March 17, 2019 Discipleship Luke 9:46-62

            We often imagine Jesus as a kind and gentle person.  Most pictures of him depict mercy, acceptance, and love.  The picture we have in the Gathering Area of the Risen Christ by the Seashore, depicts him grinning with friendliness.  And then we imagine this kind and gentle person meekly being arrested, condemned and executed in a horrific fashion.  It is all so tragic.  That is, until of course, the resurrection on Easter.  Then we have the loving man back.

            But those images of Jesus don’t begin to cover it.  We are all complex people.  We have different moods at different times.  We have a mix of ideas and motives.  Sometimes we are happy and sometimes we are sad.  Sometimes we are patient and kind and sometimes we are short tempered and rough.  Why would we expect Jesus to be forever meek and passive?

            Even so, we think we are supposed to be kind and gentle.  I suppose it’s because we want that same thing from other people.  We aren’t usually rude and harsh.  If you’ve ever broken up with someone I assume you did it gently.  You may have even rehearsed what you were going to say.  And you said things like, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings…”  Or, “It’s not you, but me…”  I assume you’ve never said, “I woke up this morning and decided you’re stupid.  Go away.  I don’t care if I never see your face again.”

            Maybe it falls to you to give people their job evaluations at work.  It’s not fun when you have to give a person bad news, or maybe even fire him or her.  You’re anxious and wish you didn’t have to do it.  You start off by listing their strengths and making them feel valuable.  And maybe with flushed cheeks and embarrassment do you then broach the problems and issues.  Even when someone is guilty of gross misconduct we don’t like to be mean.  I doubt you’ve ever said, “You’re a totally worthless moron.  Clear out your work area and go home.  Oh, and if the door does hit you on the way out, I’ll be glad!”

            Of course there is a difference between being rude and being straightforward, but when being straightforward feels rude we try to mix in as much kindness as possible.

            So when we read in the gospel that James and John want to bring down curses upon a Samaritan village that rejected Jesus we expect Jesus to say something like, “Now guys, God is merciful.  You need to work on changing those negative thoughts into positive opportunities.”  No.  We don’t know what Jesus said, but just that he rebuked them.  Not exactly nice.

            Then we encounter three people who could be disciples.  The first one makes what appears to be a good and sincere offer of devotion, “I will follow you wherever you go.”  Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

            It’s impossible to know what’s really going on here.  We just don’t have enough information.  Biblical scholars I’ve read all believe the person’s offer to follow wherever he goes was more like a idealistic enthusiasm, and not a solid commitment.  Jesus then bluntly points out a hard truth.  He has no home, no security, and no comforts.  God even provides for the wildlife better than Jesus is, and will be, receiving.

            Have you ever hiked up a mountain?  A hard steep ascent is somewhat thrilling.  It’s challenging and it’s full of anticipation.  But if you have miles of boring walking before you even get to the foot of the mountain you start to wonder if the view from the top will be worth it.  Following Jesus on this journey to Jerusalem may very well be a lot of tedium and boredom.

            The next person we meet is someone Jesus invites into discipleship.  The text says, “To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’  But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’”

            Once again, we are short on details.  We want to know more so that we can understand Jesus’ words better.  Most interpreters spiritualize this.  They say that what Jesus really meant was, let the spiritually dead bury the dead; but as for you (who are implicitly being given the chance to be spiritually alive) go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

            I suppose those scholars know Luke better than I do, but I find that lacking.  I often find the thoughts of commentator Joel Green to be more intriguing.  Green suggests that Jesus meant it literally, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”  Which is, of course, impossible.

            Jewish burial customs of the time had a twelve-month mourning process.  When a person died his or her body was placed in a tomb, often a cave or hollow dug in a hillside.  The body would be sealed in there for a year while the body decomposed.  Then, after a year the tomb was reopened.  The bones were collected and reburied in an ossuary or “bone box.”  Joel Green suggests Jesus words mean that let those already dead in the family tomb rebury their own dead. 

            Again, this is impossible.  But it is Jesus’ response to this man who has made an excuse why not to follow Jesus.  He has family obligations.  He needs to stick around to rebury his father’s bones.

            Keep his situation in mind as we look at the next person Jesus invites, “’I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.’ Jesus said to him, ‘No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’”

            Again, harsh words.  But again, Jesus has invited someone and that someone has an excuse for why not to follow.  Surely this person doesn’t have to walk out on the spot and leave his or her family uninformed as to what their going to do.  The key is that it, like the previous situation, is attempting to delay obedience in light of other obligations.

            The words are harsh but the message is clear.  Devotion to Jesus must come first.  It cannot be one of several good things a person does, with each good thing competing for attention.  Sometimes I think we Americans these days exhaust ourselves with all the good stuff we have to keep up with in order to maintain the idea that we are good people.

            How often do “good things” get in the way of true discipleship?

            And let’s make it interesting, and just as real as the obligation of honoring the remains of a dead relative.  Most churches will say that Sunday morning is a time for worship.  It is a time that must be venerated and set aside above all other obligations.  It sounds like righteousness.  But is it?

            Laura Daly, the dean of the Southern Tier Conference, tells congregations, (I’m paraphrasing) “If you haven’t had at least half a dozen visitors come to your church in the last year because you have Sunday morning worship then you can’t claim your Sunday morning worship is serving the kingdom of God.”

            Ouch.  But true.  She isn’t saying their worship is invalid.  She’s saying that preserving the Sunday morning time slot tradition is no longer serving God’s kingdom.  It’s time to move the worship time or put your key evangelism efforts elsewhere.

            This is the kind of challenge Jesus is giving.

            You’re probably sick of hearing me talk about us living in times that churches are declining.  But I don’t think it’s that the church has lost touch or headed down a wrong path.  I think it’s a wake-up call.  We can no longer fool ourselves into thinking that a culture that has built itself around a surface of Christian practice is actually doing God’s work.  It may be.  Or it may not.

            Last week when we read about the Transfiguration the voice from the cloud said, “Listen to him,” meaning Jesus.  That goes for today too.  God is not limited to traditions and practices.  The way of following God and discipleship does not follow patterns.  There are no formulas.  And every time we think there is one, we are definitely wrong.

            But God does not call us to cruel and harsh tasks.  God does not cause our lives to be hurtful, empty, and broken simply for the sake of it.  God would free us from everything that entraps us.  God would free us for adventure.  So, obligations to family brought about by traditions, and the trap of ever needing to protect ourselves from every possible liability, and the enslaving need to keep people happy with us, and many others, can all be removed.

            The world has so many many ways of entrapping us.  God would free us.  May your faith give you the courage and the creativity to be truly free.

March 3, 2019 Healing and Forgiveness Luke 5:12-26

            I believe you all know what karma is.  It’s the belief in Hinduism and Buddhism that if you do bad things they will come back to haunt you.  If you do good things they will come back to reward you.  And if you get through this life without suffering the consequences or receiving the rewards, you’ll get them in the next life.

            As Christians we reject the idea of karma, but we still live the idea that actions have consequences.  If you make healthy choices you should be a healthy person.  If you have unhealthy or dangerous habits sooner or later they’ll catch up to you.  We also like the idea that the punishment should suit the crime.  If you’re going 30mph over the speed limit on the New York State Thru Way you can expect to get a bigger fine than if you’re pulled over for going 5 mph over the speed limit.  Although if you’re going 5 over the speed limit you’re probably going to end up as a new hood ornament on a big truck.

            We believe in justice and fairness, and we aren’t afraid to throw God into the mix too.  Often legal oaths involve swearing before God that you will tell the truth.  The idea being that if you lie you’re calling divine retribution upon yourself.  And if you get away with it in this life you’re surely burn in hell for it in eternity.  Any logical person would tell the truth!

            Keep all that in mind as we look at today’s gospel reading from Luke.  The first verses set the stage for the main scene.  Jesus has become such a famous healer that people from far and wide are coming to see him.  The crowds have gotten so big that not everyone can even get to him.  One day while in a house four very devoted men climb up on the roof, tear it off, and lower their paralyzed friend down to Jesus.

            They get an A+ for devotion, although I wonder how their friend felt about being carried and bumped up onto the roof of the house!

            I wonder what Bruce Allen, our insurance broker, would say if we started having crowds here so big for worship that people started tearing off the roof to get inside?  Oh well, we don’t have to worry about that problem!
            A whole bunch of stuff starts getting mixed together once the man is lowered to Jesus.  Luke’s gospel says, “When [Jesus] saw their faith, he said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’”  Faith is a big part of all that is about to happen, but we have to set that aside for now and come back to it.

            Scribes and Pharisees, religious experts in other words, begin to question what’s going on, “Who is this who is speaking blasphemies?  Who can forgive sins but God alone?”  But Jesus perceives their questions and says, “Which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’?”

            I think we easily see that as two different issues.  For us, forgiveness and physical healing are not inextricably linked.  Forgiveness can seem cheap.  We say some words in worship and have communion and that’s it.  It’s all intellectual or emotional, not something we physically feel.  For healing, for physical stuff, you go somewhere else, either a doctor or a hospital.  But remember back to where we started, with karma.  For the people of that day the issues were one and the same.

            Why was that man paralyzed?  The gospel doesn’t tell us.  But it is safe to assume that people figured he must have done something wrong; something to deserve it.  He had sinned and his paralysis was divine punishment.  Or, perhaps his parents sinned and his paralysis was their fault.  Whatever the case, God had ordained that this man would suffer in this way for something wrong that had happened.  It was seen as God’s order.

            So when Jesus says, “…your sins are forgiven you,” this is more than just some traveling preacher making silly proclamations.  This is someone who is challenging the whole order of the world.  He is challenging their ideas of justice and fairness.

            You can’t just tell a paralytic that his sins are forgiven.  No, they’re not.  He’s paralyzed because he sinned.  You can’t just erase the paralysis.  And he’s not truly forgiven as long as he’s paralyzed.  That’s his divine punishment.

            Jesus understands all this clearly.  That is why he shows that he truly has the power to forgive.  Forgiveness means restoration to full life.  He says, “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he said to the one who was paralyzed – “I say to you, stand up and take your bed and go to your home.”

            That’s more than just about a miraculous healing.  And it’s more than just about forgiveness.  In their minds Jesus just upended the whole way they understand the world.  Where is justice?  Where is fairness?

            Did this man truly repent?  Did he offer the proper sacrifices for forgiveness or make restitution for past wrongs in order to be divinely healed?

            With healings like this suddenly the whole understanding of how the world works and what you can depend upon can’t be depended upon anymore.

            It’s easy to imagine this man as a life-long paralytic who has suffered innocently and he now has wholeness of life.  But we just don’t know.  He could just as likely been a construction worker.  Let’s say it was his job to set up a scaffold beside a high stone wall that was being built.  But he was drunk one day while he was doing it and did a shoddy job.  Then later, when a whole work crew was standing on the scaffold, he among them, the thing collapsed and several people were killed and he was paralyzed.

            Do you see?  We don’t know, but if we did, we might say this man deserves what happened to him.  Let him be a lesson to everyone else!

            And then Jesus heals him and forgives him.  If we take the construction accident scenario a bit further, what about all other families who are now suffering because their loved ones were killed?  How come they don’t get restoration while he gets to walk off without paying the penalty?

            Now of course that’s pure speculation on my part, but I say it to get to the point.  Jesus’ actions potentially upend everything we think we know about goodness and fairness.  Do you see why the religious experts were upset?  What kind of God would do this?  What’s the point of good religious practice and trying to live a good life and be a good person if it doesn’t count for anything?

            The ideas would make us mad too.

            Luke’s gospel is going to return to the ideas of fairness, and especially why do bad things happen to good people, but here he swings our thoughts back to the beginning of the scene.

            When Jesus saw their faith…

            Whose faith?  Is it the faith of the paralyzed man?  No, at least not his alone.  It is referring to the faith of his friends.

            Some would preach that it was the unquestioning faith of all these guys that led to the correct righteousness necessary for the healing to occur.  Faith then becomes about believing without any doubt whatsoever.  And if you don’t get what you want or need then there’s a flaw in your faith.

            There’s a circular trap to that logic, but many Christians believe just that.

            But that is not the faith of these men.  And it is not the type of faith that has to believe without any questions or doubts.  Their faith is one of action driven by relationships.  That is what Jesus is commending.

            Is he seeing these guys have pure motives?  No.  Does he see perfect contrition in the heart of the paralyzed man?  No, that’s not it either.

            He sees people who have oriented their lives toward what God is doing.  And that is forgiveness in and of itself.  Perhaps the key word in this passage is not faith or forgiveness.  It’s not even the healing.  Commentator Joel Green says the key word, and the center of the whole scene is when Jesus calls this paralyzed man “Friend”.  He is a friend of God.

            May we not have our lives bound in issues of fairness and unfairness, or trying to make sense of righteousness.  I’m not saying they’re irrelevant.  They are relevant, but they aren’t ultimate.

Instead, may we build our lives on the ultimate; on being a friend of God, someone in right relationship who turns there no matter whether things are fair or unfair, or seem right or wrong, all is done beside God.

February 10, 2019 Jesus Returns to Nazareth Luke 4:14-30

As you probably know, the Patriots won the Super Bowl last week.  And as is often the case, the team returned to the home town crowd and was treated to a ticker-tape parade.  Boston is no stranger to throwing such parades.  They know how to do it.  This is the 6^th for the Patriots.  The Red Sox have racked up a couple World Series too, including just last fall.  Fortunately the fans did not throw cans of beer to the Patriots the way they did to the Red Socks.  It was an affectionate gesture, but they tend to hurt more than confetti when they hit you!

And speaking of parades and throwing things to heroes.  How about our hero Jesus when he returns to his hometown of Nazareth?  Last week you’ll remember that we read about his great testing, or battle with the devil in the wilderness.  That takes place right after his baptism and it is the prelude to his public ministry.  Fresh from his triumph he begins traveling to the surrounding towns and villages proclaiming the good news.  But when he gets to Nazareth they don’t throw him a ticker tape parade.  They try to throw him off a cliff!

Since we just read the story you know that it starts off well.  He shows up in the synagogue for Sabbath worship.  He’s gotten known well enough that this is probably a very anticipated event.  The place was probably packed.  He gets up to read and is given the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah was a hugely significant prophet for them.  In Jesus’ day he was key to understanding God’s promises for the future.  Jesus reads from two of the later chapters, Isaiah 58 and Isaiah 61.  They talk about the year of the Lord’s favor, which was seen to be the arrival of the long-promised Messiah.  When he sits down, which doesn’t mean he returned to his seat, he sits down to teach.  In those days you taught or preached from a chair, not standing behind a pulpit.  He proclaims that the year of the Lord’s favor had come. 

This was a bold and amazing proclamation to make!  And the hometown crowd is ecstatic.  Jews believed that they were God’s chosen people.  They believed that God would indeed save the whole world, but God would work through them to do it.  They were special.  They were essential to God’s plans of salvation.  While they may not have been cocky or arrogant about it, they still believed they had a status before God that was above other nations.  Ultimately all the peoples of the earth would come to recognize their special place in God’s heart.

Let’s not beat around the bush here.  America today often considers itself to be a holy nation.  Even in a very humble form, it is part of being an American to think we have to be an example to the world - of goodness.  We push ourselves to live by fairness, justice, and democratic rule.  We want our military to be above reproach when working in foreign lands.  We want to be a special nation.  We want to be godly.

            Jesus is doing great with the people of Nazareth until he challenges their specialness.  Not only will the people of Nazareth not be special for raising him, the whole national way of thinking is wrong too.

            Jesus reminds them of two scriptural accounts they don’t want to here.  One is 1^st Kings 17:1-16.  That is when there is a great famine in the land.  Surely many Jews were praying to God for relief.  But God sent the great prophet Elijah to the foreign territory of Sidon to help a foreign woman in her distress.  This would be as if in the midst of American struggles we hear that God is doing miracles just on the Mexican side of the border for the refugee families fleeting persecution in their home territories.

            The other passage is 2 Kings 5:1-14.  There we also have the account of a great prophet – Elisha, successor to Elijah.  Though many Israelites were suffering from disease God sends Elisha to Naaman, a military official for the Syrians.  This would be as if a great contagious and deadly disease started breaking out among American soldiers in Afghanistan, but then reports start coming of Taliban officials and their soldiers being miraculously healed of the same afflictions.

            God helping the Taliban!?!  No way!  Aren’t they bad people?  Don’t they do bad things, hurting, exploiting, not allowing education or equality or any of our values?  Why would God prefer them to us?  Do you see how insulting it would be to our national sense of rightness?

            Yet those are two stories of Jewish history.  It turns out that before God they weren’t special at all.  Being the ancestors of Abraham and God’s chosen people wasn’t a status they could use to their benefit.  They could make no special claims on God.

            There’s little wonder they got mad at Jesus!  They run him out of town, and if they can, they plan to throw him off a cliff.  But the gospel tells us that Jesus escapes from them and goes on his way.

            What does Jesus mean by what he teaches?

            God’s plans of salvation are far bigger than they want to accept.  They don’t like not being special.  They don’t like it when the burden of being a righteous example to the world is removed from them.  Or said differently, they don’t like hearing that they’re just as bad as every other nation and in just as great a need of grace.

            They become so enraged at this loss of feeling special that they act out.  They want to kill the messenger.  Unfortunately that costs them.

            Luke’s gospel is the only gospel that gives any real details about Jesus returning to Nazareth.  Matthew and Mark both include it in their gospels, but they do so briefly.  They mention that the people of Nazareth just refused to believe Jesus.  They don’t include anything about wanting to throw him off a cliff.  But they do put in one note not in Luke.  Matthew says, “And he did not do many deeds of power there because of their unbelief.”  (Matthew 13:38)

            In their refusal to accept what Jesus taught they denied themselves the ability to receive his goodness too.

            It is good and right and commendable that we as individuals, and we as a community, and we as a nation want to embody God’s will in our lives.  It is good if we keep the words, “Thy kingdom come,” at the front of our minds and seek to use that as a guiding principle.

            But it is always a mistake to think that such an agenda makes us better before God, or somehow less in need of God’s unmerited favor. We still need it fully and completely.

            Every time we draw a line – whether it be a gender boundary, or a racial boundary, or a national boundary, or a church boundary – and we conclude that we are more righteous than others and therefore God must somehow be more fully or strongly present on our side of the line rather than the other side of the line, we have made a big mistake.  Actually we’ve made more than a mistake.  By saying we deserve more than others we actually preclude ourselves from getting at all.  Ultimately we end up with less.

            The people of Nazareth had a wonderful opportunity.  But they couldn’t handle the truth.  Because of that they got even less.  Jesus did not use Nazareth as his home during his public ministry.  He moved to Capernaum and lived there.  Jesus did not do the deeds of power in Nazareth that he did elsewhere.  He didn’t do it to punish them.  It was simply a consequence of their rejection.  It was their loss.

            Let me end with these words from theologian R. Alan Culpepper, “The paradox of the gospel, therefore, is that the unlimited grace that it offers so scandalizes us that we are unable to receive it.  Jesus could not do more for his hometown because they were not open to him.  How much more might God be able to do with us if we were ready to transcend the boundaries of community and limits of love that we ourselves have erected?”  (New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume 9, Pg. 108)

            May you be open to God giving to others as well as yourself, so that you can receive as fully as God wants to give you.

February 3, 2019 Jesus Being Tested Luke 3:21-4:13

This evening there will be a well-watched sporting event.  I don’t want to take sides, but it will be a contrast pitting the forces of good against the perennial forces of bad!  Sorry to the Patriot’s fans, but the Super Bowl gives us a good way to interpret our gospel reading for today.  We read the baptism of Jesus by John through his genealogy and all the way to the scene where he is tested by the devil in the wilderness.  It seems like a lot, but it all fits together.  We see here a struggle between the forces of good and the perennial forces of evil.

The baptism John the Baptist did was not an equivalent to Christian baptism, even though there are overlaps.  Jesus certainly didn’t need to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, but John was a hinge point between the prophets of the past and the new coming reality of Jesus.  In his baptism Jesus joins his life’s story to the story of Israel in a very real way.  After Jesus’ baptism, when he was praying, Luke tells us a voice came from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Then Luke does what appears to be a very puzzling thing.  He goes into Jesus’ genealogy.  Now, only the most staunch of biblical literalists take this genealogy to be historically accurate.  It isn’t, and many of the people listed there are known no where else.  This is the sort of thing that gives people the idea they can date creation to a specific date several thousand years ago.  But that is not Luke’s purpose.  Luke’s purpose is to get our minds back to Adam.  And notice how the genealogy ends: “…son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.”  There’s the key!

What was said as Jesus’ baptism?  “You are my Son.”  Jesus is Son of God.  What is Adam called?  “…son of God.”  Luke does this to set the stage for what comes next: the testing of Jesus in the wilderness.  What does the devil say to him?  “Since you are the Son of God…”

Remember back to the story of Adam in Genesis.  Was he tested?  How does that “son of God” fair?  Well, he’s in the Garden of Eden.  It’s a wonderful place.  Everything is easy for him.  His test?  Just don’t eat the forbidden fruit!  Of course he fails.

Now don’t fall into the ditch of making the Old Testament allegorical character of Adam into an equivalent to Jesus.  Luke doesn’t intend that.  But he does intend to set the stage for a new battle between a son of God and evil.  All along through that genealogy evil has been perennially present, sort of like the Patriots and the Super Bowl.  And now it’s time for a new contest.

At first we want to almost pity Jesus in this ordeal.  He’s just been baptized, his public ministry hasn’t even really begun but the Holy Spirit is driving him out into the wilderness. This almost feels like cruelty, and we certainly don’t want the Spirit doing stuff like that with us.  But that’s probably not the way to look at this text.

I think Luke is presenting it more like God is saying to the devil, “Alright, let’s have it out, once and for all, bring it on!”  This is going to be a no-holds-barred fight.  There are no rules, no limits, no boundaries.  And God’s not going to give himself any advantage.  This won’t take place with a fully nourished man in the luxurious Garden of Eden.  In this Jesus will be physically starving in the wilderness.

And it is as if the devil says, “I accept the challenge.”

So they meet in the wilderness.  Conditions are harsh and Jesus is famished.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t like going 40 hours without food, let alone 40 days!  It’s humanly possible but you’re near death.

The devil basically says to Jesus, “How much would it cost me to buy you off?  I bought off Adam cheaply enough.  What will it take?  Can I buy you for a loaf of bread?  Will that do it?  Will you cave to me just so you can have your physical needs met?  Nope, okay.

“How about this… I’ll give you all the kingdoms of the earth – you can have earthly power and glory – all that you want.  Everyone will like you.  You can heal everybody and cure every disease and be everyone’s savior – that’s what you want, right?  To be everyone’s savior.  All you have to do is live by the rules of the world.

“Nope, that won’t do either.  How much will it cost me to buy you off?  Ah, of course you’re the holy and virtuous sort.  Okay then,”  and this is perhaps the most clever of the tests in this fight, “Throw yourself off the temple.  Do something to make God prove his love for you.  You want proof, right?  Everyone wants proof of God.”  Who among us hasn’t prayed that prayer?  “… God I’m really struggling here and I could really use some help.  Give me a sign.  Give me some proof to help me through this tough time.”

It may not have been a mixed martial arts fight like you hear about New York State wanting to make new laws about, but it is a fight.  Jesus wins!

Well, he wins for now.  Luke writes, “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until and opportune time.”  It’s hard to imagine a time more opportune than this. Jesus is exhausted and starved.  But you know that time will come.  This fight will turn out to be a fight to the death.  The crucifixion will be the opportune time.

I want to jump way ahead in the gospel for a moment to point out the dynamics that will happen before the Last Supper.  You know well that even though the devil himself will slip out of the story line, Jesus will meet other opposition.  Next week we’ll read about Jesus getting into serious conflict with the people of his home town.  And soon after that conflict with religious leaders will begin.  By the time we get to the Last Supper we’ll find that the religious leaders will be out to get him.  Some of the political leaders will be out to get him.  But no one can ever seem to ultimately get their hands on him.  But just before the Last Supper we read that Satan entered into Judas Iscariot.  Now we’ll look at that more closely when we get to that point in the story, but for now look at what happens then.  The devil, the religious leaders, the political leaders, and people from Jesus’ own inner circle of friends all join forces to do him in.

Evil fights dirty, and it takes them all combined to get Jesus.  Then we really do see that this is a fight to the death.

By Friday night I imagine the devil admiring his newly acquired ‘Super Bowl’ ring from his victory over God.  What does a winner say a major victory?  “I’m going to Disney World!”  And so I imagine the devil kicking back, savoring his triumph, and enjoying a Florida vacation admiring that new ring.  That is, until a messenger tells him what happens on Easter.  Empty tomb – Jesus alive!  The rage!!!

Yes, God will willingly fight to the death.  This Son of God will even go so far as to die, because even death is not bigger than God.

Regardless of the outcome of today’s Super Bowl, the real contest has already happened.  Jesus vs. Satan.  Adam failed in Super Bowl 1.  Jesus does not fail.

This time last year I was nervous as my beloved Philadelphia Eagles pitted themselves against the Super Bowl’s perennial players.  I was nervous because the odds were against them and I didn’t know the outcome.

Today I don’t really care, but I can smile with confidence at last year because I know what happened.  The Eagles won!  Nothing can ever take that away.

Jesus won!  Nothing can ever take that away.

We need not worry when we fall to temptation.  We need not worry when it appears as if evil is winning.  There are no more spiritual Super Bowls.  The ultimate one has happened and will never be played again.  Jesus won, and you get to live in the coattails of that win.  If all fail because of Adam then all are made righteous because of Jesus.

May you the confidence of a winner even when you fail, for your Lord and Savior has won, and it is a victory for you too.

January 13, 2019 Jesus in the Temple at 12 Luke 2:41-52

The first question I have every time I look at our gospel reading for today is why does Jesus stay behind in Jerusalem?  He does it without asking or informing his parents.  If Jesus is the sinless one, then hasn’t he just broken the commandment to honor is father and mother? 

That problem with Jesus’ actions take us right to the heart of the matter.  And let’s just dive right in, because simple as this Bible story is, it points to something deeply profound, a teaching for all that ages and probably why it’s in the gospel at all.  The gospel writer Luke was unlikely to include a story about Jesus’ childhood simply because it was cute.

Let’s be sure t remember something about the story so far.   Jesus’ parents are good Jews.  Parenting?  Well, that’s another story.  At least in the movie Home Alone the parents recognize they’d left their kid within a couple hours; while it took Jesus’ parents all day.  But, that aside, were good Jews!  They follow all the religious laws: Jesus is named and circumcised when he is eight days old.  They’ve also offered the proper sacrifices for him and dedicated him the way first born Jewish males are supposed to be.  In today’s reading we learn that like all good Jews, they travel to Jerusalem for Passover.  They practice all the expected pieties.  But somehow they and their son start to diverge.  If going to Jerusalem for Passover is all that God wanted from his people then why does Jesus stay behind?

This is really a story about piety.  At first faith the way Joseph and Mary practice their faith is very appealing.  You simply do the right things and God blesses you for it.  I’d argue that is the basis of faith for many people who call themselves Christian in American today.  They want to live in a way that pleases God, and as a reward for pleasing God they can expect to live a good and prosperous life.  Sure, bad things may happen but God will be there to help you through the difficulties.  Even if it feels like everything is falling apart it is believed that God will give the emotional strength to endure.  We have a name for faith such as this.  It’s called the “prosperity gospel.” 

Ultimately it is horrible!

Jesus staying behind in Jerusalem is in no way criticizing his parents’ piety, but he is pointing to something deeper.

I’m currently reading Kate Bowler’s book, Everything Happens for a Reason, And Other Lies I’ve Loved.  She started her career studying the prosperity gospel in America.  She was a 35 year old woman, brilliant professor and theologian, was married and had a little boy, and in 2017 was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer that started in her intestines and spread throughout her body.  She’s still alive.  Her cancer appears to respond to treatments somewhat, but of course she’ll never beat it and she’ll never live to be old.  The book’s title pretty much says it all, but she goes into something much deeper and more profound.  Because the prosperity gospel, good religious piety, and the way we understand ourselves as citizens of America all link. 

She writes, “Fairness is one of the most compelling claims of the American Dream, a vision of success propelled by hard work, determination, and maybe the occasional pair of bootstraps.  Wherever I have lived in North America, I have been told a story about an unlimited horizon and the personal characteristics that are required to waltz towards it.  It is the language of entitlements.  It is the careful math of deserving, meted out as painstakingly as my sister and I used to inventory and trade our Halloween candy.  In this world, I deserve what I get.  I earn my keep and keep my share.  In a world of faith, nothing clung to can ever slip away. (Pg. 8)

“There is something so American about the ‘show-and-tell’ of our daily lives.  A big house means you work hard.  A pretty wife means you must be rich.  A subscription to The New York Times shows you must be smart.  And when you’re not sure, there will always be bumper stickers to point out who has the honor roll student and who finished a marathon.  America likes is shopping malls big and its churches even bigger, and every Starbucks in every lobby proves that Jesus cares about brewing the best. (Pg. 20)”

Isn’t that really living a life of piety?  It may not be exclusively religious piety, but it is American piety!  Work hard, make healthy choices, stay out of trouble – and all will go well in your life.  But if your life is falling apart, you must have done something wrong.  If your child is addicted to heroin or ends up in jail you must have failed as a parent.  If your house is foreclosed upon you must not have done your homework before you bought it, or you over-reached financially.  If you’re overweight, or you’re addicted to smoking or alcohol you must have a moral defect and lack will-power and self-control.  No, we don’t dare to say such stuff, but we believe it.

Aren’t all these things subtle and not-so-subtle messages from our society that you aren’t doing your American piety properly?

Now don’t mishear me.  I am not denying that actions have consequences.  I am not saying we should blame other people or the government or social systems for our ills.  There still needs to be accountability and responsibility.  But, the message is that if you do it right, life will be good.

Hear Kate Bowler one more time, “What would it mean for Christians to give up that little piece of the American Dream that says, “You are limitless”?  Everything is not possible.  The mighty Kingdom of God is not yet here.  What if rich did not have to mean wealthy, and whole did not have to mean healed?  What if being people of “the gospel” meant that we are simply people with good news?  God is here.  We are loved.  It is enough.” (Pg. 21)

Those are truth-filled words that free us.  Those are words that go underneath the piety of following the Jewish rituals of Jesus’ day or the piety of Americanism today.  We call ourselves the land of the free and then we live lives that are completely enslaved!

In our gospel reading we see Jesus at age twelve focusing his life on something beyond religious piety and on what God was doing.  That became his singular purpose.  It did not negate the good piety of his parents, but it did point to something deeper. 

Here is what was true then and what is true now.  It is the message Jesus embodied and taught:

God is in charge; always has been, always will be.  And God is drawing creation forward into the fullness that God has always had for it.  You are part of that fullness.  You are known to God, you are loved by God, and you are wanted by God.  But life is not all about you.  It is about what God is doing.  And God invites you to participate in his work, his plans.  That’s how God gives you value.

There is nothing in God’s work that is going to trap you into feeling like a failure because: you got cancer, or your life is short and full of pain, or because your child dies from a drug overdose.  And God’s not going to exhaust you in the pointless societal rat-race called success.

What’s the point of being a Christian if it doesn’t lead to a healthy, easy, prosperous life?  That’s the question many people will ask.  The problem is that it’s the wrong question, the wrong way of thinking.  Ask it and you’re guaranteed to get a bad answer.

The point of Christian faith is to be freed from the dead-end tortuous stupidity most people devote their lives to.  Instead it invites you to see your value as secure in God and offers you true freedom.  It gives you confidence because the future does not rest in your hands, or your goodness, or your piety in whatever form it takes.  The future rests securely in God.  That is an eternal truth God invites you into.  It is the good news we proclaim and how we live.

January 6, 2019 Epiphany Matthew 2:1-12

We humans like to domesticate things.  The first thing we appear to have domesticated is dogs.  They’ve been domesticated so long there’s no way to trace exactly what their wild ancestors were.  We also domesticated cattle, sheep, cats, and all sorts of creatures.

We also like to domesticate the geology around us.  None of us lives in a natural environment – at least I don’t think any of you live in a cave.  We shape the world to our liking.  We domesticate it.  It is no surprise then that we also like to domesticate God and the Bible.

Neither of those domestications are all that smart.  While Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus of Nazareth was God come to life as a human that is God coming to us – not us domesticating God.

And of course the Bible is among the wildest and most out of control writings in human history.  We, however, try to domesticate it into a tame book of history and good advice.  Not so!  You’ve heard me say before that the traditional Christmas pageant is a highly domesticated story.  Stars, angels, shepherds, Wise Men, and a stable with Joseph, Mary and a baby lying in a manger. 

There’s nothing wrong with it in and of itself, but it is wrong when that gets in the way of what the Bible’s authors actually intend.  There are two versions of Jesus’ birth in the Bible.  One is in Luke’s gospel.  One is in Matthew’s, which we read today.  Both authors tell a story of darkness, mystery, and fear.  Both gospel writers include satire in the stories (always easy to lose sight of that).  And Matthew’s gospel is more about fleeing threats and killing than anything else. 

So, let’s look at Matthew.  Matthew suggests that Jesus was born in a house – actually Joseph’s house – in Bethlehem.  Bethlehem was a dusty hamlet of no consequence.  You know how you drive into city or village and there’s a sign saying, “Home of….” And then they list some famous person who was born there?  Or maybe they list their high school’s sports titles.  Have you ever seen a sign that lists some high school sports triumph from like 45 years ago?  I find myself thinking, “And since then…?” 

Well, if there had been such a sign in Bethlehem in Jesus day it would have been a very worn and rotted sign that said, “Welcome to Bethlehem.  Birthplace of King David” and then listing his birthdate 1000 years before.  Never overestimate the importance of Bethlehem.  Nothing of significance had happened in it for over 1000 years!

Jesus is born.  Matthew gives nothing about shepherds and angels, just another baby in just another house in just another village.  Unknown to the inhabitants of that house some astrologers from far to the east -probably Parthia- are looking for them.  These astrologers have seen a star.

I typically imagine this star as an obvious and bright object appearing in the sky, and it leads the Wise Men like a carrot to where Jesus is.  Not so.  Ever looked at the night sky in a truly dark place and realized the countless dim stars that are there?  Even now many of them are not counted or named. Other than Matthew there is no historical mention of a new star appearing at that time.  Some suggest a comet, but that’s a stretch.  What you have is a number of astrologers, court priests, again, probably from Parthia, noticing something and deciding to follow it.  In those days it was a common belief that when people who would become great kings were born a new star would appear.  Matthew is building on that. 

The Bible makes no mention of how many of these wise men there were or how long it takes them or anything.  Just, sometime later they arrive in Jerusalem seeking where the child who has been born King of the Jews.

These astrologers are not an innocent appearance.  The vast Parthian Empire existed to the east of the Roman Empire.  Here’s a piece of first century history I always forget: The Parthian Empire was larger and more powerful than the Roman Empire was at that time.  Two global super-powers side by side.  Rome’s eastern territories, like where Jesus was born, was of tremendous military significance to Rome.  If the Parthians ever conquered them Rome would lose their land infrastructure around the Mediterranean Sea.

These were very dangerous, very unsettled times.  And from the perspective of Herod in Jerusalem, when court priests of the chief enemy empire show up talking about the next King of the Jews, he sees a threat on many levels.  He hatches a plan to both save his own legacy but also keep the these Parthian astrologers from doing too much spying.  That’s a whole different topic.

For us, we want to focus on these enemy ambassadors as they make their way to the dusty hamlet of Bethlehem, five miles from Jerusalem.  They show up – again, who knows how many - and I doubt their appearance was welcome.  The gifts they bring are highly symbolic.  Gold, a gift fit for a king.  Frankincense, an incense used in religious rituals, a gift fit for a High Priest.  And then downright unnerving, myrrh.  You may remember well that myrrh was used as an embalming spice in those days.

Picture this – you are parents of a newborn.  You’re at homing having dinner and there’s a knock at the door.  A group of travel worn and unkept foreigners are there asking to come in and give gifts.  Now these gifts are not the hottest items currently selling on Amazon.  No, they’re strange.  Strangest of all they give you a coffin for your child.

How about putting that in a children’s Christmas pageant – dirty foreigners bringing in a coffin?  Nope, we don’t want a realistic nativity scene!  Keep it domesticated!

Do you get a sense of how weird this all is the way Matthew tells it?

The foreigners then leave, double crossing Herod, which puts him in a tyrannical rage.  Joseph, Mary, and newborn Jesus have to uproot from their home and flee to Egypt as political refugees.  It is a dark and difficult story.

We use the arrival of the Wise Men to note the revelation of God to all the nations of the world.  Right from his birth Jesus is opening God’s grace and mercy to the whole world.  God’s grace and mercy are not national possessions, or the possessions of any exclusive religion.  They are God’s boundless openness and desire to gather all things into his goodness.  No limits, no boundaries, no gatekeepers.

God’s actions in the Christmas story are good and wonderful.  It is a beautiful story.  But it is not good news for all.  The powers that be – represented by Herod – do not like it.  This innocent little baby in a dusty village where nothing ever happens poses a threat.  It must be eliminated.  If you know the story well you know that Herod orders the killing of all the babies in and around Bethlehem two years of age and younger.  That is why Joseph and Mary flee to Egypt.

            What is the actual historical truth behind it all isn’t important.  The story speaks the truth of the way earthly power doesn’t want God’s goodness. 

It seems to be human nature to want to draw lines and categorize people as in or out, good or bad.  We see: races and nations, assets and liabilities, resources, potentials, good and bad, smart and stupid, riches and poverty.

            But I think God just sees a world in need.  It is a world in need of what God has to offer.  If the world would accept it, it would be better on the whole.  But those who hold power in the world, in other words those whom the world’s systems favors don’t like it.  To them it means loss.

            I pray that we have the sight to see what God is really up to.  I don’t think Epiphany is about what you do.  It is about seeing what God is doing and rejoicing in it.  Right from Jesus’ birth his is attracting all nations of the world – even the enemy pagan Parthians.  Ironically they worship him while Herod, representing the Roman Empire, seeks to kill him. 

May you recognize God’s star at its rising, for God is doing that all the time.  I’m not talking about literal new stars.  It is God’s actions at work, and they may be things few other people see.  But may you to see God’s goodness come to life.  And may it nurture your faith for ever new revelations of God to the world.