February 23, 2025 Ministry with the Scared Luke 5:27-6:16

             In my professional circles I’ve heard many people say we need to, “Speak truth to power,” in response to many current actions of our federal government.  People who say this cite the Old Testament prophets and also Jesus as doing the same.  It is a rally cry to action.  As I’ve said before, I certainly have my concerns, but for the sake of a sermon and being faithful to the witness of the Bible, saying that Jesus spoke truth to power is a projection of current day dynamics onto Jesus; and turns him into an activist who agrees with you. 

I feel like I’ve said many times recently; if Jesus was really speaking truth to power he would have addressed the Romans, not the Jews.  And if he had done so he probably would have been championed by the Jewish leadership for what he was doing.  They certainly would not have called for his execution.  Interestingly, when Jesus was actually before Pontus Pilate, the Roman governor who did have power, Jesus was pretty silent.  Understanding what Jesus was actually doing is much more helpful for today.  Let’s get at that by reminding ourselves of a very big reality behind the gospel of Luke.

Any time we read from Luke’s gospel we need to keep in mind that we are reading something that was probably written around the year 80 but talking about events that happened in the 30s.  Between the 30s and the 80s, and especially in the 60s, there were a series of major Jewish revolts against the Romans.  They continued until Rome cracked down.  In the year 70 the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem.  That destruction included reducing the Jerusalem temple to rubble.  That temple was the center of Jewish faith. 

The Romans destroyed more than just property.  They also killed plenty of people.  The whole situation seems to have put an end to most sects within Judaism.  In the time of Jesus there appear to have been five major sects.  Four of the five show up in the Bible.  Those four are the: Sadducees, Pharisees, Herodians, and Zealots.  The fifth, the one that doesn’t show up in the Bible, is the Essenes.

I don’t know of any clear historical records as to exactly what happened, but after the destruction of the temple only one of the five still remained.  That sect was the Pharisees.  The Sadducees, Herodians, Zealots, and Essenes all disappeared from history.

The Pharisees probably survived because they were the ones who developed the idea of the synagogue.  Synagogues were centers for worship and learning.  Wherever a significant number of Pharisees lived they built a synagogue.  Most of the Jewish people Jesus interacted with in his public ministry were Pharisees.

If you were a Pharisee living after the year 70 you were weak, scared, and confused.  What had happened?  What went wrong?  Why did God allow all this to happen?  And, would your faith survive?

The crisis of the Pharisees had a precedent.  They looked to it for guidance in the current day.  600 years earlier the Babylonian Empire had also destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  Thee Pharisees looked to that precedent for answers.  They survived that period of destruction by holding fast to their Jewish identity, which centered on keeping the religious laws of the Torah.  The Torah is what we Christians have as first five books of the Bible.  Jews believed they were given to Moses by God.  The Torah taught a Jewish person how to live in right relationship with God.  It gave directions for personal and religious life.  It taught how to make up for your sins and be forgiven.  It was the central scripture.

In the 80s (when Luke wrote his gospel) the Pharisees were clinging to this, the only hope they knew.  If they broke it they feared God would punish them even more for doing so.  Then, from the Pharisees point of view, in the midst of all of those fears and struggles to survive came a new radical upstart sect of the Nazarenes – or more and more being known as “Christians”.  This fast growing new religious sect appeared to be yet another threat to orthodox Jewish beliefs.  Christians claimed the Torah was not central to faith and was not what God really wanted.  From the point of view of the Pharisees, the Christians were teaching absurd heretical nonsense; that a man called Jesus from Nazareth was actually the Son of God and he was ignominiously executed by crucifixion.

I hope you can appreciate just how ludicrous Christian claims were to the Pharisees at the time Luke was writing.  For the Pharisees, there was no way God could have wanted what Christians claimed!

When we read Luke’s gospel we have to remember that Luke is addressing the reality of Jesus’ followers in the 80s as he’s writing about what happened with Jesus in the 30s.  I suppose you could say Luke is projecting his time onto the stories of Jesus.  So, when we read about Jesus being in conflict with the Pharisees, he is not speaking truth to power.  Jesus is speaking to scared powerless people who are clinging to the only thing they knew – staying faithful to the Torah.  Jesus has to convince them that is a misunderstanding of God’s will.

Be sure to recognize something in all of the gospels as they tell the story of Jesus.  Jesus never ever condemns the Torah as: bad, wrong, ignorant, or heretical.  In Matthew’s gospel Jesus outright praises it and recognizes its authority.  Throughout Luke’s gospel we’re reminded that Jesus himself lived like a faithful Jew, which meant he honored the Torah.

Jesus is not being a rebel.  He is not speaking truth to power.  He is not trying to start an uprising or revolt.  All of those ideas are ideas being imposed upon him by later peoples. 

Now, hear me clearly.  I’m not saying that what Jesus did in his lifetime is the correct formula for how we are to live today.  The times and situations are different.  What I am saying is not to impose our present time onto Jesus and make him into whatever it is we want him to be to accomplish our own agenda.  What we want to do is learn from Jesus in his time and then apply it to our present-day situations; whatever they may be.   Unfortunately for us this Sunday, the core teachings Jesus has for life are what we will read in worship next week.  That’s when we’ll read the “Sermon on the Plain” as it’s called in Luke’s gospel.  So you’ll have to stay tuned.  Even so, there is a very important thing in what we read for our lives today.  I’ll wrap up by looking at that.

When Jesus was eating dinner with Levi the tax collector he said, “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”

That sounds simple enough.  Jesus is saying out with the old and in with the new.  But that’s not where Jesus ends.  He continues, “And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”

What does that mean?  Apparently out with the old and in with the new is not what Jesus meant!

Thus far in Luke’s gospel he has rooted us in Jewish history and shown how important it was – central to God’s designs in fact.  Luke has taught us that Jesus in no way intends to upend living by the Torah.  Luke does not want the Pharisees to think Jesus and the new sect of Christians are a threat at all.  Rather, Luke wants them (and us) to understand that deeply rooted within the old Jewish ways is God’s will and God’s excellence.  The problem with the Pharisees is that they’d gone a bit off track.  They were clinging to the wrong things for salvation.  Any time you think following rules and regulations puts you in right relationship with God you’re risking becoming arrogant.  It happens all the time, not just to the Pharisees.

I talked about this last week, and we’ll see it at work again next week.  It’s all about recognizing our brokenness before God and realizing we need God’s grace.  That’s where the Pharisees had gone wrong.  They were trying to build a relationship with God based upon technical following of the laws.  What they missed is that the laws were based on God’s mercy for fallen and broken people.

That is why Jesus is spending time with tax collectors like Levi.  That is why Jesus is healing these unimportant and powerless people in Judea.  That is why Jesus chooses the twelve disciples that he chooses.  They were not qualified because of their skills or education.  They were qualified because they were willing to accept their need for forgiveness from God.  They wouldn’t do that perfectly.  And Luke even reminds us that Judas Iscariot will be a traitor who brings the whole thing to an end.  What qualifies them, and all of us, for God’s service is the humility of recognizing our need for God’s mercy.

As we engage each other and people on the street and people in social media platforms, regardless of how righteous or horrible you may think another person is, begin your interaction with remembering your own limitations and imperfections.  You may not win any arguments.  You may not convince anyone of anything.  And I’m not saying that you should say nothing or not engage in current events.  To the contrary.  Work and act hard.  But do it with an eye on God’s mercy for you and God’s mercy for others.  That is the thing which unites us.

February 16, 2025 Centrality of Needing Forgiveness Luke 5:12-26

             As many of you know, I am a life-long fan of the Philadelphia Eagles.  It then comes as no surprise that I was very pleased with the way the Super Bowl went.  I know many Bills fans were also pleased to see the Chiefs soundly defeated.  I confess that part of me was enjoying not only seeing the Chiefs lose, but clobbered so soundly that it was among the worst defeats the Chiefs ever suffered and that even some records were near being broken.  Revenge against arrogance is sweet.

            But then there was the half-time show.  I did not understand it and I did not like its tone.  But, as I have since learned, it was a carefully crafted condemnation of American white culture.  Samuel Jackson dressed up as Uncle Sam was a condemnation of slavery by whites of blacks.  Uncle Sam warns the black rapper that this is the biggest show on earth and therefore to play game that American whites want and not be ghetto.  The Squid games stage symbolized the rich killing the poor.  The red, white, and blue colors represented the flag and its hypocrisy.  Serena Williams appearance was a statement protecting black women after the disrespect from Drake, and reminding Drake that America is an exclusivist whitest nation but black culture is diverse and authentic.  Therefore turn the TV off, organize and unite, ultimately leading to the “game over” message that appeared in the crowd meaning game over to white people in America.

            Well, I can critically take issue with it in any number of ways.  That’s not my intention and that’s not what sermons should do.  In as much as it was a strategic artistic expression of rage, it had every First Amendment right to be expressed.  It also reminds me that much as I liked to see the arrogance of the Chiefs put in place by the Eagles, so too do many in this nation want to see what they perceive to be the arrogance of white people put into its place.

            Now, I have probably managed to offend just about everyone at this point.  That’s not my intention.  I find that race, class, gender, and sexuality dynamics in this nation have become venomous and filled with hate.  People create caricatures of the “other” (whoever the other is), over-simplify their situation, weave together tidbits of fact by flawed logic and then make broad condemnatory statements against the other – whoever that may be.  It seems like that’s the norm across the board and with each claiming to have the moral high ground for their position and arrogantly enjoying the downfall of the other.  There’s no such thing as a neutral position in these situations.  When you are wrapped up in a system suffering from such incredibly unhealthy dynamics there’s no way to not be affected yourself.

So, let’s learn a completely different approach to things from Jesus as we read in the passage from Luke.  Two things stand out.  First, we have the scene of the leprous man begging Jesus to be healed.  Notice how he asks Jesus.  He does not immediately beg for healing.  He says, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”  Jesus replies, “I do choose.  Be made clean.”

Notice the man’s appeal respects Jesus’ will and his sovereignty.  He does not say he deserves to be healed because he is a good person.  He does not say he deserves to be healed because he is a victim of injustice.  There is no leverage of Jesus at all.  It is simply an honest humble request.

The second thing is in the healing of the paralytic man.  His four friends lower him through the roof of the house.  That’s plenty bold!  There’s no humility or gentleness in that scene!  But notice Jesus’ first words.  “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

I picture myself in the crowd and think, “Fine words Jesus, but what good are they?  Words are cheap.  This guy has real needs and you’re not helping.”  The religious people there take issue with Jesus claiming for himself the ability to forgive sins.  But all of this is a setup so that when Jesus does heal the man Jesus shows that he truly does have the ability to forgive sins.

While our attention is easily diverted to vividly imagining this man being lowered through the roof and then walking away healed, we should not miss that the central point here is forgiveness.  Forgiveness.  Forgiveness.  Forgiveness.

Perhaps you didn’t like the Chiefs being soundly beaten, or perhaps you were offended by the racial messages of the halftime show, but let’s not overlook that this forgiveness message is the most deeply offensive of all.  It is also the only one that can give us any hope at all.

Why is forgiveness so offensive?  It can be easy to be the person offering the forgiveness.  You can stay on the moral high ground and feel good about yourself for being kind and generous.  It can be immensely harder to accept forgiveness.  Before you can accept forgiveness you first have to admit that you did something wrong that has to be forgiven.  We humans don’t like to be wrong.  We want to be right.

When I look at race and gender and political dynamics in this country today I see a common theme.  It is rooted in the answer to an age old question.  Are people by nature good or are they bad?  Or perhaps said a little differently, are people by nature good or by nature fallen?  While we can easily skirt the issue by saying we are both, and that would have some level of accuracy, you can’t get out of this one by sitting on the fence.  Either people are by nature good and we can count on goodness to rise up in people, or people are by nature bad and cannot be counted on to do good things; especially under pressure.

I don’t care where you are in the political spectrum, or where you see yourself in issues of race and gender, or whether you are an Eagles fan or a Chiefs fan, the dominant answer I see in our culture is the wrong one.  That answer is, that people are by nature good.  Everyone wants to say that the trials and struggles of their life are not their fault but someone else’s.  If it’s someone else’s fault then I get to claim the moral high ground.  I do not have to change and I will benefit when someone else is forced to change.  I get to win and someone else looses.

Doubt me?  How would the halftime show of the Super Bowl be if it was a message that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace?  How would it be if the halftime show were a middle school chorus from some small obscure rural school district singing Amazing Grace simply and in unison?  No complex lights show and fireworks, no diss track, no arrogance, no anger, no winners and losers, no desire to take someone down.  Just the simple message that we’re all a bunch of messed up sinful losers who can’t get anything right no matter how hard we try.

USA Today reported that the average cost of a ticket for the Super Bowl this year was $6,645.  I hear that a 30 second ad was $8 million.  The truth of our sinfulness doesn’t sell tickets or make money. 

Calls for equality are a big thing in our society today.  But here’s an ugly yet undeniable truth that many people are hell bent and determined to deny.  By all measurable standards we are not equal.  Some of us are smarter than others.  Some of us are stronger than others.  Some of us are born better looking than others.  Some of us have genetics which give us robust health while others have genetics which lead to endless health problems.  Some of us have great eye-hand coordination and others of us are so klutzy that we can barely walk and talk at the same time.  We aren’t equal and life’s not fair.  Those are undeniable truths.  We are not equal, at least not in any earthly measure.

Jesus roots things in the truth – the offensiveness of being fundamentally flawed, fallen, and in need of God’s grace.  That is the only thing that makes us equal.  And that is the only path of hope.  Endless virtue signaling and seeking the moral high ground does nothing but make more problems.

We read these words from Galatians 3:28 in our second Bible reading today: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.”  That is a very audacious statement.  It is true equality.  It is based on a common need for forgiveness.  Only by recognizing our common need for forgiveness can we ever get to equality.  And you can’t recognize your need for forgiveness as long as you run around through life thinking you are basically a good person and bad things are other people’s fault.  Perhaps there are many things that are bad that can be blamed on other people.  But that is false sight.  When we recognize that our fallenness (our tendency to not trust God but to trust in ourselves) is woven in and through ourselves every corner of our thoughts and actions can we see the truth.

That’s not about beating ourselves up all the time.  That’s not going to get us anywhere and it’s not what God wants from us.  But it does bring to our thoughts and actions: authentic humility, authentic equality, and an authentic common need.  That authentic common need of God is the community Christ builds as his kingdom on earth.

February 2, 2025 Everyday Jesus Luke 4:31-44

             Pastors are often told to keep politics out of the pulpit.  That’s pretty much impossible.  My sermons are quite often political, although I usually skirt around names and labels that trigger political responses.  Given the political changes at the federal level in the last couple weeks, and as a means of recognizing something easily overlooked in our gospel reading, let’s make some political connections.

As The Rev. Elizabeth Eaton has pointed out in her January 24^th letter, the new presidential administration has come in with a flurry of executive orders that are causing widespread concern and confusion.  I agree with her letter overall and I encourage you to read it.  (It’s found easily enough with an internet search.)  Regardless of your thoughts on the incoming administration, I think it can be safely said that in the last election a majority of people voted for congressional leaders and the presidency significantly as a reaction to what many would call a “liberal” agenda that has pushed many things in our nation for a number of years.  Maybe you liked those things.  Maybe you didn’t.  Whether you did or not is not the point.  Focusing on the ideology alone is a mistake.  Ideology does not drive people’s voting choices.  Money does.  When I say that money does that does not automatically mean greed and corruption.  Yes, there is that part.  But there is also always the reality of what average daily life costs and how hard many people have to work to afford things.  Whatever party or administration is in power usually gets booted out when people feel things are hard.

If you go back forty or fifty years you see the factory and labor economy of the United States starting to crumble.  When I consider town in which I grew up there were multiple shoe factories, a glove factory, a shirt factory, and two tool and die works all showing strain.  People were told that we were moving into an information age and service economy.  Education was the way to success.  Many laborers were promised that with re-education their lives would be better.

It didn’t happen.

            Meanwhile, highly educated people – both liberal and conservative – were largely unaffected.  They promised the laborers that they knew what was best and they should be trusted.  That didn’t work either.  And along the way something else happened.  This is something no one wants to talk about but it is true: even laborers didn’t want to do the labor anymore.

            I remember touring the Kinney Shoe factory.  In one big room was something like 400 sewing machines with 400 people bent over them cranking out shoes.  It was piecework.  That is, you got paid based on how many shoes you worked on.  More shoes equaled more money.  A good worker could be reasonably prosperous, but it was hard work.  Men and women had heavy callouses.  Carpal tunnel and arthritis would form at young ages.  Even working in a place as clean as a shoe factory wasn’t good for your health – let alone those who worked in the mines and in heavy manufacturing.  People didn’t live long past retirement age.

            People just don’t want to work that hard.  I’m not going to blame anybody for that.  When I was in middle school I started working commercially picking raspberries on a neighboring farm.  The whole operation was run by a couple of educated idealists who had moved into the area and who thought they knew what they were doing but didn’t.  It was a fiasco and more comic than anything, but it gave me a perspective I wouldn’t have had otherwise.  Farmers around here have a hard time finding labor.  If you’ve ever picked apples, grapes, or cabbage at a commercial scale; or ever milked cows in a modern milking parlor you know that it is miserable; and yet still skilled work.  Farmers say they can’t attract Americans to it despite offering close to double the New York minimum wage.  For the most part immigrants do that work.  From what I read about local farms and hear from farmers we’re desperately short in labor as it is.  Causing fear in immigrant communities with the current policies is pushing a difficult situation into the impossible.  But that’s beyond my scope today.

            If I were to return to picking raspberries, and I were to take home $20 an hour after taxes I wouldn’t do it.  I wouldn’t want to work out in the sun for eight to ten hours a day, picking countless pints of raspberries, and barely make enough to pay for… a 40-minute visit to the dentist!  It would make me resentful.  All that work – all taken away in a blink of an eye with nothing to show for it, except maybe another appointment to have a cavity filled that will cost me over a day’s labor.

             Yes, I know there are many help programs for such people.  They’re very helpful.  The point is, it is a lot of labor for not getting anywhere in life, except every day being older and having a more worn-out body.

            Among colleagues and the church circles I inhabit I hear many people who would say we should be advocates for such people.  We should speak up for their rights and make sure they’re paid a better wage.  Or they’d advocate a boycott on raspberries to teach producers a lesson in fairness.  But I ask, is that the way Jesus did things?

I hear many voices say Jesus spoke “truth to power.”  Perhaps…

maybe a little. 

But that is making Jesus into a present-day political activist.  Look at what Jesus actually did.  In our gospel we meet him in Capernaum.  It is a story with an exorcism and healing.  Those miraculous things grab our attention.  But let’s not miss what is also there that we don’t recognize.  Capernaum was Jesus’ home for most of his public ministry.  Jesus was not in Rome or a provincial capital.  He was not in Jerusalem, the religious center for worship.  Jesus was not being an advocate.  He was not going to rallies, marches, protests, or riots.  He was not meeting with political leaders.  As our gospel reading for today ends we see the people of Capernaum asking Jesus to stay.  But he tells them that he must be going.  He must spread the gospel elsewhere… in Judea.  That’s basically going from no place to no place laboring hard and preaching to people of no consequence.

            Near the end of the Harry Potter book series the character Dumbledore reflects on some of his ambitions in early adulthood.  He was brilliant, talented, and highly acclaimed even as a youth.  People expected him to go on to great things in life – be a leader in government or education.  But then tragedies in his family require him to care for his miscreant brother and unstable sister.  He has to give up being great and famous.  He becomes resentful for all his talents and abilities being so wasted.

            Remember the testing of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness that we read about two weeks ago?  The devil tempted him to do spectacular things with his powers.  It all seems insidious.  But consider:  Jesus could have used those amazing powers of his to get quite a political movement going.  He could have used his power to teach those in political power how to act.  But where do we find Jesus for most of his public ministry?  In backwaters like Capernaum among laborers. 

            There’s no record of what Jesus did most days, but given his frequent use of agricultural images, and fishing images, I’m guessing he did a lot of work with farmers and fishermen.

            Almost certainly Jesus was not an impressive person to see.  He was dressed in ordinary clothes.  Like most rural people, he was probably dirty.  He walked in the dirt.  He worked in the dirt.  There was dirt under his fingernails, dirt between his toes, and dust and dirt in his teeth.

            A miraculous healing from Jesus did not turn a person into someone prosperous.  A miraculous healing from Jesus returned a person to their ability to labor to survive.  Look at what happens when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law.  We’re told she immediately gets up and returns to her household work of being a hostess to guests.

Summing it up, most of Jesus’ ministry was probably going to obscure places to unimportant powerless people to tell them the good news that God sees them and loves them.  It’s ordinary.  It’s unimpressive.

            We, with our comforts and conveniences, with economic safety nets and insurance policies, with social media and connections have a hard time understanding Jesus.

            When I look at the political divides and economic landscape of our society today I see everyone wanting to claim Jesus for themselves.  And I see traces of Jesus ministry in many places.  But I don’t see Jesus actually fitting into any of it.  Not liberal, not conservative; not Republican, not Democrat; not any segment of society that wants to claim either moral victory or victim status.

            There is a profound humility to Jesus.  I think he labored much harder than we usually give him credit for.

So what do we take from all of this in our charged society of today?  I don’t think you get to pull Jesus out of your pocket and use him to claim some higher morality for yourself or political rightness.  I think we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask if we’re really willing to be like Jesus.  Are we willing to labor that hard, do that work?  Are we willing to make financial investments in people and communities – things like buying houses in run down neighborhoods and investing in local business – rather than just putting money in the highest rate of return mutual fund we can find? 

Will we donate money to a cause and expect a gracious Thank You note, or will we get our hands dirty and be a part of the cause?  One of the great things about Family Promise is the face to face connections that are made.

In our fractured world where national level politicians seem to cater to groups who are of strategic importance to their agenda, and don’t seem to care who gets hurt in the pursuit of that agenda, we remember that we are all children of God, sinners in need of God’s grace.  Jesus shows us that when you live that way it is not sweet and nice and kind.  It is hard, dirty work often unrecognized in the world.  But it is God’s work in this time.