January 22, 2023 Disciples First Missionary Work, Matthew 10

             In our gospel reading Jesus sends his disciples out on their first missionary journey.  I believe the only directive that Jesus gives that unsettles us more than the idea of going out and spreading the gospel is the one of selling all that you own and giving the money to the poor!

            Now, that one may unsettle us more.  We’ll cover that when we get to it.  For today we focus on going out and testifying.  We should ask ourselves why that so unsettling for us.  I think answering that will go a long way to making us more comfortable with it, and also make us more effective at it.  Because ultimately the same command comes to us.  Some things haven’t changed.  The harvest is indeed plentiful, and the laborers are few!

            I think part of our discomfort with testifying is that we’ve all been annoyed by a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon who greets us at our door and annoys us by wanting to talk about faith.  We’ve probably also at some point experienced someone on an airplane or similar place we can’t escape decide to evangelize to us.  Christianity can easily come across as annoying.

            Many of us may have been taught that faith is something you keep private.  You don’t really talk about faith outside of church events.  You may not even talk about it much at home.  Americans are known for: championing rugged individuality, being a ‘self-made man’, or being capable and independent.  There is something weak about truly having Christian faith.  Christian faith suggests brokenness, neediness, and incapability.

            In the last hundred odd years the divide between faith and science has grown significantly.  If you speak of Christian faith people think you must be an ignorant simpleton who believes myths and fairy tales.  Oh, it’s okay to be a church member, because at its best the church is a do-gooder organization, but to take it seriously and to proclaim it in public is another thing entirely.

            And then add to it the way the clergy abuse scandals rule news stories, and stories of judgmentalism and hypocrisy, and you realize just how hard it is to be public with your faith.  Our society is functionally agnostic and presses hard to keep it that way.

            My one colleague has a daughter who is in second grade.  In Sunday school she received a bunch of colorful cards with pictures and Bible stories on them.  They’re from Augsburg Fortress, our denomination’s publishing house.  You can be sure they are good quality, show critical scholarship, and are non-judgmental.  In other words, they are solidly good stuff!  This girl enjoys looking at them and imagining the stories.  A couple weeks ago she took the cards with her to school.  She was looking at them on the bus and some of her friends were curious.    So, she gave cards to everyone who wanted one.  Being a pastor’s kid, she knew she could get plenty more.

            How much more sweet, authentic, and wonderful can it get than a little girl sharing colorful Bible story cards with her friends who are interested?

            By that afternoon my colleague got a text from her teacher.  Apparently a parent of one of the kids who received a card contacted the school, who contacted the teacher, who contacted my colleague who gently asked her to not allow her daughter to pass out religious materials on the school bus.

            Perhaps we could get angry.  A child has the constitutional right to pass out religious materials on the school bus, after all!  It was not an official school lesson or anything like that.  It was not endorsed by the school or passed out through the school’s formal channels.  But still, the social pressure is very strong to not express faith in a public place.

            My colleague could fight it.  And she would certainly win the legal battle hands down.  But it would be embarrassing and ultimately counter-productive.

            Yes, keep your faith to yourself.  No one wants to hear it.  It makes people uncomfortable.  They don’t like that.

            Imagine you were at a meeting at work.  The company wants to move forward with something that is counter to your faith.  Are you going to raise your hand and object?  Are you going to say you’re uncomfortable with it because it goes against your Christian principles?  That’ll take guts if you do it!  And people will look at you like you’re weird.  If you raise ethical objections you’d better find something other than faith to base them on!

Jesus warned his disciples that the work of spreading the good news of God’s love wouldn’t be easy.  And in their case you’d think it would be very easy!  They had just heard Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount outlining an ethical foundation of authenticity, humility, and grace for a way of life.  They’ve just witnessed numerous miracles.  You’ll remember we read two chapters full of them last week.  There’s no counter-Christian movement out there to cause them trouble.  But trouble they will have. 

It’s not easy.  It’s never been easy.  I doubt it ever will be easy.

So let’s learn five things from what Jesus tells the disciples as he sends them out with their newly minted faith.

First, their tactics are to be invitational, not judgmental.  They are not to use fear or guilt.  Every Thursday morning when I drive to Lyons to work with the church there I pass the LED sign of another church.  It usually has some message of fear or anger on it.  Last Thursday it proclaimed that Jesus is coming soon, and then red letters overlaid the frame with VERY SOON.  That’s a threat.  That’s intended to cause fear.  And Jesus never set a time frame.

Second, they are to be respectful.  If people aren’t interested, then just move on.  When he tells them to shake the dust off their feet from the towns that will not respect them he is not suggesting they become angry or spiteful.  Shaking the dust off your feet when you left a town and returned home was standard practice.  Jesus is basically saying don’t worry about it.  When it comes to consequences for their rejection of God’s messengers, the Sodom and Gomorrah reference we heard is just saying that that is God’s concern, not theirs.

Third, they are to be creative; cunning and clever even.  He says to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  Use your brains.  Use your creativity.  God gave them to you for a reason, so use them!

Fourth, they are to carry out their actions without fear.  If and when they receive pushback know that there is nothing that humanity can do that is ultimate.  God is the only one who can do something ultimate.

There is a fifth thing that is not exactly relevant to us, but that it will tear apart families and friends.  There will be serious conflict.  So be ready for it.  We can consider ourselves fortunate that expressing our faith will at most get us social disapproval and not imprisonment or execution.

I want to wrap up with one thing to keep in mind, especially as we have our annual congregational meeting later today.  We have a lot of work to do as Christians to overcome the highly negative attitude our society has towards Christian faith.  Much of it is deserved.  The church has indeed not acted the way Jesus taught his disciples to act.  And yet much of it is undeserved.

Moving forward, I think we need to change a lot of long-held tactics.  In the past churches tried to create programs, ministries, and fun activities to attract people.  Worship tried to be a fulfilling splash of, if not entertainment, at least a well-crafted public performance: comfortable, inviting, good preaching, good music, etc.

I don’t think high quality worship should be the end goal of churches who want to evangelize.  I’m not saying worship should be careless.  I’m just saying that if churches think a great worship service to invite someone to is the key to evangelism they’re barking up the wrong tree.  The same goes for all programs and ministry options.

We have to remember something very significant.  Jesus never taught his disciples to invite people to church.  That’s obviously because the church didn’t exist.  But then again Jesus never taught his disciples to form churches!!!  He just taught them to spread the good news of God’s love into the world and invite people to live it in.  The church is the outcome, not the goal… and not the driving force.

In other words, don’t invite people to church.  Invite people to know that God loves them with abundance.  And that embracing that love is central to living a truly fulfilled life.  True Christian faith is authentic, honest, unafraid, deeply rooted, and empathetic.  There’s nothing offensive or ignorant in that.

Whether people know it or not, that is what they are seeking.  Fortunately for you, you have found it.  Finding it doesn’t mean life’s sorrows and problems go away.  Finding it means that you can manage life’s sorrows and problems with confidence.

Live like that and you will find opportunities to genuinely share the love of Christ with people who are truly interested.  You will probably even find them in abundance.  For indeed, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

January 8, 2023 Jesus’ Testing and Early Ministry Matthew 4

             When I began doing research for today’s sermon one of the first things I came across was the phrase, “practical atheism.”  (M. Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 8, Pg. 164)  It was in reference to Jesus being tempted to bow down and worship Satan and thus be given the whole world.  Perhaps a story of a literal historical testing of Jesus by Satan sounds passe in today’s world, but let’s not be too quick to dismiss it just because the format seems scientifically impossible.  There is a deeply real thing to that test.  It is the very same test we all face each and every day.

When the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” he is simply inviting Jesus to accept the status quo of the world.  It is inviting Jesus to use his skills for his own personal fulfillment.  Think of the power and glory a person who can perform miracles could have!

But you don’t necessarily have to go that far.  It’s really just live life the way the world expects you to.  Go with the flow.  Do things the way everyone else does in search of self-fulfillment.

If we think this is a test to see if Jesus will disobey the will of the Father we would be right.  We can also easily go one step deeper and find a very practical application.

I had nothing on my social calendar for New Year’s Eve.  I decided I didn’t want to watch the ball drop all by myself at home.  So I went to see the fireworks at Finger Lakes Gaming and Racetrack.  They were being launched over the racetrack.  The only way to the grandstand overlooking the racetrack is to go through the gaming floor.  So before they opened the grandstand I wandered through the rows and rows of video lottery machines.  I also kept an eye on the Ohio State/Georgia game to see how that turned out.  The final quarter was certainly spectacular!  But aside from the game, I thought the whole place was an interesting commentary on the state of the human condition.  Setting aside any wisdom or biblical ethics about gambling, it was hundreds of people mindlessly pushing buttons on the lottery machines.  They weren’t thinking in what they were doing.  They weren’t having fun in what they were doing.  They weren’t being fulfilled by what they were doing.  They were doing what?  Hoping to hit some jackpot of significance that would give them enough money to rise above the pointless mundane lives they are currently living? 

I don’t know.

I do know that more money will not buy you a more fulfilled life.  And I do know that more power will not buy your more prestige.  And I do know that more will not buy you satisfaction.

The test for Jesus was to buy into that life philosophy though.  It is “practical atheism” because it is looking to the human systems of the world for fulfillment rather than looking to God.

That really shouldn’t surprise us.  All the way back to the Adam and Eve story we find that temptation: humans, seek fulfillment on your own terms rather than on God’s terms.

Put that way it seems so simple.  Just trust God.  But the world always offers us simpler, easier, quicker forms of fulfillment – or so they seem.

Jesus is alone, starving, driven by the Spirit into the wilderness.  Is he, the Son of God, going to use his powers to rise above the limitations of the human condition?

When God isn’t giving us answers as clearly or as quickly as we want – and I think I can say we’ve all been there – the world’s answers are very convenient.  We take them.  But they take us nowhere.

In a sense, the rest of Matthew 4 is along the same lines.  Jesus calls the first four disciples: Peter, Andrew, James, and John.  They are fishermen.

Some interpreters have suggested that these fishermen were struggling with their profession.  Or that they were dissatisfied and wanted a life of meaning.  But there is nothing in the text to support those conclusions.  Sure, professional fishing was hard work.  It was then.  It is today.  But it was good, honorable, decent, and meaningful work.  Who can argue with the value of a job where you provide food for people to eat? 

Jesus’ call to discipleship upends the lives of these four men.  While Jesus doesn’t exactly immediately call them away from their families and livelihoods (we’ll hear more about that in a minute), it is a call that is a life priority that is distinctly different from what they are living.  If they become Jesus’ disciples that will take priority over the other life agendas they would be living.

The question for them is, are they going to unquestioningly continue their current life direction because it is stable, predictable and straightforward, or are they willing to let their lives be interrupted by God’s kingdom.

I say they are not exactly being asked to leave their families and livelihoods because of something else we learn just prior to them being called.  We learn that Jesus has moved from Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum.  Capernaum was probably also the home of Peter, Andrew, James, and John.  If Jesus is living there and they are to then while they may have left their nets to follow Jesus that day, they have not left their lives entirely.  I suspect that many days they did continue to fish and that they did return home.

Here is the interesting thing.  And here is where we see the way God works.  In today’s age if you wanted to start a movement to change the world perhaps you would gather some followers from around here.  You’d put together a plan and then head to Albany or Washington, along with your followers, to push for it.  You’d lobby.  You’d have rallies, or protests, or maybe even use civil disobedience.

Does Jesus do that?  Note that Jesus is not born in the power center of Judaism.  That would have been Jerusalem.  And he did not center his ministry by going to the religious and political leaders and trying to persuade them to his world view.  No, Jesus shows that God really sees no significant value in human centers of power and prestige.  God works on the outskirts with the people who are there.

We’re back to the testing of Jesus to live by the world’s ways and receive the world’s rewards, or live by God’s ways?

I think it could be said that from the point of view of many of Jesus’ followers, he was whipping up a following and then heading to Jerusalem to press for changes.  I think the religious leaders thought that was what Jesus was doing too. 

But no.  Jesus goes to Jerusalem simply to celebrate the Passover holiday.  While he knows full well what is coming, and while he does preach and teach in the temple – the center of Jewish religious power – he has not actually whipped up a following and brought them to Jerusalem to create a dramatic crisis.  Jesus is just a Jew celebrating a holiday in the holy city.  It is his opponents that raise it to a crisis. 

Practical atheism is what our society lives by.  It says there is effectively no God – or that there is effectively no God who will meaningfully be a part of your life.  Practical atheism says that you should be a good person because it is the moral thing to do for the betterment of the human system; and… if it turns out that if God really does exist then you want have a lifetime of morality to draw upon to get you into heaven.  But, practical atheism lets you be your own God.  That’s what we humans want.  We want to be our own source of fulfillment.  We want the video lottery terminal to give us a win for a life of meaning.

When Jesus says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” he meant it in a very real literal way.  The kingdom of heaven – with its trust upon God, and its attitude of ‘there is enough for everyone to have what they need’, and that you can live a meaningful, solid, authentic life right here and right now is something for you to have.

Will you be immune from the often painful limits and realities of your humanness?  No.  Will your life be easier?  No.  But your life will be worthwhile.  It will be fulfilling even if it isn’t easier.

When Jesus says to Peter, Andrew, James, and John, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” it may have been a radical life change, but it was not an earth shattering crazy daring change.  It was a change away from the world’s ways of practical atheism and into God’s kingdom.

The farther we go into the future I am sure that ways of Christianity will diverge from the ways of society.  By that I don’t mean the hot button political topics of abortion or immigration or climate change.  I do not want to minimize any of them, but they are ultimately side shows that draw us from the real truth.  The truth is where are you going to point your life for meaning.  Society’s ways will take you nowhere except ongoing anxiety and emptiness.  God’s ways, while difficult, will fill you.

It isn’t hard to start.  It takes no great revelation.  It just takes a critical look at why the world is doing what it is doing and what it hopes to accomplish.  And then turning to God’s ways of loving your neighbor and discovering the truth is there.  May you have such courage and sight.

January 1, 2023 John the Baptist Matthew 3

             Not all that many hours ago people were wishing each other, “Happy New Year!” and then we come to worship and hear John the Baptist say, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  Well, ‘Happy New Year to you too, John the Baptist!’

The thing is, I believe John’s repentance message can put us on the right track for the new year.  I think we can get at that by looking at a very famous person this time of year, although a fictional person, Ebenezer Scrooge.  He is certainly an example of repentance.  But it is important that we understand the true nature of his repentance.

Here is what it is not.  This is a Facebook post by Daniel Williams that has been going around recently.

Every single major life trauma to happen to Ebenezer Scrooge happened at Christmas time: his parents abandoned him at boarding school, his fiance left him, his beloved sister died. It's not like Ebenezer just woke up one day hating Christmas - it's painful for him, and so he does what a lot of us do: he ignores the pain, he tries to keep the painful reminders of his own loss at bay. So of course he gets upset and lashes out when other people (unknowingly) insist on reminding him of his trauma by telling him he *should* be in the Christmas spirit. Then what happens? An old friend recognizes his maladaptive strategy and forces him to get help from experts who allow him to: first, confront his past traumas; second, recognize other, healthier ways of coping with them; and, finally, understand the probable consequences of continuing with destructive strategies designed to avoid hurt by avoiding human relationships.

A Christmas Carol isn't a story about how you're so much better than the mean rich person. It's a story about how anyone, even the rich and powerful, can struggle with trauma.

Um, no.  Wrong.  If it’s been a long time since you’ve read Charles Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol, or if you’ve never read it at all, I encourage you to do so.  It’s relatively short.  Lots of interpretations and adaptations have been made to it.  I think if this Daniel Williams reread the original story he’d realize just how wrong he is.  It is the right interpretation of the story that gets us to where John the Baptist is.

If you know the story well then you know that early on the ghost of Scrooge’s former business partner comes to Scrooge and warns him that he needs to change is ways or suffer the consequences.  Scrooge rejects this notion.

The first ghostly visitor, the Ghost of Christmas Past, shows Scrooge several scenes from his past.  We learn that Scrooge was indeed abused by his father and neglected as a child.  But we also learn that there were significant improvements in his father.  We learn that Scrooge had a fiancé who genuinely loved him and cared for him.  In the early days of their relationship Scrooge was loving in return.  But over time he began to distance himself from her and went down a path of greed.  She only leaves him when she realizes that despite her ongoing love, he has chosen earthly wealth over human relationship.

By the time Scrooge is done with his time with the second ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Present, we realize that Scrooge has had a change of heart.  He has decided to change.  He has decided to become a better person.

Dickens could have left the story off there.  It would indeed be the story of a rich and mean old man who has a change of heart because, and Daniel Williams says, he has seen the probable consequences of continuing with destructive strategies.  If that were the case the story would be no different than hundreds of other stories that show up on the Hallmark Channel.  If it were that sort of story it would have been forgotten in the dustbin of sentimentality over 150 years ago.

But Dickens continues the story.  There is one question remaining.  That question is, why has Scrooge changed?  If he has changed because he recognizes there will be dire consequences if he does not change, then his change would merely be a strategic move for his own ultimate gain.  But if he has changed because he has truly become a better person, then his change will not have a strategic benefit.

This is the part that Daniel Williams gets completely wrong.  Enter the third ghost.  As the ghost shows Scrooge horrific things in the future that happen to a dead person Scrooge eventually comes to realize that the dead person is him.  And he asks the ghost repeatedly -he even pleads with the ghost to know- can he, by making changes in his life, change the course of the future.

Now we are at the core of the story.  If you know the story well you know that the Ghost of Christmas Future never ever says a word.  All it ever does is point.  And so as Scrooge pleads for an answer… he never gets one.

This is where the magic of Dickens’ story happens.  If Scrooge changes it will be because he has become a fundamentally better person with no desire whatsoever for personal gain.  He will truly be generous, selfless, loving, and kind.

You know how the story ends.

This is the ultimate, deep, genuine repentance John the Baptist calls for in our gospel reading.  He is like the Joseph Marley character in A Christmas Carol.  He is telling people to repent or suffer the consequences.  But the repentance is to be absolute and real; not a strategy.

When John is so cruelly harsh to the Pharisees and Sadducees he knows that they fundamentally believe that they are good people.  At the beginning of A Christmas Carol Scrooge considers himself to be pragmatic and wise when it comes to the way he treats other people, especially those who are struggling.  I want to avoid drawing too strong a parallel between Scrooge and the Pharisees and Sadducees, but there are similarities.  If you have convinced yourself that you are good, and if you have surrounded yourself with life dynamics that affirm your goodness all the while keeping hidden the bad things that result from your life, then you feel no need for repentance.

John the Baptist did not invent the idea of baptism.  There are records from Judaism at that time that shows that Jews did have ceremonial washings.  But John is the one who elevates baptism to a one-time event meant to bring about serious and permanent life changes.  Baptism as John did it predates Christianity, but Christianity adopts it as its own initiation rite. 

For most of us living in a generally Christian culture baptism doesn’t really change much.  But in those days, being baptized into Christianity meant a serious life change.  It may mean many life changes.  It may mean stopping doing all sort of things.  It may mean changing one’s friends.  It may even mean being ostracized from your family.

And central to that is what John the Baptist had in mind – a genuine, authentic, enduring, fundamental change of heart and life direction.  No longer would a person live strategically for themselves.  No.  Now, it would be a life of genuine love and giving for the sake of God’s kingdom.

John the Baptist’s core message was, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  When John is arrested and goes off stage Jesus picks up the identical message, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 

The kingdom of heaven is when people genuinely live that life direction.

The Pharisees and Sadducees probably thought their lives just needed a little bit of a tune-up when they came to John to be Baptized.  He felt they also needed a major change in life priorities.

If you are driven to being kind and giving because it is a strategy to avoid negative consequences, well, I suppose that works.  But understand that your life is one of calculation and a constant subtle cost/benefit analysis.  If your life is one of constant cost/benefit analysis then joy will at best be fleeting, and you will live a half life of anxiety and exhaustion.  You will question your purpose, meaning, and direction in life.

If you are driven to being kind and giving because it is a natural flow from the love and goodness God has for you, then I make no promises as to how your life will go.  Remember, Scrooge received no promises from the Ghost of Christmas Future.  Things may go poorly.  Or they may go quite well.  But know that you will discover deep and enduring satisfaction, wholeness, and meaning. 

It is January 1^st 2023.  It is a new year full of new possibilities.  May it be a year where you become nothing short of excellent at living in God’s love and goodness.