He Descended

Matthew 10: 40-42

“He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me. Anyone who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and anyone who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”
Sermon
This passage from Matthew comes at the end of a vivid description of the reality the disciples can expect to encounter as they go out into the word spreading the Good News. Jesus, surely not in an attempt at convincing them to become disciples, but in an effort to warn them to the reality of their call, tells them, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
Honest about the magnitude of their mission, the danger and violence they can expect to encounter, he seems to arm them with absolutely nothing saying, “Freely you have received, freely give. Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.”
You have to wonder how this group of men would stand up against the streets of Atlanta – resembling not a militia of freedom fighters, not a celebrity in a limo, resembling the homeless who line Ponce de Leon, but even then, without a shopping cart or bag filled with meager possessions.
We know that Jesus calls this twelve to drive out evil spirits, to heal disease and sickness, but we wonder how they will do it, and with what?
To think of all they were up against then, and to imagine what all they would be up against now, they seem ill equipped, truly like sheep among wolves.
Then they were up against a great challenge going out into Ancient Jerusalem, armed with nothing much more than a will to make a difference, and thinking about it in our context, it’s hard to say whether they were up against a greater challenge going out into Ancient Jerusalem then they would on the streets of Atlanta.
Today, like during the Civil Rights movement, those who seek social change are often met with fire hoses rather than the flogging that Jesus warns the disciples about; and where Jesus warns the disciples of arrest, we can be sure that the modern jail surely has more to offer her inmates than the ancient jail. But as for the people themselves, we know that the disciples expected to encounter a culture that had hardly heard of Jesus. While most have heard of Jesus in our culture, so many have forgotten, and while they may know where the church is, should they walk through the doors, worship in the sanctuary, how many could remember the words of the Apostles Creed, much less know what the words mean?
Most of us here today know the words, but the meaning can be something different. I have struggled, as I know others have struggled with the words, “he descended into hell,” that we say each Sunday. A couple weeks ago someone asked me if we really mean that Jesus went to hell, a question I didn’t know the answer to exactly, but fortunately I knew the right book to look in. The line, “he descended into hell,” wasn’t added to the Creed officially until the 9th Century, though it was included unofficially beginning in the 4th. Those translations were most likely in Latin, and translating the word “infernus” into English adds another layer of complication.
A great Historian of Christianity, Justo Gonzalez writes that whether we say Jesus descended into “hell” or if we say, as many do, that he descended “to the place of the dead,” isn’t really the point, as “infernus” can mean either. The point, according to Gonzalez, is that, “As one reads the Creed from the declaration that Jesus was born to this point, the movement is clearly downward. The eternal Son of God descends to earth through birth, and at his death continues descending to the lower places.”[1]
This descending nature of Christ then that we affirm in our statement of faith, directly contrasts what is a given in almost every area of our lives. In the Apostles’ Creed, what we declare about Jesus is that rather than climb the latter, rather than elevate himself, rather than associate himself with those who society considers great, Jesus in his life and in his death descended.
From heaven he descended to earth to be among us, we who are human, earthly, and unworthy. Then as a human being, he did not create for himself a palace that he might use to make his way in the world as what we would call a great man, he did not ride through the cities in a parade of extravagance as those Pharos who claimed divinity did on the streets of Ancient Egypt, but lived simply, associating with the poor, the prostitute, the outcast.
So he called his disciples to do the same – to go out into the world like sheep among wolves, not armed, not separating themselves from those who they served, not decorated so that the villages they approached would recognize them as great men, but penniless, without even a bag, or an extra tunic, not independent, but completely dependent on the people they met.
The challenge then became, or the question that I wonder about, is how would the village recognize these divine messengers when they saw them? If they don’t identify themselves as Ancient Israelite society would expect great men to identify themselves, if they didn’t come rolling into town with an armada and a legionaries’ escort, how would the village know what important men were approaching?
The question for us today is no different. If disciples are out there in the world today, if God is sending us messengers of the Good News right now, how will we recognize them if their greatness is not symbolized by the pomp and circumstance we are accustomed to?
We are used to human beings who try their hand at ascension, attempting to make themselves bigger than they are, but divinity as we know it in Jesus Christ is not only known through Ascending into heaven, but also descending to earth, and even to hell.
If divinity then has descended, if knowing God comes through knowing Jesus who has descended among us – and that knowing Jesus comes through knowing these disciples who he has sent, how will we recognize divinity when divinity has descended from the majesty of heaven to the streets of the city?
We know from our passage for today, that any one who receives a prophet, a righteous person, or one of Christ’s disciples will receive a reward far greater than what they deserve, but how will we receive that reward if we don’t know who to give that glass of cold water to, not being able to recognize them from the homeless on the street?
As Christ descended among us redefining our understanding of what it means to be great and important - God, taking the form of not a king, but a servant, not a rich man but a poor man, not at the center of society but on the outskirts – our hospitality, the way we interact with each other, the standards of class that divide rich from poor, black from white, upwardly mobile from downtrodden all must change.
Creation groaned with this kind of change not long ago. In this part of the country, and in so many other parts, as African-American people began to claim their equality in an unequal society, like the disciples they were like sheep thrown out to the wolves. They were met by barking dogs, angry mobs, not with a cup of cold water, but high powered hoses that attempted to beat them to the ground. Their voices were not heard over the roar of a fire hose, and so the sin of segregation that plagued all of society continued on. But imagine if instead of a fire hose, the police offered the protestors a cup of cold water.
We cannot know for sure who Jesus is among us, who he has sent to do his work, who he has empowered to take his ministry onward, but as our passage from Matthew claims, “if we only greet one of these little ones because they are his disciple, I tell you the truth, we will certainly not lose our reward”.
But… it is a reward with a price. Unlike a fire hose that attempts to keep things the way they are, the gift of a cup of cold water is an invitation to see another person in a new way, to hear the Good News of the Gospel, and so to challenge the structures of society that divide us.
By inviting a disciple to a cup of cold water Jesus was calling society to meet a poor man face to face, and to hear the lesson he had to teach.
By inviting those who marched for equality for a cup of cold water Jesus called white society to meet someone different, and to see that Christ shown in their eyes.
It is a radical thing really, a cup of cold water, because it calls us to identify with another just as God identified with us through the descending Jesus Christ, and to be changed.
So we are called to offer a cup of cold water to those who are different. To sit down with the poor, the laborer, the waitress; to quench their thirst, to listen to their dreams and their hopes, and to identify with them as Christ identifies with us.
We are called to offer a cup of cold water to the teenagers and the children of our church. To sit down with one of his own, to quench their thirst, to listen to their struggles, to identify with them as Christ identifies with us.
It is so different from what we often do – to silence those who are different and who call for change with the roaring of a fire hose, but just as Christ descended among us to quench our thirst, so we are called to sit down with each other. We are called to make their struggles our own, to know their story, and to sit down together as equals.
-Amen.

[1] Justo L. Gonzalez, The Apostles’ Creed for Today (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) 49.

Shall We Go On Sinning?

Romans 6: 1-14
What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, we cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Sermon
The image of baptism that this passage paints is not necessarily the one we are most used to. Paul writes to the church in Rome, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death.”
When I think of baptism, death is generally far from my mind. I think of babies, I think of newness. I do think of all that is wrong with the world, but I am also filled with hope because I know that those who are baptized in this church will find their identity, not according to sin, but according to God’s love.
Many though have taken Paul’s theology of baptism literally, and one of my favorite Biblical scholars goes so far to deal with the heart of death and resurrection claimed in baptism that the sermon he wrote for his son’s baptism is titled, “A Death in the Family.” He preached on this same passage in Romans and said, “For [his mother and me], [our son’s] death today is real, not just a symbol or an abstraction. This reality is tempered only by the hope we hold for what this death means. He will cease to exist under the powers of this world, and will be transformed and transferred to a completely new and different kind of existence, with different powers and possibilities for life, with new eyes to see the world, and most important, with a new family and a new Lord. To use Paul’s words, today [my son] will be united with Christ in a death like his, he will be buried with him, and he will be crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be destroyed.”[1]
We don’t necessarily think of death when we see beautiful babies – we think of life. We also don’t think of sin – we think of innocence.
But history tells us, and indeed, Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us, that the meaning of baptism is radical, not polite or expected. And that baptism makes radical demands on our lives as faithful believers, claiming that we are not sprinkled with water, but die to sin, and do not come forth from the waters of baptism to be as cute as possible, but as new creations dead to sin and alive to Christ.
During slavery African-American slaves who lived on the coast of South Carolina and Georgia baptized, not in a church, but in the oceans or marshes just as the tide was going out to sea. These Christians descended into death, or into the water, and as the tide was swept out to sea so their sins were also.
But while these slaves were surely resurrected into a new life, they could not live this new life fully. The water did wash the sin of slavery off their bodies temporarily, but this sin could not be forgotten long – the walk back to the plantation reminded them all that while their baptism marked their hearts, their bodies were owned. While the reality of their baptism lifted their spirit, affirmed their identity as God’s children, this identity could only be partial, as their hands that worked the field belonged to another.
We look back on this time and question the morality of the slave owner, wondering how anyone could claim such dominion over another person. But these owners were not heathens, but Christians, attending church each Sunday, some even preaching the sermon, leading devotionals to their families and their slaves on plantation verandas throughout the South. We know from their letters, their church attendance, their conversions and professions of faith that these owners of slaves were Christians, baptized just as their slaves were – but their conversion it would seem was just as partial. While they honored Jesus in their heart, they honored selfish economic gain with the practice of slavery.
Another scholar of the New Testament, David Bartlett claims that this partial conversion is typical. He writes, “We think that because our hearts belong to Jesus, our bodies, our check-books, our votes, and our property values belong to us.”[2]
We all want to be known as Christians and hope that as our friends and family look at our lives they will know that our master is not sin, but God who conquers sin – that our lives will be a testimony to God’s power – that our actions will preach the gospel in a way that our words alone never could.
In Florida, and now in South Carolina there is an effort to make the reality of conversion known through license plates – that just as Georgia or Georgia Tech fans can personalize their license plates, so Christians might be able to buy plates proclaiming their conversion – but how will this statement be understood if the owner of such a license plate cuts in front of you on 285?
We look back on slave owners in this way – not recognizing the faith that they bore in their hearts, but the cruelty that they bore through their economic decisions. Today, as history is judged through the lens of our 21st Century Christian expectations, we cannot imagine how a follower of Jesus Christ could tolerate slavery, and so, like a the car that bears a Christian license plate, we judge not according to the faith that their heart espouses or the words that their mouth proclaims, but according to their actions – knowing that the license plate may not matter nearly so much as the way you drive the car; as it is according to actions that we expect to see the evidence of death, a death to sin and a resurrection to Christ.
Today, as we examine our lives through the same lens we must ask ourselves the same question – that while we honor God in part through attending church, through confessing our faith, can we “count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus”? Will our lives be a true confession of our faith?
Will future generations take into account the belief our words confess to? Or will they judge us by the way we have used or abused our bodies? The way we make decisions based on selfish gain with our check-books, voting not for the good of all people but for the good of our own? Have we lived by the law of love in our hearts or according to laws of economy in our actions?
When future generations look back on our marriages, will they judge us by what we had hoped to do, or by what we actually did? Will they recognize the sacrifices we made at the office, or will they be more concerned with the empty seat we too often left at the dinner table? Will they honor us for our promotions, or judge us for not being there for the big soccer game, swim meet, or concert?
Will our children celebrate our many anniversaries, or will they always remember the slamming doors and arguments? We concentrate so often on the faith that lives in our hearts, but will this faith be known to future generations if it does not live out in our lives? Will the smiles in pictures matter, if our children and grandchildren know that these smiles hide sins of all kinds?
We are a country that claims a strong faith, but will future generations judge us by the number of churches we have built, or by the number of bombs we have dropped?
Claiming justice for all, will we be judged according to our defense of the unborn, or our torture of the accused terrorist?
Knowing that Christ calls us to defend the weak and the immigrant, to seek justice for the poor, will a vote for our business interest honor the foundation of our faith?
These are the questions for today, because these are the questions that Christianity demands. Like slave owners before us, we will be judged by future generations who will ask if we have truly died to sin, or continued to live honoring false gods. But why should we wait for their judgment? Christ did not die so that we could go on sinning, but so that we might be alive in him today.
-Amen.
[1] Stanly P. Saunders, The Word on the Street (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000) 42-43.
[2] David L. Bartlett, Romans (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995) 61.

Romans 4: 13-5, page 798.
It was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who live by the law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath. And where there is no law there is no transgression.
Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring – not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed – the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what was promised. This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” The words, “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.
Sermon
We are often confronted with our own sinfulness. One of the things that we try to keep secret from ourselves and others, the fact that we aren’t perfect, we boldly confess to in the Prayer of Confession each Sunday morning.
The temptation though, or the temptation for me anyway, is that when I am faced with my sinfulness I feel uncomfortable and I am tempted to say to myself, “Well surely I’m not really that bad.” We want to know that we are OK, but rather than trusting in God’s Grace, we hope that God will be distracted by other people’s sin, or that “their” sinfulness will make our sinfulness seem small in comparison.
We say to God, “Sure I’m pretty bad, sure I’m impure, but at least I’m not as bad as that guy – right God?”
We see this logic play out in the news, as society is divided between good guys and bad guys. If morality was a softball game, and we were picked to go up against the bad guys of the world, I am sure we would be winning by a few runs, their sinfulness surely outweighing our own.
But does our faith call us to different teams, judging each other according to a set of rules? For Paul, the Law stood as society’s law book – the means by which humanity could judge one another, figuring out who was ahead and who was behind. But Paul believed God, through Jesus, was calling us to see each other in a different way.
I saw a glimpse of this different way in a video some folks sent me through email this past week.
It was a clip from ESPN, a college softball game.
In this clip steps to the plate a young woman, barely more than 5 feet tall, batting average of .153, no career homeruns in college, high school, or even before that. Her name is Sarah, and as her team trails by a run she steps to the plate with two strikes already hanging over her head. The pitch, she swings, and off it goes, over the wall. She has hit a home run for the first time in her life, giving her team the lead in this important game against rival Central Washington. The two runners score as the crowd cheers, but they turn to see Sarah on the ground, her arms wrapped around 1st base. She is not able to cherish every second of this important moment trotting from base to base, because in turning 1st her knee gave way, and Sarah found herself unable to finish rounding the bases to score for her home run. She lay there in pain, hugging first base knowing that her career in softball had just ended, and that her only home run would count as a single. Her coach asked the umpire what to do, and the umpire said that if the coach were to substitute a runner for Sarah the homerun wouldn’t count, and her hit would be scored a two RBI single, and if any of the players on her team even touched her, Sarah would be called out. These were the rules of the game.
But then Mallory Holtman and Liz Wallace of the opposing team, finding they couldn’t sit by, knowing what it means to see such an important accomplishment be taken away, walked over to Sarah, picked her up in their arms, and carried her around the bases, as Sarah touched second, then third, and finally home to score the first and only homerun of her career.
Liz and Mallory’s act of compassion could have cost their team the game, as Sarah’s homerun secured a 4 to 2 lead. By the rules of the game, they could have waited as the team’s trainer bandaged Sarah’s knee and escorted her off the field, limiting her homerun to a single, leaving their team in a better position on the score board.
They would have had a better chance of winning their game, but compassion led them to do something else. Compassion broke down the wall between two softball teams, as they saw each other, not as competitors, but as something else.
For Paul it was the Jews vs. the Gentiles, the law dividing the two, standing as a means for the Jews to justify themselves in light of the non-Jewish Gentiles apparent unrighteousness.
But Paul knew that faith, like the compassion that broke through the wall dividing two softball teams, would break through the wall between Jews and Gentiles, Slave and Free, Male and Female.
As a persecutor of Christians he prided himself on knowing right and wrong, of building up a righteous life according to stringent observance of the law codes of our Bible. He rested on the Sabbath, was circumcised, he ate what he was supposed to, he said what was upstanding and clean, he gave everything he had to being righteous in God’s sight. He built up a wall against impropriety, unrighteousness, impurity, and against those he believed to be impropriates, unrighteous, and unclean.
But this wall came down as he realized it didn’t really matter when he came face to face with Jesus.
Paul’s faith in Christ was like a wrecking ball to the walls he had built up around himself.
When Paul’s opponents began claiming that those who wanted to be Christians had first become Jews - that those men who wanted to be baptized also had to be circumcised, Paul put his foot down, asking “is this blessedness only for the circumcised?” Claiming that “it was not through law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.”
The rules of the game had to be changed, and as Paul’s faith changed the way he lived, the walls he built around himself, walls of division, of race, of class, of status, came tumbling down, according to the foundation of his faith laid out in verse 25 of our scripture lesson, that Jesus, “was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Paul began living by a new set of rules.
I have another story about people breaking down walls, though the stakes in this story are much higher than winning or losing.
A few years ago, Evan Silverstein of the Presbyterian News Service, reported that two Presbyterian participants in an important ministry at the US/Mexico border were arrested, charged with helping undocumented migrants cross the border into Arizona. In an effort to limit illegal immigration, the United States Border Patrol increased security dramatically in those areas where it was safest for people to cross. This increased security drove migrants to cross in rural areas, deserted wastelands where the sun would be hot, water scarce, and nothing in between Mexico and the US but sand and cactus.
The US Border Patrol thought that the length and the risk of crossing in these desolate areas would make desperate migrants think twice about crossing the border - that the threat of death would prevent people from trying to cross, but they underestimated a peoples’ desperation. "There is no shade or water available to the crossers," said Rob Daniels, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, which takes in much of Arizona. "They're at the disposal of the elements. They really face an uphill battle of Herculean size." And there are other challenges, including snakes, scorpions and vultures, twisted ankles, dislocated knees, broken bones and severely blistered feet.
In an attempt to prevent another death, two Presbyterians drove a dying migrant to a hospital, where they were arrested for aiding an illegal immigrant. According to some statistics, in the years between 1998 and 2003, 2,600 people died attempting to cross the border. In the hopes of limiting how many immigrants come into our country, in the hopes of keeping the labels on our food, the signs on the street, and the sound on our TV in English, more than 2,600 people have died.
And as I read Paul’s letter to the Romans, as I think about the power of God’s Grace, my sinfulness, and our common heritage in Abraham, the Father of all the Faithful, I know that there is a wall that our Faith has yet to break down.
But at least for these two Presbyterians, like the two softball players, and so like Paul the Apostle, the walls that divided became nothing when they considered the bonds that united them to another.
We seem to be a world divided by walls, oceans, and hatred. We seem to be a country segmented, and distant, but truly, we are a sinful people made worthy by the bonds of faith that join us together.
Faith has torn down the walls that divide us, as it is not by building up walls around ourselves that we are saved, but like Paul, “we are saved by the one who was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
-Amen.

The Roaring Lion

1 Peter 4: 12-14; 5: 6-11

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that God may lift you up in due time.

Cast all your anxiety to God because God cares for you.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers and sisters throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.

And the God of all grace, who called you to eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.

To God be the power forever and ever. Amen.

Sermon

The author of this passage makes the intent clear – suffering, is not some unrelated experience of the Christian life, but a seemingly central part of it – writing, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you.”

There are passages of scripture that help us to avoid suffering, other passages explain suffering as punishment for doing wrong, while other passages, passages like this, don’t necessarily explain why we suffer, why bad things happen to good people, but assume suffering is a part of life, and that while we may not always understand it, suffering is not always without purpose.

Suffering as religious persecution is at the heart of 1 Peter, and while some Christians still suffer for the sake of their beliefs, today we stand on a foundation of believers who did not allow Christianity to die out, but who persevered in the faith though their lives were at risk. Women like Saints Perpetua and Felicitas were thrown to the beasts by the Roman Empire, giving the lion mentioned in today’s scripture passage not allegorical, but literal meaning, embodying evil in a way that makes our flesh crawl, wondering how such a thing could ever happen.

My relationship to lions, like my relationship with religious persecution, is not something I know from personal experience, but through books and magazines.

Browsing through National Geographic this week I saw a picture of 6 female lions chasing a herd of at least 400 water buffalo - all while the male lion napped in the shade of a tree. This entire herd ran, completely at the command of 6 aggressors – these lions, like puppet masters commanded the herd, but not by strings, through the fear that they inspired. As the water buffalo ran, as fear of their hunter gained authority, as their self-control was completely replaced with self-preservation, the lions were able to split the herd apart, isolating one or two sick or young buffalo, and the herd could only watch as one of their own was devoured.

And what could they do about it? They were at the mercy of the lions.

It may be that suffering, like a lion, is unavoidable, and that we can only continue running with the herd, not looking back, knowing that the cost of life is high, that the relationship between predator and prey is a reality that cannot be avoided.

For Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, it was. These two women were thrown to the lions – as defenseless as a young buffalo – they paid the price for their community, a price paid to a bigger and more powerful beast – the lion that was the Roman Empire.

However, history tells us that the Roman Empire eventually stopped sending Christians to the lion’s den. That the road paved by Saints like Perpetua and Felicitas led to AD 313 when the Edict of Milan was agreed, ending persecution under the great emperor Constantine, himself a convert to Christianity.

And so the threat of the lion was no more, though suffering continues to test our faith, and our fear of it has not gone anywhere.

We are the audience and participants in a troubling world, and the news blares in our ears like the roar of a lion, filling us with fear and worry, convincing us more and more each day that the world is getting worse and worse – that terrorism is an ever present evil, that immigration is a plague that this country must free herself from, that society is failing.

We come to this church, seeking another message, but even here it seems we are in the midst of change.

As though it were addressed to us, 1 Peter reads – “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” And like a lion our worries prowl around in the back of our heads and the lion’s roar begins to fill our ears.

The lion roars and the foundation of our faith seems to shake.

We lose faith in ourselves, fearing that we are not good enough, that we are not loved, and out of a fear of rejection we isolate ourselves.

We fear the changes that go on all around us, as the streets get busier, we see faces we don’t recognize, we fear what we don’t know and directed by the roar of the lion we retreat to find people who think and look like us.

Hearing the lion’s roar of economic instability we cling to what we have, finding less and less for others, fearing the time when there won’t be enough to feed ourselves.

The roar of the news reaches our hearts, and out of a fear of crime we stay in our homes, fortifying our neighborhoods with gates and electronic codes, our houses with alarms.

Made afraid by the lion’s roar, we shut ourselves in, attempting to fight our battle alone, not realizing that this is exactly where the lion wants us. Like a buffalo separated from the pack, we are defenseless.

There is another picture that captured my imagination in the National Geographic magazine. It is a picture of a bull, wounded by a fierce lioness, strong with rippling muscles, menacing sharp teeth in full view, now retreating from her pray. The herd, led not by their fear of the lion’s roar, but by something else, formed a wall, and with their horns pointed towards the lioness like scimitars, forced her to give up, and walk away.

Today, we are not free from trials, we are not safe without a fear in the world, but because we believe that God works in all things, we are invited to see our trials as opportunities for the full expression of love.

We may never be without the lion, but we are called to resist our fear of his roar, we are called to resist the temptation to allow his roar to separate us into factions – to isolate us so we are weak in our solitude - we are called to stand together for our unity is required of every trial we encounter.

Should our foot slip, should our hearts wander, should our worries take hold, we must trust that the foundation of this church is not built on the strength of individuals, but on the love of Christ that joins us together.

Trusting the words of the hymn: that “though all hell should endeavor to shake, (our God) will never, no never, no never forsake” us.

To God be the power forever and ever.

Amen.

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.