Christian Community

March 12, 2017  2^nd Sunday in Lent               Matthew 18

Today’s chapter from Matthew is sometimes called the “Community Discourse.”  It parallels the “Missionary Discourse” that we read in Matthew 10.  Like a lot of things in Matthew it follows a structure, and I hope that came out the way we read it.  There are two sections each broken into three parts: One, the topic is introduced; two, Jesus gives a teaching; and three, the teaching is illustrated with a parable.  Taken as a whole this is about how we should treat each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Like everything, it is challenging, and it upends everything we do in daily life.

We humans like to make distinctions and have stratifications.  We measure people based on how smart they are.  We even quantify it with IQ tests.  We measure people based on how much money they have – that is easily quantifiable even if it is socially unacceptable to share your net worth in public.  We measure people based upon their looks, their athletic ability, their charisma and on and on and on.  Sure, as Christians we know it is wrong, but it is also unavoidable and we should resist it.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “We should try to get them as members,” after a person or family has visited; however it doesn’t happen with every visitor.  Consciously or not, I think we have a model in our minds of what makes a valuable new member.  We want those people.  And, therefore unavoidably, there are also people that we don’t really care about as members.  While we won’t exactly exclude them, we won’t pursue them as vigorously.  This is wrong, but we do it.

I think we are drawn to people who help us get ahead, or who amuse us, or who make us feel good about ourselves.  We are repulsed by people who offend us, or who make us work on things we don’t want to work on.  You’ve heard me say before that living in the suburbs or a bedroom community is very challenging to faith.  Not everyone can afford to live in places like this.  Those who can have really bought themselves the best of all worlds – close enough to the good parts of urban life to easily enjoy it, but removed from the bad parts.  When you and everyone else around you has done the same thing it becomes its own culture.  Then instead of recognizing that you are an extraordinarily fortunate person, inadvertently you start to think of it as the norm.  You expect it.  You demand it as your right.

When I inspected bridges we usually worked at least ten hour days when we were in the field.  The exception was the one bridge in Harlem.  There we started at 7am.  By 4pm we finished up, climbed into the company van and drove back to a Red Roof Inn in suburban New Jersey.  It was time to leave the filth and the crime and the violence and the noise behind.  We called it, “the armpit of the world.”  Now of course the Red Roof Inn is just run of the mill accommodations, but it was a palace by comparison.  I sometimes reflect on what life was like for the thousands who couldn’t climb into a company van every night and drive away from it all.

In our gospel reading notice that the disciples are starting to get that God loves everyone and invites everyone into his kingdom.  That’s good; they’re learning.  But while they know that Jesus loves everyone they want to know ‘who’s your favorite’? 

How do they get ahead?  How is social rank established in God’s kingdom?  What makes one person a more valuable member than another?  What qualities should they work on?

Jesus calls a child and uses the child as an example.  A child had no real social rank in those days.  Children certainly didn’t have school and sports schedules that ran their parents ragged.  No, a child held no position and had no rank.  While being friendly to children was considered a virtue, a child could not help you advance in social rank.

Jesus’ teaching upends all social ranking systems.  They simply don’t exist in God’s kingdom.  That’s a good thing.  Do you really want to spend eternity fighting for social rank?  Perhaps if you were the cool and charismatic jock or cheerleader in high school you’d like to keep that superiority forever.  You could forever look down on others.  But if you were the nerd or the kid being bullied or ignored you certainly don’t want to spend eternity like that.

It would be wrong to say that everyone is equal in heaven.  It is more like there is simply no ranking or status above or below others at all.  Jesus uses the parable of the lost sheep to illustrate that.  God wants all.  We can’t determine that someone isn’t worthy of God’s love and therefore not share God’s love with him or her.

That this is serious business is proven by the cutting off limbs and plucking out eyes teaching that Jesus repeats.  We saw that first in the Sermon on the Mount and he repeats it here.  This is not just a matter of convenience for Jesus’ followers.  This is not something that you can just say, “That’s a nice thought Jesus.  I’ll do it when it’s convenient for me.”  No, this is a solid demand and expectation from our Lord.  If God loves all equally then we must too.

The same theme is present in the second section about forgiveness.  If the first part is about inviting people in, then the second part is about kicking people out.  Here is one of the Bible passages that actually bears the weight of law.  The constitutions of all ELCA Lutheran churches cite Matthew 18:15-17 as the rule for disciplining members.  It bears the force of law.  When I was in seminary I was on the student ethics committee one year.  When a student was brought up on charges of ethics violations the first question was if Matthew 18:15-17 had been followed.  It turns out it wasn’t and the student brought a civil lawsuit against the seminary.

Peter asks Jesus if a fellow Christian sins against him how many times should he forgive?  As many as seven times?  Seven times was the Jewish expectation of forgiveness.  It was also the number symbolizing completion.  But Jesus replies not seven times but seventy-seven times.  The parable that follows shows Jesus point.  A king forgives the debt of a man who is deeply in debt to him – 10,000 talents.  A talent was worth about 15 years wages for the average laborer.  So to put that into perspective, if the average household income in Ontario County is about $60,000 then this amounts to a debt of around $9 billion!  This is no ordinary debt forgiven.  One has to wonder how someone wracked up that much debt in the first place!  But then this fellow turns around and imprisons someone who’s in debt to him to the tune of a hundred denarii.  A denarii was a day’s wage so this would be like $20,000-$25,000.  Definitely a sizeable sum, but nothing compared to $9 billion!  When the king found out he revoked his forgiveness of the huge debt.  Jesus concludes by saying, “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Though it may be hard for us to see ourselves as significantly sinful people, (After all we try to do right don’t we?) this is God’s business and not our own.  Last week we talked about God’s power.  It is not for us to judge the magnitude of a sin.  That is God’s and God’s alone.

A neighbor recently posted on Facebook, “Just love everyone.  I’ll sort them out later… God.”  Indeed that is God’s role.

Now don’t take this the wrong way.  It does not mean we have to be syrupy nice to everyone.  It does not mean that criminal and destructive behavior should be overlooked.  No, there is still accountability.  But in terms of your relationship with your brothers and sisters in Christ and the people around you, you don’t get to pick and choose who you love and who you favor.  All our God’s.  Your job is to love and to work to build others up. 

Let me conclude with Martin Luther’s advice from the Small Catechism on the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”  Luther writes, “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations.  Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light.”

God's Power, Not Yours

March 5, 2017  1^st Sunday in Lent                  Matthew 17:9-27

If you grew up going to Sunday school you may have learned songs like, “I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together.”  And little finger poems like, “Here is the church.  Here is the steeple.  Open the doors and see all the people.”

I think we all know that the church is not a building or an institution or a collection of traditions.  The church is people.  However, defining the church beyond that starts to get tricky.  Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, the theological constitution of the Lutheran Church, defines the church as the assembly of believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered rightly.

That sounds like a good definition, the kind of thing a smart and educated person would say when told to define the church.  Indeed the Augsburg Confession was written by a university professor by the name of Philip Melanchthon.  But that definition quickly runs into problems.  If the church is the assembly of believers then how come there’s so many problems all the time?  Why don’t people in the church get along?  Why can’t all Christians come to a consensus about things like morals… and politics for that matter?   And of course just remember back to the Catholic priest scandals and you have to ask how come there’s so much that is downright evil and wrong with the church?

Go a little bit farther to Article 8 of the Augsburg Confession and you find Philip Melanchthon writing, “Again, although the Christian church, properly speaking, is nothing else than the assembly of all believers and saints, yet because in this life many false Christians, hypocrites, and even open sinners remain among the godly, the sacraments are [effective] even if the priests who administer them are wicked men…”  So, for example, if you are baptized by a pastor who later on gets kicked out for all sorts of horrible behavior your baptism is still perfectly valid.

It turns out that defining the church is hard to do.  In our gospel reading today we’re seeing the very beginnings of community being built around Christ.  You might remember from previous chapters that Jesus has reached out to the Jewish religious establishment and been rejected.  It is as if Jesus was reaching out to them to invite them to a new expression of their traditional faith.  But this was not to be.  The only thing then is to create a new community.

Two weeks ago we saw its beginning.  Jesus said to Peter that he is the rock upon which the church will be built.  We discovered pretty quickly that Peter is not a very solid rock; but in time that will come.  For now, things are still pretty shaky; although they’re improving.  The four scenes we have in our gospel reading for today show that.

The first scene is the disciples asking about Elijah.  We see at the end of that scene the disciples and learned that Jesus was talking about John the Baptist. 

The second scene is the curing of the epileptic boy.  Again the disciples are asking a question.  You’ll remember from previous chapters that Jesus has given these disciples powers of healing and casting out demons.  Exactly how they had that power may raise some questions in our minds, but to dwell on that is to miss the main point here.  Here the problem is that they cannot take care of the problem of the epileptic.  That sets the scene for Jesus to say, “…truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’”

What little child hasn’t tried that?  I tell you, as someone who used to work on roads and bridges it sure would make road construction easier if we could do that!

Let me read to you something from Eugene Boring in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary:

“One should not infer from [this passage] the guilt-inducing conclusion that when hoped-for miracles fail the problem must be our lack of faith, and that if we had “enough” faith we would be able to avert all tragedies and heal all afflictions.  Neither can we infer from it that faith itself is a power that accomplished miracles, for God is the one who acts, not an attitude called “faith.”  …this is not a saying about the power of faith but about the power of God…  And ‘faith’ is not a quality of the one praying, but a relationship of practical trust with the one to whom prayer is offered.  We might be tempted to reason that, if the smallest faith moves mountains and our achievements seem quite ordinary, our faith must be smaller than the smallest – good math, but pedestrian exegesis [in order words, bad logic].  Rather, this disruptive picture pushes at us the gnawing reminder that as disciples we are agents of the church in which Christ himself is ‘with us,’ which means God-with-us, and that with God nothing is impossible, a guard against fitting God into our ideas of what is possible…” (Volume 8, Pg. 369)

Said more simply, faith is a relationship of trust in God who has power.  Faith itself is not power.  This is a basic lesson for the beginning Christian community to realize, and it is a lesson for us as well.  I think this is the biggest teaching from our gospel today, and you may want to stop here and mull it all over a bit, but I do want to touch on the other two scenes also.

In verses 22-23 Jesus is again teaching the disciples that he will be betrayed into human hands and be killed, and on the third day be raised.  This distresses the disciples, and they don’t get it yet, but it is a show of progress.  The first time Jesus brought this up you’ll remember that Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him.  Then in response Jesus rebuked Peter saying, “Get behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

So with baby steps and with plenty of confusion and mistakes Christian community begins to take form.  It has a long way to go as we’ll see in the coming weeks.  One of the biggest issues for this community to deal with is how does it interact with the world around it?  Should Christ-followers reject the world?  Should they go off an live apart?  It’s tax season and there are advertisements everywhere offering help with your taxes.  Should the followers of Christ pay taxes?

Right now it might be nice if Jesus had said to his disciples, “You are exempt from paying taxes,” but that’s not what he said.  In the fourth scene from our gospel Jesus tells Peter to go fishing.  He will catch a fish with a coin in its mouth that they can use to pay the temple tax.

At first we think, “Okay, we have to pay taxes to the government.”  But there’s more to it.  In Jesus’ day there was a roaring debate over paying the temple tax.  Who had to pay it and how often?  The temple tax was essentially voluntary.  The Jewish leaders did not have an Internal Revenue Service that would audit people’s finances and punish them if they didn’t pay.  You could easily be a Jew and ever pay.  Yet Jesus says pay the temple tax – even though it is the temple system that is going to arrest him and have him killed.

Jump forward a few decades to the time of the writing of Matthew’s gospel.  The temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed.  There’s no longer a Jewish temple tax but the Romans are now taxing all Jews for the support of the temple to Jupiter in Rome.  Not surprisingly, paying a tax to support a pagan god they don’t believe in didn’t go over to well with the Jews!  And should these early Christians agree to pay a religious tax to something against their faith?

Jesus’ answer: yes.  Pay it.  In a few weeks we’ll get to Jesus’ famous words, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render unto God the things that are God’s.”

Along the same lines as the power of faith, all human understandings of wealth and power and capability are completely and totally irrelevant to God.  Pay the money to the pagan government.  Who cares?!?  It does not diminish God’s powers one bit.  Ultimately the disciples will discover what we should also discover.  There is no power to faith.  There is no real power in the Church.  The power is God’s.  The church and faith are founded on trust in God’s power.  May we all have such faith.

Open to God's New Ways

February 26, 2017  Transfiguration Sunday   Matthew 17:1-9

When I think of the disciple Peter I think of someone who speaks first and then thinks later.  How often does he say something in haste only to be proven wrong?  Perhaps his most infamous guffaw is when he vehemently promises that he will never deny Jesus.  Then that same night when confronted by a lowly female servant he denies Jesus, and then does it two more times.

However sometimes Peter says things that are right on target.  We see both his ability to be amazingly insightful and his tendency to put his foot in his mouth in the verses immediately before our gospel reading for today.  There we find Jesus has asked the disciples who do people say that he is.  The disciples reply that some people say he is Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets, or that he is John the Baptist.  Then Jesus says, “But who do you say that I am?”  And Peter famously replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus commends Peter, and for a few glorious moments Peter is flying high.  But then Jesus goes on to explain what it means that he is the Messiah.  That he will be rejected and arrested and beaten and die.  Now when Peter says, “God forbid it Lord.  This must never happen to you!”  Jesus replies, “Get behind me Satan!  You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Shortly thereafter comes the Transfiguration that we read about today.  A question on our minds might be what sort of proclamation is Peter making this time?  Is he brilliant or is he foolish?

To our ears his words immediately sound foolish.  What is this that he offers to make three dwellings on the mountaintop; one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah?  What on earth is he thinking?  Is he trying to make this mountaintop experience to last forever?  Is he trying to win favoritism from these three great giants of faith?

But let’s look at Peter’s words more carefully.  I think we’ll find he’s actually said something quite profound.

A big holiday in first century Judaism was the Festival of the Booths.  It was an eight day harvest festival that took place at the end of September or early October.  It was a celebration of the harvest and giving thanks to God for the season’s produce.  The key part of the festival was to dwell in booths or tents in commemoration of the 40 years the people wandered in the wilderness under Moses.

In Jesus day the festival was also a celebration of the end of time and God’s ultimate salvation.  It was believed that Moses and Elijah would have a part in all of those events.

And so look at it from Peter’s perspective.  He knows that Jesus is God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Son of God.  He knows that Moses and Elijah are going to come at the end of the age.  He sees Jesus and Moses and Elijah all together on top of a mountain and he comes to a well thought out, theologically astute conclusion.  The end has come!  This is the ultimate Festival of the Booths!  He offers himself in service to these men to make the tents or booths for them.

But of course Peter is totally wrong!  I think this is indeed one of Peter’s shining moments.  He’s made the right offer and he’s said the right thing, yet he’s completely missing what God is up to.  The voice from the cloud interrupts Peter while he’s speaking and says, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”  God is about to do something new.  There are no precedents.  It is totally unpredictable.  So the disciples are to just listen and watch.  Of course that something new to come would be the crucifixion and eventual resurrection.  The disciples had absolutely no way to put that into anything they understood about God.

I think it is helpful for us to think well of Peter here, and not to mock him, because we’ll see a lot of parallels with ourselves.

This church has been around a long time.  None of us were alive when it was founded.  By God it has served generations of people: teaching them, shaping them, maturing them into disciples of Christ.  How many people have been baptized here, confirmed here, married here, and had their funerals here?  A lot.  You know well how to be the church in this place.  You know how to care for the poor and the needy.  You know how to take care of this building and property.  You know how to do worship and do it well.  All in all you know how to be faithful Christians.

Several years ago I did a funeral for a teenager in my community.  We expected a huge crowd for the service.  A local funeral director and I had worked out how we thought it best to handle it all.  But for some reason a woman from another church, who I will kindly describe as a “busybody,” kept horning in and checking to make sure we had it all under control.  She even came an hour before the service to check our preparations and see if we needed help.  Of course she found our preparations lacking and rambled on endlessly about what we were doing wrong.  I rarely lose my temper but I turned and snapped at her, “This church has been doing funerals for 110 years!  I think we know what we’re doing!”  The funeral director guffawed in laughter.  And indeed, everything worked as planned.

We know what we’re doing, and we know how to do it well.  Peter knew how to do things, and do them well.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with that.  But we know Peter’s well-informed offer was missing something.

Notice the voice from the cloud does not scold Peter.  The other times Peter says something outright wrong Jesus takes him to task for it: “Get behind me Satan,” and, “Before the cock crows you will deny me three times.”  No, there’s no criticism or correction at all for Peter at the transfiguration.  It’s not that he’s wrong.  It’s that he hasn’t listened enough to know what to do.

I don’t have to point out to you that despite the fact that we know how to be a church and be a church well, that way of being isn’t working too well anymore.  Recent polls show that all church denominations are declining.  Even the charismatic mega churches that were once envied are also declining.  What does this mean?  Are we all doing something wrong?

We easily beat ourselves up when our churches don’t flourish the way we think they should.  While we do indeed need to be self-critical and disciplined, we have to remember that the church is ultimately God’s – not ours.  God will make sure that what God needs to get done will get done.  You can try to hinder it all you want, but God’s will is still going to get done.  We are honored for God to ask us to participate in that work, but it does not rest exclusively on our shoulders.  Therefore we do not worry.

God is up to new and dramatic things every day.  In our knowledge and experience let us not be like Peter and think we can know for certain what God will do.  No, instead let us approach each day and each moment with eyes open to new things.  Let us not let our knowledge get in the way of seeing what God is doing.  No, let our knowledge remind us that God is unpredictable; dependable, loving, forgiving; yes… but not predictable.

God is amazingly good.  God is amazingly loving; more amazing and loving than we can imagine.  So let us not be surprised when God stretches our imagination.  Jesus was revealed in glory at the Transfiguration.  May we too see God in glory.  And may we always be open to the new things God is doing.

Savior to an Imperfect Community

February 12, 2017  6^th Sunday after Epiphany           Matthew 13:54-14:36

As we’re reading through Matthew I hope you’re understanding just how much fear and stress there was in the lives of the people who first read Matthew.  Their nation was in ruins and the Romans were cracking down ever harder.  Jesus promised to return soon, but that promise was decades old and almost everyone who ever met Jesus face to face is now dead.  Their families were being torn apart because of their faith.  There are betrayals, backstabbing, persecutions, and in the midst of it all some people renouncing their Christian faith as a hope of release from it all.  God seems all too far away.  Faith feels all too weak.

As we get into our reading for today we discover that disorder was not unique to Christian households.  The infamous Herod family has some problems of its own.  And I think that is a take on this situation that we do not often consider.  There’s plenty of manipulation and backstabbing going on there too.  And who is the victim of it all?  John the Baptist.

John is one of the saddest deaths of all time.  Was he a martyr for his cause?  No.  As the precursor to Jesus does he go down in a blaze of glory?  No.  Do people rally around his death and cause an uprising?  No.  John is beheaded as entertainment for a birthday party.  His one and only life snuffed out at the request of a dancing girl and her mother. 

If I’m executed for something I want it to be something worthwhile, not the sick whims of a dictator’s family; yet this is the world of Matthew’s church.  You might notice there’s a change in tone in the next few chapters of the gospel.  Prior to this Jesus has delivered a lot of harsh teachings.  The Sermon on the Mount makes impossible demands.  Jesus turns away disciples who are not committed to a ridiculous degree.  And Jesus teaches that discipleship must always come first, even over family ties and obligations.  You start to wonder why anyone ever followed Jesus.  And you start to think if Jesus is God incarnate, then this is not a loving God you want to have a part in; but you have no choice.

Humanity fails.  It is impossible.  So does Jesus say, “That’s it!  I quit.  I refuse to die for this bunch of wishy-washy uncommitted weaklings”?  No.  He sticks with us.

To me, this is a far more powerful teaching than any of the miracles he performs or the great sermons he gives.  Hopeless, broken and bad as the people of that day were (and us as well) Jesus stays in relationship with them (and us).

One summer when I was in college I was inspecting a road construction project on Route 15 in Pennsylvania.  It was a huge project and several concrete workers were hired and added to the company’s regular crews.  One guy was never happy.  He complained constantly.  He said how other companies he worked for had done things better.  He said everything we did was backwards.  He said our equipment wasn’t set up well and was backwards.  On and on and on he droned day after day.  Indeed paving a concrete road in the middle of the hot July sun is a miserable task, and no one was all that happy.  And then one day I’ll never forget, in the middle of the morning this guy suddenly gets mad, tips his bucket of tools over and says with disgust, “I quit.”  And he just walked away.  The crew leader yelled out to the foreman, “He quits.”  And we all just kept working, with smiles on our faces.”

Jesus doesn’t quit.  He stays with us, even when we do things wrong, working in the misery and the heat of the day.  Valentines Day is just around the corner and there are plenty of smarmy cards with sweet love messages on them.  But a far more powerful statement of love is when you stand with someone, sharing a miserable burden with them.

Chapters 14 through 20 of Matthew’s gospel are about Jesus standing with people in their needs.  You might notice that he doesn’t necessarily solve their problems for them, but he is with them in the problems.

The first one, and my favorite, comes with the Feeding of the 5000.  Jesus has tried to withdraw from the crowds because he wanted to be away from it all after his cousin John’s death.  The crowds won’t let him alone anyway.  Even in his exhaustion and stress he has compassion for them and ministers to them.  When the day is nearly done the disciples suggest that the crowds be sent away so they can get some food.  Jesus makes one of the most concise and profound statements of his entire ministry, “You give them something to eat.”

That’s such a simple statement, but it has profound ramifications.  The disciples state the obvious, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”  Unless those fish are whales and the bread loaves are the size of eighteen-wheel trucks there’s no way that’s enough resources to feed 5000 men plus women and children!

“You give them something to eat.”

The disciples have taken a very logical approach.  They have meagre resources.  They have needs.  They will use those meagre resources to take care of their own.  The just can’t take care of the rest.

“You give them something to eat.”

How many times in our lives have we been in the same situation?  We see the needs around us.  We do some pretty quick calculations and know there’s no way we can even make a small dent in the needs and the problems.  We turn to God and say, “I don’t have the resources to do this.  I’m not talented or special or capable of this task.  All I have are five loaves and two fish, and what are they among so many?  I think I’d better just keep what I have to stay safe and take care of my own.”

“You give them something to eat.”

To Matthew’s original readers they have nothing.  The problems in their families and the problems in the world around them are just too great.  There’s no way they can ever have an impact on them.  They aren’t rich.  They aren’t powerful.  They aren’t well connected.  Even their faith is weak and struggling.  All too often they’ve seen people go the way of John the Baptist.

But they are not alone.  Jesus is with them, and he’s not a quitter.  The only thing he asks is that they make their resources, meager as they are, available to him.  Like the five loaves and two fish he takes them, blesses them, and gives them to the disciples to distribute.  There is enough.  Every last person eats their fill.  In fact there is so much abundance that there are twelve baskets of leftovers!

Meager resources, used in companionship with God’s will, and they bring about an abundance.

It would be wonderful if such miracles of abundance would occur every day for us.  We might think that would be a sure way to build our faith when we have doubts, but that is not the way God does business.  Several times over the Bible teaches that signs and miracles do not build faith or bring about belief.  We may think that would be so, but it is not the case.  Faith is in a different place.

One of the greatest challenges our faith faces is that when tasks seem overly large, and our resources look ever so small, we want to horde them.  We want to protect them.  We want to turn in on ourselves and take care of our own.  Yet God wants us to make those resources available to him.

Here’s one guarantee I’ll make.  If you horde what you have to protect yourself you won’t have enough.  You never will no matter how much you stockpile for yourself.  Turning inward is a journey towards fear and frustration.

If you make what you have available to God’s will good things will happen.  In your hands your resources are never enough.  In God’s hands any amount of resources will lead to abundance.  Turning outward is a journey to fulfillment and peace.

May you trust God enough not to horde, but to make available.  May you know that God does not just take what you have and redistribute it elsewhere.  God does not run a Robin Hood scheme.  God uses what you have, in-you and through-you, to do his will.  That is key.  Jesus doesn’t quit.  He wants to work with you even if you are a miserable-mess-of-a-failure.  Because together, God’s will is done and God’s kingdom comes.

Why the Good Is Sometimes Rejected

January 29, 2017         4^th Sunday after Epiphany                   Matthew 11-12

            I like to call Chapter 11 of Matthew, “Who is John the Baptist, and Who is Jesus?”  When you answer who John the Baptist is you also learn a lot about who Jesus is.  We know well that John the Baptist is the one who points to Jesus.  People came to John and he prophesied about the coming of the Messiah.  You’ll remember that John said things like, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”  (Matthew 3:11-12)

John expected Jesus to be a firebrand who would whip up a following and take on the Romans in battle.  Jesus shows up and is baptized by John, but then what does Jesus do?  John ends up in prison.  He’s probably not happy about that, but he might be feeling a sense of righteous anger.  He’s in jail for speaking the truth and for standing up for the Messiah. 

But Jesus is falling short for John.  Where is this apocalyptic winnowing fork?  Where is the fire and Holy Spirit?  Where is the violent judgment.  All the miracles are nice and all, but Jesus is not living up to the person John thought he was pointing to.  Was Jesus really the Messiah?  Was Jesus really God’s chosen one to usher in the kingdom of God?

Jesus replies to these questions, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers and cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”  (11:4-5)  It appears as if the kingdom of God is not coming as John thought.

The kingdom of God as Jesus brings it into being is about health and wholeness and restoration.  It is about good things.  So why then are the religious leaders so upset when we get into Chapter 12?  Why be so upset about a traveling do-gooder?  Because doing good isn’t always all that great a thing.

Let’s get at it this way.  Let’s say that Jesus comes to this day and age into the Rochester area.  He can heal everyone with just a touch.  It’ll take him about one day to put Strong Hospital completely out of business.  Strong Hospital is the biggest employer in the county.  All the doctors, nurses, support staff all the way to the janitors are suddenly out of jobs.  (Linda Thompson and Suzie Maynard are now unemployed.)  But of course it doesn’t stop with Strong.  Rochester General goes too.  (Beth Schroeder’s now out of a job too.)  Unity Hospital closes.  (There goes Lynne Minkel’s job.)  Highland Hospital, Thompson Hospital, Clifton Springs, they all are out of business.

Pharmaceutical companies are now pointless.  (There goes the School of Pharmacy at St. John’s Fisher, the school Scott Swigart started.  Aaron Swigart just got his white coat.  He’s now completely unemployable with the education he just worked years to receive.)  With all the hospitals closing goes all the construction work that is always going on in hospitals.  (Jeff Hall is now out of a job too.)  Of course there’s no need for nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and all sorts of senior housing.  So much of new construction around here is for senior housing.  The local construction market would collapse.  (There goes Mike Ross’s job and Jeremy Brown’s.)  The medical imaging work that companies like Kodak and Xerox do is now pointless.

Do you really want Jesus around healing everybody?  Sometimes when I’m in a hospital room and people are asking me to pray for a miraculous healing I wonder if they really know what they’re asking!

Let’s return to 1^st Century Judea.  Jesus forgives the sins of people.  That seems innocent to us, but it was a massive threat.  If Jesus could forgive sins then the temple no longer has a role to play.  There go the jobs of probably hundreds of priests.  About a quarter of the real estate in Jerusalem is for the temple.  That’s now pointless.  Merchants, money changers and all sorts of support staff suddenly have no place.

Shut down the temple and you shut down the tourist and pilgrim industry.  That ripples across the whole economy. 

Plus with Jesus offering forgiveness the whole religious authority system is decentralized.  Who’s to tell what is right and what it wrong?  Where’s judicial authority?  What about police, armies and protection?

We Americans make a mistake when we say separation of church and state.  We think that religion and government and business and arts are all separate, but they are not.  They are all interconnected.  Where one goes so goes all the others.

From our perspective Jesus was doing great things.  From the powers that be in Jesus’ day, he was a serious threat that had to be dealt with.  They were afraid of him.  Their whole lives were built around things he challenged.  When someone does something that threatens the value of your house or your retirement account or your standard of living you’ll react against it pretty quickly.

The message of Matthew’s gospel was radical then, and it is radical today.  Jesus preached many times that the kingdom of heaven had come near.  When we live that out life looks very different.

So what do we do with Chapters 11 and 12?  While we don’t have Jesus’ miraculous healing powers we do have power and strength to do good.  Jesus said, “For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good person brings good things out of a good treasure, and the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure.”

When we see good things at work let us not be like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and oppose them.  Instead we will support them.  And when we see evil things we will oppose them.  Though we cannot perfectly bring God’s kingdom to life here on earth we always work for the good, whatever the cost.

Missionary Advice

January 22, 2017               3^rd Sunday after Epiphany                            Matthew 10

                A soldier in a particularly good mood walked into the barracks and said, “I have a $20 bill for the laziest man in this barracks.  Everyone scrambled to their feet and rushed forward to tell how lazy he was.  Everyone except on tall southerner who stayed laying in his bunk and drawled, “Somebody come and roll me over and slip that money in my pocket for me.”

                I thought that silly quip would be a good contrast to what Jesus is calling the disciples to do in our gospel reading.  Before we can understand Matthew 10, the "Missionary Discourse,” we have to remember what was going on at the time Matthew’s gospel is written.

                No one knows for sure when the gospel was created but most theories put it at late in the first century.  Matthew’s gospel is written to people who were Jewish but converted to Christianity.  It is a particularly tough time for them.  In the year 70 the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish temple.  It was the biggest crisis in Judaism since the Babylonians did the same thing 600 years before.  Without a temple there was no center to the Jewish faith.  Also, the Romans began actively persecuting Jews.  Jewish leaders were trying to scrape together whatever remnants of their religion that remained.  Unfortunately for them there was also a threat from within their religion – Christians.  It appears as if an ultimatum was made to the Jews who believed in Christ – either drop their beliefs in Jesus and remain truly Jewish or get out of the synagogue.  This ultimatum tore families apart – children against children, parents against children, spouses against each other.  If you found your family’s Thanksgiving table divided between Trump supporters and Clinton supporters know that it was nothing to the division between Jews who rejected Jesus and those who accepted him.  Families were delivering each other over to punishment.  There were spies and double-crossers. 

                If you’re a Christian life is pretty tough.  You can’t express your faith publically and your family may have rejected you privately.  In the gospel Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”

                He goes on, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

                You’ll remember from two weeks ago that the Sermon on the Mount had many harsh teachings.  Last week with the miracles Jesus said to a man who wanted to bury his father before following Jesus, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”  It seems like Jesus makes nothing but harsh and cruel demands of his disciples.  Is this the price of eternal life?  Is the bar really so high?  Who wants this anyway?  If this is what it takes to get into heaven who wants to be in heaven with such a harsh God?

                Let’s back up a bit.  According to what we’ve learned so far in Matthew’s gospel how do you become a disciple of Jesus?  Do you hear one of his charismatic sermons and decide you want to follow him?  Last week we read about a scribe, a Jewish religious expert, who did just that.  What did Jesus say to him? “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

                You don’t apply to Jesus to be a disciple.  The impetus is not yours.  It is the other way around.  Jesus chooses you.  In Chapter 4 we read about how you become a disciple.  Jesus went to Andrew and Peter and James and John and said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

                Even today, you do not choose God.  God chooses you.  In our passage from 1 Corinthians we read, “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus.”

If you think you choose God then Matthew’s entire gospel is going to read like a book of harshness and misery.  But if you realize God chooses you then Matthew’s gospel is strength and encouragement.  It tells you that just because you’re chosen by God it does not mean you’re going to have a sweet and happy life.  It does not mean that everyone at your Thanksgiving table is going to happily get along forever and ever.

                The original readers of Matthew were hurting and scared.  They were questioning their faith and they were questioning what God was calling them to do.  Matthew tells them that persecutions and family problems do not mean that they are not called or that God is not working.  No, they should take confidence in being called.

                Does being called mean that you sit back and are lazy like the soldier in our opening example?  No.  It means that you are driven to work for God’s kingdom.  Why does Jesus send his disciples out on the missionary journey that we read about?  The answer is 9:36, “When he was the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

                You have been chosen by God to be his missionaries in the world.  That does not mean that you become like the Trozzos in Malaysia.  That means work right here.  Look at the community around us.  It is a community that is harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

                “No,” you reply.  “This is not a community that is harassed and helpless.  Sure, it’s not perfect, but in general people around here are stable and happy.  They are educated.  They have jobs.  They have opportunities.” 

I would say otherwise.  I see people scrambling and crying for some of the most basic needs of humans.  Isn’t it interesting how crazy many families’ schedules are because of children’s activities?  I see a lot of bumper stickers that say things like “Swim Taxi.”  Children complain about being too busy.  Parents feel overstretched by their kids involvement in drama and sports and scouting and any number of things.  Travel sports are perhaps the most fascinating because the time and travel demands are so great yet the schedules are so unpredictable.  Often players don’t know the schedule from one week to the next…  Yet they do it.  They’ll rearrange their family’s whole social (and sometimes work) schedule over and over again to make it happen.

Why?  Do parents think their children will be good enough to get a college scholarship?  Nope.  Do parents think that travel sports build their child’s character and sense of teamwork and their physical fitness?  Some parents may indeed say that, but that’s not the reason.

Here’s the reason, though I think it resides at a sub-conscious level.  Kids want to be on the team because it makes them feel worthwhile.  Though parents grumble, they involve their kids because there is community with the other parents.  They may all sit in the bleachers and grumble about the demands of the team but they feel a sense of belonging that they aren’t getting elsewhere. 

I don’t like to put my family on the spot, but my daughter Emma has advanced well in music.  There is somewhat of a community of parents among the top musicians in Canandaigua.  All of our kids have made it into the exclusive groups and performance.  We all have kids with crazy school schedules because of music.  And we’ve all dumped small fortunes into professional level instruments or private lessons.  Every time there’s a performance we see each other.  It feels good to be in that crowd, and it feels lonely if you are excluded.

If a person’s core sense of belonging and community is based on personal achievement or career accomplishments or their children’s activities or anything similar, that person has built their life on shaky ground.  Jesus says it is like building a house upon the sand.  The community all around us is harassed and helpless; lives built upon sand.  What happens if they lose the job?  What happens if their child doesn’t make the travel team, or when they graduate?  What then?

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.  You, just like the twelve disciples, have been chosen and called by Jesus to go out into the harvest.  You have been charged with the wondrous task of inviting people into true community, lasting community.  You are to invite people into a place where they can find belonging; belonging this day and every day.  You get to invite people into a reality of security and rest.  You get to witness to something substantive and real.

Is it going to be easy?  Are people really interested in receiving what is good for them?  Human nature being what it is, no.  But you are called anyway, and that is a two part call.  One part is to go out and do it.  The other part is to look inward and make sure we actually do have a community that is accepting and makes people feel like they belong.  Or said in a more fancy way, a community that brings the kingdom of God to life here on earth.

Have confidence in being chosen and called by God, and be bold in living out that calling.

New Year New Faith New Life

January 1, 2017           New Year’s Day                                   Matthew 3:1-4:17                     

            It’s New Year’s Day and the whole year lays before us fresh and new.  We’re only 11 hours into this year, so if you’re the sort who makes New Year’s resolutions you probably haven’t even had the chance to break them yet.  As for me, I quit making New Year’s resolutions.  If I never make a resolution to improve I never feel guilty about failing!

            In our reading from Matthew we meet two people who talk about changing your life.  Both John the Baptist and Jesus use the exact same words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  What does this mean, and why?

            Repentance here does mean to stop doing bad things, but it also has a deeper dimension, especially in light of the kingdom of heaven coming near.

            (Power point slides) Here’s how I think most people see their lives.  This circle is a person and he or she is made up of many parts:  Faith is one part, an important and significant part.  And through the church their faith connects to other people’s faith.  There are other parts as well.  Many people have a job and a connecting workplace.  Or if you are a student you have classes and attend a school.  There is a spouse or significant other.  That’s a major part of life and a commitment.  Parents have children.  They require time, attention and money.  I’d swear you go from spending time changing diapers to spending times on the sidelines of a ballfield or at a concert.

            What we have also has a big impact on us.  A house, cars, maybe a boat or snowmobile or four-wheeler or something else.  These are all big and expensive things.

            Of course there are also other relationships: friends, neighbors, other family members.  And there’s a whole lot more.  What makes you – you – and what defines your life is a complex mix of a lot of things.

            Sometimes people feel exhausted by keeping it all together.  Sometimes demands from one area crowd out others.  Family may suffer because of work.  Children reduce the amount of time parents have for each other.  Expenses and bills may cause you to cut back what you can do other places.  Church participation falters when other demands become too great.  People try to balance it all, but keeping the balance becomes exhausting.  Ultimately they fail; feeling burnt-out and guilty.

            Sometimes when it all falls apart people turn to their faith for help.  They ask God for strength and guidance.  This is good thing, at least they are turning the right way.  However, it is probably too little too late.  True repentance is needed.  This is not the type of repentance where you stop doing naughty things.  This is much deeper.  It is the repentance John the Baptist and Jesus called for.  It is a whole-life reorientation.

            Let’s change our self-understanding to this way:  First and foremost you are a child of God, made in the image of God, whole, complete and good.  You live every day keeping eternity in mind.  You make every decision knowing everything life is only temporary.  Everything: your house, your relationships, your job, your possessions, your traditions; everything.  Your ultimate and eternal reality awaits.  And in light of that everything today is pale and relatively unimportant.

            Now, with that as a lens you view everything else – your job, your house and possessions, your spouse, your kids.  Now things are not tugging against each other.  They are all held in the perspective of faith.  With that lens you then make all your life decisions, big and small.

            This all sounds easy and great; but it’s not.  It’s incredibly hard.

            Try and keep this way of being in mind and then consider the stereotypical college guy on a Friday night.  He goes out to a bar with some friends.  He does what stereotypical college guys do, he checks out all the women in the bar.  What’s going through his mind?  I can tell you what is not going through his mind!  He is not looking the women and judging them by asking himself, “Which of these women can help me be the most effective disciple of Jesus?”

            Let’s go further, and make us all feel guilty.  Did you pick the house you live in by considering how it will help you bring about God’s kingdom?  Did you ever go into a car dealership and say to the salesperson, “I need the best vehicle that will equip me to serve Jesus.”  Did you ever go to your boss and say, “I need a raise so I can give more to charities.”

            Let’s look at the testing of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness.  There are three tests:

Jesus, you’re hungry.  You have the power to get food, so get some for yourself.

Jesus, you have faith.  You’re in good with God.  Make use of it for yourself.

Jesus, you’ve got power.  You can have the biggest house, the prettiest wife, the fattest paycheck and the nicest, smartest, most athletic and best behaved kids in the neighborhood.  All you have to do is use your power like everyone else would.

            These tests, these temptations are not obviously evil.  In fact, they all appear to be for the good.  It’s basically saying: Jesus, structure you’re life according to the model of the world.  Be the stereotypical college guy.  Come on, this is the way good upstanding people live.  This is the way it’s supposed to be.

            Jesus lives for the kingdom of God and he orients himself toward that.  His life was built around the second model of being a person.

            Why do you have to repent in order to have the kingdom of God?  It’s the only way for this second model to work.

            None of us are perfect at this, and don’t think I’m claiming to be better than anyone else with this next thought.  Sometimes people come to me with their life in tatters.  They’re trying the balancing act and it just isn’t working.  They want me to pray that God give them strength and endurance.  I want to say that it’s not that simple.  You’ve made every major life decision apart from God – apart from who God made you to be.  It’s all fallen apart and now you’re asking God to give you strength so you can keep it all together? 

            That’s not how God works.  God is not going to give you the strength to keep going under burdens you’ve wrongfully made for yourself.  That’s like trying to fix a deep chest wound with a Band-Aid.  You need major surgery! 

God always helps.  But God is not going to help you to your own destruction.  God is going to help you to wholeness.

People who are recovering from an addiction know that there is more to recovery than just giving up a substance.  Often their whole lives have been built around the addiction.  If they want to be healthy they may have to give up friends, family ties and a whole way of life.  Otherwise they are fighting a losing battle.

It is easy to become addicted to the ways of the world.

But don’t beat yourself up too much.  I think churches bear a lot of the blame.  My critique of my own ministry, this congregation and many congregations I work with is all the same.  We buy into the idea of faith being part of a well-balanced life.  We buy the idea that life is about getting through with faith as a part of it.  We then make people feel guilty when other things crowd it out.  But I don’t think that is bringing about the kingdom of God.

What did Jesus and John the Baptist mean when they said, “The kingdom of God has come near”?  Many people imagine eternal life, but that is not what they meant.  The kingdom of God is when people live according to the reality of God’s eternal promises.  The kingdom of God is intended for this lifetime here and now.  We do not struggle through life with faith as a crutch.  Through faith we are to embrace life and shape all its possibilities.

It is a new year with new possibilities.  We’re going to make mistakes.  That I know.  And I hope we have some successes.  May we have the insight and the strength to truly repent and instead bring about the kingdom of God, so that God’s good will is done among us here and now.