The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Link to Audio File Link to Print Version Genesis 15:1-6; Romans 7:14-25 It was unclear to me what they were doing with their hands. They were trying to figure out how to divide up into teams but I couldn’t figure it out. I was about 14 or 15 years old and had gone with my parents and members of our church to the Seafarers’ Center at the Port of Houston. For those of you who are unaware about Houston, it is 50 miles from the coast but is still the second busiest port in the United States and the 13th busiest in the world. What this means is that seamen from all over the world travel and stay there. The churches in Houston have long supported the International Seafarer’s Centers by sending volunteers to befriend and spend time with these seamen who are far from home. My church was one of those. When we arrived some of the men were dividing up into teams for a softball game. They needed extras and asked me to join in. As they were dividing up into teams the men would do a thing with their hands and then one would go one way and the other, the other way. When I fumbled around with this ritual, the man just looked at me and said, “go there.” And I did. It was only years later that I learned what they were doing…paper, scissors, rock. Yes, this is a confession. I was a deprived child who had never learned to play paper, scissors, rock. I assume that most of you here are familiar with this game of random chance. Paper beats rock. Rock beats scissors. Scissors beats paper. Ok, are we good? Alright then, if you understand how this game works then you will understand what Paul is trying to tell us in this part of his letter to the Romans. To begin with Paul tells us that sin beats law. Sin is one of those words that carries with it multiple layers of meaning. For many of us growing up, sin was associated with particular actions. It was a sin to lie. It was a sin to steal. It was a sin to harm another person. If we grew up in more theologically conservative homes sin might even include drinking or going to movies on Sunday. Regardless, sin was seen as things. When Paul speaks about sin he is not referring to “things”. He is referring to sin as a human condition. Sin for Paul is like a spiritual disease which is possessed by every human being. Though Paul does not dwell on when, where or how we catch this disease he says we all have it. And what this disease does is distort and deform the image of God within us, causing us to turn away from God and toward self. We become the center of the universe and we will do whatever it takes to stay there. That is sin. Law is the compilation of the rules and regulations that God has given us so that we can order and direct our lives according to what God desires of us. The law tells us what not to do; namely lie, cheat, steal, or covet among a multitude of sins. The law also tells us what to do. We are to love our neighbors. We are to care for the powerless. We are to make sure everyone has something to eat. Unfortunately Paul tells us that sin, our inner spiritual disease, beats out the law, which is God’s rules for living. Paul writes of not being able to do what he knows he ought to do, and of doing what he knows he ought not to do. He sums it all up in the second half of verse 25. “So then, in my mind I am a slave to the law of God (meaning he wants to do what God wants him to do) but with my flesh (which is another way of saying sinful self) I am a slave to the law of sin.” Sin beats law. The second part of this spiritual game however is that Jesus beats sin. In verse 24 Paul cries out, “Wretched man that I am who will rescue me from this body of death?” His answer is, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is put another way a couple of verse later when Paul writes, “For the law of the Spirit has set me free from the law of sin and death.” What Paul wants his friends to know is that ultimately sin no longer controls them or us. The disease of self-centeredness while still being present no longer controls our lives. Granted, like chicken pox, it never completely goes away. And it may rear its ugly head from time to time, yet in the end it no longer has to dominate our lives. What this means then for those of us who are part of the League of Extraordinary Followers, is that we can live more extraordinary Christian lives. Even though we will have those days when we do what we know we are not supposed to do; or we have those days when we do not do what we know we ought to do; we know that Christ beats sin. We know that the life of Jesus is at work in us, helping us to be the people we are called to be. My challenge to you then is this…How am I allowing this reality, the reality that Christ beats sin, to encourage me in my daily living? How am I allowing this freedom from the disease of sin to give me hope that I can do what God calls me to do. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Link to Audio File Link to Print Version Genesis 14:17-24, Romans 6:15-23 There is a wide spectrum of television commercials. Some are funny. Others are inspiring. Some are direct and to the point. There are some however that are just plain creepy. And one of those creepy commercials for me is the one with the life-size puppets. The commercial has this ordinary guy who has evidently married into a family of puppets…and has a son who is a puppet. They all go around hanging from strings. What is being advertised is a cable company whose products do not need wires…or strings if you will. On the one hand we might suppose that this is very clever way of having people notice that this company can make your home a bit neater than it was before; that when you hook up all of your video devices to your television there will be no exposed wires. On the other hand though, I want to believe that the advertisers were trying to strike a deeper chord with the public. In this case I believe that they wanted us to associate their product with freedom. In other words, by choosing our product you will be the one who is free…and not bound by strings that bind others. If that is the case, that they want us to associate their product with freedom, they would find a ready-made audience almost anywhere in the world. I say this because I believe that most of us in this room this morning, would love to live a life with no strings attached. We all grow up in a world with strings attached. As children the strings are pulled by our parents, relatives and teachers. They want us to dance to their tunes and expectations. As we grow older there are others who want to attach their strings to us; culture, the media, cliques of friends, spots teams, schools and the list goes on and on. When we emerge into the working world we have companies, clients, supervisors, corporate cultures and the like who want to make us do as they direct. When we have children, as one parent reminded me, we dance to their tune of homework, sports and friendships. Yet all along the way, from the time we turn two and learn the word no, we resist the strings and long for pure independence. Our lives are spent trying to cut the cords in order that we might be free to be ourselves; to live a life with no strings attached. We see this clearly in our morning’s story about Abram. The background to the story is that there had been a battle between nine kings; five versus four. Initially the four defeat the five and in the process the four kings capture Lot, who was Abram’s nephew. Abram is not pleased so he rounds up his men and some friends and defeats the four kings, thus freeing Lot. Upon his return he is met by one of the defeated kings, the King of Sodom, who encourages Abram to keep much of the spoils of victory for himself. On this surface this appears to be generous. The King of Sodom says, hey Abram, I am happy to share with you what was originally mine. Abram will have none of it. For if the King of Sodom can say, look I made Abram wealthy, then Abram owes him loyalty. Abram will have to dance to his tune…and this is not what Abram wants. He desires a string free life. Abram therefore refuses the offer and merely asks that those who helped him receive something. Freedom, the string free life, as I said a moment ago, is one of the great goals of virtually every human being. This is one of the reasons that the early church was so attractive. It allowed people to shed the strings of their cultures and find freedom in a fashion that they could have scarcely imagined. For you and me it is hard to imagine the cultural pressure that existed in the Roman Empire. People’s lives were governed by a strict and strictly enforced set of cultural values. To step outside of those values was to risk one’s life and livelihood. People were told what they could wear, where they could live, what jobs they could hold, how they were to interact with others and on and on. Everyone danced to the strings of the Roman culture. Along comes Christianity though and it proclaims that these cords have been cut; that there is freedom in Jesus Christ. Slowly but surely people began to gravitate to the church, because at least within the church, there was a freedom to become new and different people living new and different lives. The problem with this image of a new string free life was that it led people to acts that were not Christ-like; that were in fact antithetical to Christian living. So Paul has to remind his readers that while they were free from sin, they were not free from God. In other words, there is no string free life. He writes, “But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves to sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that have been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” Notice that Paul uses the same language to describe one’s life before Christ and after Christ; the language of slavery, or in our case this morning the language of strings. In other words the only real question for the Romans was who did they desire to have pulling their strings? The idea of a neutral position of freedom from which people could choose to do or not do good was, for Paul, an impossibility. And I believe he considered it impossible because as a good Jew Paul understood the power of sin, and especially of the primordial sin of Adam and Eve. Their sin was the belief that human beings could be wise enough to choose for themselves the good; and we are all witness to the results of that choice. Paul’s contention that a string free life is not possible is one of the most difficult concepts in his writings for most 21st Century people to accept. I saw this first hand at a presbytery meeting where a candidate for ordination wrote in her statement of faith that we all have free will. When I asked her about her belief, quoting from our morning’s passage, she looked at me blankly and repeated that we are all free agents capable of our own moral choices. Her answer showed that, we, like the Romans, want our independence. If Paul is correct however, which I believe he is, that there is no string free life, the question becomes not will we choose to be a slave of sin or of God, it is instead will we choose to cooperate or oppose God’s control of our lives? My hope is that we will choose to cooperate and here is the reason. It is the reason that Tiger Woods has a ‘swing” coach. It is the reason that professional tennis players have coaches. It is the reason professional baseball teams have hitting and pitching coaches The reason is that if we are to become the best we can be in any endeavor we need someone outside of ourselves who can critique us and guide us into better practices. The same is true for being followers of Jesus Christ; we need God, to guide us from outside of ourselves so that our lives more fully reflect that of Jesus Christ. For you see, God created us to be human beings capable of living lives that reflect the love, grace, forgiveness, compassion and sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth. We, on our own, are not capable of doing that. If we allow God to pull our strings, to guide our lives, then we grow more and more fully into the image of Christ. This is called sanctification. Paul writes, “But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.” Paul reminds us that being enslaved to God, or allowing God to take control is not so that God can make us mere puppets in some great play, but so that God can lead us to the fullness of life; so God can lead us to becoming more and more Christ-like; or as we said last week, to become more and more the kind of people who choose to be part of the League of Extraordinary Followers that God created us to be. My challenge to you for this week then is this, to ask yourselves, How am I cooperating with God in such a way that I become more and more the person God desires me to be? The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Link to Audio File Link to Print Version Genesis 12:10-20; Romans 6:1-11 He was a standup kind of guy. Abraham was one of those standup guys that we all want to have around. And how do we know that he was a standup guy? We know because he only gave his wife away twice. A lesser man might have given his wife away three, maybe even four times. But not Abraham. No, he only gave away his wife twice, each time in order to protect his own life. In our morning’s story we read that Abraham went down into Egypt in order to escape a famine. On the way he realized that his wife Sarah, being beautiful, might cause him some issues, such as the loss of his life. So rather than risk everything he gave her away…and she was taken into Pharaoh’s house. Granted God was not all that pleased with this arrangement and caused Pharaoh to return her, but even then Abraham got to keep all of the livestock which Pharaoh had given him in exchange for Sarah. Not a bad deal. Ok, so this is not Abraham’s best moment. But what I hope that we will see is that in this story there is both good news and bad news. The good news is that we discover that Abraham is just an ordinary guy and in fact makes us look good. I don’t know about you, but the impression that I was always given growing up was that all of the great Biblical characters were perfect people walking around with these halos hovering over their heads. Everything that they did was exactly what God wanted them to do. We were taught to revere them and seek to emulate their lives. As we see in this story and one other about Abraham is that there is much about his life that we do not want to emulate. While he certainly listened to God and was willing to leave his home and kin to seek the place where God would have him live, along the way his life was sometimes less than exemplary. What this means for us though is that if God can use an ordinary guy who gives away his wife, twice, in order to save himself then perhaps God can use us ordinary people as well. So, as I said there is good news in here for us ordinary people. The bad news, remember I said that there is both good news and bad in this story, is that we discover Abraham is an ordinary guy and in fact makes us look good. I know that I had just told you that that was the good news, but it is also the bad news. It is the bad news because it allows us to look at Abraham, and in seeing that we are in many ways better than he is, be satisfied with our ordinariness. In other words, when we look at Abraham we can say, “Hey, I have never given away my wife, or my husband in order to save myself. I must be pretty good.” This sense encourages us to be OK with being just OK. After all, if we are better than one of the great patriarchs of the Bible then we must be good enough. Ordinariness becomes the watch word. We no longer have to strive for being better than we are. It would be like the San Antonio Spurs, when they lost to the Heat last year, saying, hey guys we made it to the finals. That is all we need. We don’t need to strive to be champions…see I did manage to get a Spurs reference in the sermon. That is the bad news that even as ordinary people God can use us. This was the situation Paul faced when he was writing to the church at Rome. Evidently this was a church, like most of the other churches to whom he wrote, which believed that being ordinary was good enough. In the section of the letter we read this morning, what we see is that Paul makes it clear that when Jesus Christ begins to work in our life, that we become more than ordinary. We become extraordinary. We become extraordinary because the old person that we once were is crucified in Christ and dies. He writes, “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death…” (Romans 6:1-4a) Paul reminds his readers, and reminds us, that something remarkable has happened to us. The old ordinary person no longer lives. That person is gone. And for Paul this is not some metaphorical change…it is an objective reality of being changed from one kind of person to another. The second half of this spiritual equation is just as important…that in Christ not only does the old self die but a new self is born. “But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:8-11) In other words, when the ordinary self dies we are given a new spiritual self. We become more than ordinary people. We become people capable of living lives oriented to God. We become capable of loving, serving, caring, sharing and sacrificing just as did Jesus. We become capable of being extraordinary people. Let me be clear at this point, that when Paul links this death and resurrection to baptism, he is not suggesting that baptism is not a magic event that causes this death and resurrection to happen. Baptism is instead the recognition of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. So when we baptized our three newest members of the universal church of Jesus Christ this morning, we did so believing that God was already changing them. God was already making them capable of being extraordinary people. In 2003 a movie entitled, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, reached the movie theatres. Based on a comic book series of the same name, it was not an extraordinary movie. Nonetheless it was the story of a group of men and a lady, who while on the outside appeared to be rather ordinary…and in fact sort of dysfunctionally ordinary, like Abraham, were in fact extraordinary individuals. Each had a gift or a talent which could be used for good or evil. They chose to use them for good…and in good movie fashion saved the world…for the moment. As we move through this sermon series on the People of God, what I hope is that we will see ourselves as the League of Extraordinary Followers. For on the outside we look like ordinary people…yet because of what Jesus Christ has done for us we are no longer ordinary but extraordinary and the task to which we have been set is to be part of Christ’s world-saving community; showing love, grace, compassion and care for the world as we work for justice and transformation both here and around the world. My challenge to you then this morning is to ask yourselves, how does my life reflect the fact that I am part of the League of Extraordinary Followers of Jesus Chirst? Rev. Amy Morgan
June 15, 2014 Psalm 8, Matthew 28:16-20 Link to audio file Link to print version Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’ “To doubt is heresy, to inquire is to admit that you do not know,” and according to agnostic thinker Robert Ingersoll, “the Church does neither.” But this has not always been the case. Take, for example, the sorry remnant of disciples we read about today, trudging up a hill in the middle of nowhere to meet up with a flash-in-the-pan, has-been rock star who is supposed to be dead and inexplicably isn’t. They meet up with Jesus, they worship him, but some doubted. Now, the last time someone doubted in the Gospel of Matthew – in fact, the only other time this verb is found in the New Testament – the hot-shot disciple Peter was sinking into the sea and being chastised by Jesus. “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” But today, Jesus has no words of judgment for the worshipping doubters. He doesn’t label them faithless heretics. Instead, he declares that all authority in heaven and on earth have been given to him. The disciples can doubt and question and misunderstand all day long. Because they don’t have the authority. No one is looking to them to be right, to know the truth, to have all the answers. But over the next couple of centuries, all of that begins to change. By the beginning of the 4th century, we have presbyters and bishops and all manner of ecclesial hierarchy jostling for supremacy in matters of doctrine and discipline and order. And it is into this melee that an ambitious theologian named Arius inserts his questions and doubts. By this time, the church was pretty clear about the fact that there was only one God, and that Jesus was to be worshipped as God. But how exactly all of that worked out was a topic of hot debate. Some people leaned in a direction that bordered on worshipping two - or when you factored in the Holy Spirit, three - different gods. Others took a position that compromised God’s power over creation. Still others held beliefs that diminished the importance of Christ. So Arius took it upon himself to help synthesize all of these positions into a doctrine that declared Jesus as the “firstborn of all creation” but of a “different substance from God the Father.” This position ensured that Jesus was still worthy of worship and devotion but also allowed God to remain immune to change and death. Despite the church’s clear teachings on the unity of the Trinity, Aruis constructed and promoted his position throughout the synod of Alexandria in eloquent sermons. He and his ideas gained popularity, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. The bishop of Alexandria caught wind of what Arius was promoting and had him banished. Arius didn’t let this stop him, however. He fled to the north and bunked up with his buddy and former classmate Eusebius and continued to find support for his position elsewhere. The controversy was so destructive that Emperor Constantine demanded it be addressed at a Council in Nicaea in 325. Doubting, questioning, and disagreement within the church were politically problematic for the ruler of the Roman world. Arius’s misfortune in this debate was that the regions where his position was most popular also happened to be those places where, only a year before, Constantine’s political rival, Licinius, had been ruler. Arius’s defeat and excommunication paralleled the defeat and execution of Licinius as the authority of political power solidly usurped that of Jesus Christ. The church, as a political entity, needed authority, absolute truth, unified power. And so, today, we have the Nicaean Creed, the very first creed in our Book of Confessions, with its affirmation that Jesus is “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” Now, don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with orthodoxy or the Nicaean formulation of the Trinity. But the Arian controversy gives me pause. It makes me wonder what might have been. It causes me to be concerned that Robert Ingersoll had a valid critique of the church. The word “heresy” comes from the Greek word “to choose.” What we, as Christians, over the centuries have labeled as misguided or wrong or outright evil is, in fact, simply people choosing for themselves what to believe or how to live their faith. But that terrifies the established church, especially in times of turmoil. In the early life of the church, Christians were fearful for their lives and livelihoods. In the Reformation, Christians were fearful of corruption. And today, we’re fearful about the survival of the Christian faith itself. We have to seriously consider the possibility that the faith as we know it will no longer exist at some point in the foreseeable future. And so doubt, inquiry, heresy, choice are all dangerous things. I once had the privilege of taking a master class with the legendary Broadway producer Hal Prince. In this class, he talked about the difference between a flop and a failure and between a hit and a success. A flop is something that the public rejects or fails to appreciate, but a failure is something that is possibly great but is somehow compromised. Likewise, a hit is a show that the public loves and is commercially prosperous, while a success is a show that is the best it can possibly be, done with integrity and passion. By the time Jesus gets to the hill in Galilee, he’s a solid flop. Yes, you could argue that rising from the dead was a pretty major accomplishment, but notice that he only has 11 followers coming out to meet him. That’s right, the text is pretty specific – 11. That’s because one of them was so disgusted with Jesus’ performance that he left in the middle and sabotaged the event. But it’s also clear that Jesus wasn’t a failure. He did what he came to do. He stuck with the script, he had the right intentions, and he gave a flawless performance. He was, in fact, a success. But his reward was not fame and fortune. No, his reward is all authority in heaven and on earth. The church, on the other hand, has been a huge hit. Almost a third of the world’s population today follows the Christian faith. But I’m not certain we can claim to have always been successful. Throughout our history, we have given authority to governments, institutions, human reason, morality, doctrine, and charismatic personalities. And this has greatly impacted our performance. Maybe we have survived and even thrived for over two thousand years. But have we really fulfilled this Great Commission Jesus gave his first followers? Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me. Go therefore,” meaning that only by his authority can we do what comes next. He tells these 11 dubious disciples to, first “go make disciples of all nations.” Now, there are two things we need to hear in this directive. The first is that “all nations” are included in this discipleship mission. Up to this point, Jesus’ message was considered to be primarily aimed at his own people, the Jews. And a Jewish messiah would have been a much easier sell to a Jewish audience. But Jesus meets up with his follower in a Gentile, meaning non-Jewish, part of the country, and sends his them out to disciple “the nations,” those people who have no context for what these Jewish guys are talking about, people who are happily following their own completely different and unfamiliar belief systems. The second thing we need to understand is that disciples are kind of like interns. When we talk about being disciples of Christ today, there is this air of piety. If you call yourself a disciple, it must mean that you go to church every week and pray and read the bible every day, and love God and your neighbor and yourself in perfect harmony. Disciples are like gold medalists in the Jesus-following contest. Because everything in America is competitive, even our Christianity. But that’s not what a disciple is. A disciple is a student, a follower, an intern. And if you’ve ever had an intern, you know that it takes a lot more work to get an intern to do something right than it would be just to do it yourself. Interns are going to make mistakes. They will lose your favorite stapler. They will make the coffee wrong. They will lose important phone messages. But Jesus is telling his disciples, his interns, to go make more interns. Why would Jesus do this? What a bad idea! This is clearly going to flop! But the interns don’t have the authority. Jesus does. If they mess up, if they flop and even fail, that’s okay. Jesus has been successful, and Jesus has the authority. So it’s all going to work out. Once the interns make more interns, they are supposed to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, this little Trinitarian reference is really the only reason this passage gets placed in the lectionary on this Trinity Sunday. I know you all have Trinity Sunday marked in red ink on your calendars right along with “Rural Life” Sunday and “Small Membership Church” Sunday. For those of you who may not have looked at those calendars this morning, however, this is, in fact Trinity Sunday, the day that preachers are supposed to try to explain the inexplicable mathematics of three equals one and one equals three. But rather perform the theological gymnastics necessary to explain what the Trinity is, I think it’s more important here to talk about what the Trinity means. Because the truth is, at the time that this text was written, there was no doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus wasn’t giving his disciples secret knowledge about the interrelated personhood of God, and he wasn’t establishing the orthodox formula for the rite of induction into the institutional church. There was no orthodoxy and there was no institutional church. For Jesus, and his disciples at the time, baptism meant new life in relationship with God and the world. The Trinitarian formula expressed the interrelatedness of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but only insomuch as it could model the intimacy of relationship God desires to have with us and for us to have with one another. Jesus is commissioning his disciples to go make more disciples, and go belong to one another. And only after that are they to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded them. Now, when we talk about obedience, all too often what we mean, or at least what people hear, is that the church has the authority to tell people what to believe and how to behave. But the word “obey” found here in Greek literally means to keep in view or guard and protect. It isn’t a subservient word, but in fact, it is rather empowering. The things Jesus commanded are to be regarded as treasures to be protected, as something vulnerable and valuable that we need to keep an eye on. And then there is the word “command,” which we all love. Because it should be super easy to pay attention to EVERYTHING Jesus commanded, right? Over 2,000 words of Jesus are recorded in the New Testament, most of them meant to teach people something. The church throughout history has decided for people which words are actually commandments we’re supposed to follow and what those words actually mean in practice. And we’ve spent most of our time disagreeing about it. This is one place the church has gotten stuck on the question of authority because maybe Jesus has all the authority, but aren’t we the ones who are supposed to enforce it? Isn’t that what Jesus is saying here? Perhaps there’s another way to look at it. The word “command” can also be translated “commission.” So when we talk about this passage being the great commission, it isn’t just the disciples who are being commissioned. They are commissioned to go make more disciples, to create relational community with them, and then help those new disciples keep that commission in their sights. They are commissioned to commission new commissioners. Notice that nowhere in this commission does Jesus say “remember how I taught you to pray” or “don’t forget what I said about the fig tree.” Jesus knows the disciples will get it wrong, and that’s okay. That’s why he promises to be with them, always, to the end of days. The boss will be there to fix the things we break and smooth out the waters we muddy and help us find our way to the cafeteria. The Jesus movement started with 11 confused, worn out, divided disciples. Some doubted, questioned, chose what to believe for themselves. They were heretics, in the best possible way. But all of the disciples worshipped Jesus together. They had no hope of accomplishing the monumental task Jesus set before them. All they had was this promise: “Look, I am with you always, even to the end of days.” Their only hope was to depend completely on the authority and power of Jesus. And that’s exactly what they did. They were persecuted and killed, imprisoned and ridiculed. They were a complete flop. But they successfully got the show off the ground. And they all fulfilled the Great Commission. We may not throw the word heretic around much anymore, but we might as well use it when we mean it. Too often, we refuse to listen to people who choose for themselves what to believe. The third most populous faith group in the world after Christians and Muslims is “unaffiliated,” in other words, “heretics,” people who want to choose for themselves. Perhaps fulfilling the Great Commission has more to do with welcoming the heretics in our midst than it does with teaching people in remote parts of the world about the doctrine of the Trinity. Perhaps instead of consuming our energies with debates over policies and procedures, studies and “seasons of reflection,” we need to recognize that we’re all interns and none of us are going to get it right. And maybe welcoming heretics will help us do that. Because if we are wise and courageous enough to remember that Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth - not us, not this church, not the PC(USA) - perhaps Christianity can ultimately be both a hit and a success. Perhaps our own doubts and questions will lead us to deeper faith and reliance on the authority and power of Jesus. My greatest hope for the church today is that we will eventually become a big enough flop to make us a success. As the growth of heretics outpaces the growth of Christians, perhaps a remnant will find its way back to a hilltop in the middle of nowhere and the doubters and believers alike can worship Jesus together and go out to serve him in the world. Amen. Chris Breeden
June 8, 2014 Scripture: 1 Corinthians 12: 4-13 Amy and Dr. Judson sometimes like to start their sermons with surveys and I think id like to do the same. Its graduation season, and I have just recently graduated from Seaholm high school, right down the road, this past Sunday and I’m sure several of you in the audience know someone graduating this month. So, here’s the survey part. By a show of hands, who has sent a graduation card to someone, ever? Great this is what I thought, several of you. Since my brother and I are recent graduates, we”ve sent and received dozens of graduation cards and I can tell you from experience that they will probably go something like this; “follow your own path” or “you have what it takes to succeed”, or “this is just the beginning”. Truly, I believe that today’s bible verse would make an excellent Hallmark card. (PAUSE) To summarize, the verse tells us that God gives us each different and unique talents but are all from the same God and are therefore equal. These talents should be used in unity with one another for the betterment of the world. So, if this is the case (which it certainly is), then why don’t we live in a perfect world? It seems to me that if we are all blessed with these talents then certainly our world should be a better place than it is now. Why does it appear that some people have no constructive talent such as members of the Taliban or other hate groups? Did God forget them? I believe that the fact of the matter is that although they are there, they may not exactly be present. Thinking about how talents may not be so noticeable at first, I’d like to ask you all to take a journey with me three years back when I was just a wee little freshman, ending my first year of high school at Seaholm, For us Seaholmers, the Spring of 2011 started with an unexpected bang. In one of the mens bathrooms, someone had vandalized a wall with racial graffiti. The writing consisted of something along the lines of “N-words” that should be lynched” followed by a list of five African American students at the school. The response was lightening fast. The police came to investigate, news stations rushed to the scene, Seaholm parent assemblies became a common occurrence and several pep rallys were strung together to fight the backlash and unify the school. With white students making up about 95% of the Seaholm community, we were quickly dubbed as racists. The school issued out buttons to students that depicted black and white people holding hands, so they could decorate their backpacks to display our intolerance of racism. At first the situation seemed bleak . Nobody had any idea who had done it and other schools hated us for it. As a freshman baseball player, I have specific memories of being taunted as we left the bus to play an away game. I felt it in my core; all my life I had been molded by good values and now I was being misrepresented because of a certain racist individual. Outside looking in, we appeared to be a bunch of affluent racists. However, on the inside, I can tell you that that was certainly not the case. Everyone was just as upset as I was. We felt judged and labeled just because we could proudly call ourselves “Maple Leaves”. For a while whenever I met someone from a different school, this was one of the first things I was asked about. Finally, and what seemed like against all odds, the identity of the person who had caused so much turmoil in our school community was revealed. And the identity of the person was nothing short of shocking. The student responsible was an African American senior at the school. In fact, his name was even on the list in the boy’s bathroom. The immediate response from my peers and me was anger that the entire racism scandal had been fabricated and the damage was already done. Our school’s name had been tarnished and by affiliation, my name. In reflection I realized that maybe there was more to the story. Maybe I had begun to judge unfairly just as I had been unfairly judged. From the outside looking in the student seemed confused and manipulative but in actuality I didn’t take the time to know him and do my best to understand. I certainly didn’t look for his talents. Through our verse today, God has told us that no one is talentless and God has blessed all of us in different ways. Sometimes there will be misunderstandings as you can see from what happened at our school but that does not mean these talents are none existent. They may simply be buried for the time being and may need help getting to or are unclear at first but are nevertheless there. OUR JOB IS TO SEEK AND APPRECIATE THE GOD GIVEN TALENTS IN OTHERS even if it is at first not obvious. And Maybe Hallmark could put that last line on a graduation card. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 1, 2014 Listen Print Version Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Peter 4:7-10 One of the things that I always looked forward to as a teenager was the arrival of the New Yorker magazine. Now, I did not look forward to it because of its insightful articles. I didn’t look forward to it because of the famous writers who graced its pages. No, I looked forward to it because of its cartoons. I loved their cartoons because they had the same wry, irreverent attitude that I had. There was always something just slightly offbeat about them in a way that newspaper cartoons seldom had. My favorites among those cartoons were the ones about the end of the world. There would be a man with a long beard, dressed in white robe carrying a sign that had something to do with the end of the world. It would say The End is Near and then there would be a twist in the cartoon. This week I went back to the web to look at some off those and here are two of my favorites. The first is a man with then sign, The End is Near. And then right behind him is another man with a sign saying, The End. The other was the same man with the sign, The End is Near, but this time in front of him is a man dressed in a pinstriped suit saying, “Yes, but what are your goals?” My guess anyone who has ever been in business gets it. That one was my favorite not only because I sort of get it, but because I believe it is the perfect cartoon for Peter. Here’s why. Peter begins this part of his letter with a statement that the end is near. In a sense he is the man with the beard, the robe and perhaps the sign. Just so that we are all clear, when Peter speaks of the end being near he is not speaking about the world ending and everyone being transported off of planet earth. What he means is that soon, Jesus will return and set everything aright. Jesus will return and suddenly the world will look like heaven. We might assume then that Peter would tell his followers to quit their jobs, and get ready for the end. But he doesn’t. He gives them goals. First they are to love and love passionately. They are to love one another. They are to welcome one another. This means they are to welcome one another across all of the lines of wealth and class and status. They are to serve one another. This is an amazing goal…that someone who is a slave owner might serve a slave. The end is near…so let’s get busy. The question that confronts us is why would Peter do that? Why would Peter, believing that the end is near not run off into the wilderness like the Essenes, or called for absolute purity as did many Pharisees? Why would Peter do this? The best answer I can give is that Peter did so because he understood that in the interim between the moment of writing that letter and the moment Jesus arrived, that people needed hope. And that the followers of Jesus were those who were to give it. The Jesus’ followers were to be hope-bearers. I realize that may seem a bit strange. How could this small community, by loving, welcoming and serving one another be bearers of hope? The answer to this question is that by so doing they are showing the world around them, the Roman Empire, what was ahead. They were showing the world that the kind of community Jesus talked about could be a reality. And in that reality, people…people oppressed and abused; people dominated and cast out; people who had been held captive and had no hope of freedom…could see that a better world was on the horizon. Hope-bearers…that is what they were called to be. That was their goal. This is what you and I are called to be as well. We are to be hope bearers. We can see this in the very language Peter uses in this letter. He calls’ Jesus followers; he calls us a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people. And the only reason that God called a people and made them a holy nation was that they had a job to do; a mission to accomplish. That mission was to bless the world. That mission was to bring hope to a hurting world. And my friends, we live in a world that needs hope. In a world in which school girls are kidnapped, hope is needed. In a world in which a young man can randomly gun down people, hope is needed. In a world in which hatred is spewed across the internet causing young people to take their own lives, hope is needed. And we can give it. We can show the world what hope looks like when we love one another; when we welcome one another; when we serve one another. We can show the world that there is something better…there is something real…there is something wonderful to be had and as Jesus followers we have it. Andrew Solomon, an author and speaker, was saying that in the late 80s he headed to the Soviet Union to interview underground artists. He said that he expected to find people whose work was edgy and subversive. But that was not what he found. When he did not he asked the artist why not. The reply was that they were not trained to be artists but to be angels; angels giving back humanity to a people who had lost it. You and I have been trained to be bearers of hope. We have been trained to given back humanity to a world in which it is taken from people in far too many ways. The question is, will we work toward our goal? Will we work toward our goal of being those who offer hope through love, welcome and service? So here is my challenge for you on this day, to ask yourselves, How am I bearing hope to the hurt around me? How am I bearing hope to he world? The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Listen Print Version 1 Peter 2:1-13; Jeremiah 13 She was one of my frequent flyers; one of those people who would regularly come to my office looking for assistance. We will call her Linda, though that is not her actual name. She had grown up in a dysfunctional home in which she had been told that she was worthless and would never amount to much of anything. And Linda did her best to prove them true. She never graduated from high school and began having babies in her teens. When I met her she was barely twenty and had two children by two different men…neither of whom were around or could help support the children. Over the course of the years she had two more children, by two still different men, who were not around and could not help support the children. Linda was very nice and always appreciative of the assistance we gave her. But we could both sense that there was an inevitability about her; her upbringing, the choices she had made and the choices she continued to make that said this is where she would always be; always having to find a way to survive. There was no hope. This is where we find ourselves in our Old Testament story. This story is about a people whose continuing bad choices had so shaped their lives that there would be no escape. The prophet Jeremiah had been trying to help the people of Judah, Gods people, make better, more God-like choices. He wanted them to worship God, care for the poor and trust that even in difficult times God would come through. But time after time they refused to listen and made a series of ever poorer choices. Finally, it was too late. Their kingdom would be destroyed. In the face of their pleading for help Jeremiah uttered these famous words. “Can an Ethiopian change his skin? Can a leopard change its spots?” In other words, you all have become who you are and you cannot change. There is no hope. For many of us, this idea that we become who we are and that there is no possibility of being something else, of improving, of breaking past patterns is disturbing. We want to believe that there is an opportunity for change; that there is hope. If this is what you are hoping for…so to speak…then Peter has something for you this morning. This small section of Peter’s letter is all about how change is possible. And it is possible because of what God does, what we do and then what we do with God. First it is what God does. Peter opens this part of his letter by reminding the people of what they once were…or perhaps still were. They were those who had been consumed by malice, guile, insincerity, envy and slander. In a sense they were ordinary people whose lives mirrored the society around them. They had been raised in a particular way, in a particular society and there was little they could do about it. What Peter tells them though is that while they might not be able to do anything about it, God could…and God did. God began by taking them out of their spiritual location and placing them a new one. They were now “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.” What the Apostle implies is that by being part of a new Christ empowered society they were given new options. They could make new and different choices. Many of us understand this. Sometimes when we have changed relationships, jobs, or companies there opened before us opportunities to make new and better choices. For me this happened when I went to college. Prior to that moment I had always been David Judson’s little brother. And David was brilliant. He was always the best student in the schools he and I attended and he even graduated number one in a class of 1,200. My homeroom teacher, who had had my older brother, called me David for three years. Going to college allowed me the freedom to be me, and not a mini-David. This is what God does for us. God offers us a new beginning in a new place. What comes second is what we need to do. Peter tells his readers that, while being part of this new community in a new location is great, it is still up to individuals to take advantage of the possibilities that the new location offers. Peter writes, “Like newborn infants, you must long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that you may grow into salvation – if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” The implication here is that even though these people had been chosen by God to be part of this new community, it would do them no good unless they chose to learn and to participate in the process of spiritual renewal and formation. I believe this is one of those places where Christians have always struggled…we like being part of the community but we are not sure we want to spend the time to develop new and Christ-like habits. For me, this meant making the best of my new opportunity at college, which at first I did not do. After my first year, I dropped out. Fortunately a very wise man with whom I worked drew me aside one day and reminded me that, unlike many of the men where we worked, I could still take advantage of my choices and return to school; which I did. This is what Peter is reminding us of. We have been placed in this new community but we still need to take advantage of the choices before us The final piece of Peter’s hope filled change process is what we do with God. He writes, “Come to him, a living stone…and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, a royal priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” For Peter, the reality of change was that even as part of God’s new community, even as those who choose to learn and grow, we cannot in and of ourselves become wholly different. We have to allow God room to work in our lives. As people of the Enlightenment we have come to believe that we ought to have the will power to change. We ought to be able, given the correct information, to make the kinds of choices that enhance our lives. However, study after study has shown that without help, people usually do not take advantage of opportunities for changes in finances, relationships or most other areas of life. Change, significant change, is difficult. This is why, I believe, Peter tells us that we have a partner in our change process. God is present desiring to build us into new people. Even having gone back to and graduated from college, my life was not where I knew it ought to be. Finally I asked God for help…to take control…and in so doing allowed God to set me on a new course; one that has brought me here. Peter tells us that if we allow God room to work, God will indeed help us with a new beginning, just as God helped Peter…and me. The trajectory of Linda’s life had been and continued to be on a downward cycle. Trapped into living with her family that truly despised her, there seemed little hope. Then one day she showed up in my office and said she had moved out from her family and had decided to become a medical assistant. A friend had told her about how she could change her life. She was coming to me, to my church for help. Though she was taking out loans for tuition and some to live on she needed help getting started. She needed a bridge gift. Would we help her? I told her we would…though I have to admit I was dubious. Her past track record was not great. However we saw less and less of her. She would only drop by when she was in desperate need. Then one day she showed up in my office and handed me a picture. It was her graduation picture. I asked why she was giving it to me and she said because no one else cared. No one in her family would even come to her graduation. She had made it. She had a new trajectory. In a sense, Linda has become for me a living metaphor of change. God changes our location. We choose to take advantage of that change. We allow God, both directly and through others to help us change. Then change happens. A new trajectory becomes possible. My challenge for each of us then this week is to ask ourselves this, “How am I working with God in order to continue to change into the person God intends me to be.” Rev. Amy Morgan
May 18, 2014 Psalm 66:8-20, 1 Peter 3:13-22 I’m going to start with one of John Judson’s “survey says” questions. Raise your hand if you are, or ever have been, a teenager. So, it looks like most of us can empathize with the teenage experience. For those of us for whom this is a distant memory, I want you to take just a minute to put yourself back to your 14-year-old self. What did you long for at that age? What did you wonder about and question? What did you worry about or fear? One study found that mothers of 14-year-old girls are statistically the most unhappy people on the planet. And there’s a very good reason for that. Being 14 years old might just be the very definition of suffering. By the age of 14, teens are smack in the middle of the three P’s of adolescent misery: Puberty, Popularity, and Parents. Their bodies are undergoing all kinds of uncomfortable, unmanageable, and, frankly, embarrassing changes. They don’t know how to move in their bodies, how to hold themselves. Their discomfort is on display for all the world to see as their skin breaks out and voices crack. I remember feeling betrayed by my body as it grew and behaved in ways I couldn’t control. And all this happens at a time when popularity becomes the most important thing in our lives. As teens begin to develop their own identity, they do so in the context of their social relationships. They want to identify with a group of peers. And since human egocentrism is at its apex in middle adolescence, they want those peers to like them, to affirm their new identity. The really sad part is, no matter how “popular” a teen might be, popularity still contributes to suffering. Teens suffer because they are unpopular or don’t fit in with their peer group. But teens also suffer because they are popular, because they have a persona or reputation to maintain that is often unrealistic or simply too static for the dynamic process of identity formation. So where popularity is concerned, no one wins. Everyone is miserable. As much as parents try to love and nurture their children through this challenging time, it is a certainty that they will contribute to the suffering of adolescence. Teens push against boundaries and family identity and obligations as they grow into independent young adults. Meanwhile, parents are stewards of these unwilling captives and responsible for steering them toward healthy and life-giving choices. Friction, conflict, and sometimes outright hostility seem to be an inevitable part of any parent-teen relationship. And so it is at this tender age that we invite them into the Confirmation journey. As a church community, we offer to walk alongside them in their suffering. We share our faith stories with them, and we listen to their stories. We teach them, encourage, support and guide them, but we also “demand an accounting for the hope that is in them.” This hope looks different for each and every person, and the variety we hear in the Confirmands’ faith statements reflects that diversity. This year’s Confirmation class has truly wrestled with their faith. Some students struggled to reconcile religion and scientific inquiry while others were challenged by friends who expressed a lack of faith. They found God in the beauty of creation and the love of family and friends, through God-given abilities and even our very existence. They questioned who Jesus is and what his death and resurrection meant. They felt the Holy Spirit at work in them in times of struggle and doubt, in discernment of right and wrong, in moments of surprising courage and strength, and in insights and inspiration. Some of them are confident in the next steps of their faith journeys while others aren’t sure what’s next. We are truly blessed this year to have a Confirmation class that has expressed their faith with raw honesty. Their statements of faith are full of wonder and longing, challenge and hope. Maybe requiring them to write faith statements, demanding an accounting for the hope that is in them, only contributes to the suffering of adolescence, but I think there is a redeeming outcome. In making an accounting for their hope, in articulating their faith, our Confimands are able to claim a hope they can count on. Our text today from 1 Peter talks about accounting for our hope, but it also talks about counting on our hope. The end of the passage has this strange bit about Jesus making a proclamation to the “spirits in prison,” referencing those who were wiped out in the great flood. Noah and his family were saved (along with the animals, of course), which, the writer says, prefigures God’s saving grace in baptism. This passage has been challenging for scholars to interpret, and there are at least 4 theories about what exactly it means. However, the underlying takeaway is that the hope we have in Christ is more powerful than death or sin. There is nothing we can do, and there is no power in the universe, that can diminish or destroy God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. If Christ can bring the good news of the gospel to the most sinful and dead people, is there anyone Jesus cannot claim and make his own? This is good news for teens, and for their parents, and for all of us. When we are in the depths of our suffering - whether it be the suffering of adolescence or the suffering of parenting an adolescence, the suffering of illness or grief or shame, the suffering of what we have done or the suffering of what has been done to us – no matter what our suffering may be, we have hope in the God who has saved us through the waters of baptism. Baptism invites us to perceive our lives through a new lens, from a broader perspective. We endure suffering by connecting to a larger purpose and meaning, something greater than that which oppresses us. And so, in baptism, we’re invited to step out of that ego-centric 14-year-old we never quite grow out of in order to experience, through the lens of Jesus Christ, our intrinsic value to God, who, as one Confirmand wrote, “showed his undying love for us by sacrificing part of himself.” The young people who will be Confirmed this morning are confirming the vows made on their behalf by their parents in baptism. They are claiming for themselves a faith that, fragile and uncertain, confounding and mysterious as it may be, is a faith they can count on, a faith in a God of love, a faith full of hope and possibility. “Baptism,” our text tells us, “now saves you-- not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience.” One of the best parts about our faith, and something our Confirmands connect with powerfully, is the fact that what we do, how we live, matters deeply. This class articulated a desire to live compassionate, generous lives, to show kindness, and to love others. A good conscience is a clear indicator for them of faithful living. And our text this morning asks, “Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?” We all know that the truth is that we may suffer for doing good – for standing our ground against bullying or for setting boundaries as parents, for “rooting for the underdog,” as one Confirmand pointed out Jesus did, or for living according to our values, though they may be different from the surrounding culture. But even in this suffering we are blessed because, as this text points out, “it is better to suffer for doing good than it is to suffer for doing evil.” Every year, when the Confirmands read their faith statements to the Session, adults in this congregation say to me, “that must have been so difficult for them! I’m not sure I could write a faith statement myself.” Well, I can tell you, it is difficult for them. It takes a lot of courage, thought, time, and prayer to write a faith statement, especially when you are 14 or 15 years old. But what I hope our Confirmands have gained from accounting for the hope that is in them is a hope they can count on, in good times and bad, through joy and suffering. I also would challenge any adult in this congregation to follow their lead. As we tell our Confirmands again and again, our faith continues to evolve over time. We learn and experience new things, and this impacts what we believe. So those of us who have escaped adolescence might have a different perspective to share. I am challenging any and all of you to compose your own statement of faith, to account for the hope that is in you. I have added a page on the church website that will guide you through the process we used with the Confirmands, and I am happy to meet with you and work with you through the journey. As our Confirmands will tell you, it’s not easy. But I think you’ll find it is worth it. Because accounting for your hope will give you a hope you can count on. Amen. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Listen Print Version Psalm 23; 1 Peter 2:8-25 He was their darling for a few short moments. For all of those who believed that government had overstepped its bounds, had grown too large, or was simply trying to oppress the little guy, he was their darling. Clive Bundy, the Nevada rancher who had been running his cattle illegally on Federal land, our land, for years threatened to kill agents of the Bureau of Land Management if they tried to take his cattle off of land he did not own. His stand was supported by politicians and pundits across this nation. They trumpeted him as being as heroic as the founding fathers. He was their darling until he said these words, “And I’ve often wondered, are they (meaning African Americans) better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.” Suddenly many of those who had proclaimed him to be the paragon of freedom backed away as quickly as they could. And regardless of what they thought about his fight with the Bureau of Land Management they could not believe he could say such a thing…that slavery was not all that bad. It is in the same vein that many of us approach Peter’s words about slavery in our morning’s text. We wonder, how could Peter say such a thing? How could Peter tell slaves that they were to, “Accept the authority of their masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh. For it is a credit to you, if being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly.” This seems to make no sense on so many levels. It makes no sense because Jesus came to set people free, not make them slaves. It makes no sense because these words have been used to oppress people of color, of lower social status, of women and anyone else who was relatively powerless. And just as Bundy’s supporters were embarrassed by his remarks, the church is so embarrassed by these words that it does not include them in the list of its official readings, called the lectionary. If I had followed the official reading I would have skipped the verse that mentions slaves. So why did I include it? I did so because without it we cannot understand what Peter is trying to tell us. In order to understand my point we need to take a quip trip back to the Roman Empire and learn something about slavery in that context. Slavery was ubiquitous in the Roman Empire. Estimates are that in Rome itself, one out of every three persons, was a slave. In the larger Empire, slaves were essential to commerce and agriculture. Slavery was not racial. Slaves came in all races, nationalities and educational levels. Slaves could be teachers and doctors, or day laborers. Romans could even sell themselves into slavery in order to pay off debts. Sometimes owners were kind and benevolent. At other times though, owners could be brutal and cruel. But here is perhaps the most important things we need to remember about slavery. A slave who tried to run away or rebelled against his master, or anyone who advocated such resistance, faced the real possibility that they would be caught and crucified. And the Romans did so because one of the things they feared the most was a slave rebellion. And so anyone even hinting at a general liberation of the slaves was bound for trouble. With that in mind let’s return to Peter’s letter. Why would Peter say such a thing? He would do so because he was trying to build a basis for owning hope even in the midst of slavery. The early church attracted not only free people but slaves. They came looking for the same hope as those who were free. In this short section of the letter Peter gives the slaves, or if you will, anyone who is stuck in a situation in life from which they cannot escape, a word of hope. The first word of hope comes from a choice the slaves could make. They could choose to act as Christ acted in the face of his oppressors. They could choose righteousness. Righteousness here does not mean some sort of spiritual perfection. It means living in imitation of Jesus. Peter writes, “When Jesus was abused he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.” In other words, Jesus chose the way of non-violence. He chose the way of suffering rather than the way inflicting suffering. He chose the way of love rather than hate. This is the choice Peter asks the slaves to make. And he does so not only because it reflects the heart of God, but because in making this choice, slaves have the ability to demonstrate that their human owners are not really their masters. Jesus is their master and the slaves will choose to follow him. So, just as Jesus obeyed because he was following God’s way, the slaves are to obey not because they are slaves, but because they belong to Jesus. In this there is hope that even though they are owned by a human being, they belong to Christ. The second offer of hope to those who are slaves or who are stuck in a life situation from which they cannot extract themselves, is to know that they have not been abandoned. Any of us who have ever been stuck in a time and place of pain, not of our making, knows how easy it is to feel as if we are alone. Peter reminds the slaves that they are not alone. He writes, “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have been returned to the shepherd and the guardian of your souls.” In slavery, in our dark moments when escape is impossible, they and we are to remember that God has not left us on our own. God has not cast us aside. But instead God is powerfully present drawing us back to God’s own self and guarding our essential selves, our souls. In a sense Peter is calling them to reread the 23rd Psalm. For in that Psalm, the writer realizes that even in the most difficult of times, in the shadow of death, we do not have to fear evil, but can rest assured that God is preparing something better for us…even in the midst of our enemies. In some ways the gift of both the Psalm and Peter’s letter is that they both address reality. They address a world in which life is often hard and oppressive. They do not pretend that there is some magic prayer that will make everything better. Instead they make it clear that God is in the midst of tough times and that even in the worst of situations we can choose to be Christ followers confident in the presence of the Living God at our side. In this there is hope even in the darkest of moments. My challenge to you on this Sunday is this, to ask yourselves how I am choosing the way of Christ even in the most difficult of situations in order that I might own the hope that God offers. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Listen Printable Version Exodus 32:1; Peter 1:13-23 He was their last hope. They had seen him on television promising that regardless of their circumstances that God was ready to help them. All they had to do was send in their faith pledge along with a description of their prayer request, and he would pray over those cards and God would fulfill all of their hopes. And so the money came, by the thousands, tens of thousands and the millions. The letters arrived as well with heart rending stories of families losing homes, of children struggling with drug addiction, of jobs lost, of health failing. The people trusted him. After all he was a man of God. After all he was on television so God must have blessed him as well. After all he said that he had gotten blood poisoning from laying so many hours in prayer over their cards and letters. But then the rest of the story came out. Outside of his headquarters were dumpsters filled with the cards and letters people had sent. The money inside was gone, but the notes and pictures remained. Suddenly the trust was gone…and so was the hope. It too was lost. Hope can only be found where there is trust. If there is no trust then hope cannot grow. To have hope people must believe that there is someone or something out there that can be trusted to offer them a better future; that can offer them a solution to their dilemma; that can save them in their time of need. Without that kind of trust there is no fertile ground for hope. We can see this clearly in our Old Testament text. The Hebrew people had been enslaved for hundreds of years. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had set them free with acts of power and might. Moses had been God’s spokesperson. But now Moses was gone. He had gone up to the mountain and had not returned. Whatever trust they had had in either Moses or God was now gone. And along with it went their hope in a new and better life. Along with it went their hope that they would inherit the land of promise. Their response to this vanished trust was to create a new god; a new god in whom they could trust and thus renew their hope. The golden calf was their attempt to rediscover a hope that had been lost. The issue of trust lies at the heart of Peter’s letter to the church. Peter understood that trust was essential if Jesus’ followers were to claim the hope that was theirs. Thus he offers two reasons why Christians of all ages ought to be able to trust in God and thereby own the hope that is ours. First, God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter writes, “Through Jesus you have come to trust in God, who raised Jesus from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.” Peter’s argument goes something like this; by raising Jesus from the dead, God not only fulfilled God’s promise to Jesus, that he would be raised on the third day, but God also broke the powers of sin and death. In a sense this means that, as we discussed on Easter, there is a new and better future for us. There is hope that the powers of this world are no longer fully in charge. Instead the Kingdom of God is breaking into this world in a way that offers us new possibilities for life, love and community. We can own our hope because we can trust God. Second, we can trust God because we have seen the fruits of this new and better world in our own lives. The example that Peter offers is that because of faith in Jesus Christ, because of what Jesus and God have accomplished, they possess genuine, mutual love. “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth (meaning you trusted in God through Jesus Christ to change your life and change the world), so that you have mutual love, you love one another deeply from the heart.” Peter takes it for granted that the recipients of his letter have been changed for the better. Their being born anew by the work and love of God was not simply something that would get them into heaven, but was something that changed them now; that made them people whose lives demonstrated this new and better future. But it does not stop there Peter writes, it makes it possible for us to love others with the same love with which God in Christ loved us. He wants us to know that we have been made capable of forming this better community and better world. We can trust God, Peter tells us, because of what we see in ourselves…and therefore we can own our hope. The television preacher asked people to place their hope and trust in him to secure what they needed from God; to trust him so that they could have hope. Peter did not. Peter reminds us that our hope is in God, not in a human being, because God can always be trusted. We human beings…we will always fail one another. So our challenge is not to place our trust in a television preacher, or in me, or in the church or in any other person or institution. As one of my pastor friends always said to his new member classes, “Sooner or later we will disappoint you.” Our trust and hope is always in God, the one who never fails. My challenge to you then is to ask yourselves, “How am I trusting in God’s life changing presence, in such a way that I can own my hope?” |
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