The God Who Answers By Fire

1 Kings 18: 30-39

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come here to me.” They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the Lord, which was in ruins. Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, “Your name shall be Israel.” With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, “Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood.”

“Do it again,” he said, and they did it again.

“Do it a third time,” he ordered, and they did it the third time. The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.

At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.”

Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.

When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, “The Lord - he is God! The Lord – he is God!”

Sermon

People wonder if the Bible has lost its relevance. It was a question many people were asking, some still ask, but today I read this passage and I see the Bible as being painfully relevant, almost eerily relevant, considering the battle of religions currently being fought in our world.

The cover of the Atlantic magazine last month bore the question, “Which religion will win?” in a world that seems to be the stage for the battle between Christianity and Islam. Many scholars of global mission have become aware of the truly significant missionary movements that are sweeping the Southern Hemisphere. Whereas the center of Christianity was once Jerusalem, then Rome, then Western Europe, then the United States, today the areas most dominated by Christianity are closer to the equator, making the face of Christianity not white, but brown, not middle class or wealthy, but poor most often, and not fighting a battle against secularism, but Islam.

Today, reports the Atlantic, Nigeria is in conflict, but not between clans or races, between religions.

For evangelism has turned violent, and worshiping God turned into something very different from what it should be.

What is burning in Nigeria? Not the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, the soil, and the water in the trench, but the Mosque, the Church, and the very people who worship there.

I believe it is too simplistic to assume that Christians stand fully in the tradition of Elijah, for when Christians are afraid we turn just as quickly as the Israelites, to other gods.

When farmers know that their crops are failing, that their families face starvation, the question is not where to turn, but where will they not turn?

And in the chaos that is Nigeria, where life is cheap, where the government pursues self-interest rather than the common good, where will the parents of children turn for provision? Or where will the parents of hungry children not turn for provision? What is violence, the prophets of Baal say, if it paves the way to spiritual and physical salvation?

There is a question that we all must ask. We Christians naturally desire peace – but will we not turn to war should the safety of our country be jeopardized? Will we not turn to the gun though we follow the Prince of Peace?

The Israelites left the God of their ancestors, not out of a baseless whim, but because the God of their ancestors seemed unable to put food on their tables for today. They left the God who brought them out of Egypt, gave them the promised land, because plants can grow without history, but they cannot grow without water, the old stories can’t fill an empty belly or ease a worried mind.

So Elijah does not preach, does not prophecy. He does not try to kindle fear with fire and brimstone preaching. He lays the groundwork for a contest – appealing to the people’s need he forces the people to choose and challenges the prophets of Baal to make good on their promises.

Can they bring the rain? Can they provide for the people? Who is the God who can bring fire on the mountain?

Elijah, it would seem is the last of the faithful, but with a faith stronger than fear, wagering his very life on the provision of God not only sets the stage for this battle of faith, but ups the anti by pouring water over a sacrifice the people didn’t expect to burn in the first place.

And the fire the people didn’t expect to burn doesn’t simply burn, but burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench. And as the smoke raised from the flames the doubt of the people, their idolatries, and the authority they gave to the false prophets of Baal rose with it as the flames burned a fiery purity among the people of God.

Unfortunately for us though, the prophets of Baal have returned, though their authority has been soundly defeated.

The people of Nigeria still pursue provision – and the prophets of Baal are there leading them in a litany of violence – though the wages of this idolatry is not rain, not fire on the mountain, but fires in churches and mosques. This idolatry cannot provide for the people, cannot bring peace and order, but will only corrode their society further. The prophets of Baal will not bring the waters of life to this thirsty region, but the cup of wrath, the bitterness of a never-ending struggle.

But it’s a struggle not unlike our own, and the wages of our own struggle seem to be the same. Out of fear we turn to violence, and the god of violence has not provided what was promised, only what we should have expected.

Elijah calls us to the mountain again – throws down the same challenge. Who will truly provide? Can violence and war bring peace? Can our safety be bought through threatening another’s life? Will the prophet’s of Baal provide?

Elijah asks us, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him?”

It is a risky business making such a choice, but our country cannot defend and oppress the immigrant among us; we cannot call for peace while waging war; we cannot expect justice for all while denying justice. We cannot be thankful for all that we have if our eye is always turned towards what we don’t.

How long will we waver between two opinions?

Until we realize that the wages of our sin is death, and that the true God of Israel brings life.

For who will be our shelter in the time of storm?

Who is our rock in a weary land?

Even with voices dry we must trust the one who will be our shade by day and our defense by night.

When we are cast aside by the prophets of Baal, laid off, un or under insured, used for our votes or our tax dollars, our helper will be ever near. When we finally tire of war, realizing that the only true shelter from the bomb blast is not trusting the bombs in the first place – we will know that the God who brings fire is our shelter in the time of storm.

-Amen.

Who is This?

Matthew 21: 1-11; page 697

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethpage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”

This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:

“Say to the daughter of Zion, ‘See, your king comes to you,

gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from trees and spread them on the road. The crowds went ahead of him and those that followed shouted:
”Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest!”

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Sermon

“Who is this?” A strange question, or at least it can seem strange to us as we have all heard the answer many, many times.

Reading this passage, knowing what’s going to happen, we wonder why anyone would ask, but especially the ones who had the privlidge, or the burden, of being alive while it all unfolded. And if the miracles, the virgin birth, and Jesus’ words weren’t enough for everyone there to figure out his identity, in our passage Jesus makes sure to do certain things to show everyone who he is. In our passage for this morning he gives everyone a big hint by fulfilling a prophecy. By riding on top of not only a donkey, but a donkey and the foal of a donkey, the author takes pains to show that Jesus fulfills what was spoken through the prophet: “See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Maybe he should have stuck one of those Jesus fish on the back of his ride. Then everyone would have gotten the idea.

I see those fish a lot these days. They are pretty popular – so popular that they are now parodied. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but on some cars the Jesus fish has evolved, sprouting legs with the word, “Darwin” on the side of it.

To counter evolution I have seen bigger Jesus fish with the word “TRUTH” written on the side and the Darwin fish in its mouth being eaten.

And given this advancement, I should have seen it coming, but I was still surprised to see our friend the “TRUTH” fish being eaten by a now, even bigger fish, with the words “Reality Bites”
on the side.

I didn’t know whether to gawk at how sacrilegious people can be, or to applaud a person willing to say exactly what they are thinking. And as the events following Palm Sunday unfolded, I think this fish would say what a lot of people were thinking – that reality challenged, and for some, completely consumed, their faith in Jesus.

It may be hard to believe that anyone would ask the question, “Who is this?” just as its hard to believe that anyone today wouldn’t know who he is, but as fear would replace these revelers with an angry mob, that not long after this joyous entrance, his disciples would disown or deny him, he would be tried and condemned while the crowd called for his death, it would seem as though no one completely knew the answer to the question, “Who is this?”.

But such is faith.

We have faith in prayer, so we pray for healing, and sometimes it comes, but can faith remain the same if it is based on a string of unanswered prayers that were supposed to be answered? What does praying and praying for a grandparent, parent, spouse, or child, do to our faith if our prayer is not answered? Can we ever believe the same way once we have prayed for a healing that never came?

We have faith in God, trusting that God has ordained our leaders, trusting that God works through them, that God has put them in our churches for a reason, but what happens to our faith if that leader falls from the pedestal? Can our faith stand the trials of believing in some pastor, believing that he or she could truly speak the word of God, would listen, give the right advice – but in the face of temptation or when his or her power was threatened, that pastor turned to be no better than you or me and maybe even worse – falling from grace, falling and possibly taking faith in God and faith in the church down also.

We have faith in the Bible, teaching us to honor our mother and father, an easy command when your parents are honorable, but to see and know parents who act un-honorably, poses the question: is the Bible wrong – is God too naive for our reality?

We have faith in beliefs we expect to stand the test of time. We are taught certain things about wrong and right, taught standards of ethics and sexuality, but when a loved one tells you about their love, their love that contrasts what you have always been taught, can we go on with the same standards of right and wrong? Can homosexuality be wrong when it is given a human face, when this issue takes the face of someone you love?

Just as we have faith, so the disciples had faith in Jesus, but the reality of where that palm and cloak strewn road led, threw them all into doubt, took them to a place they were not willing or expecting to go, inspired not the shouts of “Hosanna in the highest” but the wailing of grief.

They assumed he was riding that donkey to his coronation as the Son of David, that he was on his way to a throne room in the palace, that he was steadily on the path towards making the path straight, putting the unjust in their place, lifting up the weak, honoring all, not thinking how this donkey was also the symbol of sacrifice.

So they mourned the death of their leader, they mourned the death of all that they believed in, they mourned the death of all their hopes, too afraid to approach his grave they mourned while Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, and Joseph of Arimathea prepared his body and laid him in the tomb.

Like them we mourn, as his path is not the one we expected, his destination is not where we wanted to go, and we are ashamed for not having gone with him. So we mourn the loss, we stand at the tomb asking why, not realizing that the one who we are looking for is not here.

Who is this?

See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Where Does My Help Come From?

This morning’s second scripture reading is Psalm 121, and can be found in your pew Bibles on page 440.
I invite you to listen for the word of God.
I lift up my eyes to the hills – Where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.
The Lord will not let your foot slip – the One who watches over you will not slumber; indeed the one who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you – the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm – the Lord will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
The hills of Haiti are a sight I’ll never forget. As we flew over them in a tiny air plane during a medical and construction mission trip this past December I remember thinking that in their desolation they represent their country. The hills of Haiti appear naked without trees, clear cut, and worn down. They once sheltered the native inhabitants, providing them with all that they needed, were then home to escaped slaves, offering them a place to hide from their captors, but today all they offer the Haitian people is a cruel reminder that help seems no where to be found.
Our first clinic was held in a school house. There nurses on our team diagnosed illnesses and Jane dispensed medicine to all ages of people. Some old, women with leathery skin, braided gray hair, and the kind of eyes that made me think they could see things that I could not; others young, eyes bright with newness; and the old would coo those small children to bring out a smile that would break the sadness of that place. With a smile, Jane handed out prenatal vitamins, pills for pain, worms, and infection. It was my job to limit the number of people who the medical team cared for, calling up groups of 2 to 5 from the ever growing crowd of people. As we left after a long day, having helped more than 80 people, but still thinking of the many that still needed help, I saw the words “Children of God” painted on the wall. I thought to myself, how will anyone in this place know that they are God’s children? In numbing poverty, marked by malnutrition, a population where the vast majority of people are unemployed, where the average family lives on less than $500 a year, where health care is virtually non-existent – and yet they are the children of God. However, those words are written in English in a country where the people speak a mixture of French and West African, and where there are no public schools leaving the majority illiterate, even in their native tongue, I wondered how any of them would be able to read those words and understand the truth that they hold, especially when the truth that they hold so contrasts all the evidence that surrounds them.
For the entire week I watched the children, and wondered how they would know that they are the children of God. Muddied and poor, finding themselves worth more on the street than in the school room, how will they know their true identity in a place like Haiti?
I was thinking about this paradox in a field beside a wall that was under construction. Ron and I were toting cinder blocks that were stacked and mortared to protect an area to be used as an orphanage. Standing there beside a polluted stream, with mud on my legs that smelled like oil as it dried, I looked to the hills.
Though I’ve been to Honduras, a country that shares a common history of hardship with Haiti, in Haiti the poverty was all encompassing and deep, and I needed to escape from it.
Standing by that cinderblock wall, thinking about the desperation of Haiti, the staggering unemployment, the economic inheritance that benefited countries like my own, rarely offering help, but more often seeking to take advantage of an already depraved people, who having descended from slaves who fought for their freedom, found poverty and disease at the hands of their selfish leaders and a harsh global economy.
I dreamed of the day God would return to this place – return to the children of Haiti, bringing justice. I looked to the Hills of Haiti, and wondered when that help would come.
But interrupting my thoughts, a young Haitian boy handed me three fried plantain strips that Ron Moore sent to me from the other side of the field. I looked at those three plantain strips, thinking about how hungry I was even though I had eaten my lunch already, and then I looked at the skinny bodies of the men I was working with, thinking of their empty stomachs, knowing they had not had any lunch, and I broke off a piece for each before eating my own piece. As I ate, sharing something that wouldn’t make too much of a difference to anybody, I heard the words of institution in my ears saying, “This is my body, broken for you.”
I had been looking to the hills for hope – looking towards some future of a world without today’s greed that drives us to amass more and more while the Haitians have less and less. Looking to the hills – to a future when God would be present. Looking to the Hills, only to realize that God was present to me right there in the people who surrounded me.
I was looking for God in some place far away, thinking God was present in the past, and would be present again in the future, but had abandoned the children of God in the present. But in confining God to some distant place or time, I was forgetting who Jesus really is.
Our God did not rest on a hill watching the people suffer; our God came to earth, born poor and simple to a teenage, unwed mother. God walked this earth as a man and during Jesus’ time in the wilderness, truly knew what it means to be hungry and tempted as I assume most Haitians feel everyday. And before his death, Jesus told his disciples that the best way to remember him would be to break bread and share wine, that in these common, simple, real things, we would feel God’s presence with us again and again.
I forgot what kind of God it is that we believe in, maybe because it’s hard to believe that God would be in such a place as Haiti.
Maybe because I have sanitized God to the point that God seemed too bleach-y clean to walk the Haitian streets – forgetting our God is not the resident of some mansion of the sky, but is the embodiment of victory in the face of the powers of death and despair. Not denying the realities of human struggle, but bearing them on his body, but not being defeated.
In Haiti I saw this God’s face. I saw God’s face in the ancient faces of women waiting to see a nurse, but whom despite pain from illness, and frustration in the face of so many obstacles, could coo a baby and smile in defiance of a situation I thought was hopeless.
And then I saw God in the face of a man in a wheelbarrow.
Jane knew this man would be there, and with him in mind she had a wheel chair donated. Smuggling this wheel chair into Haiti proved complicated. Rather than pay the extra money to check the wheel chair, Jane and Ron convinced me to fake a hurt ankle, and they took turns wheeling me and my luggage around as we all flirted with the Patriot act in a way that still makes me a little uncomfortable.
But when I saw that man in this wheel chair, a man who had depended on his son to put him in a wheel barrow to move him from his house to the field where the clinic was held, I knew I had been a part of something that really mattered, that I had been a part of something holy. And as I knelt down, looking into this old man’s eyes, tears filled my own, because I knew that God does not live in the hills, that my help and his help does not lie in a place I must lift up my eyes to see, but right there in each other.
I felt God, and saw God in this man’s face. Not in a cathedral, not in a Haitian past filled with hope, freedom, and possibility, not only in a possible Haitian future where the world’s economy and the leaders of this small country would somehow smarten up, but right there before me and inside of me.
I realized in that moment, that if our eyes are on the hills, looking for God, remembering a God present somewhere in the past, or hoping for a God who will be present in the future should we all start acting right, we may be missing the true God right here among us today.
I was looking for God in the hills, knowing that God was present to the Haitian people as they fought for independence from slavery and oppression, knowing that God was present as they looked on a future full of hope, but feeling as though the fathers and sons who looked to the hills for warmth, burning tree after tree had caused hope to dwindled down like their cooking fires, allowing the shadow of today to overcome.
Today, in this church, I feel God’s presence again and again. It is not solely in this room, but also around a breakfast table on Thursday mornings with a group of men, on Wednesday nights over dinner and during Building Believers, a time where I am surrounded and sometimes overwhelmed by young kids, as well as many other places, all where people are joined not by common ideology, age, or station, but only by a common faith in God, and a common desire to know God better. In this church we share more than meals or space in a Sunday morning church service, we share a part of each other’s lives.
It is in this community that our help lies. Not because we know all the right answers, not because we are any better than anyone else, but in this place we all share something with each other, reaching out to one another, showing each other that sharing meals, sharing dreams, sharing pain, sharing joy, are what make us all more than a group of individuals, for in serving each other, we are serving God.
We all want to be a part of something holy, but all that is required is realizing that you are a part of something holy now, that God is present in each others eyes.
-Amen.

Chloe's a Tattletale

This morning’s second scripture reading is 1 Corinthians 1: 10 – 18, and can be found on page 807 of your pew Bibles.
Listen now for the word of God.
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.
My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; and another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul?
I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel – not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
-The word of the Lord
-Thanks be to God.
Sermon
My grandmother is one of those people who only use Duke’s Mayonnaise. My grandfather told me he learned that lesson the hard way, having come home from the store with one of the inferior brands, and been sent back to exchange some lesser mayonnaise for the real thing. You might say that my grandmother has made up her mind on mayonnaise, and hasn’t changed it in a very long time.
In today’s world that same kind of dedication seems to be a rarity. People seem to like change, and it is not often some deep seeded commitment that stirs our decision making, but passing whims, sales, or flashy new advertising.
Of course, no one would think it a serious problem if our inability to commit to things were limited to what we put on our sandwiches or in our potato salads, but lack of commitment has infiltrated more serious concerns.
The standards of our faith that once seemed to be written in stone, immovable and unchangeable, now seem to be under the sway of movements and philosophies of the day. The standards of “truth,” seem to be less certain than they once were, and we find ourselves just like Pilate before Jesus, asking, “What is truth?”
Like tapered jeans, feathered hair, roller-skates, and tie-dye shirts, commitment and certainty seem to have gone out of style.
Today even “the church,” at least in the way that Paul speaks of it, has changed, and is changing dramatically.
Some groups have broken away, seeking something pure and a truth un-wavering to the winds of time. These days Presbytery meetings are the forum for debate, or simply the place for announcing who has moved on from the PC (USA).
There are some who would say that they are leaving a denomination that has faltered, that has failed, that has compromised too often, that doesn’t seem to stand for anything anymore.
And those who leave might say that they are seeking the truth of Christ – acting as the true church, unlike those who in the Corinthian church said, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; and another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”
But I wonder often what such divisions are really all about.
Anyone who has been paying much attention to the Presbyterian Church recently knows that our current divisions have a lot to do with ordination – who can be ordained – what standards for ordination really exist? This debate brings up new questions – questions that Paul probably didn’t deal with directly, but dealt with in his own way nonetheless.
In our passage for today, Paul wrote, “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel – not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”
With the crafting of such a sentence, Paul addresses the problem that those from Chloe’s household let him know about; maybe not directly, but in a way that disarms the argument, making a statement that’s hard to disagree with, but which steals the foundation from any quarrel, saying, I have been called here, not to baptize, “but to preach the gospel – not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”
For Paul, the cross stands as the judge of all human wisdom – and for Paul, it was this one truth that held his commitment fully, making human knowledge appear to be foolishness.
But to the Priestly Leaders of the Jews—a group also called the Sanhedrin—and the Romans, at the time of Jesus’ trial, it was Jesus who appeared to be foolish. The Sanhedrin and the Romans were two groups who could not compromise together, but were, like politicians vying for a Presidential Nomination, unified by a common enemy in Jesus.
The Sanhedrin, committed to a truth they believed lied in their interpretation of the Law, and the Romans, equally committed to the truth of law and order, were both offended by the man who preached that the truth could not be in either of these places, but in loving your neighbor as yourself. The Romans and the Sanhedrin were both sure that truth did not lie in the words and essence of the man who stood before them both, condemned as a criminal.
And Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”
They assumed that Truth lay in their interpretation of the Law; that Truth lay in Empire, in order, in human wisdom. And their opinions, held so strongly – unwavering, uncompromising, unapologetically standing for something they thought to be true – crucified the truth, the light to our shadow.
So Jesus died, like a child torn apart by two warring parents both too obsessed with being right to see the failings of their argument – more dedicated to winning the fight than to the love that once joined them together; or like a denomination torn apart by churches convinced they are the true manifestation of all that is good and right that they have forgotten that the essence of Christianity is not the standards of faith that can be agreed upon, but our common call to the foot of the Cross – binding us together as one body of broken people who admit their need for a savior; or like the Corinthian congregation segmented by leaders who all believe they have all the right answers tearing apart a church – the very body of Christ, torn apart by the Roman Court and the Sanhedrin, unable to see beyond their the words to see the truth.
The Cross stands before us all – not as something to fight over or to defend, but as a sign that should humble all of us who think that we are right. Here we see that we don’t have the answers, and we can only hope that Chloe will tell on us before we tear ourselves apart.
In a world so broken by war fueled by fundamentalism and the fear of retreat, it seems that we have gone too far trusting in human wisdom so that we may never make it back.
We want to stand for something, we want to believe that there are answers lying in our hearts or hands; but the Cross shows us that the truth does not lie in the faith of the Sanhedrin, the wisdom of the Greeks, the order of the Romans, the Patriotism of the Republicans, the Hope of the Democrats – but that the answer lies in those hands nailed on the cross.
At the cross we see that faith does not mean forging ahead according to what we believe is right – but walking humbly with our God and neighbor, expecting to make mistakes, but walking together, bound by cords that cannot be broken. And we’ll be singing, “Bind us together Lord, bind us together, and bind us together with love.”
-Amen.

I Always Thank God for You

This morning’s (second) scripture reading is 1 Corinthians, chapter 1, verses 1 – 9; and can be found on page 806 of your pew Bible.
Listen now for the word of God.
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ – their Lord and ours:
Grace and peace to you from God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank God for you because of the grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him we have been enriched in every way – in all your speaking and in all your knowledge – because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God, who has called you into fellowship with the Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
I had the honor of serving one of our denomination’s finest churches as an intern in the summer after my second year of seminary. One of the flagship churches of the PC (USA), hosting General Assemblies, having had more than one of their senior pastors move on to become moderator; this place was perfect for learning about our denomination because this church, with its illustrious heritage and breathtaking cathedral-like sanctuary, had been losing members since the 1950’s and the end of this loss seemed to be no where in sight.
Across the street from this fantastic church stood another church undergoing renovations; not so that it could expand to accommodate their growing congregation, but so that the sanctuary, Sunday School rooms, and offices could be converted into apartments to accommodate the growing number of young professionals who could see the value in a fine apartment, but didn’t have the time to stop and see the value in attending a fine worship service.
The fate of this church-turned-apartment complex was a looming omen, casting a shadow of fear over the congregation that I served.
They looked to the past, remembering the days when the sanctuary would fill to the point of bursting, Christmas Eves with folding chairs filling up the aisles to accommodate all those who wanted to worship God in this place that meant so much, and Sunday school rooms with the audible laughter of children being nurtured in the faith where now only a few small voices remained. They would remember the times with both joy and shame, for it seemed as though they had failed, or might fail, in keeping the church alive, and when it came down to it, if the church were to close, whose fault would it be?
Surely, they would not be the kind of church who, like that church in Corinth, inspired Paul to write, “I always thank God for you because of the grace given you in Christ Jesus.”
Surely, they would be the kind of church that Paul would be too ashamed to write, the kind of church who would fade away into history rather than be remembered in scripture.
The Corinthian church was a big wealthy church, because Corinth was a city conveniently situated for imports and exports between the Aegean Sea and the Ionian.[i] An attractive place, and a wealthy place, that surely nurtured a church who didn’t worry about budgets or mortgages, but who was able to rest secured in the promise that their church would be there for their grandchildren, would stand the test of time, establishing its place in Corinthian society – a church that would not need suffer the anxiety of a future as an apartment complex.
However, success often breeds its own sad set of problems, and as Paul is that kind of a person who you only hear from when something is gone wrong, not the kind of boss who drops in to say, “hey, looks like your doing a great job – keep it up,” but the kind who, should you be called to the office or find a letter at your door, you know to expect the worst.
Such is the case with the Corinthian church, for, according to John Calvin, “during Paul’s absence false apostles had crept in, not… to disturb the church openly with wicked doctrines…but priding themselves in the splendor and magnificence of their address, or rather, being puffed up with an empty loftiness of speech, they looked upon Paul’s simplicity, and even the Gospel itself, with contempt.”[ii]
Like any pastor, outgrowing his or her humble position by growth in ambition rather than growth in faith, leaders in the Corinthian church, seeking the credit for the church’s success, split the congregation into factions rather than be unified by Christ. To use Calvin’s words again, they were “promoting their own honor, rather than Christ’s kingdom and the people’s welfare.”[iii]
But Paul’s criticism of these problems does not begin with anger or insult, but with the words, “I always thank God for you because of the grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way – in all your speaking and in all your knowledge – because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you.
Paul’s words are kind, and might almost seem to give the ambitious leaders of the Corinthian church more reason to boast - but Paul’s words are not focused on the leaders, they are focused on God. No, pointedly, Paul takes the credit and acclaim that has been misplaced on the heads of the leaders and that has caused factions and divisions, and gives it right back to its rightful source.
It is not uncommon for any leaders in the church to take credit for success – lifting them up, applauding their own efforts, taking credit for what God has done. But Paul knows that the source of their speaking or knowledge does not lie in the goodness of their own character, but is able to do such good because of the grace given in Christ Jesus.
And likewise, it is not uncommon for church members to take credit and responsibility for what they perceive to be failure, placing blame for smaller attendance or lacking programs, on themselves or their leaders, assuming that if things are going wrong that they are at fault –but Paul also speaks to this concept of responsibility, for placing blame for what seems to be going wrong is equally self centered.
We deserve Paul’s rebuke whenever we take credit for success or failure, believing that the future wellbeing of the church lies in our hands - because the future of this church does not lie in our hands, but in the hands of God, “who has called you into fellowship with the Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is faithful.”
I want to rejoice in this day, because today we are surely oblivious if we cannot see God working in this place – though we must remember that we are no doubt fools if we think that God is working in this place because of what anyone of us has done.
The inflated egos represented in the Corinthian Church, and the inflated sense of responsibility represented by the church that I served as an intern, are two sides of the same coin, both sides which seem to doubt the power of God, lacking the faith to trust that it is God who is at work all around us.
So Paul calls us to a different sense of purpose and responsibility – to a place of trust, trusting the sure truth that God is setting all things right in Jesus Christ.
While we are called to trust, and to watch, we are also called to be actors within this great healing of the world – acting, not because of our own merits, but using our gifts for the glory of God, knowing that it is because of God that we are here in this place at all.
According to Bible scholar Richard B. Hayes, God invites us to participate in this healing, and because of this invitation, “on the one hand, the stakes are raised. Our actions belong to a larger pattern of significance than that of our own lives, and the church’s obedience to God’s will matters urgently, because it is part of God’s strategy for the eschatological renewal of the world. On the other hand, at the same time, we can gain a better sense of proportions about our own striving and failures, for God is faithful, and it is God who is at work in calling and preparing us.”[iv]
We are all called to this place, and we must not allow our complaining, our disappointment, our egos, our successes, our triumphs, our shortcomings, to hinder God from letting this church be a great voice, shouting the good news in our actions and words, through our presence in this community, and despite the flaws that make us one people in need of the same savior.
-Amen.
[i] John Calvin, Corinthians Volume 1, p. 37.
[ii] Ibid. p. 38.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Richard B. Hayes, First Corinthians, p. 20.

When Will Restoration Come?

This morning’s scripture reading is Psalm 80, and can be found on page 419 of your pew Bibles.
I invite you to listen for the word of God.
Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel. You who led Joseph like a flock; who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
Awaken us to your might; come and save us.
Restore us, O God; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
O Lord God Almighty, how long will your anger smolder against the prayers of your people?
You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.
You have made us a source of contention to our neighbors, and our enemies mock us.
Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches.
It sent out its boughs to the sea, its shoots as far as the river.
Why have you broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes?
Boars from the forest ravage it and the creatures of the field feed on it.
Return to us O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself.
Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish.
Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself. Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name.
Restore us, O Lord God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
Coming back to my office after the busy Christmas season that began with a trip to Haiti has not been the most pleasant of things. When I walked into my office I added another stack of papers to my desk, moved another stack of papers away from the computer key board so I could type a little bit – at some point I am going to have to organize all this chaos that has invaded my office, but I haven’t quite gotten to it yet. Maybe this week I’ll categorize my paper, put them away into files, and then, maybe in a week or so, actually deal with them.
Scholarship often deals with the psalms in a similar way – organizing the psalms into categories before dealing with what they actually mean for the community of believers.
This morning’s psalm is categorized as a lament psalm. Not a psalm of praise surely, as the words “you have fed them with the bread of tears, you have made us a source of contention to our neighbors,” are not those of thanksgiving, but of sadness and complaint.
We hear the psalmist cry out to God, voice her predicament, finding words to describe her situation – to put words to a human calamity that cannot be filed away, but must be faced and dealt with.
What makes the words of this psalm so powerful is that the words of the psalmist are in fact timeless – for humanity’s need to lament and question God has not gone away.
And so, as we look out at the world – as we look at ourselves, or as we hear testimony like that of our guests the Allenbaugh family and those of other families still suffering from a hurricane that swept through two years ago, and to use the words of journalist Brandy Wilson, “is still a flood of suffering,” we have to ask God “Why?”Why have you “fed them with the bread of tears?” For in light of such a reality the words of the psalmist make sense again, her words speak to the seemingly timeless experience of human suffering – and the need to ask God “why”. The need to ask, “When will we be restored,” “when will restoration come?”
The psalmist speaks of Israel, a nation like a vine, plucked up and liberated from the slavery of Egypt, then planted in the Promised Land after God made a place for it through Joshua’s military conquest. This vine was able to prosper by the grace of God, “the mountains were covered by its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent out its boughs to the sea, its shoots to the river.”
But then God seemingly abandoned the people, the walls were broken down, and all who pass picked its grapes.
The psalmist calls for God to return, “Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand planted, the son you raised yourself.”
And like the psalmist, we call God to restore us, asking, when will you return, when will our restoration come?
Our cities and homes were prosperous, but then the winds and rain came and would not stop. Homes were flooded, lives were lost and others put at risk, and we called out to you for help.
But did help come? We still have faith, remembering the deeds of the past, how you liberated the people from Egypt, how you led them like a flock through the sea, how you created a place for them in the Promised Land and enabled them to prosper. But today, the government seems to have given up, leaving people to fend for themselves. Providing trailers or nothing at all, while the insurance companies do little more than find loopholes. So why will you look in the other direction while your people suffer?
The psalmist voices such concerns to God – attempting to make God aware of this situation. Knowing that if God only knew how the people suffered then God would once again provide: “Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see!”
And the psalmist hopes for when God will see, providing a savior for the people. The psalmist looks to “the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up yourself.” The psalmist expects this man to provide redemption, liberation from the situation of want; the psalmist looks to this promised one for salvation.
And as Christians, we know this savior by name.
This savior who did not only look down from heaven on our situation, but was born in a manger and lived on earth as one of us. Who has not only observed our situation, but came to know it as his own. Who joined in our suffering – to the point of being crucified on the cross.
And the title given this King – in today’s psalm it is “the son of man.” In a sermon on John, the great United Methodist preacher, Grace Imathiu analyzes this title, saying:
“Jesus is human, he loves being human. Time and time again he calls himself human: Son of Man. And he came to teach us how to be human: Son of Man. You see, Jesus is the new beginning. Jesus is the new Adam. Jesus came to show us how God intended for us to be.”[1]
The Son of Man – the very title used by the psalmist, is the title that Jesus uses to refer to himself – the title that reflects, not Christ’s divinity or royalty, but that God chooses to be like us.
God does not choose to be like the government – fumbling through paper work or looking the other way, hoping for a scandal or celebrity romance to distract us from the failures that surround Katrina and the failure in honoring its charge to provide for those still without homes.
God does not choose to be like the insurance companies – seeking to preserve profits over care, finagling between what is flood damage and what is hurricane damage.
God choose to become one of us – knowing our pain, knowing our reality, and knowing what will truly bring restoration.
By living as one of us, God has broken the divide between the divine and the human – and broken down all hierarchy with it.
Rather than hear the psalmist’s cry to “Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see!” God walked in our shoes, and gave up his life to save us, suffering on the cross, quoting the words of another lament psalm saying, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
And so we know that we worship a God who does not simply know our struggles, has not simply read about them or looked down on us from a heavenly throne, but who has born our struggle on God’s very body, becoming one of us.
And by becoming one of us, God affirms our humanity, and calls us to see each other as sister and brother.
By serving us, even washing the feet of those who followed him during his earthly ministry – God calls us to model such servant-hood by serving each other.
And by sacrificing God’s life for us – God calls us to sacrifice ourselves for the good of our fellow woman and man.
Only then will we become whole – by following the example of this new Adam – and we know that it is in following his example that we will know what it means to be truly human.
In doing – we model the life of Christ, and will no doubt find the restoration of a hurricane torn region too long left broken, and the restoration of our souls, too long left longing for something more.
-Amen.


[1] R. Grace Imathiu, Words of Fire, Spirit of Grace: Twelve sermons from on of the world’s best preachers

Christmas Eve 2007

This evening’s Scripture reading is Luke, chapter 2, verses 8 through 20.
I invite you to listen for the word of God.
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men and women on who his favor rests.”
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in a manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.
The word of the Lord
Thanks be to God.
Sermon
I’ve only met one shepherd in my life. She was quite a person. I met her in a really interesting place; a place that was foreign to me, though it was only miles from our house. I met this one shepherd in a maximum security prison. To get into this prison I would first show my identification, walk through a metal detector, then maybe get waved with the metal detector wand should I set off the regular metal detector, then pass through a series of gates – and as I passed through one door it would immediately close behind me, and only then would the next door open. It was a scary place to be; a place full of walls between the inmates and the outside world.
In the women’s prison there is one program that really does something to help people get rehabilitated. This program where the women train Seeing Eye dogs to help the blind was the place that really made me feel hopeful. I ended up spending a lot of time in their building because they seemed to have a hope that life could be better – that upon release they could make a new life for themselves – that they would leave these prison walls behind them. I used to love that hope, because here was this one place where I didn’t feel so obligated to offer something, to say something, or to do something. This was the place where I could just be, or just listen. Every where else I was trying to say the thing that God would have me say, but in this one bastion of hope and rehabilitation I could just watch the good things going on.
It was in this place that I met a shepherd, an inmate who told me how she raised Catahoula Leopard Dogs before she was incarcerated. This woman told me about how she would be called out to farms when the cows had gotten out. She would release her dogs, and they would run out into the woods, chasing and corralling whatever cows were still running amuck, chasing them all back into the fenced area. She told me that she remembered a time when a particularly rough bull finally came out of the woods, but with one dog clamped to his side, this dog had bitten down so hard on the bull’s side, she refused to let go and just hung on to the bull until it had been corralled to safety.
She told this story with pride, for her dogs were so well trained that they would never give up – even risking their lives to do their job.
The shepherds mentioned in Luke’s gospel, just like this shepherd I met in a maximum security prison who raised Catahoula leopard Dogs, are not the kind of people who church going folks are used to hanging around with.
In our society, maybe you saw them early this evening in the nativity scene here at church, you might see shepherds, but these shepherds were little boys and girls dressed in their father’s bathrobes; something completely unlike the shepherds that are mentioned in Luke’s Gospel. At the time Luke’s Gospel was written, Shepherds weren’t well thought of. If you were an ancient Roman citizen you might walk into a wealthy person’s backyard and see a grotesque statue of a person with no teeth and shabby clothes.
These statues often depicted shepherds for they were considered to be a homely addition to any well manicured garden – an effigy of a person who worked on the outskirts of society, living in huts rather than houses, tending flocks in their fields rather than participating in the life city people considered normal.
At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees believed that if we follow the law to the letter then the Kingdom of God would come, that if we are stringent enough with our Sabbath observance, or are clean enough, or are devout enough in our worship at the Temple, then the Kingdom of God will surely come.
However, the shepherds of the day would never have been able to live up to any of the Pharisees’ standards. How could they observe the Sabbath fully by giving a full day of rest when their animals needed to be fed – there are no animals that only need to be nurtured six days a week after all? They weren’t clean either, rarely having time for baths or brushing their teeth, as ancient documents tell us that most shepherd’s teeth were black, and how could any shepherd make it to the temple when their vocation mandated that they live and work in the prairies and valleys where their flocks could roam.
They were surely not viewed as good enough by the standards of the time, surely viewed as having nothing much to offer, surely a group in need of help or guidance or charity.
When I think of such a people I feel pity in the pit of my stomach, and I feel responsibility bearing down hard on my shoulders. I feel guilt for all that I have, and I feel obligation – thinking of the things that I could do to break down the walls of injustice and inequality – hoping for a day when the wall of privilege that insulates us would fall to provide for those without enough.
If I could sit on Santa’s lap this Christmas that is what I would ask for. I would ask for justice, I would ask for peace, I would ask for hope.
But this Christmas I realize this gift is not one in Santa’s bag, but is a gift that the shepherds have brought.
For on the first Christmas Eve – long, long ago, God told the shepherds of Jesus’ birth. The most important event of human history was not broadcasted on the evening news, not announced to the president or emperor, but told to the shepherds in their fields.
The first ones to get the news were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And the angel of the Lord said to them, “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
These shepherds, these unclean, these seemingly dangerous, these illiterate, these virtually homeless, these poor were entrusted with the most important – the most vital information. It was from their unclean lips, from their missing, broken, or black teeth that the good news was first uttered for the good of human kind.
I am used to thinking that it is my job to say it, but here I know that I am to hear it, realizing what God has done and what the shepherds were able to bring.
We worry so often that the good news of Christmas will shrink to a whisper as political correctness encourages us to be respectful of the many faiths that now surround us, and so we say Happy Holidays or Seasons greetings rather than Merry Christmas.
We worry that our children will miss out on the meaning of this great day because it becomes a morning of presents and not a morning of celebrating the birth of Christ.
And we worry that this day may not turn out the way it is supposed to because the turkey gets dry, someone has more to drink then they should, nobody likes the new girlfriend or boyfriend, and everyone ends up arguing instead of getting along around the dinner table in their holiday sweaters.
But tonight we hear this good news – and it is not even our job to make sure that it is heard. Tonight we celebrate God’s message that we will hear, not because we say it, but because we go to the people who can tell us about it.
We are led to the prison, where the walls are so high and so real – but we go and hear the gospel from our sisters who refuse to give up, hanging onto life with a will that defies explanation, living with knowledge of hope that inspires and encourages us to never give up.
We sit at our Christmas feasts, realizing that our table looks less like our ideal and more like our reality but we are led to the manger, where the smell of animals offends our senses, where our class bids us not go, but where we hear the words of the shepherds leading us to the place where we find Jesus, forgiving us our sins, affirming our humanity, biding us together as one.
-Amen.