Today's Sermon - The Days are Surely Coming - 11/24/19 Christ the King Sunday

This morning's sermon is really just a short meditation.  We'll be worshiping with three congregations joining in a Christ the King/Thanksgiving Service and the pastors sharing a short message on the lectionary passages.  Mine is the OT passage from Jeremiah.

The Days are Surely Coming

(based on Jeremiah 23:1-6)

“The days are surely coming” says the Lord when God will raise up a king who will execute justice and righteousness in the land.  This king will be called, "The Lord is our righteousness."  Both the Old and New Testaments make it clear that we can live in a right relationship with God.  Not because of who we are but because of who God is.  Not because we are good but because God is loving toward us.  When we are in a right relationship with God, we know and experience the true meaning of salvation.  Israel knew God primarily as a God who acts in human life and history to save his people from real troubles, like bondage in Egypt, like the exiled in Babylon.

Jeremiah's promise to a people who were defeated and scattered because of the unfaithfulness of their leaders, was that the same God who had saved their ancestors from bondage in Egypt would save them from exile in Babylon.  According to Jeremiah, the job of a king (or any leader) is to take care of the people, just as a shepherd takes care of the sheep. 

Jeremiah promises the coming of a new and good king in the line of David.  From this passage in Jeremiah it is not exactly clear whom he meant.  But Christians know that the promise was ultimately fulfilled in the coming of another whose name means, "God's salvation."  In the event of the life of Jesus, God again acted to show us what God is always doing. God is always reaching out to us in life and in history to bring us to a new and right relationship with God and to promise us salvation.

Today, we, too can discover a new dimension of the meaning of righteousness and salvation when we learn to expect God to save us from the real problems of our lives, problems like career frustrations, conflicts in our relationships, addictions, and the loss of integrity resulting from life in a sometimes very hostile world.  We can discover even more when we learn to expect God to save our world from injustice, from racial strife, and from the constant presence of conflict and war in the world.

But God does not save just by "fixing" our circumstances.  God saves by reordering our lives as a new king reorders life in a kingdom.  We are led into a new and right relationship with God, the Lord is our Righteousness.  Then, and only then, people and communities who are renewed from within move out to change the world.  

We often implore God to fix the problems in the world; to make a way for peace, to make sure that no one goes hungry, that the poor are lifted up, that widows and orphans are taken care of, etc…but, that’s not how God works.  The Lord is our Righteousness works by working in the hearts of God’s own people.  And then through the faith and life of the new king, whom we find in Jesus Christ on this Christ the King Sunday, reorders our priorities and renews our heart’s desires so that WE, God’s people, do the work of God. 

“The days are surely coming”, says the Lord.  Have they come?  Are they here?  Will you do the work of God in this world of ours?

Today's Sermon - Creating New Heavens and a New Earth - 11/17/19

Creating a New Heaven and a New Earth

(based on Isaiah 65:17-25, Luke 21:5-19)

Last week I was in a meeting with the Administrative Commission for Transformation, before we began the meeting we spent a half hour in a time of devotions.  This passage from our Old Testament Reading this morning was used with the practice of Lectio Divina.  We’ve tried this practice a couple of years ago.  Lectio Divina is a monastic practice of reading scripture, meditation, and prayer.  It often requires a multiple reading of the text to help us more fully engage with the passage in order to allow the words of the passage to dwell in us.  It is not so much a practice of pulling the words apart in an exegetic rending of the original meaning of the words in the Greek or Hebrew, following by a theological contextual breakdown of the time and place of the writing, concluding with an understanding of what the passage might mean for us today.  Rather, it is allowing the scripture to more fully dwell in our hearts, minds, spirits and souls as if Scripture were truly the Living Word that allows us to have an increased knowledge of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives, now.

So, this morning I’d like for us to try this practice with this passage from Isaiah.  We’ve already read it once during our regular reading of the Old Testament.  You may have listened and been paying attention, although most often on a first reading of something our minds wander a bit and sometimes it’s helpful to read it again to help concentrate.  So, let’s read it a second time.  This time take note of words, groups of words or concepts that catch your attention or jump out at you.  We’ll then have a moment of silence while you contemplate on those words or phrases.  Then I’ll read it for the third and last time.  During this third reading, think about what those words or phrases that you had earlier identified are revealing to you.

We will openly share those words or phrases and I’ll offer a meditation on what stood out for me.

          Read passage

          Silence

          Read passage again.

          Brief Silence

          Ask for communal sharing of words/phrases.

          When this passage was first read, I remembered this passage as a prophetic reminder of what heaven will be like.  I’d always seen this as God preparing us for a new heaven and a new earth that will one day be when God’s time has been fulfilled for us to leave this earth, whether in spirit or in body to enter into the joy of God’s presence and go to heaven.  Sort of like an earlier version of John’s Revelation we read in the New Testament.

          But upon reading and listening to this passage a second time, new words and phrases caught my attention.  Verse 20 in particular, “No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.”

          Wait a minute.  If this passage is about God bringing into existence a new heaven and a new earth that are to represent eternity when we are with God and in God’s presence, what’s this business about birth and death.  My understanding of our time in eternity is supposed to be devoid of these kinds of things.  How can there be death in heaven?  This passage had me rethinking the whole of this section in Isaiah.

          Hearing it read a third time, got me to concentrate on the whole of the passage in a different light.  It begins with “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.”  If this isn’t about eternity, then it must be about the here and now.  God is going to do this creation of a new heaven and a new earth sometime BEFORE eternity arrives.  But the whole passage sounds so much like what we envision heaven to be like when we are finally in God’s presence, at heaven’s gate, worshipping in front of the throne, inhabiting the homes that Jesus’ has prepared for us, doesn’t it?

          If this is not about heaven and what eternity will be like and it’s about the here and now BEFORE eternity arrives, what does that mean?

Again, this passage starts with “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth.”  Part of our trouble is we suffer from a shrunken timeline.  We bet God won’t do the new heavens and earth thing this afternoon or next week, but we have a very difficult time thinking that God might do it a generation from now or a century from now, either.  However, Israel knew about waiting — not a week, month or year but decades, gosh, even centuries.  And yet the expectation kept them alive, fresh, eager, hopeful that “even centuries” might dawn soon.  God has begun the new thing already, even if unseen.   What’s even more exciting about that is that we have always been co-creators with God.  God doesn’t do these things alone.  God works in the lives of humans to make things happen.

If we don’t like how something is being done, we have the ability to change it.  We are co-creators with God.  God might be bringing about this new heaven and new earth, but God will only be doing it through the work and thoughtfulness of faithful people.  That is the process by which God has always worked in the world.

So, if God is about to create new heavens and a new earth, God will be doing it through people like you and me.  The injustices of the world will be corrected by people like you and me.  Hunger will be satisfied by people like you and me.  Racial inequality will be corrected by people like you and me.  When we see good happening in the world, it should be amplified and copied.  When we see tragedy in the world, we should embrace the mourners and work together to fix the problem.  This is how God creates new heavens and a new earth and whereby Jerusalem becomes a joy.

Isaiah 65 is a gargantuan vision of what God is on the verge of doing.  But this passage is one of the now.  God is already at work doing this.  God is already working in the lives of us human beings to make the new heavens and a new earth the reality Isaiah speaks about.  But we have to want it and become a part of it, too.

How dumbfounding must it have been for Iron Age people to hear that all infants will live into old age?   Walter Brueggemann rightly points out that infant mortality is “an index of the quality of community life.”  Where in our country or in the world is infant mortality on the rise or simply too high?  Is that where we go to see what God might do while we are witnesses and co-laborers there?  Another index is housing.  Isaiah dreams of a day that the people will build houses and live in them — which sounds obvious, but Abraham Lincoln denounced what went on in slavery and still goes on in our tiered society: Some build, others enjoy; some plant and harvest, while others reap the benefit.  This is not what God had in mind for the new heavens and new earth.  It is not what this passage in Isaiah speaks about.  God dreams of an egalitarian kind of community.

 Brueggemann’s summary of our text is spot on, calling it “a glorious artistic achievement. It is also an act of a daring, theological faith that refuses to be curbed by present circumstance.  This poet knows that Yahweh’s coming newness is not contained within our present notions of the possible.”  God really is bigger than our imaginations.  God really is more compassionate than we dream God might be.  God really delights in us, which doesn’t seem so possible, does it?  But, isn’t Scripture all about what isn’t possible.

Today's Sermon - Abundance - 11/10/19

Abundance

(based on Haggai 2:1-9, Luke 21:1-4)

Today’s story from Luke can also be found in the Gospel according to Mark and has been called the story of the widow's mite – two copper coins, the equivalent of less than a penny.  These copper coins represented the sum of all she had in the world and in dropping these coins into the treasury for her Temple offering, she received the praise of Jesus as he addressed and taught his disciples.  The story is generally perceived to be one about giving and clearly that element is there.  

But there is another element to this story that perhaps we fail to see, especially if we connect it to the passages we read from Haggai this morning.  

Jesus had just been watching the Pharisees in their giving practices.  Here’s where we’re talking big bucks.  And they were quite open about their giving.  Everyone knew their giving record; indeed, they made a point that everyone knew it.  It was in the light of that that Jesus pointed out this widow.  Picture Jesus sitting now with the leaders of the temple—the Sadducees— observing the people as they come in and watching their donations.  There is no paper money in Christ’s day, so the offering coins make quite a loud noise as they roll down this long horn shaped object and fall into the pool of other coins.  So here comes this little old lady and she has two small copper coins worth nothing and drops them in.   They barely make a noise.  You can almost see the Temple leaders as they roll their eyes and hope for better results with the next person who walks in the door.  Jesus then calls his Disciples over and says, “This poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.”  To the Sadducees this woman is a waste of time but to Jesus she is the stuff by which Kingdoms are erected. 

Let’s go back for a moment to the story from Haggai.  The word of the Lord came to Haggai in the second year, in the seventh month, on the twenty-first day during the reign of King Darius.  This word of the Lord was that Haggai was to go to speak to the governor of Judah, the high priest in Judah, and to the remnant of the people that were back in the land after their exile.

He told them to look at the ruins of the temple and asked if any of them remember it when it was in its former glory.  We could probably do the same today.  One commentator I read about preaching this passage said;

To ancient Judeans, and to today’s church, the Word through Haggai summons us to “take courage” — three times! And why? “The Lord is with you.” As Sam Wells rightly named in his A Nazareth Manifesto, “with” is the most important theological word in the Bible.  God is with us: this is the Old Testament’s constant story, the very nickname Jesus was given (Emmanuel), and his parting words at his Ascension.  God doesn’t fix everything or shelter us from unpleasantness, but God is with us.  Somehow, ultimately, that is enough.

The promise, “The latter splendor will be greater than the former,” is ostensibly about a cooler, more magnificent temple yet to be built.  We might read Haggai’s promise and wonder if our church, with its crumbling denominations and ever-lessening profile in society, will enter a new era of glory, not defined by size or institutions but by holiness and a radical embodiment of what church was supposed to be about all along.

Frederick Buechner’s old quote might pertain: “Maybe the best thing that could happen to the church would be if the buildings were lost, the bulletins blown away by the wind, the institutions all gone — and then all we’d have left would be Jesus and each other, which was all we had in the first place.”

Our building is not in ruins, but the pews are less full than they once were, correct?  I could ask you the same questions that Haggai asked perhaps.  How many of you remember the days when the pews were full, and the building’s usage was in its former glory?  How does it look to you now?  Is it not in your sight as nothing?

Now, here is the word of the Lord that came to Haggai to share with the people.

Yet now take courage, O members (of Olivet, of Bethesda), take courage, all you people of the land, says the Lord; work, for I am with you, according to the promise that I made you when I brought you out of Egypt (or when you formed this worshipping community, when you erected this building here in this town.)  My spirit abides among you; says the Lord, do not fear.  Once again, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasure of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with splendor.  The silver is mine, and the gold is mine.  The latter splendor of this house will be greater than the former and, in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord.

Thus, at its heart, the widow's mite is not just a story about giving, it’s really a story about whose we are and our motivation.  The key phrases in the Haggai passage is; “My spirit abides among you, do not fear.  I am with you, says the Lord.”  That’s the motivation behind what God is asking them to see and to invest in.

Why do we do what we do?  What do we hope to achieve by our giving?  What is our motivation?  The Pharisees and Sadducees gave to receive peer recognition.  And, as Jesus said, they received their reward.  People praised them.  The woman, on the other hand, gave out of love for God because God dwelled in her.  And according to Jesus, she also received her reward.  The rewards are as different as night and day.  One is measured by wealth in material things and the other is measured in wealth that is immaterial, personal, and can only be experienced…here…(thump chest) in the heart and soul of a person.

The first motivation for giving is that we give of ourselves.  In speaking of his Gentile churches, the Apostle Paul said: “First we gave of ourselves, and then we gave of our resources.”  Too many of us have gotten it backwards.

Giving is an outgrowth of who you are.  It is the inevitable result of a changed heart.  As we surrender ourselves to God and to loving our community and neighbor then we will want to give our time, our energy, and our financial resources too. 

Secondly, your money follows your heart.  Jesus worded it this way: where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  And this principle is true in other areas as well.  Take the stewardship of time for example.  Have you ever noticed how your time follows your interests?  You get interested in something and you invest in it--both with time and money.  We go where our heart leads us.  We follow with time and money where our heart has gone.

A third motivation is to give not because the church bills need to be paid but because we are moved by a sense of gratitude.  I have long suspected that the church universal has taken the wrong approach to stewardship and it’s one of the reasons why I don’t push stewardship drives very much.  In most stewardship campaigns people see a line item budget that details what our expenses will be for the coming year.  It’s mostly boring unless you’re the kind of person that likes numbers and few people ever read it.  Most people just look at the bottom line.  And it perpetuates the concept that you are to give in proportion to what the bills/expenses are going to be.  Regardless of what our bills are going to be, we should be giving out of a sense of thanksgiving and joy, not necessarily just to pay the bills.

Are we willing to leap into God’s grace and see where God is leading us?  Not just your money, but also your time and your energy and your life for God?

Just as a reminder; God is with us, we are all in God’s hands, at all times.

The widow’s mite; her two small coins, aren’t just about giving money.  It’s about giving of ourselves, following our hearts, out of generosity for all that’s been given to us.  If a dirt-poor widow (one of the lowest on the economic and social order of Jesus’ day) can give all that she has out of generosity for what has been given to her, we can certainly give because of who’s we are, where our heart leads us, and out of our extravagant abundance.

Thanks be to God.

AMEN.

Today's Sermon - Little Man - 11/3/19

Little Man

(based on Luke 19:1-10)

Z:      I woke up this morning feeling a bit out of sorts.    I felt empty, useless, without motivation or conviction.  I hadn’t felt that way in a very long time.  This uneasiness made me start thinking back on my life. 

I remember growing up in a pretty regular family.  My brothers and sisters were always around.  We did our morning chores, ran off to school, tried to remember our lessons and came home to do more chores and play in the streets with the other neighborhood kids before it was time for dinner.  Nothing out of the ordinary or different.  Until the rest of my brothers and sisters started to grow, but not me.  I’d always been the smallest of my siblings, but they started getting a lot taller and filling out in ways that I simply didn’t.  My older brother (who was only a year older than me) was already half a foot taller than me.  I was about the same size as my baby sister who was four years younger, and even she was beginning to outgrow me.  My brothers and the other neighborhood boys would wrestle with one another, run races, and horse around.  Even the younger kids could pin me down on the ground, outpace me in every race, and easily overpower me.  Sometimes even the girls would do it just for a bit of “fun”.  All the kids teased me, mercilessly, about how small I was.

I started spending more and more time helping Dad at his shop in town and spending less time with kids my age.  When he didn’t have anything for me to do, I’d head back home and peek in on Mom to see if she needed anything done in the house.  She’d shooed my outside and tell me to go play with the other kids.  Dejected, I’d slowly wander back out to the streets to watch the other kids play.  Eventually, I’d just sit and think.

One day, as I sat on the side of the street, playing with a handful of stones, counting them and putting them into piles of different sizes, my dad came over and sat down with me.  He told me that I shouldn’t be so sad.  I was smarter than the rest of my brothers and sisters.  He told me to not worry about being so small, that one day I’d grow up to be bigger than most of them; I just needed to be patient and wait for my time to become big and strong like them.  

Well, I tried to be patient and wait, but nothing changed.  Instead, I started to spend more and more time on my lessons.  I was the first to know the answer to every question the rabbi asked us.  In fact, as my Father had noted, I was smarter than boys much older than me.  At first, I thought this would make me feel worthy of the other kid’s affects, but it only made them tease me more.

As a young adult, having an affinity for numbers, I apprenticed with the money changers at the temple.  Eventually, I became the local tax collector.  Every move I made helped me gain a little more confidence.  I was beginning to be respected in ways I hadn’t been as a child.  I knew important people and therefore, people wanted to know me.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that most people didn’t really want to know me, they only wanted to use me.

This made me angry.  Why couldn’t people see me for who I was?  Why couldn’t people appreciate the person I’d become from the child I’d been?  This bothered me for a long time.  I watched people come and ingratiate themselves in order to get something from me, perhaps an introduction to someone of higher standing, perhaps an audience with the chief priest or even a Roman official.  Afterall, I knew them all.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped caring about them and what they thought of me or what they wanted from me and started wondering what I could get from them.  I was the tax collector, everyone had to come to me.  Well, if they wanted my favors, they’d simply have to pay for them.  That’s when I started extracting just a tad more of their tax money.  Interestingly enough, the more I required of them, the more favors they asked of me.  And I grew in power and prestige.  I worked my way all the way up to become the head tax collector in Jericho for the Jewish people.  I had the power I’d lacked as a child.  I was rich.  I had a beautiful home.  I had lots of servants.  And people groveled at my feet for the tiniest of favors.  I knew they spoke poorly about me behind my back, but by now, I didn’t really care.  I pretty much had everything I’d dream of.  This is what they’d wanted from me, so this is what I’d gotten and what I’d become.

In so doing, I’d spent my entire life building a wall between myself and others to stave off the feelings of hatred, anger, and isolation, but suddenly this morning that isolation felt depressing.

I’d heard about this Jesus, an itinerant rabbi who was stirring up the crowds, healing the sick, speaking against the hypocrisy of the scribes and the Pharisees.  I silently reveled in his rebellious nature, to go against the grain.  But I realized that I wasn’t any different than the scribes or Pharisees.  I, too, was a hypocrite – just a different kind.  I had wanted to be good, I had wanted to be loved and cared about for me, but the children of my youth and those I came into contact with as an adult who teased me and made fun of me for being so small and feeling unimportant made me what I was.  Deep down I’d felt that I wasn’t just a cheat and a scrounger, that I really did want people’s loyalty and their affection for the man that I was, or at least the man I could have become.  But what I was on the outside was just that – a cheat and a scrounger - a man who exacted a price for attention and a repayment of the relentless teasing I’d gotten as a child and the back-stabbing I’d endured as an adult.

This Jesus was on his way to Jericho and for some reason I wanted to see him.  I don’t know why, but I needed to see him.  I knew the crowds would be heavy.  How would I be able to see him, I wondered?  How would I be able to see over the heads of all those who came out today to get a glimpse of this man?  As the morning advanced, I became more interested in seeing this Jesus.  I realized that it was a bit irrational, but somehow, I felt that I really NEEDED to see him; more importantly, I needed him see me.

Suddenly, I had an idea.

As I walked quickly down the street from my house, I arrived at the place where I thought I might be able to see him.  There was a sycamore tree that branched heavily over the street.  I climbed unto his branches and found a good resting place to wait for him.   Shortly after I arrived, I heard the crowd get more excited and the commotion begin.  He was headed in our direction.  Within just a few short minutes, there he was standing with his followers underneath the tree.  Looking up at me, he spoke.

J:      Zacchaeus, hurry up and come down from that tree.  I want to stay at your house today.

Z:      I was astounded.  He noticed me.  And he actually spoke my name.  My thoughts ran wild.  How had he known my name?  I quickly came down from the tree.  Landing on the ground, I again, could not see him.  The crowd of the people close in on me and I felt dwarfed by their presence.  I felt the stares of all those who’d teased me as a child, hated me as an adult, and mocked me behind my back.  I started to hear the whispers begin – Why would Jesus speak to him?  Why would Jesus even want to be with such a sinner?  What right does he have?  Zacchaeus is a cheat and a scoundrel – a horrible little man.

J:      Zacchaeus.

Z:      I heard him say my name again and the crowd began to part.  As they moved aside to let me through, a pathway emerged and there he was in front of me.  I looked up into his face and saw compassion.  The kind I’d only ever seen before in my parent’s eyes.  The kind that made my heart leap within me and filled my soul with something other than contempt for my fellow man.  Tears began to well in my eyes.  What in the world is wrong with you, I thought?  I quickly brushed them aside and walked toward Jesus.

J:      Let’s go to your house, Zacchaeus.  I’d like to spend some time with you today.

Z:      Why does he want to spend time with me, I wondered the same things as the crowd did.  All the inadequacies came flooding back.  I felt like a little child again, unworthy of someone’s affections, unworthy to be called friend, unworthy of all the human kindnesses others are easily afforded.  The crowds followed behind us as I led the way to my home.  I desperately wanted to show Jesus the best of all I had.  I wanted to flood him with gifts, to offer his followers a place to stay, a meal to eat.  I sent for my servants to quickly make preparations for the most important visitor.  As we laid down at the table, the servants brought a feast.  The brought bread and wine, vegetables from the garden and an ox roast that had been cooking on the fires all morning.  Jesus remained silent through most of the meal, but kept watching me.  At first, this made me self-conscious and uncomfortable, but the more he watched, the more relaxed I became.  At last he spoke.

J:      Tell me, Zacchaeus, what is it that you want?

Z:      All I wanted was for Jesus to see value and virtue in me.  But mostly I wanted a peace, a peace I’d never known.  A peace in my spirit and soul that knew I was a good man deep down inside, a peace that knew I was not a sinner, but a man of God.  As he looked deep in my eyes, I knew what I needed to do.  Regardless of how others had treated me, I needed to show them the value of my heart.  Yes, I was a sinner.  Yes, I had cheated people out of money that did not belong to me.  And I needed to make reparations for my sin.

Z:      “Jesus,” I said, “I want peace in knowing that I’ve corrected my mistakes and want others to know that I have a good heart.  Actually, that’s not entirely correct.  I need to know that I have a good heart.  Therefore, I will give back four times whatever I have taken to whomever I have wronged”

J:      Zaccheaus, salvation has come to this house today.  What did you see that made you desire this peace?

Z:      Master, I saw – mirrored in your eyes – the face of the Zaccheaus I was meant to be.

The most important reason for this church to exist is the hope that once in a while, in sermon or in song, or through the friendships we make, we catch a glimpse of what we were meant to be.

Grant us the imagination, gracious God, to see the face of love and trust, and be drawn by it to a nobler life through Christ our Lord.

AMEN.