow his expectations. And when Jesus’ Messiahship didn’t follow the pattern that Judas wanted, he was willing to betray Jesus. Mary learned from Jesus. Judas expected Jesus to learn from him.
Need I say: be like Mary, learning from Jesus. Do not make God in your own image.
Conclusion
Mary, Martha and Lazarus appear to have been amongst Jesus’ closest friends during his earthly life.
But we celebrate their lives not simply because of their intimacy with Jesus, but because they represent three important aspects of being a follower of Jesus. Resurrection life, active discipleship, and the willingness to pray and learn from Christ.
As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together this morning, I pray that we all may be strengthened for the journey ahead. May we learn from Christ, may we seek to follow him actively and may we always keep our eyes on the resurrection. Amen
The sermon is based on John 12:1-8.
===
Introduction
Today the church celebrates the festival of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Our Gospel reading for today contains all three of these characters as well as Jesus, but it also contains another character: Judas.
If you were going to make a film out of this morning’s story, I reckon that you could turn this into quite an uncomfortable scene.
Lazarus has just been raised from the dead in the previous chapter and, although the text doesn’t say it explicitly, we imagine that Jesus is having a celebratory meal with these friends who he loves. Mary then does something that would be as embarrassing as someone in our society hiking her skirt up to her thighs.
In my imaginary film I can just see Judas portrayed as a model of calm and sensibleness, looking at Mary with an attitude of pity and announcing: “The money you spent on all the drink you’ve just poured down yourself could have been given to poor”…
So when Jesus opens his mouth to speak, we expect that he’s going to take Judas’ part and tell Mary to calm down and stop making everyone uncomfortable. But instead Jesus tells Judas to leave her alone. And the narrator tells us that Mary’s heart is right with God and that Judas’ is not.
Resurrection
Although today is the feast of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, it’s the character of Judas who is the foil that helps us learn from the example of these three siblings.
Let’s think about the difference between the Judas and Lazarus to start with. Lazarus has experienced resurrection and Judas has not.
None of us has any idea of what it would feel like to be resurrected, but there are people in our culture who have had near death experiences. It seems to me that one universal outcome of such experiences is that people often have a sense of the true meaning and the true value of life.
I imagine that Lazarus might feel that he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. He’d lost his life but now he’s found it again and every moment, every day, every taste of food, every drink, every moment shared with a loved one is a sweet and joyful bonus.
Judas, I imagine, thinks that life is much more serious than this. Life is about freedom from political oppression and Judas will stop at nothing to get it.
But although Judas is serious and apparently lacking in a certain degree of empathy, we are also told that he is not straight. Judas’ serious outlook toward life did not prevent him from stealing from the common purse.
Lazarus, along with Jesus, is on the right side of resurrection.
The readers of this story are invited to be on the right side of resurrection as well: the poor will always be with you until the resurrection of the dead and the kingdom of God has come.
Turn your sights to the day when God’s children will live in true freedom. Be like Lazarus and live the resurrection life today.
Workers for the Kingdom
Then we have Martha.
Poor old Martha; I always think she gets a bit of a raw deal. Martha does all the work of the kingdom behind the scenes and, although she always gets mentioned, the picture I have of her is as some sort of generic worker-bee.
And it’s the Marthas – male and female – who are the backbone of the Church, and often the backbone of society’s army of carers. People who quietly do the work of God asking for no recognition or reward who often influence the lives of many for good.
Here again, though, is a contrast with Judas.
I imagine the Judas thought of himself as working for the coming of the Kingdom of God. But I suspect that he also wanted that kingdom to come in a blaze of earthly glory. And I somehow doubt that he would have been content to fade into the background.
Martha, unlike Judas, understands what the real work of the Kingdom is. We are called to be like Martha. When we work, we work for Jesus and for the Kingdom of God. We do not work for personal glory or gain.
Prophets for the Kingdom
And then we have Mary.
Mary the sister who sits at the feet of Jesus learning from him. But Mary who also embarrassingly proclaims her love for Jesus in today’s text.
Mary is something of a prophet. She is happy to ignore what is normally expected in society in order to learn from Jesus. And she is happy to embarrass herself in order to proclaim the profound truth about Jesus: Against all expectations of what the Messiah will be like, Jesus will have to die in order rise again.
The Messiah does not look like what the world expected. The Messiah will not bring about the Kingdom of God the way that the world expected.
That, of course, is the great contrast between Judas and Mary.
Judas insisted that Jesus must follow his expectations. And when Jesus’ Messiahship didn’t follow the pattern that Judas wanted, he was willing to betray Jesus. Mary learned from Jesus. Judas expected Jesus to learn from him.
Need I say: be like Mary, learning from Jesus. Do not make God in your own image.
Conclusion
Mary, Martha and Lazarus appear to have been amongst Jesus’ closest friends during his earthly life.
But we celebrate their lives not simply because of their intimacy with Jesus, but because they represent three important aspects of being a follower of Jesus. Resurrection life, active discipleship, and the willingness to pray and learn from Christ.
As we celebrate the Lord’s Supper together this morning, I pray that we all may be strengthened for the journey ahead. May we learn from Christ, may we seek to follow him actively and may we always keep our eyes on the resurrection. Amen
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Sunday 19 July 2009 - A heart of Reconciliation
This sermon is based on Ephesians 2:11-22
====
Introduction
Ephesians 2:14 For he (Christ) is our peace; in his flesh he as made both groups (Jews and Gentiles) into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
Christ has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. I wonder if anyone here this morning would disagree with this idea?
It seems like a no-brainer to us, but it was a hot topic for the early church. A VERY hot topic, in fact. It was as emotional and contentious to the early church as any of our own hot topics are to us.
And the topic of whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised before being accepting into the church was not the only thing the Early Church was arguing about.
In the New Testament, we hear that the early Church was arguing about whether or not to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols or used in Pagan temples. They were fighting about the proper way to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and this debate got so heated that Paul even ends up pointing out that some of the early church members might be at risk of eating and drinking to their own condemnation.
The early Church fought about the marks of leadership, about what the fruits of a God-appointed leader looked like and even whether or not Paul himself was a leader appointed by God. And they fought about charismatic gifts: Should supernatural gifts be used in public worship or was worship to be a place of strict order and dogma?
Close to Home?
Whilst we ourselves might think silly the debates about Gentile membership or food sacrificed to idols, some of the other issues might start getting a bit too close to home. We are happy to accept uncircumcised Gentiles in the Church these days, but what is the Church’s track record when it comes to opposing anti-Semitism?
And debates about the nature of the Lord’s Supper or what sort of person should lead or whether or not charismatic gifts are to be used in worship are not debates that are entirely unheard of in the Church today.
So, if we’re tempted to write off this morning’s reading from Ephesians as yet another all-too-familiar no-brainer statement about the unity of Jews and Gentiles, let’s not do that.
Let’s appreciate the seriousness of the emotions behind this particular issue and let’s not feel too smug or superior as we listen to author telling us that through the flesh of Christ, the dividing wall between factions has been broken down and that the former hostility has been turned to peace: to Shalom.
Because, at the end of the day, this reading is not really about Jews and Gentiles both being accepted by God as disciples of Christ. What this reading is about at its most fundamental level is Shalom. Peace.
And Shalom is not just the absence of violence; it is a holistic peace where a right attitude toward God and toward our fellow human beings shows us the potential of human life as it was first created to be. Shalom, is, above all, an attitude of the heart.
Living without Forgiving
A story is told of a famous preacher who was asked by a friend of his to preach at his church’s morning service.
As the famous preacher went up to the pulpit, he looked out into the congregation and saw a very angry-looking woman sitting on the pulpit side of the church. The preacher felt that the anger, which was so apparent in her face, might put him off his message of Good News, and so he decided to preach to the other side of the Church.
The only problem was, in his direct line of sight on the other side of the church was another woman, almost the same age, sitting there exuding as much anger as the first women. The preacher decided that he would have to deliver his sermon somewhere in the vague direction of the centre aisle, which he preceded to do!
At lunch with his friend, he was told that the two women were sisters and they’d had a small disagreement about 25 years ago and they weren’t speaking to each other. The visiting preacher said ‘It’s a good job they don’t live together!’ to which his friend replied ‘But they do!’
The friend went on to explain that each sister had told him that she was prepared to forgive the other, but that the other sister had never asked to be forgiven. Each one concluded that she was not prepared to forgive her sister until the other woman asked for forgiveness.
And so they had spent 25 years living together and becoming people whose anger was apparent for all to see.
God the Reconciler
The Good News that we hear in this morning’s Epistle Reading is that God is not like that.
The reconciliation that God offers to people through his Son Jesus is not a reconciliation that depends on us making the first move toward God, because we can’t. It is not our saying sorry that causes God to forgive us, but rather God’s offer of forgiveness that calls our repentance from us.
The Good News in today’s readings is that God makes the first move toward reconciling us to himself.
Elsewhere, scripture tells us that it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us. Of course, we still have to recognize the gift of reconciliation that God gives to us in order to benefit from the gift. And I think that it is really in this recognition that we can begin to achieve the kind of peace – the kind of Shalom – that God wants for every one of us.
The point of my sermon this morning isn’t so much to say to you ‘Be thankful for the reconciliation that God has offered to you by being reconciled with others’, although that is of course true.
My point this morning is rather to point you to the truth that reconciliation is God’s way; It’s God’s way for creation and it’s God’s way for all his children.
Reconciliation is, if you will, one of the central tenets of the Christian faith, it is central to Shalom and it is central to being the kind of people who God wants us to be.
Ironically, it is in reaching out to others by trying to find a point of commonality that our own lives will be enhanced. It is in making the first move toward forgiveness that our own peace will be grow. Just like love isn’t love until you give it away, so too reconciliation isn’t reconciliation until you give it away.
Conclusion
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, let us give thanks for our brothers and sisters in Christ who came before us and who challenged mindset of denominationalism so that we can freely celebrate communion with each other today.
Let’s also think about those situations where reconciliation is still needed. There are still many of these: I expect in our own personal lives, in our communities, within our own churches and even still between some Christians.
And let’s also give thanks to God for the forgiveness and reconciliation afforded to each and every one of us in Christ.
And may the Spirit enable each one of us to be messengers of peace. Amen
====
Introduction
Ephesians 2:14 For he (Christ) is our peace; in his flesh he as made both groups (Jews and Gentiles) into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.
Christ has broken down the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. I wonder if anyone here this morning would disagree with this idea?
It seems like a no-brainer to us, but it was a hot topic for the early church. A VERY hot topic, in fact. It was as emotional and contentious to the early church as any of our own hot topics are to us.
And the topic of whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised before being accepting into the church was not the only thing the Early Church was arguing about.
In the New Testament, we hear that the early Church was arguing about whether or not to eat food that had been sacrificed to idols or used in Pagan temples. They were fighting about the proper way to celebrate the Lord’s Supper and this debate got so heated that Paul even ends up pointing out that some of the early church members might be at risk of eating and drinking to their own condemnation.
The early Church fought about the marks of leadership, about what the fruits of a God-appointed leader looked like and even whether or not Paul himself was a leader appointed by God. And they fought about charismatic gifts: Should supernatural gifts be used in public worship or was worship to be a place of strict order and dogma?
Close to Home?
Whilst we ourselves might think silly the debates about Gentile membership or food sacrificed to idols, some of the other issues might start getting a bit too close to home. We are happy to accept uncircumcised Gentiles in the Church these days, but what is the Church’s track record when it comes to opposing anti-Semitism?
And debates about the nature of the Lord’s Supper or what sort of person should lead or whether or not charismatic gifts are to be used in worship are not debates that are entirely unheard of in the Church today.
So, if we’re tempted to write off this morning’s reading from Ephesians as yet another all-too-familiar no-brainer statement about the unity of Jews and Gentiles, let’s not do that.
Let’s appreciate the seriousness of the emotions behind this particular issue and let’s not feel too smug or superior as we listen to author telling us that through the flesh of Christ, the dividing wall between factions has been broken down and that the former hostility has been turned to peace: to Shalom.
Because, at the end of the day, this reading is not really about Jews and Gentiles both being accepted by God as disciples of Christ. What this reading is about at its most fundamental level is Shalom. Peace.
And Shalom is not just the absence of violence; it is a holistic peace where a right attitude toward God and toward our fellow human beings shows us the potential of human life as it was first created to be. Shalom, is, above all, an attitude of the heart.
Living without Forgiving
A story is told of a famous preacher who was asked by a friend of his to preach at his church’s morning service.
As the famous preacher went up to the pulpit, he looked out into the congregation and saw a very angry-looking woman sitting on the pulpit side of the church. The preacher felt that the anger, which was so apparent in her face, might put him off his message of Good News, and so he decided to preach to the other side of the Church.
The only problem was, in his direct line of sight on the other side of the church was another woman, almost the same age, sitting there exuding as much anger as the first women. The preacher decided that he would have to deliver his sermon somewhere in the vague direction of the centre aisle, which he preceded to do!
At lunch with his friend, he was told that the two women were sisters and they’d had a small disagreement about 25 years ago and they weren’t speaking to each other. The visiting preacher said ‘It’s a good job they don’t live together!’ to which his friend replied ‘But they do!’
The friend went on to explain that each sister had told him that she was prepared to forgive the other, but that the other sister had never asked to be forgiven. Each one concluded that she was not prepared to forgive her sister until the other woman asked for forgiveness.
And so they had spent 25 years living together and becoming people whose anger was apparent for all to see.
God the Reconciler
The Good News that we hear in this morning’s Epistle Reading is that God is not like that.
The reconciliation that God offers to people through his Son Jesus is not a reconciliation that depends on us making the first move toward God, because we can’t. It is not our saying sorry that causes God to forgive us, but rather God’s offer of forgiveness that calls our repentance from us.
The Good News in today’s readings is that God makes the first move toward reconciling us to himself.
Elsewhere, scripture tells us that it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us. Of course, we still have to recognize the gift of reconciliation that God gives to us in order to benefit from the gift. And I think that it is really in this recognition that we can begin to achieve the kind of peace – the kind of Shalom – that God wants for every one of us.
The point of my sermon this morning isn’t so much to say to you ‘Be thankful for the reconciliation that God has offered to you by being reconciled with others’, although that is of course true.
My point this morning is rather to point you to the truth that reconciliation is God’s way; It’s God’s way for creation and it’s God’s way for all his children.
Reconciliation is, if you will, one of the central tenets of the Christian faith, it is central to Shalom and it is central to being the kind of people who God wants us to be.
Ironically, it is in reaching out to others by trying to find a point of commonality that our own lives will be enhanced. It is in making the first move toward forgiveness that our own peace will be grow. Just like love isn’t love until you give it away, so too reconciliation isn’t reconciliation until you give it away.
Conclusion
As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, let us give thanks for our brothers and sisters in Christ who came before us and who challenged mindset of denominationalism so that we can freely celebrate communion with each other today.
Let’s also think about those situations where reconciliation is still needed. There are still many of these: I expect in our own personal lives, in our communities, within our own churches and even still between some Christians.
And let’s also give thanks to God for the forgiveness and reconciliation afforded to each and every one of us in Christ.
And may the Spirit enable each one of us to be messengers of peace. Amen
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sunday 12 July 2009 - Sow Love, Reap Hope
This sermon is based on Ephesians 1:1-14 and Mark 6:14-29. This was also the last sermon that I preached at one of my four churches.
====
Introduction
What a contrast we have in the two different readings assigned for today.
The first reading we heard was from the letter to the Ephesians: a letter that is dedicated to explaining the covenant relationship between Christ and his Church universal.
The particular reading that we heard this morning/evening from the beginning of the letter was written in a style that would have been familiar to people in the Greek and Roman world. It’s a eulogy of praise that people might have heard given at a banquet in honour of a wealthy patron. Except that here the words of praise are not directed at a human being but toward God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.
The second reading we heard this morning/evening was from the Gospel of Mark as the assigned readings continue through the 6th chapter of Mark. This reading is quite a contrast from the glorious opening verses of the letter to the Ephesians. Here we have a dark story: a powerful man (Herod) who recognizes the prophetic calling of a man of God, but who nonetheless allows the forces of jealousy, anger and hatred to have their way. And John the Baptist is killed because of the evil intentions that Herodias has been harbouring in her heart toward John the Baptist.
It occurred to me that there is a contrast in these two readings between different attitudes of the heart:
The first reading expresses all sorts of Godly and constructive perspectives: the praise of God, gratefulness, unity with God and with fellow Christians, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, goodness, hope, abundant life, truth, redemption and good news.
But the second reading is a lesson in evil. We see that evil arises from wrong-doing and from anger and vindictiveness.
We also see illustrated in this story the fact that evil is given free reign when good people do nothing to stop it.
So my thought for today is ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Or maybe more accurately, ‘Be careful what you think’
Keep your Eye on the Goal
Many moons ago, my husband and I decided that we were going to take golfing lessons together. I still can’t really play golf because I never learned how to use a driver, but that’s a different story.
As those of you who do play golf know (and pardon me if I’m teaching my grandfathers to suck eggs but) this is a game that is not just physical, but it is also mental.
And one of the things that our golfing instructor taught us was that we should visualize where we wanted the ball to go before we took a shot. If we wanted to get the ball on the green, we should visualize not only the green but also the hole that we were aiming for. He also pointed out that the worst possible thing that we could do would be to think ‘Don’t go into the sand trap, don’t go into the sand trap.’
Guess why? Because our brains would be thinking about the sand-trap and visualizing the sand-trap and that’s exactly where the ball would end up going. The combination of the physics of golf and the leverage involved in the game somehow manage to transmit your thoughts into physical action and to have a real effect on the direction of the ball.
As you think, so shall you reap.
Herodias’ thoughts were apparently on revenge. We are not given any details about what Herodias, Herod’s wife, thought and felt prior to asking her daughter for the head of John the Baptist, but we can well imagine the strength of emotion behind this request. How long had Herodias been rehearsing this day in her head? How long had she been wishing for John to get his comeuppance? She certainly seized the opportunity to initiate his death the minute the opportunity presented itself.
In a foreshadowing of Pilate’s role in Jesus’ crucifixion, we get the impression that Herod would rather let John the Baptist go all things being equal. But events seem to have taken on their own momentum and ordering the death of this holy man is now Herod’s safest option.
Herodias’ evil thoughts led to evil being unleashed in to the world.
A World of Grace and Hope
But look at the contrast with this morning’s Epistle reading.
We move from a world of evil to a world of grace and of hope. We move from a world ruled by the forces of chaotic, incoherent evil to a world ruled by mercy, by grace and by hope. We’ve moved from the Kingdom of Evil to the Kingdom of God on earth.
I suppose that one lesson you could take from what our golf teacher taught Trevor and me is the ‘power of positive thinking’.
But the power of God’s Kingdom isn’t just the power of positive thinking. All the positive thinking in the world isn’t going to do anyone any good if hope isn’t real, if the Kingdom of God isn’t real. The words that the author of the letter to the Ephesians uses are powerful words precisely because they are expressions of the underlying truth of God’s rule.
It is certainly true that there is evil in the world. Today’s Gospel story reminds us of its power. But the Good News that Christians proclaim is that, in Christ, the powers of evil and chaos and confusion have been conquered.
That means that we do have real choices, under God, about the influence we have on the world around us. It is not futile to hope. It is not futile to seek to do what is right. It is not futile to forgive.
The choices made by God’s people can and do help to further the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
And it is by being careful to tune our hearts and minds in to the will of God that we can be used, as God’s church, for agents of good in the world.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the task of a Christian preacher is both very easy and very difficult. The easy bit is the Gospel message.
The Gospel of Christ is that creation has been set free from the powers of evil and that human beings have real power to choose good. The Gospel of Christ is about the fact that God loves each and every individual and wants to draw each person to him.
The difficult bit for the preacher is that we need to find 50 or more different ways to say this every year!
But, I think that, most of us understand intuitively what is important in life and that is love in all its various aspects and relationship in all its various aspects: with God and with other people.
By turning both our thoughts and our deeds in God’s direction, we gain practice in all those things described in the introduction to Ephesians: The praise of God, gratefulness, unity with God and with our fellow human beings, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, goodness, hope, abundant life, truth, redemption and good news.
My prayer this morning is that, as we prepare for our ways to part from one another on this stage of our journey, we may all grow in the grace and knowledge of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To him be all the glory for ever and ever. Amen
====
Introduction
What a contrast we have in the two different readings assigned for today.
The first reading we heard was from the letter to the Ephesians: a letter that is dedicated to explaining the covenant relationship between Christ and his Church universal.
The particular reading that we heard this morning/evening from the beginning of the letter was written in a style that would have been familiar to people in the Greek and Roman world. It’s a eulogy of praise that people might have heard given at a banquet in honour of a wealthy patron. Except that here the words of praise are not directed at a human being but toward God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.
The second reading we heard this morning/evening was from the Gospel of Mark as the assigned readings continue through the 6th chapter of Mark. This reading is quite a contrast from the glorious opening verses of the letter to the Ephesians. Here we have a dark story: a powerful man (Herod) who recognizes the prophetic calling of a man of God, but who nonetheless allows the forces of jealousy, anger and hatred to have their way. And John the Baptist is killed because of the evil intentions that Herodias has been harbouring in her heart toward John the Baptist.
It occurred to me that there is a contrast in these two readings between different attitudes of the heart:
The first reading expresses all sorts of Godly and constructive perspectives: the praise of God, gratefulness, unity with God and with fellow Christians, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, goodness, hope, abundant life, truth, redemption and good news.
But the second reading is a lesson in evil. We see that evil arises from wrong-doing and from anger and vindictiveness.
We also see illustrated in this story the fact that evil is given free reign when good people do nothing to stop it.
So my thought for today is ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Or maybe more accurately, ‘Be careful what you think’
Keep your Eye on the Goal
Many moons ago, my husband and I decided that we were going to take golfing lessons together. I still can’t really play golf because I never learned how to use a driver, but that’s a different story.
As those of you who do play golf know (and pardon me if I’m teaching my grandfathers to suck eggs but) this is a game that is not just physical, but it is also mental.
And one of the things that our golfing instructor taught us was that we should visualize where we wanted the ball to go before we took a shot. If we wanted to get the ball on the green, we should visualize not only the green but also the hole that we were aiming for. He also pointed out that the worst possible thing that we could do would be to think ‘Don’t go into the sand trap, don’t go into the sand trap.’
Guess why? Because our brains would be thinking about the sand-trap and visualizing the sand-trap and that’s exactly where the ball would end up going. The combination of the physics of golf and the leverage involved in the game somehow manage to transmit your thoughts into physical action and to have a real effect on the direction of the ball.
As you think, so shall you reap.
Herodias’ thoughts were apparently on revenge. We are not given any details about what Herodias, Herod’s wife, thought and felt prior to asking her daughter for the head of John the Baptist, but we can well imagine the strength of emotion behind this request. How long had Herodias been rehearsing this day in her head? How long had she been wishing for John to get his comeuppance? She certainly seized the opportunity to initiate his death the minute the opportunity presented itself.
In a foreshadowing of Pilate’s role in Jesus’ crucifixion, we get the impression that Herod would rather let John the Baptist go all things being equal. But events seem to have taken on their own momentum and ordering the death of this holy man is now Herod’s safest option.
Herodias’ evil thoughts led to evil being unleashed in to the world.
A World of Grace and Hope
But look at the contrast with this morning’s Epistle reading.
We move from a world of evil to a world of grace and of hope. We move from a world ruled by the forces of chaotic, incoherent evil to a world ruled by mercy, by grace and by hope. We’ve moved from the Kingdom of Evil to the Kingdom of God on earth.
I suppose that one lesson you could take from what our golf teacher taught Trevor and me is the ‘power of positive thinking’.
But the power of God’s Kingdom isn’t just the power of positive thinking. All the positive thinking in the world isn’t going to do anyone any good if hope isn’t real, if the Kingdom of God isn’t real. The words that the author of the letter to the Ephesians uses are powerful words precisely because they are expressions of the underlying truth of God’s rule.
It is certainly true that there is evil in the world. Today’s Gospel story reminds us of its power. But the Good News that Christians proclaim is that, in Christ, the powers of evil and chaos and confusion have been conquered.
That means that we do have real choices, under God, about the influence we have on the world around us. It is not futile to hope. It is not futile to seek to do what is right. It is not futile to forgive.
The choices made by God’s people can and do help to further the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.
And it is by being careful to tune our hearts and minds in to the will of God that we can be used, as God’s church, for agents of good in the world.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the task of a Christian preacher is both very easy and very difficult. The easy bit is the Gospel message.
The Gospel of Christ is that creation has been set free from the powers of evil and that human beings have real power to choose good. The Gospel of Christ is about the fact that God loves each and every individual and wants to draw each person to him.
The difficult bit for the preacher is that we need to find 50 or more different ways to say this every year!
But, I think that, most of us understand intuitively what is important in life and that is love in all its various aspects and relationship in all its various aspects: with God and with other people.
By turning both our thoughts and our deeds in God’s direction, we gain practice in all those things described in the introduction to Ephesians: The praise of God, gratefulness, unity with God and with our fellow human beings, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, goodness, hope, abundant life, truth, redemption and good news.
My prayer this morning is that, as we prepare for our ways to part from one another on this stage of our journey, we may all grow in the grace and knowledge of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.
To him be all the glory for ever and ever. Amen
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Sunday 5 July 2009 - Being Prophetic
Today's sermon is based on Ezekiel 2:1-7 and Mark 6:1-13
There are some similarities with last week's sermon as these two were preached to different congregations.
====
Introduction
In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus has just come back from doing great deeds of power in Galilee. He is now in his hometown and it would seem from this morning’s reading that the people are not amused.
I wonder if Jesus would have been better received if he had come into town as a healer? After all, he has just exorcised a demon-possessed man, healed a sick woman and raised a dead girl. And all of these people have not only been healed of their aliments, but possibly more importantly, they have been restored into their communities.
The occupation of ‘healer’ would have been a recognized occupation in first century Palestine. And the healing work that Jesus has just done in Galilee would most likely have been of great value to any community. Jesus wasn’t just dealing in home remedies for everyday complaints (and let’s not minimize their value in a pre-scientific culture); he’d just healed some pretty tough cases.
Ironically, the raising of the young girl might be the easiest of Jesus’ recent healings to explain away.But Jesus has also shown power over something which looks to us like schizophrenia and he’s healed a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Jesus’ healing power works on the tough cases.
Jesus the Teacher
But Jesus didn’t come into his hometown as a healer. He came into his hometown as a teacher. And in today’s story Mark, unlike Luke, doesn’t even give us a hint what it was that Jesus was teaching in his hometown. But we are told of the effect of the teaching: the hearers recognize it as a powerful message and they reject it angrily.
Carpenters weren’t supposed to teach; who did Jesus think he was? The people of Jesus’ village knew all about him; I’ll bet some of them were pretty convinced that they actually knew Jesus better than he knew himself. These people knew that Jesus wasn’t a teacher and they knew that he wasn’t a healer either. It was almost inevitable that they would reject his message.
And, we are told, that Jesus wasn’t able to perform miracles because the people of Nazareth (I’m assuming) didn’t have faith in him and his teaching.
Faith in Jesus’ Teaching
I wonder what that means - Faith in Jesus and his teaching? From what Mark has to say, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that Jesus’ message might have been one of healing. And Luke’s account of the same story suggests a ‘healing’ message as well: the message that God is not just the God of Israel but of all people.
This is a message that has the power to heal not just individuals, but the world. But, of course, it is also a dangerous message.
Because if we open our worldview to others, if we open our minds to the idea that God might love other people as much as he loves us – that he is on their side as well as ours - then we lose a good deal of human-made security. We will have to give up the idea of building fences to keep other people out of our lives; be those fences literal ones of chain or stone or wood or even – dare I say it – of national borders. And we will have to be open to the possibility that God also works in the lives of people who we view as frightening or as our enemies.
Learning Healing
But if we simply hear this teaching and we don’t apply it in practice because we don’t believe it or because it is too hard, then there isn’t going to be any healing in the world.
If countries continue to operate on the basis of Realpolitik – of deterrent force - then the world will not escape ongoing cycles of warfare. If communities do not seek forgiveness and understanding then strife between people of different ethnic groups will continue in many parts of the world – not least in Northern Ireland. If individuals do not forgive one another and treat one another as precious gifts of God, then families and communities will continue to be torn apart. Children & elders will continue to be abused, and family members will continue to suffer from mental illness, addiction and all manner of stress-related physical symptoms.
Healing is possible, but only if we believe in it enough to ask God for the grace to change.
Embracing Healing
Now that I think about it, maybe the people of Jesus’ hometown wouldn’t have embraced him if he had come to them as a healer. Because healing and repentance have always been linked together. And repentance means to turn around and go in a different direction. Repentance means to walk in God’s direction rather than to walk along the path of prevailing social values.
And going against the grain of the values of wider society is difficult. It requires us to give up a good deal of perceived safety and security. To embrace forgiveness rather than revenge requires us to give up safety and security. To risk relating to those who we find frightening requires us to give up safety and security. And – dare I say it - to risk believing that God loves people outside the church or outside of Christianity as much as he loves us requires us to give up safety and security.
If we think about ‘having faith in God’ in terms of repentance and in terms of seeing life in a way that is different from prevailing social values, it’s easy to see why faith can be difficult. It’s easy to see why living prophetically can be difficult. It’s easy to see why Ezekiel found it difficult to tell the people of Israel that God had allowed the exile to happen because of Israel’s unfaithfulness.
And it’s easy to see why Jesus warned the disciples that their message would be rejected by some people in the community. Nevertheless, Jesus called his disciples to go out into the community and to depend for their well-being on the very group of people who were liable to reject them.
Conclusion
At first glance, it might seem that there isn’t a lot of good news in today’s Gospel reading. But it wouldn’t be correct to take this portion of Mark’s gospel and look at it in isolation from the rest of the Gospel.
It is good news that God is a God of healing. This is not just a God who is a common garden-variety healer; this is also a Creator God whose desire is to heal everything that he has made.
As always, the good news is that Jesus is Lord and that Caesar is not Lord. Peace of body, mind and spirit – the Shalom of wholeness – comes from loving God and loving our neighbour as ourself. God’s peace is not the peace of Rome; it is not the peace that comes from might making right. God’s peace is the peace that comes from seeking to obey the law of God but also by living out that law in a loving way that takes account of circumstances and individual situations.
Because the good news is that God loves all of his creation and there is no one from whom he withholds the offer of his salvation.
Jesus showed us the way; as the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus showed us the character of God. But he didn’t just show us God’s character, he died and rose again so that we could enter into relationship with God.
And that, of course, is the very best news of all.
I pray that as we go from this place, that the Spirit will fill us with the courage to dare to get out into the community and tell those who do not know about the love of God. I pray we will be passionate about proclaiming this message even when it means that the message will not be gladly received. And I pray that, as we continue our journey as Christ’s disciples that we may continue to be amazed by hope, love and the peace that passes all understanding. Amen
There are some similarities with last week's sermon as these two were preached to different congregations.
====
Introduction
In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus has just come back from doing great deeds of power in Galilee. He is now in his hometown and it would seem from this morning’s reading that the people are not amused.
I wonder if Jesus would have been better received if he had come into town as a healer? After all, he has just exorcised a demon-possessed man, healed a sick woman and raised a dead girl. And all of these people have not only been healed of their aliments, but possibly more importantly, they have been restored into their communities.
The occupation of ‘healer’ would have been a recognized occupation in first century Palestine. And the healing work that Jesus has just done in Galilee would most likely have been of great value to any community. Jesus wasn’t just dealing in home remedies for everyday complaints (and let’s not minimize their value in a pre-scientific culture); he’d just healed some pretty tough cases.
Ironically, the raising of the young girl might be the easiest of Jesus’ recent healings to explain away.But Jesus has also shown power over something which looks to us like schizophrenia and he’s healed a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Jesus’ healing power works on the tough cases.
Jesus the Teacher
But Jesus didn’t come into his hometown as a healer. He came into his hometown as a teacher. And in today’s story Mark, unlike Luke, doesn’t even give us a hint what it was that Jesus was teaching in his hometown. But we are told of the effect of the teaching: the hearers recognize it as a powerful message and they reject it angrily.
Carpenters weren’t supposed to teach; who did Jesus think he was? The people of Jesus’ village knew all about him; I’ll bet some of them were pretty convinced that they actually knew Jesus better than he knew himself. These people knew that Jesus wasn’t a teacher and they knew that he wasn’t a healer either. It was almost inevitable that they would reject his message.
And, we are told, that Jesus wasn’t able to perform miracles because the people of Nazareth (I’m assuming) didn’t have faith in him and his teaching.
Faith in Jesus’ Teaching
I wonder what that means - Faith in Jesus and his teaching? From what Mark has to say, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that Jesus’ message might have been one of healing. And Luke’s account of the same story suggests a ‘healing’ message as well: the message that God is not just the God of Israel but of all people.
This is a message that has the power to heal not just individuals, but the world. But, of course, it is also a dangerous message.
Because if we open our worldview to others, if we open our minds to the idea that God might love other people as much as he loves us – that he is on their side as well as ours - then we lose a good deal of human-made security. We will have to give up the idea of building fences to keep other people out of our lives; be those fences literal ones of chain or stone or wood or even – dare I say it – of national borders. And we will have to be open to the possibility that God also works in the lives of people who we view as frightening or as our enemies.
Learning Healing
But if we simply hear this teaching and we don’t apply it in practice because we don’t believe it or because it is too hard, then there isn’t going to be any healing in the world.
If countries continue to operate on the basis of Realpolitik – of deterrent force - then the world will not escape ongoing cycles of warfare. If communities do not seek forgiveness and understanding then strife between people of different ethnic groups will continue in many parts of the world – not least in Northern Ireland. If individuals do not forgive one another and treat one another as precious gifts of God, then families and communities will continue to be torn apart. Children & elders will continue to be abused, and family members will continue to suffer from mental illness, addiction and all manner of stress-related physical symptoms.
Healing is possible, but only if we believe in it enough to ask God for the grace to change.
Embracing Healing
Now that I think about it, maybe the people of Jesus’ hometown wouldn’t have embraced him if he had come to them as a healer. Because healing and repentance have always been linked together. And repentance means to turn around and go in a different direction. Repentance means to walk in God’s direction rather than to walk along the path of prevailing social values.
And going against the grain of the values of wider society is difficult. It requires us to give up a good deal of perceived safety and security. To embrace forgiveness rather than revenge requires us to give up safety and security. To risk relating to those who we find frightening requires us to give up safety and security. And – dare I say it - to risk believing that God loves people outside the church or outside of Christianity as much as he loves us requires us to give up safety and security.
If we think about ‘having faith in God’ in terms of repentance and in terms of seeing life in a way that is different from prevailing social values, it’s easy to see why faith can be difficult. It’s easy to see why living prophetically can be difficult. It’s easy to see why Ezekiel found it difficult to tell the people of Israel that God had allowed the exile to happen because of Israel’s unfaithfulness.
And it’s easy to see why Jesus warned the disciples that their message would be rejected by some people in the community. Nevertheless, Jesus called his disciples to go out into the community and to depend for their well-being on the very group of people who were liable to reject them.
Conclusion
At first glance, it might seem that there isn’t a lot of good news in today’s Gospel reading. But it wouldn’t be correct to take this portion of Mark’s gospel and look at it in isolation from the rest of the Gospel.
It is good news that God is a God of healing. This is not just a God who is a common garden-variety healer; this is also a Creator God whose desire is to heal everything that he has made.
As always, the good news is that Jesus is Lord and that Caesar is not Lord. Peace of body, mind and spirit – the Shalom of wholeness – comes from loving God and loving our neighbour as ourself. God’s peace is not the peace of Rome; it is not the peace that comes from might making right. God’s peace is the peace that comes from seeking to obey the law of God but also by living out that law in a loving way that takes account of circumstances and individual situations.
Because the good news is that God loves all of his creation and there is no one from whom he withholds the offer of his salvation.
Jesus showed us the way; as the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus showed us the character of God. But he didn’t just show us God’s character, he died and rose again so that we could enter into relationship with God.
And that, of course, is the very best news of all.
I pray that as we go from this place, that the Spirit will fill us with the courage to dare to get out into the community and tell those who do not know about the love of God. I pray we will be passionate about proclaiming this message even when it means that the message will not be gladly received. And I pray that, as we continue our journey as Christ’s disciples that we may continue to be amazed by hope, love and the peace that passes all understanding. Amen
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