December 11, 2022 Arrival of the Wise Men Matthew 2

“We three kings of orient are bearing gifts, we traverse afar.”  So goes the words of the famous song, and the song we’re going to sing after the sermon today.  I think the gospel writer Matthew would take issue with it however.  Most obviously is that they are not kings.  They are of a foreign priestly class of diviners, astrologers.  The idea that they were kings comes from a later application of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60 to the birth story of Jesus.  Second, Matthew never actually says how many of these wise men there were.  The idea that there were three comes from the idea that each one was bearing a different gift, and there were three gifts.

The third issue is where these guys actually came from.  Matthew just says from the East – not from the orient.  It’s safe to say that the “East” Matthew had in mind was the immediate east – the Parthian Empire.  We’ve talked about the importance of the Parthian Empire before and it is good to remember now.  At the time of Jesus’ birth Parthia was declining a bit but it still covered about 1.1 million square miles of territory.  In the first century it was about equal to Rome in power.  I put a map in your bulletins that shows the Parthian and Roman Empires are side by side.  Judea, where Jesus is born, is the eastern end of the Roman Empire.  It was a bit of a buffer zone right up against the western end of Parthia.  Neither empire could realistically conquer the other.  

The distances between their power centers was just too great to muster the massive armies necessary.  But Rome was an empire built around the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.  Controlling Judea was already a bit of a stretch, but it was strategically necessary.  Otherwise they’d lose the land route to the southern end of empire.  In other words, Rome needed Judea.  Parthia would have liked to have had it, but did not need it.

The Herod family, of dubious Jewish descent, was sort of in power when the Romans came in and took control decades before.  And the Romans found it beneficial to let the Herods stay and use them as puppet kings.  Defending the eastern end of the empire against the Parthians was costly.

So, put yourself in Herod’s place.  Some Parthian priestly officials come to you, you who have faked your family tree and are pretending to be the legitimate Jewish leader, and ask where was born the new king of the Jews?  They say they want to pay him homage.  But why pay him homage?  Because these Parthian officials, your arch enemy, are nice guys?  No!  Of course not!  For all appearances they have come to buy the favor of the newly born Jewish leader and swing Judea away from Roman allegiance and into the hands of the Parthians.

If you are Herod what are you going to do?  You’re going to call in your equivalent of the CIA!  You’re going to track these astrologers.  You’re going to let them lead you to the target.  And then you’re going to eliminate the target.  The Herods may have been cruel, but they didn’t get to power by being stupid!

The story in Matthew is highly troublesome.  The Parthian astrologers are warned by God in a dream.  They give Herod the slip.  Joseph is warned in a dream and he, Mary, and Jesus flee.  When Herod realizes the treachery he has all the children in and around Bethlehem under the age of two killed.

How can God let that happen?  Why should all those innocent families suffer like that?  Indeed, if you ask those questions of Matthew’s gospel you get some very disturbing answers!

But Matthew isn’t interested in answering those questions.  If it helps you feel better remember that Matthew is a theologian, not an historian.  While some parts of Matthew’s gospel can be independently historically verified, what we read today cannot.  There is no outside evidence of a star appearing, Herod killing the babies, or a trip by Parthian astrologers.

Matthew is, however, wanting to state some theological truths: Baby boy Jesus is bringing together two rival superpower empires.  Foreigners – definitely non-Jews, come to pay homage to this savior of the world.  Also, the Wise Men had good intentions.  Their act of devotion was genuine.  Even so, the powers that be weren’t happy.  All too often in life innocent people suffer.  Sometimes the saying, “Only the good die young,” is all too true.  Innocent people suffer every day.  We do well to keep that in mind.  When we pray, when we buy things, when we vote, etc., keep in mind the full impact of your decisions.  Power tends to protect itself.  Innocent people often suffer as a result.

But the suffering of the innocents is not the end of the story is it?  Will this baby boy Jesus grow up to become a hero whom all love as he rises to incredible power and stature, and live a long and happy and successful life?  No.  This baby boy Jesus will grow up.  He will cause controversy.  Though he doesn’t lift a finger to hurt, he himself will also be caught in the web of power and be an innocent sufferer.

That takes us to the three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Each one is symbolic.  As We Three Kings gets right, gold is a royal gift fit for a king.  While Jesus’ kingship will not be like any others, he will usher in the kingdom of God.  Frankincense is a gift for a priest.  Frankincense was used in temple worship as part of the sacrifices.  Priests were the go-betweens between God and the people.  Priests were the ones who pronounced forgiveness.  Though Jesus never performed official service in the Jerusalem temple, he will fulfill all those roles.

Myrrh is the mysterious disturbing gift.  The hymn says, “…its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in a stone-cold tomb.”  For myrrh was a burial spice.  Its gift here at Jesus’ birth already anticipates the crucifixion.

If we put ourselves in Matthew’s story I wonder how Joseph and Mary felt about that gift?  How would you feel you had a new baby and someone stopped by offering you a gift of embalming fluid for your newborn!?!  Creepy!

And yet, this is perhaps a little joke in the Bible.  These Parthian astrologers appear to be quite knowledgeable about what is going on.  They have spotted what the Jewish leaders have not.  They have recognized the birth of a new king.  They have come to pay him homage.  They have brought highly significant gifts.  But this one they got wrong!

Jesus will die, yes.  But do you need embalming spices for someone who will be dead only three days?  Certainly not!  The gospel of John makes a bit of a joke about that when the man Nicodemus brings a whopping 100 pounds of myrrh for Jesus’ burial!  Jesus probably didn’t weigh a whole lot more than 100 pounds himself!

No, the resurrection is not anticipated in the three gifts.  That will be the twist in the story that no one but Jesus himself predicts.

And for our lives today, some 20 centuries later, what does this text mean for our day to day lives?

Two things stand out to me.  First is a challenge.  The Parthians wise men were not citizens.  They belonged to a rival enemy power.  The Parthian wise men were also not Jewish.  They were leaders of a pagan religion.  Yet God chooses to connect with them in order to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

We cannot automatically dismiss those who are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or any other religion.  They are not unworthy of God’s notice.  They are not unworthy of God’s love.  While I will never teach something so foolish as, “all religions are just different branches of the same tree,” for that is utter nonsense, other religions are worthy of our respect, our notice, and our Christian love.  We do not help ourselves, and we do not help the work of the gospel, if we fear them or attack them.  Though we disagree about God in ways that are insurmountable, in Matthew’s gospel we see that God is quite capable of working remarkable things through them.  All things are God’s.  God will take care.

The second thing is to not underestimate the power of what God is doing.  We hear this lesson over and over again, but we easily forget it.  God comes to human form in Jesus.  It will be God’s greatest and most significant act in the history of salvation.  Yet Jesus is born in basically a military buffer zone to parents of no account.  He will not be raised in a fine household.  He will not have a fine expensive education.  He will work with his hands, have dust on his feet from walking, and collect a group of followers; all of whom will betray him when he’s in trouble.

Yet no historian or religious skeptic can doubt that Jesus creates the largest and most significant organization in history – the Church.  The movement Jesus founds will outlast the Parthian Empire.  It will not only outlast, but help to bring down, the Roman Empire.  It will go on to spread to every nation on earth.

Never ever underestimate how important or powerful a seemingly insignificant action can be.  God works in unexpected ways.  God has absolutely no respect for things that look powerful or important.  Even the church itself cannot become cocky thinking itself grand and an end unto itself.

God works in powerful ways that the world misses utterly.  Never dismiss an opportunity to share the love of Christ no matter how insignificant it looks.  Never think anyone or any issue is too trivial to be important.  None are.

God is working.  God is working in hard and powerful ways all the time.  Keep your eyes open.  Be ready for the unexpected.  And rejoice in the surety of God’s success.

December 4, 2022 2nd Sunday of Advent Matthew 1:18-25

 Let’s call this sermon, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do.”  That is probably an odd name for a sermon, especially one that is based on the birth story of Jesus, but I think our gospel text takes us there.

Let’s start by noting that Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus is very different from what we’re used to, which is the version from Luke.  The words of that story flow to us like a well-known legend, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…”  We’ll hear that story on Christmas Eve.  But in Matthew’s account there is no census, no inn that’s too full, no angel chorus, no shepherds, and no manger.  Also there’s no Mary, “pondering these things in her heart.”

In fact, the birth story in Matthew doesn’t even have Jesus in it!  All we’re told is that Joseph has a dream of an angel visitor.  And then he, “did as the Lord commanded him.”  The very next scene, which we will read next week, is about Jesus already being born.

As Matthew tells the story about Jesus’ birth, it is not about Jesus.  It is not about Mary, who gets a pretty big role in Luke’s gospel.  No, in Matthew the story is all about Joseph.  That may seem odd; especially if you remember from last week that Matthew took Jesus’ genealogy to Joseph, even though Joseph really has no biological connection to Jesus at all!

But it is what happens with Joseph that gets us into our theme of, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do,” this way.

In what we read Joseph has a dream telling him what to do.  Then he acts on it.  Next week we’re going to read about three more dreams Joseph has.  In each case it is pretty specific about what to do.  And Joseph dutifully acts on it.

My guess is that none of us have had literal dreams giving us, with some detail, instructions on what to do.  Does that mean that God is using us less?  Are we somehow less important to God’s overall plan for the world than Joseph was?

In contrast to Joseph who received a number of instructional dreams, my guess would be that most of us fall closer into the category of, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do.”

It may seem like the lives of biblical characters are somehow clearer, cleaner, more straightforward than our lives.  They receive visions or dreams or angel visitors or something telling them what to do beyond doubt.  Now, they don’t always act on them.  Plenty of people in the Bible ignore God or reject what God calls them to do.  Nevertheless, they are still told clearly.  I think we want the same.

I should acknowledge that there are plenty of people in the world who appear to be going through life with no purpose or direction whatsoever.  They seem to be perfectly okay with that; at least for now.  I wonder if they’ve ever really given any thought as to what their purpose is?  What will their legacy be?  Will they leave any positive mark on the world at all?

A person of faith, and by that I mean any number of the world’s religions – not just Christianity, is going to want to live in a way in which their faith gives their life purpose and meaning. 

This is an aside, but I think a necessary one.  I disagree with those atheists who say that having faith is a crutch for the weak minded.  Or that faith is nothing more than a society’s morality made large and imagined onto a divine being; who then punishes or rewards after death with heaven or hell based on how well a person followed the morals.  Religion then is about keeping a population in line.  I respond that faith is not about pleasing a supernatural being with the way you live.  Faith is, as I said, about living in a way that gives purpose and meaning to what you do.  It means that you are connected to some value which extends beyond yourself; and even beyond your society.  But that can create a problem.

There is no problem when you feel like God is telling you what to do.  There can be a problem when you don’t feel like God is telling you what to do at all.  Simply going through life with the idea that you’re just supposed to be a good person – and have some fun when you can - doesn’t help much.  I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we want more than that.  We do want to feel like our lives have a purpose, that we’re a constructive part of something bigger than ourselves.  Sure, we may dream of becoming world famous and being a household name like Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin, but we don’t really think that could be.

I feel like some people work really hard to figure out what God wants them to do.  They pray.  They meditate.  They may read scripture.  Maybe they go on a discernment retreat, or take all sorts of skills inventories to see what they’re good at.  Of course there’s nothing wrong with any of that.  But it’s likely that something is still missing.

If we approach life with the idea that God has a purpose for us to fulfill, and it is up to us to figure out or discern that purpose, - and I believe many people think that’s exactly what life is – then it’s as if God is a scientist and we are all lab rats running through the maze of life searching for a piece of cheese.

If we take the way Matthew describes God giving directions to Joseph and apply it to the way we think God will interact with us, then we are unknowingly making a basic mistake.  But it is an easy mistake to make because we live in a society that values and encourages individualism. 

What was that old Army advertising slogan?  “Be all you can be!”  It surely is appealing.  But you can’t stop there.  The Army is not a collection of individuals.  No effective army is. The Army is a community of skilled people; skilled people with a purpose.

What do you do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do?  The Army is a good example.  And the same answer will unfold as we move forward in Matthew’s gospel.  Jesus does not create a faith of a bunch of individuals.  Jesus creates a community with a purpose.  The purpose is to make God’s reign of grace reality in the world.

I do not think God has pre-planned individual purposes for us to do in life.  I do know God wants His reign of grace to be reality in this world.  And he’s called us collectively to help do it.  Also, just as new threats emerge and old threats fall away and so the Army changes, so does what we collectively are called to do changes.

Even Jesus didn’t work as an individual.  You know he had the twelve disciples, and there were many more.  Consider the Lord’s Prayer.  Does it start off with, “My Father who aren’t in heaven”?  Is this the prayer of an individual?  Does the Lord’s Prayer even work if you are the only one praying it?

Yes, indeed it can work.  But this simple foundational prayer assumes that it will be spoken by a community.  “Our Father who aren’t in heaven…”  Everything in that prayer about us is plural.

It is the Church’s weakness when it thinks it’s a bunch of individuals trying to discern God’s will.  It is the Church’s strength when it realizes it is a diverse and dynamic community with a common purpose.

If you don’t know what God is calling you to do with your life – and remember that calling will change with your age, your life circumstances, and changes in the world around you – then don’t feel like you are lacking, or missing something, or weak in faith, or any of that.

It is the role of the Church to be our common expression of God’s grace in the world.  It is the role of the Church to be the community that gives our lives solid meaning and value.  It is the Church that is to be the community that offers us meaningful forgiveness from shame.

That is a very high bar for the Church to achieve.  We certainly don’t do it perfectly here – far from it.  But when we are at our strongest and our healthiest, that is what we do.  When we do that well we should not have to ask as individuals alone in this life what is it that God wants us to do.  We know that we are part of a much greater whole.  It is the work of the community that God’s reign becomes real.

So, may we make our church the community of faith that it needs to be in order to give us purpose and value.  And may we see the efforts of our labors come to life in the world.  In Matthew’s gospel we’ll see a community of believers struggle to get it together.  And we join them in that struggle.

November 27, 2022 1st Sunday of Advent Matthew 1:1-17

 The first thought coming out of your mind after hearing the genealogy of Jesus might very well be, “So what?  Why bother listing all those hard to pronounce names if it’s going to end with Joseph?  If Joseph isn’t Jesus’ biological father then what’s the point?”

Indeed, those are very good questions.  For as far back as we have records of people reading Matthew’s gospel those questions have arisen.  People have invented some very creative answers to those questions, but those answers are absurd. 

But there’s more.  If you were able to follow the names and do math at the same time you realize that Matthew can’t count.  He says there are fourteen generations between Abraham and David.  Indeed he listed fourteen generations.  Then he says there are fourteen generations between David and the deportation.  And again he listed fourteen generation.  Then he says there are fourteen generations between the deportation and Jesus.  But he listed only thirteen generations.

Yet there are more problems still.  Much of the genealogy we cannot verify at all.  But some of it we can.  Those years between David and the deportation – a time period for which we have reliable records – was actually eighteen generations.  Matthew overlooks four of them.  Plus, that time period is 400 years – roughly 22 years per generation.  But for the remaining 28 generations, covering 1350 years, the average generation would have to be 48 years.

And to further add to the problems, we can contrast Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus to Luke’s genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3 and immediately realize that they do not match.  No matter how creative you want to be, and how many excuses you want to make, you just can synchronize them.

What then do we do with such a text?  If the Bible is authoritative for our lives then how can such an unreliable source make any claim on us?

You may remember from several weeks ago that we encountered similar problems when we were reading from 1 Timothy.  It was the passage where the text said that women should be secondary to men and be silent in church.  We had problems with that not only because we fundamentally disagreed with it, but because the author showed he neither knew the scripture he was quoting to back up his claims, nor were his arguments even logical.  At that point I also said that we’d be turning to Matthew’s gospel soon, and we’d find some similar dynamics there.  And here we are.

This past week I spent a good amount of time searching for answers to these questions.  Ancient authorities try to tap dance around the issues or come up with complicated ways to wiggle out of it.  You see, Matthew is an enigma.  He knows his Jewish scripture very well.  His writing style uses layers of complex chiasmus patterns.  You have to be both very smart and very well educated to do that.  And yet, his scriptural interpretation is downright wrong in several places.  His genealogy doesn’t work.  And as we read on we’re going to see that in some places he warps things severely so that they say what we wants them to say.

Well let that be the beginning of an answer for us.  Matthew’s writing shows that we are reading the work of someone who is highly educated and in that person’s story that is carefully crafted.  Personally, I think Matthew did make an outright mistake when he listed only thirteen generations rather than fourteen.  But otherwise, his logic and his conclusions are pretty tight.

How do we respond to all of the various problems that we can note in the genealogy?

I like this straightforward answer by Douglas R. Hare in the Interpretation commentary:
“Our answer to these questions must be based on a single observation: apparently they posed no serious problem to Matthew and, by extension, to his first readers.  The details of the genealogy were obviously of secondary importance to the [Gospel writers], as Matthew shows by his intentional deletion of three generations of Judean kings.  What was important to hi was that Jesus was truly David’s son.  He was this not by the natural process of male procreation but by the direct will of God.  How God’s intention was effected in this instance is the topic of the next passage.”  (Interpretation Commentary, Matthew, Pg. 9)

Is that a satisfying answer?  Maybe not.  But it is the answer that does take us to what Matthew really wants us to realize.

Matthew’s first readers were almost certainly Jews who had decided to follow.  And for their belief their lives had become chaos.  Matthew was probably written in the 80s of the first century.  You may remember that in the year 64 Rome burned.  Emperor Nero, who was probably insane, blamed Christians.  Persecution began.  In the year 70 the Romans burnt the temple in Jerusalem and destroyed the city as punishment for Jewish revolts.  It was a tumultuous time!

Where was God in all this chaos?  What was God up to? 

If you look carefully at the genealogy you realize Matthew is giving you answers.  The people listed in the genealogy, or at least those we know something about, are really a mixed bag.

Some are prim and proper.  Some are faithful.  Some are righteous.  Some are wise.

And some are cruel.  Some are killers.  Some are faithless.  Some are stupid.  Some are scoundrels, scandalous liars and manipulators. 

And the women listed – well, let’s say no one who calls herself a “lady” would have anything to do with that lot!  The thing that four of the five have in common is infamous sexual scandals.  The fifth woman is Mary the mother of Jesus.  And well, in the next scene her situation is going to get questionable as well!

All in all, we ask ourselves, is Jesus’ genealogy one of picture-perfect virtuous people?  Is God willing to claim only the righteous?  No.  Rich/poor, good/bad, known/unknown, all are included.  God wants us to know he is rooted in the same messy reality we live in, not something perfect.  God will come into this world as a human connected to all the imperfections of the past.  God embraces and claims as his own: both our good and our bad.

There’s one more thing to point out about four of the five women.  They are all outsiders to Judaism; foreigners.  God is not confining the origins of his coming to just the chosen people.  The very final line of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 28:19, is, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”

Being Jewish may have been a blood line and heritage thing.  Being a follower of Jesus was not restricted at all.  Right from the get go, Matthew’s original Jewish readers are realizing that God has all nations in mind for what is to come.

Right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, the purpose of the genealogy in Matthew is to show how God has deeply rooted himself into history – into our history.  Even though the genealogy goes to Joseph, and thus shows no actual DNA connection to Jesus, for Matthew this is an important connection.  Matthew wants his readers to know that God didn’t just pop into the world for a short time and then just pop back out after the resurrection.  Our human story and God’s story are one in the same.

And though the genealogy itself doesn’t point it out, Matthew wants us to know that God is still very much with us and that our story is still God’s story.  Matthew begins the gospel with a genealogy and lets jump to the end again with the absolute final line Matthew writes.  Jesus says, “And remember, I AM with you always to the end of the age.  Matthew’s fearful original readers were not lost or forgotten.  They are not unimportant to God.  And the same goes for us too.

 

November 13, 2022 Despair 2 Timothy 3:10-4:22

             I think one of the saddest possible scenarios I could imagine would be someone on their death bed looking back over their life and feeling, “Well, that was a waste.”

            It was a waste because they feel like they’ve accomplished nothing.  Or perhaps it’s because their life’s accomplishments have been wiped out by war or natural disaster or maybe uncaring heirs.

            I’ve always felt bad for skilled artisans and craftspeople who are maybe carrying on their skill from a previous generation but now their skills are unwanted or irrelevant or being replaced by machinery.  It’s got to be tough to see your skill die with you.

            This is probably a depressing way to begin a sermon, but I think it sets us up to understand what we read from 2 Timothy.  I’ve said before that most biblical scholars don’t believe Paul actually wrote any of the pastoral epistles: 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus.  And yet, of the three, 2 Timothy feels the most like Paul, and it has a number of things that do make it ring with some authenticity.  For example: why all names of people, and what’s this about bringing a cloak and books?  No one knows.

            I’m no expert, but I believe 2 Timothy probably contains some fragments of Paul’s actual writing.  And like 2 Corinthians, it is a composite of those fragments.

            Whatever the case, it is safe to assume that things are not going well.  Paul is in prison.  It seems that he is alone.  Most, if not all, of his associates have left him.  You get the feeling that Paul senses it is quite likely that he will be executed.  That’s certainly a sobering thought.

            And is he going to be executed for some high crime?  Is he a traitor or a murderer?  No.  Earlier in the letter he says, “For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle, and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do.”  (2 Timothy 1:11-12a)  He’s suffering for his faith.  So he’s in jail, he’s suffering, and he’ll probably be executed for his faith.

            Is he going to go down as some great martyr, with his followers being inspired to action by his death?  Well, he's all alone.  So no.  He may very well die in obscurity.  Indeed, while there is a church tradition that he was beheaded in Rome, there’s no real historical evidence to support it.  No matter what though, St. Paul died in relative obscurity.

            How about the churches that he founded?  How are they doing?  Well, the fact that Paul had to write so many letters to the churches he helped to found is proof that things were not going well.  While both Romans and Philippians are written to places where things are going well, the rest of the letters are about problems.  And these are not sophisticated problems that should require an expert to solve.  Paul’s letters are not talking about fine tuning a machine that is already running well.  Paul’s letters are like instructions to keep a machine running period.

            And if you look at history, how many of the churches that St. Paul founded still exist?  None.  Zero.

            So how is Paul doing sitting in jail, probably awaiting execution, with none of his supporters around him, and most of his life’s work failing?

            So much for the great and amazing missionary who probably did more to establish the early church than any other person!

            Given Paul’s situation it would be very easy to despair.  And who knows what he prayed to God about.  Maybe he cried out in anger or frustration.  Maybe he did question whether it was all true or not.  He may have had lots of thoughts and feelings he didn’t write about.  What he did write about shows that he’s aware of how tough the situation is.  Yet there is also a quiet confidence in him.

            When I say quiet confidence I do not mean magical thinking.  Paul does not say that if we all just stay faithful and believe the right things that God is sure to bring about an easy and bright future.  No, Paul fully accepts the reality ahead.

            For over a month now a couple times a week I’ve been visiting a woman from the Syracuse area who is receiving care in Strong Hospital.  It’s a long story, but to make it short, she’s a parishioner of a church in Syracuse.  She suffered a stroke and was hospitalized.  She began to recover and was sent to a rehab facility.  But then a couple weeks later she suffered a more severe stroke.  She was sent to Strong because it was believed Strong could offer better care.  It’s ridiculous for her pastor to travel all the way from Syracuse and so I was asked to visit.

            At first there was hope she’d be able to recover.  How much we didn’t know, but significant recovery.  But in time that hope has diminished.  Her family has been posting things about her condition on Facebook.  They tell me that people reply with kind thoughts.  That’s good.  But there are also comments like, “I’m sure she’ll recover.”  And, “Keep praying and she’s sure to get better.”  And, “She’s looking so good.  It won’t be long now.”

            But when I visit her and report to her family I’m pretty straightforward with them.  She is stagnant at best.  She is not improving.  She will not improve.  That assessment fits with their own feelings when they travel to see her.  They’ve commented that they’re sure all her Facebook friends mean well.  But they also have to face reality.  This is not a good situation.  It will not get better.

            At the same time they are not despairing.  They know their family member is in God’s hands.  They have long entrusted her future to God.  They let it go from there.  I met with them at the hospital a few weeks ago and they commented that it’s surprising how many people say she should fight on, when that is the last thing to do.  Wouldn’t the trusting Christian response be to just begin withdrawing treatment and let her die?  Don’t people actually trust God that they fight death so much, and think it is loss and failure?

            I’ve been impressed with their faith and trust.  They’re certainly not happy.  But there is a resigned sense of acceptance and contentment.

            That is what we see in what we read from 2 Timothy.  He will probably not be released from prison.  His faithfulness will not rescue him miraculously.  The problems in his churches will probably continue after he is gone.  Some of his churches will fail.  Some will continue on.  How much his life will impact the world is unknown.  He does not feel special.  But he knows that God will continue to work through him and through the people he’s touched.

            He writes, “I solemnly urge you; proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.”  (2 Timothy 4:1b-2)

            There’s no anger in those words.  There’s also no despair or depression.  It is not resigned acceptance.  It is a confident conviction that God’s got this.

            He can go to sleep at night, or be lying on his death bed, or if he was executed - right before his execution, and know that he had lived and loved in faith.  There was no greater or more lasting way to live than that.

            When things in life don’t go well it is easy to despair.  It is easy to become depressed.  I won’t criticize anyone whose life experiences have put them in such a place.  We need to feel what we feel.  But there is also a foundation of hope based on God’s promises.  That hope is not that tomorrow will somehow be sunnier.  It is the hope that God holds tomorrow, and that the work of today was not wasted.

            I sense that is the faith the author of 2 Timothy is trying to encourage in his readers.  It is a faith that is deep and enduring.  May we who also read 2 Timothy almost 2000 years later strive to have such faith.  May God bring that to life in us and give us a sure confidence in his actions for this world.

November 6, 2022 All Saints Sunday 2 Timothy 1-3:9

“Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.”  (2 Timothy 1:2b)  These are the greeting words that we read in 2 Timothy a few minutes ago.  We probably didn’t pay much attention to them.  They are, after all, ‘church words’ found in the Bible.  It’s the kind of thing biblical authors say.  But let’s not run by these words too quickly; for they are, in fact, (or they should be) very problematic for us.

The first word is grace.  That’s definitely a church word.  We don’t use it often outside of church.  Perhaps we come across it in insurance when we talk about a grace period after payment is due.  And that is indeed appropriate.  Grace means unearned favor.  It means that someone likes you, or approves of you, or gives you benefits even though you haven’t earned them; or earned them yet.

The second word is mercy.  Mercy is not a word used by an innocent person.  If you’re in a court of law you don’t beg the judge or the jury for mercy unless you’re guilty.  You’ve done something wrong.  Consequences are coming.  And you’re asking to have them lightened or lifted.

The third word is peace.  We use that word quite often.  May people use it as a greeting or as a goodbye.  It means an absence of open hostility.  It means that you’ll work together for a common goal.

Okay, so what?  Paul wishes Timothy grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.  What’s the big deal?

The big deal is why?  If St. Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary of the early church, is writing to St. Timothy, another of the greatest missionaries in the early church, why is he starting off with grace, mercy, and peace.  Isn’t Timothy already a super holy guy?  He’s called a saint after all.  Why would a saint need grace, mercy, and peace?  Isn’t he good enough to deserve to be in God’s good books?

Here is where these words start to cause us problems.

I’m not an expert in medieval Christianity, but there seems to have developed a belief among them that the saints were super holy people whose lives had built up an abundance of goodness before God.  It was like the saints were super savers who during their lifetimes had amassed huge amounts of goodness in heavenly bank accounts.

Then there were ordinary people - sinners like you and me - who just plain messed up all the time.  Our lifetime heavenly bank accounts were in negative territory.  So we’d pray to the saints to let some of their goodness out of their bank accounts and come into ours.  If you’re a fan of the Netflix series The Good Place you get the idea.

My example oversimplifies things.  It wasn’t that simple, but that was the general idea.  It was a popular idea because it preserved a sense of universal justice.  People did good and bad things.  In order for God to let you into heaven you had to have a positive balance.  If you came up short you weren’t totally lost.  There were ways to get help.

But what does it mean when two of the greatest early saints start off with the words: grace, mercy, and peace?  Of all people, wouldn’t these hero missionaries of the early church have an abundance of goodness before God to draw from?  What does it mean when even the biggest of saints have negative balances before God and need to depend upon God’s grace and mercy?

In art the saints are usually depicted with halos.  They are depicted as looking down upon us and teaching us how to be righteous.  How often have you seen art where the saints are also looking up and begging for mercy?  Perhaps there is some art like that, but not much!

What does it feel like to you to realize the truth – the truth that before God you and St. Paul and St. Timothy would all be side by side looking up to God and asking for grace and mercy?

Most people, and many who call themselves Christian, and certainly all those who say of themselves that they are “spiritual” even if they aren’t religious, believe in a fundamental sense of justice in this world.  They believe that good people go to heaven after they die and bad people are punished.  There’s an understanding of fairness to it all.  You get what you deserve.

            At a recent pastors’ Bible study the Rev. Greg Zajac noted something that he heard said at a funeral years ago.  A friend of the deceased stood up and said, “I’m sure he’s in heaven.  He was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back!”

            Interesting thought.  It fits with a universal sense of justice.  And it’s 100% pure heresy in Christianity!

            Oh how we struggle with the idea of God’s grace!  Oh how we struggle to understand what the simple greeting of grace, mercy, and peace really means!  What does it mean when, by our standards, the best of the best in Christianity still fall abysmally, hopelessly, short of the righteousness needed to deserve God’s love?  What does it mean when the best of the best still have to rely 100% on God’s grace and mercy?

            This is where we have problems.  How unfair is this life?  We talk about grace but insist that there still has to be some sort of merit or deserving going into it.  Surely God can’t love and forgive the things that many people do!  So we add layers to it.  We say they must repent, they must realize that what they’re doing is wrong.  Then they will be forgiven.

            We say that okay, God’s grace is a free gift, fine.  But then a person has to actually accept it as a gift in order for it to work.

            But don’t you see?  In each case we are still wanting to put something of ourselves into the mix.  We want to have some agency in it, some power, some discretion.  That agency gives us a sense of justice.

            But what if the whole of humanity is in a bottomless pit of need that no one, not even the most holy, can ever repay?

            The Men’s Breakfast is watching a documentary on Martin Luther.  They’re at the part where it talks about Luther hating God for this reality. Luther cries out to God that it is so fundamentally wrong to be born into this world and into an unforgivable amount of debt before God.

            In time Luther discovers that he got it all wrong.  And where he was wrong was not some wrong teaching that he had learned in church.  The wrong was something within his own understanding.  The right was grace.

            Here’s the thing about grace.  The only way you can understand it is to realize how big of a mess you are, and the world is, and even the greatest of saints are.  It requires understanding that this fundamental notion of fairness and justice we humans have is just plain out of sync. 

Don’t bad deeds ultimately get punished?
Don’t bad people deserve to go to hell?
What’s the point of being good if it doesn’t mean anything?
            These are all basic questions of humans.  The best thing we can do is just set them all aside.  Do not fret over them.  Don’t dwell on them.

            Grace, mercy, and peace from one saint to another means that they both realize these truths:

They are made in the image of God.  Life is a gift.
God wants good things for all in the world.
God loves humans and the world.  Period.  God wants it all back.
God wants it all to live in love without any regard to a scoresheet.

            That is grace.

            As we celebrate those who have died and gone on before us on this All Saints Sunday we actually celebrate the complete freedom and liberation from our understanding of justice.  Wonderful as our minds, our logic, our sense of justice is, we run up against a truth no one will deny.  No one is good enough to live forever.  By logic death wins, hands down, always; saint and sinner alike.

            By God’s grace, mercy, and peace, death is not a winner at all.  By God’s grace, mercy, and peace, you win.  Accept and believe that.  Focus on that.  Live that.  Leave all the other questions and problems and justice up to God.  For God’s final word is that you are a saint he wishes to save.

October 30, 2022 Reformation Sunday 1 Timothy 6

 I’m disappointed to have missed last Sunday with you when you read from 1 Timothy the recommendation to drink more wine.  That’s not what you expect from a religious text!  While 1 Timothy 5:23 does read, “No longer drink only water, but take a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments,” it is suggesting alcohol for medicinal purposes.  So I suppose that’s not all that exciting.  Still though, I’m surprised no clever person have ever figured out how to twist that into a clever t-shirt and wear it to justify going on a bender.  I did find on Amazon that there is a t-shirt with that quote, but it is a really boring shirt.

Why though, would this show up in scripture?  While 1 Timothy pretends to be written by Paul to Timothy, his younger assistant, it is not.  So why include such a detail?  We’re back to something we have to remind ourselves of every time we read from these pastoral epistles – context.  What is going on in the world around the writing of the text that we have to know?

In the case of ‘take a little wine’ the background is other religions of the time who required complete abstinence of alcohol.  A number of religions were very austere, requiring giving up of just about everything that could be considered pleasurable.  At the same time, a number of religions were quite the opposite – allowing and encouraging all sorts of things.  It is wrong to say that Christianity took a middle of the road approach.  Christianity does not teach, “all things in moderation,” although that can be a wise way to live.  No, Christianity is built on an entirely different premise.  And that takes us to our reading for today.

Once again, there is a lot there that we could dig into.  And if there is interest in exploring these books of the Bible in more depth I’m willing to lead Bible studies on them.  However, intriguing as these texts are, I doubt there’d be much interest in that.  But I think we can get at the heart of the passage by looking at the phrase, “…imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”  (1 Timothy 6:5)

Again, we need to understand the context.  Although this time we will discover that the context hasn’t really changed all that much.  What has not changed is that we live in a merit-based society.   We measure, grade, and judge people all the time.  You have a measurable IQ, a measurable net worth, and all sorts of measurable things about your physical health.  You also have some sort of social status based upon your wealth, your looks, your work ethic, and your connections.

If you work in a factory it is safe to say that your employer has some means of measuring your productivity.  If you earn a higher paying position you are more likely to get it over others.  If you work in an office and you ask your boss for a raise your boss is likely to ask you why.  Have you increased your education, your credentials?  Are you willing to work harder, more hours, or take on more responsibility.  Why should you merit higher pay than you are currently getting?

Throughout our productive lives we work hard to earn our way up – to merit more.  The same was true in 1^st century Rome.  And that also went for religions.  There were loads of religions.  Christianity was a new kid on the block, although not the only new kid on the block.  Pretty much all religions were merit based.  You have to do what pleases the god (or gods) – you have to earn it, merit it – and then the god would favor you, protect you, or do something you wanted.  Religions were often connected to your trade or economic status.  A sailor would probably not be of the same religion as a farmer.

And then there is Christianity.  What made it stand out in this world where there were more religious choices than there are paint shades in a home improvement store?

It wasn’t merit based.  It was grace based.  And it wasn’t rooted in a specific trade, or economic class, or geographic area.  It had no temples, no buildings whatsoever.  Getting in was easy – baptism.  That was simple enough.  It sounds great, and it sounds perfectly ordinary to our ears today.  But at that time – a religion of equality among social classes – that was unique… and it led to problems.  Problems the likes of which we have a hard time grasping in our world today.

Many people considered themselves to be followers of a number of religions.  It was probably easy to add Christianity to your religion portfolio.  And Christianity had a couple big benefits.

One we got a hint of last week.  Christians were generous.  They were highly supportive of each other.  And they had the idea that everyone should get in.  Foundational to the faith was the exclusion of no one.  Again, that’s normal to our ears- but that was radical in those days.  And that, plus generosity, let to problems. 

Last week we read the widows role.  Widows were powerless and struggled to survive.  I don’t think Christianity was unique among religions that offered significant aid to its widows.  But again, it was an easy religion to get in to.  It appears as if the love and kindness of the early Christians made it quite attractive if you were in need.  Capable and able women were apparently exploiting the church’s support.  Hence the teaching that make sure widows really qualify as widows before you put them on the official list of widows!  Yes, it is an odd teaching to our ears today, but remember that much of the Christian writings from that time period deal with the church’s message of love and grace being exploited.  Again, a religion based on love and grace, not merit.  From a purely academic standpoint it was then, and still is today, unique among religious belief systems.

Christianity’s desire to attract all people of all backgrounds and classes led to other problems we wouldn’t understand today.  It's impossible to tell, but what we read today suggests that some people were using Christianity as a means of getting ahead – godliness leading to personal gain.  If you were a slave or a laborer a gathering of Christians will be a great chance to network with people of much higher economic status than you.  Be cooperative, behave well, impress the right people, and being a Christian might be the easiest way up the social ladder for you.  So, our author says, “Of course there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.”

In other words, Christian faith is not to be a means of personal advancement in the world.  It can make you a more authentic and whole person, and there is certainly great value in that!  But it is not a strategic path to get ahead.  I think that helps us to understand the sentences, “But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.  For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”  (1 Timothy 6:9-10)

Some of the final advice from the chapter is, “But as for you… pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.”  1 Timothy 6:11)  And then the final phrase, “Fight the good fight of the faith.”  Or maybe better translated, “Contest the good contest.”  The point being that living faith requires the energy and discipline of a good athlete.

And I think that image summarizes the whole of what the author is trying to get across for his readers.  It is a message for that day and today.

Yes, Christianity is not merit based.  We are all sinners in need of God’s grace.  And yes, initiation into Christianity is quite simple, cheap, and painless.  It’s hard to get any easier than baptism!  And people being people, they will quickly learn to exploit God’s generosity.  It can seem like a cheap and easy path to eternal life and maybe earthly prosperity as well.  But, that just misses the point of the whole thing.

It's Reformation Sunday and so we’ll wrap up with Martin Luther’s way of explaining it.  God’s love is free, unlimited, and unconditional.  You are saved.  No doubts.  No fears.  But that should never lead to laziness.  It should inspire us to work – work hard – harder than we would have worked before.  What is the life of a Christian?  It is like an athlete in training for a competition: growth, hard work, practice, training, discipline.  Overcoming obstacles with perseverance.  Good athletes know that they will not win every time.  In fact they may lose over and over again.  But for the love of their sport they keep at it.  Win or lose, they will do what they do at the absolutely very best that they can do it.  That is the attitude we want to have for our faith.  And fortunately, life is not a game or a sport.  There isn’t only one winner, or only one team that wins the championship.  God desires all.  So whether we are weary from a lifetime of work, or excited by the new possibilities of this very day, we give thanks to God for the love and the inspiration.  We get to live authentic valuable lives, and ultimately eternal life with God.