Rev. Dr. John Judson
November 15, 2015 Listen Print Version Ezekiel 34:1-16, Matthew 18:10-22 Every church has what I have referred to as the fixit guys. These are the men, and some women, who show up and fix things that are broken or simply are in need of updating. At my last congregation the fixit guys were working on some doors for a new closet when one of them said, “Hey John, do you want to go to the Restore with me?” “What’s the Restore?” You don’t know what the Restore is!?” “No,” I replied, “I have no idea what the Restore is?” “Well jump in my truck and I will show you.” We got in his truck and headed across town. Along the way he explained what the Restore was. It was a part of the Habitat for Humanity organization where builders, contractors and home owners, when they had excess new or gently used house items such as doors, windows and cabinets would donate them to Habitat. Habitat would then put them in this immense warehouse and when people purchased them the proceeds would go to help fund the building of homes for those who could not otherwise afford decent housing. On the way back from the Restore, with two doors in the back of the pickup, the thought that came to me over and over was, what a great illustration of stewardship. I realize that when most people think of the Restore, stewardship would not be the first word that came to mind, especially for those of us in the church. I say that because in the church when we speak of stewardship the first thing that comes to mind is money. Every year we have a stewardship drive where we ask people to carefully consider how they use the money with which God has blessed them. In a sense it is a theological annual fund drive to insure that the church has the resources it needs to fulfill its mission. At the same time we also speak of stewardship of time and talent; believing that God has given us each of those and therefore we need to figure out how God wants us to use those things in order to expand and enhance the Kingdom of God. Stewardship then it figuring out the best uses for our time, talent and treasure. All of which is indeed true, but when that becomes the extent of being faithful stewards, we miss one of the great stewardship truths of scripture and that is that God asks us to steward all of creation, including humanity. What I mean by this is that the stewardship of our time, talent and treasure is for the express purpose of being stewards, or caretakers over humanity…or to put it another way, it is the stewardship of loving neighbor. After all this is what God has been about throughout history. God has been working to restore all of humanity back to a place where they can love God and love neighbor; where they reach their fullest potential in life; where they live into the hopes and dreams that God has for them. So what God does is take broken human beings and through the love and grace of Jesus Christ and the power of the Spirit works to restore them. This is what I meant when I said that the Restore was an amazing image of stewardship. It takes broken and castoff goods and insures that they are used in a way to enhance the lives of others. And so when we speak this morning about being faithful stewards what we need to look at is how do we become co-stewards with God in God’s work to restore humanity? The answer fortunately can be found in all three of our stories. The first way we can be faithful stewards is to reclaim human beings. One of the commonalities of all human beings is that we have been a species that sees other members of our species as disposable. We see this in the words of Ezekiel who accuses the religious leaders of abandoning the weak and the poor. In the time of Jesus it is the widows, the orphans, the day laborers who are disposable. They are ignored and cast aside. In our own day nothing much has changed. We view foster children when they turn 18 as disposable and we toss them out on the street. We view children in poorer school districts as disposable and so do not offer them adequate resources for their education. Jesus in his story about the one sheep reminds us that no human being is disposable; that when one sheep, or as he puts it, one of these little ones, is lost, our task is to go and find them. We are to leave the other ninety-nine in the hands of the other shepherds and go and find the one that was lost. Our task is to help reclaim these people for God. Being a faithful steward of people is helping restore the potential of all people. The second way we can be faithful stewards is to reconcile with others. Let me ask, how many of you have sent off a letter or an email that was written in the heat of the moment and which you later wish you could un-send? Any of you? I ask because when we are attacked, or as Jesus puts it, when someone sins against us, one of our first reactions is to attack back. We want to diminish the other person even as they have tried to diminish us. In other words a good defense is a good offense. And in so doing rather than helping to restore a human being we are working to tear them down. Jesus offers us an alternative to this kind of response. He tells us that we are to first go, in private and lay out our case. If that doesn’t work we are to take a couple of friends and once again lay it out. If that doesn’t work we are to take it to the church. The purpose of each of these steps is to try and restore another through reconciliation. It is to help the other see that they are bringing harm to those around them. Being a faithful steward of people is helping to restore relationships. The final way we can be faithful stewards is to release others. As Jesus is telling these stories about how we are to be stewards of humanity, Peter desires a bit of clarification. If, he appears to be asking, if I am supposed to look for the lost one and work at reconciliation, how far does this extend? How many times must I forgive? Chances are that this is a question that many of us have asked ourselves at one time or another. There is that one person who just keeps tearing us down, or apart. And this is a good question for Peter because Judaism at the time had the three strike rule. You were to forgive a person three times and then no more. Jesus however, refuses to go there and instead speaks from the heart of human stewardship, that we are supposed to forgive seventy-seven times, or basically an unlimited amount. I realize that this appears to go against the previous story, but Jesus understands something central about what happens when one person sins against another; the sin traps and diminishes them both. The one sinned against is as trapped by the sin as the one who commits it. Thus when we forgive we are released to once again live fully and the other is released to become the human being God designed them to be. Being a faithful steward is helping to release ourselves and others to live into the fullness of being one created in the image of God. As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to be faithful stewards and as such are to see he world as a giant Restore. We are to see the men and women, the boys and girls in it as those for whom Jesus Christ gave his life in order that they might be restored. Rev. Cathy Chang
November 8, 2015 Listen Print Version Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 50:15-21 If there's one thing about our three-year old daughter Aurélie and how we as parents are raising her, it's perfectly acceptable to be a superhero like Spiderman -- and not just for one day out of the year like Halloween this past weekend. If she likes you, note that I said the opposite: not if you are an enemy, but if she is your friend, she will want to catch you and impress you with her web-slinging skills. As young as she is in life and in her imagination, we try to impress upon her that there are no limits. As parents, even though we glimpse more of what she'll be like at 13 instead of her mere 3 years, we still want her to know and to act as if she can be and do anything "greater than" her ordinary human limits. In the same way, last weekend in our church calendar, many of us paused to remember the saints who are now in the church triumphant, who shaped us and who through their lives showed us that we can be "greater than" our human limits, because God empowers us to be "greater than" any of what society defines us or the ways that we limit ourselves. Our family also stopped to remember the many people who have gone before us and shown us that their lives were about following, serving, loving God and loving one's neighbors. In preparing myself for his death and especially in these months after my uncle's death this past January, I often gave thanks to God for his call to ministry and mission service. For many Presbyterians here in the United States and throughout the world, my late uncle was Rev. Dr. Syngman Rhee who served as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the PCUSA. Uncle Syngman's faithfulness in ministry and mission also paved the way for me to find my way in ministry and mission: Going through confirmation as a high school student in a more conservative church that was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in America, more than a decade later I only learned about the PCUSA when he introduced me to the Young Adult Volunteer program. This introduction came at a time when I was no longer working as a management consultant with Accenture, and instead I sought a career more in line with my international and cross-cultural experiences. Thinking about that time in my life, as a twenty-something young adult, it was probably the first time that I had the opportunity to reflect on my personal and family history, and how that might intersect with my choice of career. More specifically, I can remember meeting with Young Adult Volunteer site coordinators and finally deciding between serving in Tucson, Arizona and Cairo, Egypt. Both sites provided opportunities to work directly with migrants or refugees. Around that same time, a particular news story caught my attention and must have helped me to think about the possibilities of working with refugees: several North Korean defectors had crossed over into China and headed to the consulate offices in the hopes of seeking asylum. It wasn't the first time North Korean defectors made such movements towards better lives, but it was the first time that I connected that story with the story of my mother's side of the family: during the late 1940s, in the years leading up to the Korean War, her family traveled within the Korean peninsula, from North to South Korea in the hopes of arriving at safety and security. In the official language of refugees, her family, like many others, were internally displaced. Too young to walk, too young to remember, my mother rested on the back of her aunt who insisted that she stay with the family. Too noisy because of her crying, my mother almost did not make it through that journey - had it not been for my aunt. Several years later, I also learned about another family story connected to North Korea: although my Uncle Syngman had married my aunt and into our family, this story has become our family story. During his younger years, Japanese colonial rule defined my Uncle Syngman's Korean heritage and homeland. His mother sent away him and his brother, after they were kicked out of school because their father was a Christian minister. These two brothers left their family to seek safety and security and a better life. Through many twists and turns along the way, Uncle Syngman left Korea and eventually arrived in the United States, and many years returned to the remaining family members in North Korea. As I read the story of Abram leaving his family and his homeland against the backdrop of our family stories, I often wonder about what has become of God's promise of blessings and curses and how that has played out in my life today. One of my consistent prayers is that God's blessings might enable me to serve a blessing to many people. I have also come to believe that such blessings can bring about greater transformation through reconciliation, about the God alone who can heal and redeem broken bodies, broken lives, broken relationships, broken families, even broken peace accords. Through these blessings, it is how I opened up my mind and my heart to the many refugees from the Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, many fleeing civil war, religious persecution and famine, while I was living and serving in Cairo, Egypt, as a Young Adult Volunteer. It's also how I opened my mind and heart up to the son of a political refugee who happened to be serving as a mission volunteer and living in the same house as us Young Adult Volunteers in Cairo, Egypt: During the early 1970s in the South American country of Chile, Juan's father went from serving in the military to serving a life sentence in a matter of months due to the changing political tide. Brought to France without his family by the United Nations, Juan's father began a new life in exile. Returning to Chile again but this time traveling with his family and resettling together in France, Juan's family would begin their lives again. In his younger years, Juan will tell you that his home served as a way station for many of the Chilean families in the process of resettling into a new life in France. In his older years, armed with his guitar Juan traveled throughout Europe and North Africa. In more recent years, Juan moved from France to marry me, this Korean-American woman whom he had met while he was serving as a mission volunteer in Egypt. After hearing family stories like ours, it is a wonder how God has brought us together to respond to God's calling to serve in mission together. This time, we're moving again, but this time with our daughter, this time in a country in which neither of us has traveled, this time working with individuals and families who are seeking a better life for themselves only to have human traffickers dash their hopes and dreams. Those of you looking for a definition of human trafficking, here it is: Due to the poverty of their circumstances, many children and adults are working in cities, in countries, under fear, force and coercion, submitting to employers and employment conditions that treat them more like property than the people that they are. Abolished many centuries ago, the Atlantic slave trade no longer exists, but modern slavery still persists in Asia and throughout the world. With all this talk about Abram, it might sound like that we are overlooking the real-life challenges of social and economic and political systems, not to mention the attitudes of people. Turn on the radio, flip through a newspaper, scroll through your phone or e-reader, and someone - politicians, or would-be politicians- has something to say about crossing borders or closing up borders, something to say about people who are making way across water and land to find safety and security for themselves and their loved ones. Still I am curious if this morning's conversation about God and the movement of people, migrants and refugees, might sound differently because of our faithful heritage, because of another forefather in the faith: Let's go back to Joseph, not the father of Jesus, but the favored son of Jacob who sported a multi-colored coat --- this is the same Joseph whose brothers hated him and threatened to kill him, but instead they resorted to selling him as a slave to some traders on their way to Egypt. This is a life story of sibling rivalry and slavery, but more importantly, about God's intentions for good that are "greater than" any brother's plans for evil. Through the life of Joseph, my hope in God is firm in the face of life-threatening and life-transforming circumstances. Friends in faith, what it might look like for us to believe again that the God who was at work in Joseph's life, is still at work in the world? Can you believe with me that God is still at work, in peoples’ homes, in their places of employment, in their prisons, in their desires to be free and reunited with families? I invite you to believe with us, pray with us, cry and have your heart break with us, work with us, that God might bring about healing and redemption "greater than" just one person, but for many Filipinos and Filipinas, for the many Asians who are impacted by migration and human trafficking. This morning, I'm asking you to believe with me again in this God saves and redeems not just one life, but for something that is always "greater than" one person who can serve the "greater good." In the same spirit of Joseph who proclaims God's intentions for good which are "greater than" any of his brothers' plans for evil, it is the aim of Presbyterian World Mission, to come alongside the work of churches and organizations in the Philippines and throughout Asia, to support and to strengthen their programs for the victims who are impacted by migration and human trafficking. This work goes deeper and further than “rescue efforts” or “decrying the evils of prostitution or child pornography,” because it is about human rights: we also seek to address the root causes of poverty and confront cultures of sexual violence against children and women. Bringing together both Joseph's statement of faith and God's promise to Abram, I invite us towards a common vision of what it means to serve as mission co-workers with us: Let’s believe and work towards God's healing and redemption, all of which can begin with our families of origin but also encompasses God's desire to bless many families of the earth. People of God, let us praise God because who Abram was and how he lived was and still is a testimony to the God who blesses all families of the earth. Let us praise God for who Joseph was and how he lived was and still is a testimony to this very God of his father and his brothers. Who we are as the Chang Lopez family and how we live is a testimony to this very God. Brothers and sisters in Christ, as members and friends of the First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, I pray that who you are and how you live is a testimony to this very God who is "greater than" any single one of us and unto the God who is always seeking the "greater good" of all families of the earth. To the glory of God, Amen. Rev Amy Morgan
November 1, 2015 Listen (Amy had Laryngitis - John gave her sermon) Print Version Zechariah 8:9-17, Luke 10:1-11 He was mid-sentence in the middle of our meeting when the alarm sounded. It was one of those embarrassing noises your phone makes - a rock song that completely tells everyone your age. He jumped up and fumbled around in his pockets until he found his phone and silenced his alarm. “10:02,” he said, as though we should all know what he was talking about. Getting our quizzical looks in response, the chairperson of this Presbytery committee went on to explain that at the last General Assembly, commissioners had been encouraged to set their alarms for 10:02 every day. When the alarm sounded, they were to pray about Jesus’ words in the gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verse two, which says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Lots of prayers are needed to find willing laborers in this field. You might be tempted to think that this prayer is asking for more people to go to seminary and train for ordained ministry in the church. But it’s not. At the time Jesus spoke these words, there were no ministers, and there was no church. There was just a group of 70 ordinary folks willing to follow Jesus, to be his disciples, and to spread the good news of the kingdom of God. The fact that Jesus could summon up 70 people willing to be sent out as laborers in the work of God is pretty miraculous considering the job description. It might read something like this: Seeking: Persons willing to get devoured by the world around them in order to help people see Jesus. Job Requirements: Depend on the hospitality of strangers. Eat whatever you are served, even if it’s weird or offensive. If you experience rejection, just walk away. Qualifications: no money, no stuff, no shoes. Who’s ready to sign up for that? It’s no accident that this passage falls on the heels of a series of conversations Jesus has with people who would like to follow him, but they need to take care of such trivial matters as burying a father or letting their family know that they are leaving and might not be coming back. The fact that anyone at all is willing to fulfill this job description is miraculous, and you would think Jesus would be pretty happy with 70 willing applicants. But no. He calls for more. And so our meetings get interrupted at 10:02. Because 70 disciples isn’t enough. The gospel of Luke begins with a spotlight on Jesus which then expands to cover the first 12 disciples. Here in chapter 10, the flood lights come on to reveal 70 followers being sent out to spread the gospel. And if we follow Luke’s narrative into the book of Acts, the lights come up in the auditorium and in the hallways and out in the parking lot to illuminate how the gospel message spreads to the ends of the earth. Until Jesus returns and God’s redeeming work is complete in the world, there will never be enough disciples. Disciples are not just pastors and church staff. They are not just missionaries and people who run faith-based non-profits. Like most numbers in the bible, Seventy is not a random figure. The tenth chapter of the book of Genesis lists all the nations of the earth, totaling seventy. From there on, Seventy becomes a biblical code word for EVERYBODY. So this episode in Luke’s gospel is telling us that everybody is called to be a disciple. Every one of us with the courage to submit to intentional poverty, to travel lightly, to depend upon the hospitality of strangers, and endure rejection peaceably. Every one of us with the power to heal, to bless, and to announce the kingdom of God. Sound like a tall order? You betcha. Feeling underqualified? You wish. We are qualified for discipleship in our baptism. For those of us who were baptized as infants, we never even got a say in the matter. Those who were baptized as adults are thinking, “I should have paid more attention to the fine print.” But before you start sneaking out under the pews, let’s look at what discipleship really means. A disciple is literally a learner, someone who chooses to follow a particular teacher. Here at Everybody’s Church, the Session has worked over the last year or so to develop a definition of discipleship that is a little more descriptive. During the Session retreat last year and in the months following, they discerned the specific qualities they thought would define disciples of Jesus Christ in this time and place. And here is the definition that emerged from that process: “As disciples of Jesus Christ, we live and grow in God’s Word as peacemakers, faithful stewards, and compassionate neighbors.” You can review this definition in First Things each week, and it’s on our church website as well. And it is the focus of our sermon series for the rest of this month. Today we are focusing on the first of those three qualities – disciples as peacemakers. Now, Christianity certainly has a checkered past when it comes to making peace, but Jesus’ teachings are pretty clear on the matter. He tells us to turn the other cheek and declares that peacemakers are blessed and will be called children of God. But scripture is also very clear that peacemaking is much more than beating swords into plowshares and favoring diplomacy over the nuclear option. In our passage today, the FIRST thing the disciples are told to do when they reach their destination is to pick a house, seemingly at random and say “Peace to this house!” Now, that might seem like a strange thing to say, or at the very least a fairly innocuous greeting. But these are not idle words. Jesus says that the peace the disciples speak can come to rest upon the house and those in it if they share in the peace, or it will return to the speaker if they do not. This peace is a tangible force that can come and go, that can be shared or rejected. It is a gift, a blessing, that the disciples bring to those who will accept them. What is truly radical about this peace that we as 21st century Americans do not hear right away, is that this peace is fundamentally different from the prevailing “peace” of first century Judea. The peace that reigned in that time and place was the Pax Romana, a peace enforced by the Roman Empire to suppress opposition and quell uprisings of conquered peoples. It was a peace that came with a sword or a prison cell or a cross. This was a peace that was being actively resisted by some and actively enforced by others in the towns to which Jesus sent out his disciples. But the peace brought by Jesus’ disciples is different. It is a peace that engenders hospitality rather than suspicion. It is a peace that leads to healing rather than injury. It is a peace that pronounces the reign of God, not the power of Rome. It is a peace that, as author Barbara Brown Taylor says, “puts you as close to God as you can get. To learn to look with compassion on everything that is…to open your arms to what is instead of waiting until it is what it should be; to surrender the justice of your own cause for mercy; to surrender the priority of your own safety for love – this is to land at God’s breast.” The peace of Christ, the powerful force of connection and wholeness and humility, is not easy to develop. I should tell you up front that discipleship is hard. That is why it was important to the group who wrote our definition to acknowledge that we live and grow in God’s Word as we develop these qualities. This is an ongoing endeavor, not a one and done activity. This peace is a force that outlasts even our mortal lifetimes. On this day, this All Saints’ Day, we experience the peace that has been left behind by those faithful disciples who have died, those who now share in the eternal peace promised in Jesus Christ. We share in the peace of compassionate nurses like Marion Cox and Helen Williamson. We share in the peace of Marjorie DeLong and Marilyn Achterlonie, who were wise teachers and advisors and caring friends. We share in the peace of Hudson and Marilyn Scheifele and Jeryl Marlatt, who served in our country’s armed forces to bring peace in a violent world. All those who have died in the faith, all those saints we will celebrate today, have shared their peace with us through many years of shared meals, volunteer service, caring words and actions, prayers and participation in the life and ministry of this body of Christ. So as we remember them, let us remember also that we are all called to be disciples, living and growing in God’s Word, as peacemakers, as those who bless and heal and announce the kingdom of God. Because you are the workers we have been praying for, at 10:02 and many other times. You are the saints whose peace will sustain generations to come. You are disciples of Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God. Amen. Rev. Dr. John Judson
October 25, 2015 Listen Print Version Leviticus 27:30-32, Luke 16:1-9 She was that employee. She was that employee that everyone knew and trusted. Nacina was the Walmart employee that everyone would turn to if there was some sort of issue. She worked with the police to solve thefts in the store. She was the employee who made sure that people with difficult return issues were dealt with kindly and fairly. She was trusted so much that she was given a prime place in their cash department. So it was a shock to the employees and to the police officers that knew her when she was arrested for theft…and not just theft of a few dollars but theft of almost a quarter of a million dollars. It began with taking fifty dollars to cover the cost of her medications. When she noticed that no one seemed to notice, she began to take more. Eventually in one day she took more than $8,000. As one officer told a reporter, most people would not try and take that much money in a month, but in one day?” Though she has not been convicted, the DA said that there is little doubt that she will be and that her sentence will range from a minimum of five years up to ninety-nine. In a sense it is the old saying that if you do the crime then you will do the time. All of which raises the question…what is going on in Jesus’ head as he tells the story we read this morning? I ask that because by all accounts it would appear as if the manager in Jesus story commits the same kind of crime, but instead of doing time is complimented by both his boss and Jesus. Let’s review the story. A wealthy man has someone managing his money and property. For some reason it comes to the owners knowledge that his manager is cheating him. The owner asks for the books. The manager realizes that the jig is up. He also realizes as he puts it that he is not strong enough to dig and ashamed to beg. What to do? The answer is that he can cheat his master even more, make some friends and hope that one of them will employ him after he is dismissed. This is exactly what he does. He has his masters debtors change their accounts payable invoices to reflect less than they owe. Now, if this was the first story, the man would go to prison and have to repay his master. Instead though, his master who has now been cheated twice, commends the man for his shrewdness. So what in the world is going on here? Why doesn’t the master have the manager jailed? The answer to these questions can be found in taking a quick time trip back to the first century and hearing the story in context. Let’s begin by pointing out that both characters in this morality play are scoundrels. Those listening to Jesus know that the master is a scoundrel because it is the only way he could have become wealthy enough to have a manager. In First Century Judea most landowners were small farmers who struggled to make a living and feed their families. Often they would need a loan for seed or other expenses. According to Jewish law, no interest could be charged on those loans. However, the way lenders got around this was to demand repayment in goods rather than cash; and the cost of the goods was as much as 100 % higher than the amount borrowed. When the farmers were unable to pay, the lender confiscated their land, which is how they became rich enough to have managers over their extended properties. What this means then is that when the manager approaches the people who owe his master money and tells them to cut their bills, he is actually asking them to do what his master should have done, and that is to return only the amount borrowed. This is why the master then commends him, because the master as one scoundrel realizes that he has been had by an even better scoundrel, and that he, the master can do nothing about it. This however raise a second question and that is why would Jesus even use this kind of scoundrel laden parable? The answer is twofold and lies in Jesus contention that “the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” What Jesus implies first by this is that those who are shrewd know the power of money and what that power can accomplish. They know that money spread into the right hands wins friends and influences people. They know that money is a powerful tool to get one’s way in the world. In this election season we have to look no further for a modern day illustration of this than the Super PACS that are spending money like they can print it. The people who give to these PACS are not giving out of some great sense of altruism. They are giving because they want something and know that their gifts will win them friends in high places. They expect something in return for their dollars; access, legislation and other favors. I am not saying that this is the way it ought to, or not to be. All I am saying is that we live in a world very much like Jesus’ where money talks, and talks loudly. The children of this age are shrewd in dealing with their own. What Jesus implies secondly by this is that the children of light, meaning the children of God ought to understand the power of money as well. They ought to understand how money can be a force for good; for the re-creation of the world. Remember that Jesus had nothing against money. He did not want his followers to be poor beggars roaming the world. He did not think that there was any great advantage to being poor. Instead what Jesus wanted people to see was that the money they had been given by God had and has the power to win friends and influence people…meaning the people who have little; meaning the poor; meaning the dispossessed. I say this because Jesus told stories about when you throw a party don’t invite those who can repay you, but those who cannot. In the beatitudes he reminds us that the blessed are the poor, meaning that they have a special place in God’s heart. And if we do so, it will be them who will be our friends waiting to welcome us into “the eternal homes”. Doug was walking down the isle of his local grocery store. It was where he normally shopped and so he was paying little attention to his surroundings. Suddenly he heard the sound of someone running rapidly toward him. He turned, looked and was suddenly engulfed in this immense hug from a man he did not know and could swear he had never seen before. All the man could say was, “Thank you. Thank you.” Finally when Doug removed himself from the embrace he politely asked the man who he was and why he was thanking him. The man told Doug this story. He had been homeless. And one of the reasons he was homeless was that his vision was so poor that he could not read a job application or a instructions given to him by an employer. Then one day he heard about a free eye-clinic for the homeless. He went and there were people there who treated him with respect and helped him get a pair of glasses. One of the first people he could then see well was Doug, who was there as a volunteer (and unbeknownst to this man, one of the financial supporters of the program). The man finished his story by telling Doug how the glasses helped him get a job and now he was no longer homeless. Doug had made a friend that will welcome him into the eternal home? You and I have that same kind of opportunity if we are willing to see our money as a powerful force for good; a force for good through this church as well as through hundreds of other organizations that impact the lives of those like the man who hugged Doug. My challenge to you on this day then, is as you prepare to bring forward your pledge card, see it as a way of using your money for the good…to change lives for the better. Rev. Dr. John Judson
October 18, 2015 Listen Print Version Genesis 1:28-31, Luke 12:13-21 It was April 22, 1889. Spread out across the prairie were more than 50,000 people. They were on horseback. They were in horse drawn carriages and wagons. And they were all waiting for one thing…the boom of a canon. Then at high noon, the boom was heard and they were off and galloping. What were they there for? They were there for land. It was the great Oklahoma Land Rush. At stake were more than one million acres of some of the best land ever stolen from the Native Americans. As they flew across the prairie they found people who had gotten there sooner, and if so they moved on. Within half a day both Oklahoma City and Guthrie went from non-existent places to towns of ten thousand people where folks staked their lots. Thousands of others claimed their 160 acres in order to begin farming and ranching. And why would they go to such lengths? They would do so because land mattered. In some ways it is probably hard for us to imagine how important land was. But what we need to remember was that land was life. To have land meant you could feed your family. It meant you had something permanent. It meant that you were a somebody. Without land you were no more than a hired hand, a peasant, a drifter. And so since the dawn of time people sought land. Land was the cause of human migration; of imperial conquest or immigration. Most of my ancestors came to this country looking for land. In the Old World land was controlled by the very few. Everyone else was simply human machines to be used by those with land. So they came from England, Germany and Scotland. And it is this desire for land; this desire not to become a landless peasant, that is at the heart of our story this morning. When the man comes to Jesus and asks him to adjudicate his case with his brother, he is not being greedy…which is how this is often cast in commentaries and sermons. What he is is desperate. He is desperate because the only inheritance worth dividing; the only inheritance worth dividing that someone coming to listen to Jesus would have, is land. And realize that this man, if he is cheated out of his inheritance, has no way to provide for his family and nothing to give his children. He will become one of those landless workers that crowded the squares of every Judean town desperately looking to be hired in hopes of earning a days’ wage. Realizing that, we might expect Jesus to have a compassionate response. We might expect Jesus to go and find the older brother and say something like, “Hey dude, look…remember what you learned in Kindergarten, that you are to share. So buck up buddy and give your brother his share.” But he doesn’t. Instead Jesus offers up this bizarre story about a successful farmer, who does all the right things and then God kills him. No offense, but this hardly makes sense…unless Jesus wanted people to think of an alternative investment strategy. If there was one thing that Jesus understood, it was the human condition. He understood clearly what motivated and drove human beings. What this meant was that he understood that human beings invested land and things with eternal value. He knew that human beings lived with that deep dread of death. They knew that life was fleeting and that one day they would die. And in the face of that reality, they desperately looked for something to invest in that would fool them into believing that they could somehow cheat God. Like a person hanging on with their fingertips hoping not to slip, people believed that if they had land, wealth or power they were safe. This is what is at the heart of the story of the farmer. He worked hard. The land produced. He built bigger barns to expand his inventory. He did all of the things a wise businessman would do. Yet the point of Jesus’ story is that all of that personal success; all of that investing in himself…and by the way that was what he was doing, investing in himself. Notice all of the times the personal pronouns are used….would not stop death from coming. In the end he would lose it all and having nothing to show for it. Then in the closing line Jesus brings the story home. “So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich toward God.” That last half of that line lays out Jesus’ alternative investment strategy; that if we want to invest in something that lasts, we invest in those things that matter to God. So what is it that matters to God? What is it that lasts? The only thing that lasts is the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God is people and the world in which they live. What matters to God are people. This is the heart of Jesus message from beginning to end. Jesus comes and offers us a glimpse of this Kingdom in his preaching, his teaching, his healing and his feeding. Jesus has compassion for the hungry, the outcast and the broken. Jesus reminds people that they are those who are beloved by God because they are God’s good creation. The creation itself matters to God as well because it is God’s good creation. In Genesis when God declares that creation is very good, he is speaking not only of human beings but of the earth itself. This is the accusation that Jesus levels in his story about the farmer. He invested in himself and not in others, not in God’s creation. He did not leave his fields to be gleaned by the poor. He did not share what he had…which by the way, I would like to point out means, that in my opinion, this entire story is not a criticism of the man who asks Jesus to intervene, but of his brother who will not share the inheritance. It is the unseen brother who is the farmer…who is investing in only himself and not in his family. The question then becomes for us, how is our investing going? How much are we investing in ourselves and how much are we investing in the Kingdom. About nine years ago my former congregation celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. For that anniversary we produced a video in which we interviewed both new and long term members. For me the most meaningful moment in all of those interviews was when a new member began talking about the missions that our church had undertaken. We had helped to plant churches in Mexico, China, Russia and Belarus. We had helped to found the homeless shelter in San Antonio. We had been instrumental in the creation of a free eye-care non-profit that worked with the homeless and poor in San Antonio and Mexico. We had built two churches and a school in Kenya. We were involved in Foster Care work and the list goes on and on. But in the interview this member said, “You know, that if Covenant were to go out of business today there would be little bits of Covenant all over the world.” And she was right. There would be because as a church family we had invested in the Kingdom of God; we had invested in what lasts. And that is what we are doing here at First Church. We are investing in the Kingdom of God. Though you heard about keeping the lights on, the reality is that the lights are only kept on so that we can continue to invest in people. We invest in the more than 1,000 clients at FAR whose lives are enriched by what they do. We invest in the clients at Samaritan Counseling Center which is seeing more and more Medicaid clients who cannot afford to cover the cost of their visits. We invest in the homeless when we host SOS. We invest in children when we work at Alcott and Ruth Ellis. We invest in our children and youth who are shaped by the stories from scripture. We invest in people as we worship together and have our lives regularly aligned with the love and grace of God. You and I invest in the Kingdom of God through all that happens in this place. My challenge then is for you to prayerfully consider your asset allocation; to ask if you are allocating enough to the Kingdom of God through this church even as you take care of your own needs. Here then is my question for the week; How am I investing what I have in the Kingdom of God such that lives are changed for the better? Rev. Dr. John Judson
October 11, 2015 Listen Deuteronomy 16:13-17, Luke 10:30-37 I was having a weekly breakfast with one of our members one morning at the Avenue down on Woodward. Usually when we meet there are few people close to us. But on this particular morning in the booth behind me were two men I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have noticed except the voice of one of the men began to dramatically increase in volume and anger. “Who the “fill-in-the-blank” do these robin hood people think that they are stealing my money and giving it to the poor. They have no right to that. It’s my money and they have no right to it.” I did my best to then tune out the words so I could pay attention to the person I was with, and so I couldn’t tell you exactly what he said, but I can tell you how he said it, and it was in a voice filled with resentment and vitriol. As I walked past him on my way out of the restaurant my imaginary inclination, meaning those things I imagine myself doing but will never do, was to slide in next to him and tell him all of the reasons that it is good for some robin hood someplace to be helping the poor. After all I am a pastor and that is what we pastors are supposed to do. As the day went on though I began to think more deeply about it. And I too asked myself, who are those robin hoods who take our money? What right do they have to take the money we work or worked so hard for? Having been here for a little over six years I have come to appreciate the work ethic you all share. You fly all over the world to take care of business. You are constantly away from families and friends. You work long hours to insure that the company, or your company remains solvent. You often work at jobs you do not like or that stress you to the max. For those of you in the auto industry, you have weathered the trials that it has brought. So who was I to lecture that man sitting the booth behind me? For all I know he had sacrificed his health, his home and his family to gain whatever wealth he had. And besides, how many of us really like paying our taxes? How many of us can say with certainty that we agree with everything that the government does with our taxes? Those thoughts led me to change what my imaginary self would have said to the man in the booth behind me. I would have asked him this question, “What do you do with the rest of it?” For that is the question, because we all pay taxes but we also all have something left over. And so this is where our story begins to overlap with the Biblical story. Many of you probably know the story Luke tells but I want to be sure that we are all on board, so here we go. And for full disclosure, there was no real Good Samaritan; this is a story Jesus tells, yet as he tells it, people understand the entire context in which it was told. So once upon a time there was a Jewish small business man who was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. He was attacked, beaten, robbed and left for dead. Several good Jewish religious leaders walked by and none of them did anything. Finally a Samaritan came by and cared for the man. This is unusual because Samaritans and Jews were enemies. Traditionally the moral of the story is that all people, including our enemies, are our neighbors and so we are to be nice to everyone. The end. What I want to do this morning is to offer a different take on this story. I want us to see this is a broader context that reminds us that, as with so many other stories, this story is about money. I say that because money takes central stage in the story. Let’s return to the Samaritan. Everyone listening to Jesus would have understood who he was. First, he was a small business man. There would have been no other reason for him to have a donkey and to be travelling the very dangerous road on which the story takes place. As a small business man, Jesus’ audience would have also known that he was heavily taxed by the Romans. They would have taxed what he bought, what he sold and on what he transported from town to town. What this means is that he is not a wealthy man, but was instead someone who worked hard, took risks and so truly earned his money. Second, as a small business man, time was money. He needed to get to his destination to sell his goods and make a profit. Third, they would have understood that his goods for sale were his wine and oil. Finally, they would have understood that Jews and Samaritans were bitter enemies. What happens when the Samaritan sees the beaten man is remarkable. The Samaritan stops and tends to him. He tends to him by giving up some of this inventory of wine and oil with which to treat the man’s wounds. Then he takes some of his own clothing, tears it and uses it as bandages. Next he proceeds to carry the man on this own donkey to a local inn…remember time is money. The Samaritan is wasting his time and risking his business. Once at the inn the Samaritan makes a generous payment to the inn for the welfare of the stranger. Finally the Samaritan does the most amazing thing of all. He issues a promissory note for the care of a man he does not know. He will pay all expenses. This is what the Samaritan does with “the rest” of what he has. For Jesus then, loving neighbor was not simply about being nice to someone whom we might consider to be our enemy. It was about demonstrating this neighborliness with loving actions and cold, hard cash. It was about doing something. This, Jesus says, is what God followers are to do with “the rest.” It is this realization that allows us as a Jesus community to do giving things. I know this because of you it is possible for FAR to see over 1100 clients every year. I know this because you give more than 2000 tutoring hours and more than 2,400 meals a year to families at Alcott Elementary School in Pontiac. I know this because through the Ruth Ellis Center we are helping to feed LGBT youth who have been kicked out of their homes. I know this because people are volunteering to build a school and a church in Kenya. I know this because of our mission trips to Mexico. I know this because you volunteer with our All Abilities Inclusion Ministry. I know this because you provide for a satellite office for the Samaritan Counseling Center. I know this because you support the vision that God has given us to be Everybody’s Church. All of us have “the rest.” All of us have something that we can offer to God and neighbor as a way of living the call to love given to us by Jesus. The challenge then is this, as you prepare to make your financial commitment to First Presbyterian Church, ask yourself what would God have me do with “the rest” of what I have to and through Everybody’s Church? Service led by participants in recent mission trips
October 4, 2015 Listen No Print Version Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1-14; Matthew 6:25-34 Rev. Amy Morgan
September 27, 2015 Listen Print Version Psalm 19; Galatians 3:19-29 There was only a small gap between us. Maybe four feet. But it might as well have been a hundred miles. Nobody was crossing that line. On one side stood my church youth group, a bunch of white teenagers from the Texas Hill Country. We’d come to the Presbyterian Pan American School, located just about a hundred miles from the Mexican border, to scrape and paint some of the dormitories. Just after we’d arrived, the students of the school, who were at that time primarily from Mexico and Central and South America, were brought out en masse to meet us. While their classes were bilingual, many of the students spoke only rudimentary English. And while some of us were taking Spanish classes at school, we were far from conversant. So across this gap, we had nothing to say, no way to introduce ourselves, talk about shared interests, and learn about each other. Even if we could have found a way to communicate, I don’t know if we would have. Growing up in Texas, we had seen plenty of people from Mexico. I had friends at school from Columbia and Bolivia. But to see this concentrated mass of brown-skinned students, neatly dressed in their school uniforms, was an unfamiliar sight, at the very least. There were more students than church kids. We were in the minority, a position most of us had never experienced before. And we had no idea what to do about it. So we stood there are stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity until we were invited into the cafeteria for dinner. As we moved toward the prospect of food, a shared meal, it started to dawn on me that there was at least one thing we all had in common. We were hungry teenagers. And we had just completed a unit on food in my Spanish class. I moved toward the edge of the gap and caught the eye of one of the boys from the school. “Hola,” I said. “Hola,” he replied. I asked him if the food was good. He looked shocked at my construction of a complete sentence in Spanish. “Hablas Espanol?” I told him I spoke a little Spanish. He and his friends swarmed me and began talking all at once at the warp speed of teenage conversation. I didn’t understand most of what they said, but I had crossed the gap. For the rest of our week at the school, my new Spanish-speaking friends helped me improve my language skills. They helped me read the Bible and hymns in Spanish during our shared worship services. And all I had to do was stick out, allow myself to be the one white girl speaking broken Spanish in a group of Latino teenagers. The world of the early church was defined by impassable chasms like the one I faced upon arrival at the Pan American School. The Roman Empire attempted to keep the peace between a multitude of conquered peoples by establishing clear distinctions between citizens and slaves, developing a unique cultural identity, and reinforcing the hierarchy of household power structures. In this context, Paul’s statement on the deconstruction of distinction between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, is not to be taken lightly. Nor would it have made him popular with the Roman authorities. To be proclaiming unity in anything other than Rome would have amounted to treason. But here is Paul, telling the Galatians that they are one in Christ Jesus. Now, this in no way magically dispensed with all of the dividing walls that existed in first-century Galatia. Paul was not advising that Jews and Greeks find some middle ground where they could all meet up on questions of theology and culture. The concern about the Jewish Law that is the main thesis of this letter maintains that Jews should be Jews and Greeks should be Greeks. As in other letters from Paul, he does not advise that all slaves should be freed so that slave and free are one and the same. And while, of course, there would not have been the possibility of altering the sexes physiologically in Paul’s time, he also doesn’t advocate for a radical reformation of domestic life to blend the roles of the sexes. There is still a gap. With Jews on one side and Greeks on the other. With slaves on one side and free people on the other. With men on one side and women on the other. What Paul is saying is that in baptism, we are given the same uniform, we have “clothed ourselves with Christ.” More importantly, we have been given the same promise, the promise given to Abraham, the promise of blessing through Abraham’s offspring. Like teenagers discovering we all gotta eat, discovering that we have at least something in common in the midst of all our differences, God’s people can connect and find unity in Jesus Christ. We can recognize one another as heirs of the same promise. But in order to live into that unity, we will sometimes have to risk sticking out. And that’s tough, because I know some of us come to church to blend in. We want to scoot in the back pew during the first hymn, after that awkward part where everybody shakes hands and hugs and kisses each other. And we want to slip back out during the last hymn, before the pastor gets to the door to ask us how we’re doing. Or we want to blend into a church that agrees with our theology, and maybe even our politics. We don’t want questions that make us consider another viewpoint or interpretations of scripture that challenge us to change how we think or how we live. Church is supposed to be a place of comfort and support on our spiritual journey, a sanctuary of like-minded people who will reinforce our deeply-held beliefs. Maybe we even want to blend in to a church where people look and speak and act the way we do. We all like to believe we are color blind and in love with diversity. But walking into church is oftentimes no different than walking into the high school lunch room. You gravitate toward what makes you comfortable. You do everything you can to not stick out. But Paul tells us that our unity in Christ is all about sticking out. It’s about being the one Jew in a group of Greeks, the one free person among slaves, the sole female on a team of men. Feeling the strangeness of being in the minority, of being the “other,” opens us up to the expansiveness of God’s promise, of God’s grace, of God’s love for all humankind. While this may be an unusual experience for many of us, there are some of us for whom this feeling is not at all uncommon. So many people here in our congregation and our community feel the friction of sticking out on a daily basis. And our challenge when we are in the majority is to not attempt to assimilate them. The root of the problem Paul is addressing in his letter to the Galatians is exactly this. The majority of Christians at the time were Jewish. They kept Jewish law, and in order to be fully incorporated into the Jewish community and into the Jewish promise, you had to undergo circumcision. When non-Jews, mostly Greeks in this region, were called to follow Jesus Christ, they stuck out among the law-following Jewish Christians. And so the easy answer was to help them blend in. They could be circumcised and keep the law, and all would be well. But that misses the point of both the law and the Jesus event. The law, Paul says, was meant to be a guardian of sorts, boundaries and guidelines to keep sin contained until Christ came along to deal with sin head-on. Trusting that Christ did what he came to do means that we don’t need to trust in the law anymore to keep us in bounds. There’s nothing wrong with following the law per se. The Psalmist proclaims that The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul. John Calvin believed the law served three purposes: to reflect God’s holiness and human sinfulness; to restrain sin to some degree until God’s redemption of creation is complete; and to reveal God’s desire for our lives. But the Galatian Christians were attempting to use the law as a form of assimilation, which only served to highlight their distinctions and sanctify their differences. My freshman year of college, I was invited to go to a show with a group of students from my acting class. I had exactly one friend at the time, who was also in this class. So we planned to meet up in her room and go to the theatre together. I put on what I thought was an awesome outfit for a night at the theatre in New York City. When I arrived at my friend’s place, her jaw dropped when she opened the door, and she yanked me inside. She began pointing out everything about my appearance that would make me stick out – in all the wrong ways- in this group. She gave me a new outfit and accessories, did my make-up and hair, and only then would she be seen in public with me. I’m sure I looked awesome. I certainly blended in. But I didn’t feel like myself. And I certainly didn’t feel like the person I was, the person who showed up at my friend’s door, was acceptable and valuable. And that is why Paul is so adamant about reliance on Christ and the promises of God rather than the provisions of the Law. Because the law can only highlight was is wrong, how we don’t fit in. As Paul says, “if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law.” But the law can only show us how sinful we are, how depraved humanity is, how far off the mark we are. Sometimes, it’s important for us to see these things. But it is always more important to know that the promise of God is true, that God’s love is for everyone, regardless of their life circumstances, and that unity in Christ is what brings glory to God. We don’t need to blend in. We need to be different. Male and female. American and Mexican and Syrian. Tall and short. Gay and straight. Black and white. Baptist and Catholic and Pentecostal and Presbyterian. But in all our differences, we need to recognize that none of them matter before God. We are one in Jesus Christ, heirs to the promises of God. May that great truth give us the courage to stick out, the courage to appreciate our diversity rather than try to assimilate, the courage to cross the gaps and live in the tension that creates so that we may experience the expansiveness of God’s love and grace. Amen. Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 20, 2015 Listen Print Version Genesis 12:1-9, Galatians 3:1-9 I really didn’t believe them. They kept telling me that it was the most beautiful building in the world…in fact one of the most beautiful sights in the world. But I didn’t believe them. After all I was fortunate enough to have seen some pretty cool stuff in my life. But about ten years or so ago on a beautiful, clear morning I turned a corner of some souvenir shops and there is front of me was the Taj Mahal. It took my breath away. I had gone to India with a mission group to visit some projects my former church was supporting. One of the perks was going to see the Taj Mahal. I have to say it was not high on my list of things do, but what the heck. When would I ever get back to India? When I saw it though I realized why it was one of the seven wonders of the modern world. In this case seeing was believing. It was indeed, at least in my opinion, the most beautiful building I had ever seen. Have any of you had the same kind of experience? Someone keeps telling you about something and it is not until you see it that you believe them? Well if you have, then you get what Paul was trying to do in this letter, he was asking the people to remember what they saw so that they would believe him. Before I jump into that I want to bring everyone up to speed. Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia is in some ways a heavy weight boxing match between Paul and his opponents that I call the circumcision party. What they are fighting over is the entry requirements into the Jesus’ community. Paul is arguing for a barrier free entry…you want to follow Jesus? Come on in. The Circumcision Party on the other hand wants a high barrier…that one must be circumcised or ritualized into the community. This matters to Paul because, as I said last week, the entry requirements often set the culture of the institution…which can be seen in the arrests made of a large group of young men in a fraternity at Baruch College, for their brutal initiation and killing of one of their pledges. Paul’s on the surface argument in this portion of the letter then is this; the Galatians, who entered into the Jesus’ community through Paul’s barrier free manner, had seen amazing proofs of God’s presence including miracles. In other words Paul argues, you should believe in my way because you have seen results. It is at this point that many people stop looking at the text. We now know that in this case seeing is believing. But if we end here we will miss the heart of what Paul is trying to tell us. We will miss that not only is seeing believing, but that believing is seeing. Let me say that again, believing is seeing. This in fact is the heat of Paul’s message…that all of the good things that we witness as followers of God in Jesus Christ, come through believing. But in order to fully understand this we must understand what believing means. So here goes….imagine, if you will, one of your friends comes to you and says that he has a sure thing; that there is a horse named Flash-in-the-Pan, in the fifth race at Pimlico this Thursday and that if we bet everything we have we will win big. One way of using the concept of believing would be to say to your friend, “Thanks, and I am thrilled you have a sure thing…in fact I believe you, but I will hang on to my money.” Another way of believing would be to say, “This is great,” and then you sell all you have, go to the betting window and place everything on Flash-in-the-Pan, in the fifth race at Pimlico. This is believing in the Biblical sense. It is faith with feet. We can see this faith with feet in the Abraham story. When God called Abraham, Abraham didn’t say to God, “Hey this is great that you want me to go to a new land and through me bless the world. Let me put that on my calendar for the fourth of never.” No, instead Abraham got his family together and they undertook the journey to which God had called them. This is belief. It is faith with feet and where this led Abraham was to see the Promises of God come to fruition. What we have to realize about this story is just how amazing this is. When God made this promise to Abraham that through his offspring all of the earth would be blessed, Abraham and Sarah had no children. The fulfillment of the promise seemed impossible. But even when they were, according to the story, beyond the age of having children and before the age of the little blue pill, Abraham and Sarah conceived a child, Isaac. What this points to is the fact that God’s promises are present, but it is our believing, our putting feet to our faith that gives them birth and allows them to be made real. It is in believing that we see. And this is Paul’s point to the Galatians…they are living the same promise-believing-seeing life as was Abraham. We see this in verse two, “Let me ask you only this, did you receive the Spirit by works of the Law (meaning through being circumcised) or by hearing with faith?” In other words did the Spirit promised by the crucified and risen Jesus come to you through some sort of religious ritual or did it come because you believed, because you were willing to acknowledge the promise of the Spirit and then act upon it? The obvious answer for Paul was that the promise of the Spirit became a reality through believing…and the Spirit not only brought miraculous events but it allowed the Galatians to “experience many things” which we can take to mean love, joy, peace, patience and the other fruits which the Spirit brings. Paul is reminding the Galatians that believing is seeing, and so one can have a barrier free faith, remembering the cause of the letter, because ultimately it is believing that allows God’s promises in Jesus Christ to become realities. If this seems a bit cryptic, let me offer you a down to earth, Lucas film image from a little known movie called Star Wars. In this movie there is an ordinary young man named Luke Skywalker. His parents are deceased and he lives with his aunt and uncle…sound familiar? Anyway the crux of the film is that he has been given a gift of something called the force. It is within him and is of little or no use. And for it to be of any use he has to believe that it is real…which takes him at least a couple of movies to do. Yet once he believes it is real and then acts to put it to use…the universe is saved because he blows up the death star…yadda, yadda, yadda. This is where we find ourselves. We are those in whom God has poured out God’s infinite love in Jesus Christ and we are those in whom the Spirit now lives and breathes. The question is, will we believe it? Will we allow our faith to have feet, and act upon these gifts? For it is easy to not believe these two promises. It is easy to see Christianity as a decent set of moral guidelines for ourselves, our children and our grandchildren. But we are asked to believe more than that. We are asked to believe as did the Galatians these promises of God’s gifts of love and Spirit are real and then act upon them. My challenge to you then is this, to ask, “How am I believing God and acting upon the life transforming love and Spirit that God has given me?” Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 13, 2015 Listen Print Version Galatians 1:1-9, Deuteronomy 27:1-8 The soccer ball was flying through the air. The guy next to me lifted up his fist and knocked the ball down the field. “Hand ball,” I exclaimed, “It’s our ball.” “No, it’s not,” he replied. “Sure is, you hit it with your hand.” “No I didn’t. I hit it with my fist. That’s legal.” OK so I was playing soccer in high school gym class with a group of guys who evidently had never played the game, but rules are rules. “No,” I came back, “the rules are that you cannot hit the ball with any part of your arm or hand (trying not to get too technical). If you do it’s a hand ball and the other team gets it.” By this time we had gathered a crowd of teammates around us and the debate began. His team insisted that he was right. Mine didn’t really care. It was soon obvious who was going to get to make the rules…and it wasn’t me and it wasn’t the governing body of soccer at any level. The new rule was you could hit the ball with your fist. To this day I still shudder when I think of all of those guys walking away thinking that is how you play soccer. It’s an amazing thing isn’t it, watching who thinks that they get to make the rules? Most of us have watched this unfold as of late when a clerk in Kentucky has decided that she, not the state of Kentucky which compels her to issue marriage licenses, and certainly not the Supreme Court which has issued an order to do the same, gets to make the rules. And we read about it this morning in our text in Galatians. For this is what these opening words are about. They are about who gets to make the rules for entry into the Jesus community. I was thinking about how to explain this and decided the best opening analogy would be a boxing match. So here goes…and I have always wanted to do this. In the near corner, in the red trunks, is Saul of Tarsus, who we know as the Apostle Paul. He claims his power to make decisions comes directly from Jesus. As he writes, Paul an Apostle-sent neither by human commission not from human authorities but through Jesus Christ and God the Father…” He is fighting for a barrier free community in which there are no hurdles to membership. In the far corner, in the blue trunks, are the Circumcisers. They claim that their power is from God through the Torah; the Law of Moses. They claim a thousand years of tradition and the fact that Jesus was a good Jew to make their point; and that point is that in order to gain entry into the Jesus’ community you have to, if you are a male, be circumcised, just as had every member of God’s family since Abraham. So now let’s get ready to rumble. And that is exactly what is going on. Paul began the fight by teaching the Galatians that they could be part of the Jesus’ community simply by a willingness to follow Jesus. This was countered by the Circumcisers who jabbed that, no you had to be circumcised in order to be part of the Jesus’ community. Paul then countered that with, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one, meaning Paul, who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…not that there is another Gospel.” It was a heavy weight theological battle. For many of us here this morning I would guess this would already seem a bit, well unimportant. After all what does it matter who wins? What does it matter whether Paul or the Circumcisers win? This is an argument from a time long, long ago in a land far, far away. Yet what I want to tell you is that it does matter to all of us who are here this morning because how one comes into a community sets the stage for the kind of community into which one is coming. Let me explain. The college I attended had local and not national fraternities. And each fraternity decided on the pledging process, the process for entering into their community. One fraternity, to which a roommate of mine pledged, had a pledging process that eventually got them disbanded. Their process was filled not simply with fun things to do, but things bordering on cruel. And in some ways that carried through to the kind of community they became. There was another fraternity on campus that had no pledging process at all. You wanted to join? You were in. You were part of the group. They decided that they would be the un-fraternity. And their interior life was one of service, fun and joy. In the same way then it matters how the church decided this fight over who gets to make the rules between Paul and the Judaizers because it would, in the end determine what the Jesus’ community looked like. This is something that Paul understood as well. He understood that if he gets to set the rules then the community will be a barrier free community based on grace and freedom. If his opponents win, it will a restrictive community based on law. And for Paul, Jesus is about grace and not law. Paul knew that Jesus’ ministry was all about grace. Paul knew that Jesus invited all persons to come and follow…and did it in a barrier free manner. It didn’t matter if you were rich or poor, Jew, Roman or Samaritan, healthy or sick, powerful or oppressed, a man or woman, were afflicted with any physical limitations, Jesus opened his arms wide and invited you into his new Kingdom community. He was in some ways the good southern Galilean, who said, “Ya’ll come.” He never told people that they had to go through any kind of a religious ritual to be a follower. All they had to do was follow him and his example to the best of their abilities. His was a barrier free community, open to all The second reason Paul chose a barrier free entry was freedom. He writes, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord, Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age…” Let me explain. When people made the choice to follow Jesus, something happened to them. They were changed. They were made new. They had the power to resist sin; to resist the powers in this world that distort the goodness of ourselves as God creatures and goodness of God’s creation. They had the power to live new lives. They had the power to love God and neighbor. And all of this came about without them having to be circumcised or to go through some elaborate religious ritual. This was then the experience of the reality of the no-barrier entry into the Jesus’ community. What Paul wanted the Galatians to remember is that they were already in, and had already received the benefits of being in the community of Jesus, long before his opponents showed up and tried to erect barriers to entry. In the end we have no idea what the final outcome of the fight in Galatia was; whether or not they chose to become a barrier free community. But what it reminds us of is the fact that every Jesus’ community, every church has to make the decision as to what kind of community it wants to become. Does it want to be a barrier free community or one in which there are extensive rules and regulations. And we see this struggle in the Roman church, where the Pope is trying to make the church more barrier free and he is facing push back from Bishops, priests and lay people who have no desire to bring down some of the barriers. We see it in our own denomination where hundreds of churches have left since the denomination has become fully inclusive of all persons. But we here at Frist Presbyterian have made the conscious decision that we will be a no-barrier community. As our inclusion statement puts it… “As Everybody’s Church, we strive to be a faithful, open and inclusive community. We welcome the participation of all people of any ability, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other life circumstance.” We are a no-barrier community not because it is fashionable but because it is Biblical; because it is at the heart of Paul’s message of grace and freedom. But we only become that if we live it. My challenge to you all this morning then is this, to ask yourselves, “How am I helping to make Everybody’s Church a no barrier community in which all persons are welcomed and are helped to realize that they are beloved children of God?” |
Categories
All
Archives
June 2024
|