Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 28. 2015 Listen Print Version Isaiah 66:18-23, Ephesians 2:11-22 They really disliked each other. In fact one might say they hated each other. The Jews and Romans had no use for the other and essentially wished that the other would simply go away. The Romans hated the Jews. They hated them because the Jews were atheists. I realize that this is a rather odd statement considering that the Jews worship the one, true, living God. But as far as the Romans were concerned anyone who did not worship the gods of Rome were atheists. The Romans also hated the Jews because the Jews did not fully participate in the cultural activities of the Empire. They did not worship at the temples. They did not offer sacrifices for the emperor. They did not engage in the festivals. The Romans hated the Jews because the Jews were the only religion that was exempted not only from worshipping the Roman gods, but was exempt from some associated taxes as well. This made them extremely unpopular and so there were anti-Jewish riots in many of the Roman cities such as Alexandria. And at one point they were so hated the all Jews were expelled from the city of Rome itself. Likewise, the Jews hated the Romans. The Jews hated the Romans because the Romans were pagans. The Romans, rather than worshipping the one, true, living God, worshipped a pantheon of gods and goddesses. In other words they were idol worshippers. The Jews hated the Romans because the Romans were their oppressors. Even though Jews could and did worship freely there was no doubt that the Romans were their overlords. The Romans demanded heavy taxes of all non-citizens and restricted the rights of non-citizens, which included most Jews. The Jews hated the Romans because Rome was a culturally imperialistic empire; meaning that Rome pushed its culture on all its conquered peoples. This included things such as Olympic athletic games where all the competitors were naked and Roman theatres with their plays, both of which took place in Jewish territories. The Jews then to protect themselves built legalistic walls. If the Torah said to do “X” the Jewish community would do “X2”. All of this might have been of little or no concern except for one small issue. That issue was that the Jewish people, the children of Abraham, were on a mission from God. Their mission was to bless the world, and as long as they remained behind the walls which they had created out of the fear of being absorbed into Roman society, they would never be able to fulfill their mission. It was into this situation that God intervened. God intervened by sending God’s own Son, to become incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth. This Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the messiah would live, die and be raised in order to break down the walls that had been constructed over a period of more than 500 years. This is how Paul puts it in his letter to the church at Ephesus. “In his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the wall that is the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances…” Let me be clear here. Jesus did not do away with the Torah, or laws such as the Ten Commandments. What Jesus did was to break down the barriers that those laws, commandments and ordinances set between Jews and Romans. And by so doing Jesus released into the world two great powers. These powers were peace and the Spirit. The first power which was released was that of peace. I want you to notice the central place that peace plays in this part of Paul’s letter. Paul tells us that Jesus is our peace; that hostility is gone; that Jesus has created one humanity, thus making peace; that hostility has been put to death; and that Jesus came and proclaimed peace to those who were far off and those who were near. And this peace is not a Roman peace that is enforced by the edge of a sword; meaning be peaceful or else. This is not a Jewish peace of being dominated; meaning we need to act peacefully or we will pay a price. The peace that Jesus Christ brought, that Jesus made possible is a peace that literally takes enemies and makes them friends; that takes strangers and makes them family; that allows people who had nothing in common to live in harmony with one another. This is peace that is closer to the Jewish concept of Shalom in which all things are well as if the Kingdom of God has come and renewed the face of the earth. Jesus Christ made possible reconciliation among enemies so that a lasting peace might be possible. The second power which was unleashed was that of the Spirit. Paul puts it this way. “So Jesus came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him, both of us (Jews and Romans) have access to one Spirit to the Father.” And this Spirit is not present to give us ecstatic experiences or to comfort us, but to make possible the reconciling work of peace. Again Paul, “So then you are no longer stranger and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints also members of the household of God…in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in him you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” In a sense what Paul is telling us is that not only are the walls down and human beings are capable of making peace, but that the Spirit of God empowers that reconciling work. The Spirit of God takes us from being strangers and makes us not only into one family, but into one temple of God. Humanity becomes the place where God dwells, binding us together. So what does this have to do with us, you might ask? Let me begin with a quote. “We have a statue of liberty on the east coast given to us by a foreign community. But we need a statue of unity built by all Americans, for all Americans -- in every American community. Today, our nation is not united. This country is in trouble because too many Americans prefer not to know each other. Not to care about each other. […] Our country cannot go on like this.” Anyone know that quotation? It was offered in 1967 by Sargent Shriver as he was addressing the issues of race in our nation. It would be easy to say Shriver’s statement still describes our nation today. Yet if we are honest with ourselves we will admit that things have changed. There is no longer “redlining” here in Detroit, meaning people of color were prohibited from living in certain neighborhoods. There are no longer schools which are segregated by law, like the elementary school in which I grew up. All persons may now marry, whether they are straight or gay. We have a black president. Things have changed. Yet if we are even more honest with ourselves we will admit that we are not there yet. We have not achieved a society that is united. We know this because in South Carolina there are those who continue to defend the Confederate Battle flag on multiple state flags. And by the way those battle flag symbols were only added in the early 1960s in the face of integration. As a Texan whose ancestors fought for the confederacy, I will tell you that those battle flags are not there to “honor” those who fought, but as a sign of latent racism. We know we are not there yet because there are politicians who are telling county clerks that they do not have to issue marriage licenses to gay couples even though the Supreme Court said that they did. We know we are not there yet because even if there is no legal segregation in our schools and neighborhoods there is de facto segregation which leads to inferior education for many of the poor in our nation. We know we are not there yet because we have politicians stating that all Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers. We know we are not there yet because of the Muslim woman who was denied a closed can of coke on an airplane because it could have been used as a weapon. We know we are not there yet because there are those whose entire careers are based on building walls and demonizing “the other.” But there is hope. There is hope because the Spirit empowers us as followers of Jesus Christ to tear down walls and build bridges. There is hope because we know that peace is possible because we have seen it happen. One of the most powerful signs of that hope came on the steps of the South Carolina legislature. Two groups were squaring off over the Confederate Battle Flag. One group was composed of tough looking white men covered in tattoos holding the Battle Flag. The other group was young black men and women, who were calmly expressing their reasons for seeing the flag as a sign of slavery and racism. It was a moment ripe for conflict. Yet in the end one of the black men reached out his hand in friendship and the white man took it. Even though they did not agree, peace had become possible. This is our task as the church. We are to be those, who while holding to our core beliefs, reach out in love and peace to those with whom we disagree. We do so in order to build bridges and help make this world a place in which all persons become one people and one nation, united in the love and grace of God. That then is my challenge to all of you, to ask yourselves, how am I building bridges in the places where I live, work and go to school? Rev. Dr. John Judson
June 21, 2015 Listen Print Version Genesis 12:1-3, Ephesians 1:1-14 The tryouts were over. All of us had done our best. We had run the bases, tried to prove that we could hit the ball, showed that we could catch the ball and that given a chance we would make a great addition to some Little League team. The coaches had taken copious notes and met in some smoke filled secret location to figure out who would take whom in the draft; some kids they probably fought over. Others like me it was “You sure you don’t want him.” But then the day arrived; the day of the draft when we would discover where we would end up. All of the boys gathered at the field and the coaches, one by one, called out the players who were on their teams. Excitedly we would make our way onto the field in small clumps. The coaches would then hand us our t-shirts and hats. Then in that moment, something magical happened. We were no longer just kids, we were ball players; ballplayers with dreams of glory and greatness. We were part of a team; part of something greater than ourselves. It was a wonderful day. How many of you have ever been there? It may not have been Little League, or even a sports team, but you wanted to be part of something greater than yourselves and you got drafted; you got selected and suddenly you were part of a team. Maybe it was a fraternity or sorority. Maybe it was an academic team. Maybe it was a job you had always wanted with a company you always wanted to work for. Or maybe you actually got drafted and joined the military. If you have had any of these experiences then you have some idea of what Paul’s opening sentence in Ephesians is all about. What Paul was trying to tell the Ephesians and is trying to tell us is that we have been drafted by God, made part of Team Jesus and have been given appropriate attire that mark us out as members of that team. I know this may seem a bit of an over reach, but bear with me. First God drafts us just like those coaches drafted my friends and me. Paul writes, “Just as God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love, he destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” What this means is that God chose us long before we knew that God existed. This is one of the most difficult concepts for those of us in the 21st century to wrap our heads around…that God drafts, or chooses us and we do not choose God. I think our image is more like that of high school athletes who are approached by a variety of colleges, each trying to make their case that the athlete should choose them. Then the athlete makes the choice. We think that we are free agents who are approached by a wide variety of belief systems and we choose God in Christ to follow. What Paul tells us though is that even before the foundation of the world God had already drafted us and that our destiny was to become followers of Jesus. OK, I know I sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars, “Luke this is your destiny”, but in some ways this is the image Paul offers. We are drafted by God in order to work for Team Jesus. The second part is that God calls us over and makes us members of the team, just like those coaches called us onto the field. This is what Paul is talking about when he states, “In Jesus we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses…and with all wisdom and insight he has made known the mystery of his will.” All of these words suggest movement; movement from being those who are not members of Team Jesus to those who are. Redemption means that our relationship with God has been rebuilt and restored. We are no longer those who keep God at arm’s length, but that we move toward God, just as my friends and I did when the coaches called our names on that Little League field. Forgiveness is also movement. It says that we are no longer trapped in our old lives, and in our old ways of doing things; that we are new people who are capable of playing our positions on the team. Finally there is the vision of wisdom; that once we had no idea what God was up to, but now in Jesus we have been given the insight and wisdom we need to be part of God’s work in the world. The final part is that God gives us a uniform just like the coaches handed us uniforms that marked us out as part of their team. Paul tells the Ephesians that they, and by extension we, “…were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit;” I have to say that some of my most vivid memories are of putting on the uniform before a game. It didn’t matter if it was Little League, high school football, college soccer…or even our church men’s basketball uniform, all were these moments when my purpose became clear…to give everything I had for the team. This image is the heart of the seal of the Spirit. A seal in the first century was a mark which showed that the thing or the person who was marked belonged to another. This mark gave believers their identity. Paul tells us that this identity is what the Holy Spirit does for us. It sets us apart as being part of Team Jesus; as being part of God’s community of faith. The question for us this morning then, is why have we been made part of this team? Why has God, out of God’s infinite love, made us part of this team? Some people say it’s so we can be better than others; holier than others; set apart from others. Some say that we are part of this team so that we can be saved and get to heaven; so we can be raptured out of here. Yet, if we allow the totality of scripture to speak to us, we will see that our role is to bless the world. When we became part of Team Jesus, we became part of the family of Abraham. And in being part of the family of Abraham we have become those through whom the world was to be blessed; and we are certainly living in a world that needs blessing. This past week alone we have witnessed nine people killed in a church in South Carolina and two block parties, one in Philadelphia and another right here in Detroit, where shooters killed and wounded innocent people. While we may be shocked by this we shouldn’t be. On an average day in America more than ninety people are murdered. We live in a world in which hatred, racism and fear rule our lives. What we are to be about then is to bless this hurting world. As members of Team Jesus we are to bless the world by refusing to be caught up in the violence and hatred that consumes so much of humanity. We are to be those who offer up the antidote of love, grace and forgiveness in order that the world can be healed. This is a task that only we can perform. The government can’t do it. Helping organizations cannot do it. Only we, the church, Team Jesus can pour forth this kind of love into the world. The challenge I want to give you for this week then, is to ask yourselves, “How am I blessing the world as a member of Team Jesus, where I live, work and go to school?” Bethany Peerbolte
June 14, 2014 Listen Print Version Psalm 2, Matthew 16: 13-20 Good morning, I am very excited to be here today and to get the chance to talk to you. For some of you who don’t know me I’m Bethany Peerbolte and I am the Director of Youth Ministries at this church. I also am a seminary student at Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit. On the Myer Briggs scale I’m an ENFP and I am happy its finally summer so I can get outside and disc golf again. Now, that is a really brief look at who I am. There is a lot more back story, a lot more underneath, but I want to talk about the search for who we are. The question of “who am I” is one we as humans wrestle with our whole lives. Phycologist have tried to nail down the answer by developing personality types like Myer Briggs. They say this person is extraverted and this one is introverted, this person is a thinker and that person is a feeler. When I became an inquirer for ministry I had to sit for a 6 hour psychological exam with a barrage of test. With multiple choice answers and sentence answers some written some spoken. The results were a 15 page report about who I am. I’ll admit it got some things right, kind of scary right at parts, but do those 15 pages contain a full picture of who I am? I don’t think so. We are obsessed with asking “who am I” in our culture. If you’re on Facebook I’ll wager a guess that you have taken at least one test to answer the question of “who you are.” My friends this week have taken tests titled “which Disney princess are you,” “which avenger are you,” “which 50’s song are you,” and “which type of puppy are you.” We get see the answers our friends get to these quizzes and we get to share our own answers. All these tests come with a nicely worded answer that no matter who you actually are it comes off as accurate and a huge compliment. I took a quiz to procrastinate writing this sermon, the title of the quiz was “which Starbucks Frappuccino are you.” I am the cinnamon roll Frappuccino which says “You’re very sweet and absolutely adored by everyone, you’re the boss when it comes to hugs and compliments, you’re very outgoing and make friends everywhere you go without even trying” Who wouldn’t want that to be the answer to who they are? It’s a glowing endorsement and all I had to do was answer 5 ridiculous questions. But if I’m completely honest with myself this has very little to say about who I actually am… except that I procrastinate. Another way we try to figure out who we are or who someone else is is by asking what they do for a living. Graduates, I apologize in advance for the 8000 times you will be asked this summer “what are you going to do after high school.” This question is an attempt to get a “who are you” answer. The reason this question comes up is because we think we can figure out the type of person you are by what you will do as a job. Our society first labels us as our job, I’m guilty of doing it 2 minutes ago when I introduced myself. In reality who we are does not stop at what we do for a living, it’s not even our hobbies. Graduates, this can be a hard time because for years you have been wrestlers, actors, singers, basketball players. And while you may still do these things they will become less of who you are as an adult. Our faith gets a little closer to who we are but even that can be vague. A true “who am I” question gets asked at 3am when there is something looming with the sunrise and you have to decide how to respond in 5 hours, 4 hours, 3 hours. “Who are you” gets answered in a split second decision in a crisis or when no one is looking. Are you the type of person who will pick up that trash, are you the type of person who will stop to help someone with a flat tire, are you the type of person who will actually read everything the professor assigns or just skim it and go find the spark notes? To make things worse the answer to who you are is a moving target. If I asked the 5 year old you “who are you” I would get a different answer than if I asked the teenage you, and still another answer if I asked you now. I may even get a different answer next week. With how much we change in a lifetime it can be hard to really even know who we are at any given moment. A crisis of self-identity can come at any time, and when we have to rebuild our answer to who we are seeking other’s opinions is valuable input. We find friends and family who know us well, who can remind us of who we are. Faith communities provide a place to seek advice from likeminded people, some who have even suffered the same identity shaking crises. We seek these people out rather than strangers because we know them, we may not know who we are at the moment but we do know them. We have seen them face challenges, we know their advice is good, and we know how they will respond to us. Knowing them helps us remember who we are. What about God, how often do we check in to see who God says we are? We often forget this option or use it as a last ditch effort to regain identity. It’s so much easier to call someone than it is to slow down and listen for God. Maybe part of our apprehension is that we aren’t sure we know who God is. As Christians we are supposed to use Jesus as the model for who God is. SO the question boils down to who is Jesus? And do we know him well enough to seek him out and trust his advice. When I went off to college I thought I knew who Jesus was. I had sat in a pew most Sundays of my life, done VBS every summer, Jesus was the ultimate best friend. Jesus is the good guy. But when I got to MSU my image Jesus was challenged. I can remember the moment I asked myself who is Jesus…really? At any given time of day the Quad at Michigan State is crowded with students. The buildings around the spider web of sidewalks contain the introductory classes. When I went to my first class there was a man in the middle of the sidewalks on a box with a bullhorn. Now, I grew up in a small town. The largest event we had was a craft show, so we did not attract many sidewalk preachers. This was the first one I had met, and as I walked by him I heard some familiar words. Names like Jesus, scriptures I recognized, but intermingled were words like hell and damnation. They were linked to Jesus in a way that confused me. The Jesus this man was yelling about was not the Jesus I had met at VBS. How could two people with the same scriptures come to such different conclusions about who Jesus was? Did I even know Jesus? Had I missed something? I, luckily, had already found a wonderful church just off of campus and was pleased to find many other students had issues with the Jesus the sidewalk preacher was talking about. I was relieved to hear that who I thought Jesus was, the good guy, was still an option, but the question had been raised. Who is Jesus? In The NT reading today we find Jesus even asking this question who am I. Jesus has taken his disciples far away from the crowds to decompress. While he’s there he decides to check in and see who people are saying he is. He asks who do people say I am? The disciples give Jesus an array of answers. The people say you are John the Baptist, people say you are Elijah others Jeremiah or still others one of the prophets. Essentially the people have picked up that Jesus is one of the great teachers possibly even Elijah who is supposed to come and get people ready for the messiah, but they have missed who Jesus really is. Have you ever been in a crowded room and someone yells out your name and you turn excited to see a friend and they aren’t calling for you, then you get that pit of your stomach. I sense Jesus has a pit in his stomach. Jesus is called all these other people but is not recognized for who he actually is. But hope is not lost! Those people are just in the crowd here Jesus has his disciples, his closest friends who have heard every word and shared bread with him, who traveled on the road with him, surely they know who he is. So he asks, but what about you! Who do you say I am……..crickets. No one will make eye contact with Jesus, disciples are suddenly really interested in the bread on their plate. If they had iPhones there would have been a sudden alert they HAD to look at. Then Peter breaks the silence, he says “you are the messiah the son of the living God.” Yeah Peter! Jesus must have been relieved. For the moment Peter has done something none of the other disciples were willing to do. I say for the moment because this is Peter remember this is the same guy who walked on water and then doubted Jesus while standing on the top of a wave. SO he’s still got some work to do. But for the moment Peter gets it. How? With the help of God Jesus points out that Peter could not have come to this understanding on his own. For someone to know who Jesus is takes more than flesh and blood, it is a knowing beyond the eyes and ears and brain. It take the help of God to really know Jesus. Peter didn’t phone a friend for the answer or consult a personality test. He slowed down and listened to God and discovered an understanding of who Jesus is. The blessing that comes next shows us just how important it is to know who Jesus is, because by knowing Jesus Peter gets to see who he is himself. Jesus says that the church will be built around Peter and his understanding. Peter is now a leader, a foundation, a rock! Figuring out who Jesus is will shape who Peter is. Peter shows us where our foundation of self should begin, with a reflection on who Jesus is. Will we get is wrong? YES, Peter gets is wrong in the very next verse but the blessing of becoming a leader remains. So our first step to shaping who we are should begin with a search of who Jesus is. That church that helped me when I met my first sidewalk preacher was also the church that sent me on my first mission trip to Mexico. There the answer of who Jesus is took shape for me. Jesus is the one who gives piggy back rides even when your shoulders are burnt right where the kids are holding on. Jesus is the one who gets another load of supplies even though you are sore from head to foot. Jesus is the one who gives water to another even when you are thirsty yourself. Who Jesus is became interwoven with who we were and the work we were doing. It was an understanding of who Jesus is that inspired us to spend our spring break in Mexico, and not the Cancun Mexico our friends went to. The words of the sidewalk preacher made me embarrassed to be a Christian, but the work in Mexico made me excited to be a Christian. That’s when I began to answer who is Jesus and what does that mean for who I am. This is not to say a fellow Christian won’t come up with a different answer to who Jesus is. The sidewalk preacher and I have very different views of who Jesus is, even though we have the same scripture to learn from. Jesus warns of these conflicting images at the end of or passage today. Right after praising and blessing Peter for saying Jesus if the Messiah Jesus warns the disciples not to go around telling other people he is the Messiah. I always get frustrated when Jesus says this. Isn’t that the point Jesus? To tell other people? To be proud of who Jesus is and let the world know Jesus is Messiah. Sure yes, but! We heard a little bit of who people thought the Messiah would be in the OT reading today. If you were paying attention I hope you cringed a little. This psalm is an image of who people though the messiah would be, a warrior, fighter, and vindicator! The Messiah would vanquish Israel’s foes and raise God’s people above all others. If the disciples had gone out happily saying Jesus is the messiah many people would automatically associate Jesus with this expected warrior. That was NOT who Jesus was and Jesus did not want that expectation clouding his message. Words are a great tool but people mistake words to mean things we don’t intend. We have all sent an email or text that was read the wrong way and we ended up in trouble. SO how do we take our understanding of who Jesus is and show him to others. If words can be confused how do we ensure the message is clear? That is when our answer to who we are becomes most meaningful. Because who we are says an enormous amount about who Jesus is. If we take who Jesus is and allow it to shape who we are we can tell anyone about Jesus regardless of language or distance. This is when John usually gives a challenge but since I work with teens I give them homework. Seek God’s help in figuring out who Jesus is this week. I read a quote from a monk that said “spend 20 minutes a day with God. Except if you’re busy. If you’re busy spend an hour with God. Ask this week who is Jesus then take that understanding and make it the foundation for who you are in the world. May you go from here seeking a deeper understanding of who Jesus is and may that understanding lead to the blessing of knowing who you are yourself. Rev. Hank Borchardt
June 7, 2015 Listen Print Version Deuteronomy 10:12-22, Galatians 3:23-29 Where were you in the summer of 1967? If you were here you probably remember tanks in the Detroit city streets. Fires, burning in buildings. We knew that Detroit would never be the same. If you were an adult living here in 1967, what did you feel? Fear? Anger, anxiety. What? If you were watching it on TV perhaps the feeling was GLAD IT DID NOT HAPPEN HERE! The riots captured our attention from across the lake. But Lake Michigan isolated those of us in Wisconsin from the real horror of it all. I was turning 30 in 67, pastor of a small Presbyterian church south of Milwaukee, incidentally chair of the city human rights commission, and we were looking at steps we might take to avoid such an occurrence in our town, The riots also attracted the attention of the federal government, where president Lyndon Johnson did two things: first he called out the 82nd Airborne to aid the city police department and National Guard in maintaining order, and second he appointed a commission to look into the riots charged with the task of determining what happened (that was the easy part), why it happened and what must be done so as not to have it happen again (that was the hard part). The commission was chaired by Illinois governor Otto Kirner. The Kirner commission reported several months early due to the seriousness of the situation. The Commission asked three questions:
Referring to the reports of earlier riot commissions for the 1919 riots in Chicago and the Harlem riot in 1943, Dr. Kenneth B. Clark said: I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission—it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland—with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction. That is old history, of course, but recent events in 2015 indicate that the problem is still with us. Events in St. Louis, Cleveland and Baltimore indicate that nothing much has changed. A month or so ago a TV reporter interviewed a young African American man who had participated in the riot and asked what it was all about. The man answered that it wasn’t the death of the person with a broken back from being placed in a police vehicle although that was the spark that set fire to the barn. It was the result of a number of years of pent-up grievances presented to city government with no response. Racial violence seemed to be their only way of communicating and venting their grievances. Nothing new! That describes the situation. So, what are we at First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham going to do about it? Scripture and our faith demand that we do something. After all, we say we are Everybody’s Church and our little blurb every Sunday says we stand for mission INCLUSION and community. After all St. Paul says there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Greek (aaaaaaaand we might add gay nor straight, black nor white) we are all one in Christ Jesus This is what we say we believe so how then do we make that a reality for the metro area in which we live? When Dr. Judson concludes a sermon he ends it with a challenge. I offer two. First, what can as individual persons do and second what can we do as a church around a thousand people strong? Here is an example of what one person can do. In the 1960s there was a Catholic priest in Milwaukee named Father Groppi. He was serving St Boniface church on the east side of Milwaukee in 1967. He challenged the city to 100 nights of marches for an open housing ordinance in the city. (Open housing legislation prohibits discrimination in the sale, purchase or leasing of residential property.) At that point there was no such law on the Milwaukee books and it was one of the racial minority complaints. Passing such a law wouldn’t completely solve the problem but it would be something tangible and symbolic. The marches were huge. Black and white together. The Police, on their Harleys, were waiting for someone to step out of line so they could react, including watching the white lines at cross-walks. If anyone stepped outside of them you received a twenty dollar ticket. But it never happened because the people didn’t want conflict, they wanted change. As we crossed next to the corner bar (there are very many of them) the marchers chanted NO MORE SCHLITZ. Drink Budweiser, it is brewed in St. Louis. This was as disruptive as it got under Father Groppi’s leadership. The ordinance was passed and peace reigned. No violence in Milwaukee in 67. This was the impact one person could have. What can a church do? Perhaps it is time for another foray back into the city. How about we start or participate in an interracial city think tank where people gather to discuss Detroit’s challenges that affect us all?? Ecumenical Theological seminary could be the place. I have spoken with Dr. Murray the president and he welcomes the idea of an ecumenical think tank connected with the seminary in the old First Presbyterian Church of Detroit, just one idea among many. Or, maybe we could invite mayor Duggan to an after worship discussion in the fireside room asking how we can help him help the city. Lots of ideas. Just pick a few. Detroit needs you Otto Kirner. Well, Otto isn’t here, but we are! What will we do? Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 31, 2015 Listen Print Version Psalm 103:1-18, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 I want to begin with three quotes from the same individual. Take a moment, listen and then let me know who said them. “Winning is not everything, but wanting to win is.” “If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?” “Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.” So who said these pithy statements? Yes, you are correct, it was Vince Lombardi, legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers. What I have found over the years is that there are two reactions to these statements. The first is my reaction. I want to go around and chest-bump someone. Booyah…let’s get out there and win! The other reaction is people rolling their eyes and thinking, there’s too much emphasis on winning. We need to be happy with just playing. Right, which works well until, say the Olympics, when a member of our nation is competing; or when they win and our national flag is raised and the anthem played. Then at least for those of us who are US citizens, we are quietly chanting, “USA, USA.” I would argue that for most of us there are moments when winning matters. The Corinthians would have understood this perfectly, for they were about winning; about coming out on top. Just so we are clear about this we need a quick history lesson…please no nodding off. The Corinth we are looking at this morning was not the first city of Corinth. The first and ancient city of Corinth had been utterly destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC when it refused to surrender during the Roman invasion. One hundred years later, Julius Caesar founded a new Corinth first because its location as a trading center was too valuable to lose and second because it was a place where decommissioned soldiers could go. What this meant was that Corinth was a “new world” if you will. It was a place where fortunes could be made or lost. It was a place where an ordinary person, with grit and determination could become wealthy. It was a place where winners were rewarded. And because of this it became the second wealthiest city in the Empire. Winning was indeed not everything, it was the only thing in Corinth…booyah. This would not have been a problem for the Apostle Paul, except for one small detail; the Corinthians brought this same attitude into the church. Everyone was out to win, to prove that they were better than everyone else in the church; that they were top dog. This winning took several different forms. First, it became a competition to see who was best based on who they followed. Some followed Peter, others Paul, and others a guy named Apollos. Each group declared themselves the winners because they knew that they were better than everyone else. Next it came to wealth. Those who had wealth would flaunt it in front of the poor in the church, essentially declaring that they, the wealthy, had won. They were better. Finally they competed over who had the best and most important spiritual gifts. Though there were a multiplicity of spiritual gifts, each of which was important, people argued that theirs was the best; especially those who spoke in tongues. They knew that they were the winners. And so as you can imagine, this sense of winning is everything, was slowly but surely destroying the church. It was tearing it apart. This then is the situation that Paul is addressing with this thirteenth chapter of his letter. This portion of this letter is neither a wonderful treatise on soft furry kitten love, nor is it a set of lyrics for a First Century love song. This is Paul’s reminder to the Corinthians that the ground of being for the Christian community is not winning, that it is love. He begins by reminding them that without love all of their other gifts are meaningless. It doesn’t matter if one can speak in tongues, prophecy, have great Biblical knowledge and incredible with…without love those are of no use. He then describes what this love looks like. It is patient, kind, humble and other centered. It celebrates the victories of others and the truth even when it hurts. It is willing to suffer anything for the other. Paul then gets all over them for acting like children who are always out to win, rather than mature adults who know how to love. And Paul does this because he gets it that this is how God works. God is the one who shows steadfast love. God is the one who forgives. God is the one who is self-giving. God is the one who sent God’s only Son to save the world. The best gift then; the only spiritual gift that mattered for Paul then, was love, a gift that was given to every believer by Jesus Christ. Love wasn’t everything. It was the only thing. I realize that there are moments when making love the only thing is difficult because we live in such a winner take all world. When we are in competition in business to build the best and sell the most. When we are in competition with others for jobs and promotions. When we are in competition to be at the top of the class. When we are in competition on the athletic fields. Yet it is still possible to be rooted and grounded in love. It is possible to let love be real in our lives. And I know this is possible because I have seen it in Ernest and Sarah Krug, to whom we say goodbye this morning. Now, Ernest and Sarah, what I am about to say is not intended to give you the big head…to prove that you have won the, let’s show how people to love contest. I say this simply because you have shown us what love looks like. You have been patient and kind. You haven’t ever pushed your own agenda but have supported that of others. You have given countless hours at hospitals and hospices, in meetings and worship, in private conversations and larger groups. You two have been a model for us that shows you can be successful in life and at the same time allowed love to be your aim. Thank you for being a model for the rest of us. At the same time I want to thank all of you for showing what love looks like. On this, my sixth anniversary with you, I have found you to be a congregation in which love lives. I say this because there are not small factions vying for power. There are no individuals who have to have their own way. And conversely, there are so many of you who share your time, energy and gifts with others in acts of love and compassion. You are a congregation that shows me what love looks like. My challenge for you then this week is this, to ask yourselves, “How am I letting love guide all that I say and all that I do? How am I letting love be everything?” Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 24, 2015 Listen Print Version Genesis 1:1-8, Acts 2:1-21, 37-42 I want to begin this morning with a snippet of a song from a little known childr4en’s show called Sesame Street. I do so because, well because it sets the table for our text. Here it is. “This is the very beginning. This is the once upon a time. Somebody’s starting something. These are the opening lines. Seymour is waking up. He’s wearing stripped pajamas. He’s jumping out of bed, all smiles and yells, “This is the beginning.” Yes, every story has a beginning, middle and an end. And when it’s over we can go back and tell it all again.” Yes every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. So the question this morning is where do we find our Pentecost story? Is it a beginning, a middle or an end? In order to get your input we will take a poll. All for beginning? All for middle? All for an end? Great…so who is right? Which is it? The answer is…it is all of those things; a beginning, a middle and an end. So you are all correct. Pentecost is a beginning. It is the beginning of the church, of the called and sent out Jesus people. Though the church is the expansion of the children of Abraham, Pentecost is the founding of a new kind of community. Pentecost is an ending. It is the ending of Jesus’ physical ministry and the ending of a community in which only those who were Jewish were welcome. Each of those ways of seeing Pentecost, as a beginning and an ending, are fairly well known and accepted. What I want to do though is to talk about Pentecost as the middle; as the middle of the entire Biblical story. But before we look at that, a brief recap. For those of you who are here on a regular basis you have heard me talk about the fact that the Bible is a single story with a beginning, a middle and an end. What is fascinating about that idea is that the Spirit is present at each of those three moments. It is present at the beginning when the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of creation. In other words the Spirit was a co-creator with God. The Spirit is at the end of the scripture in the book of Revelation when in Chapter 22 we read, “The Spirit and the Bride (meaning the church) say, “Come.”” This is the call to Jesus to recreate the world. Finally, the Spirit is at the middle. I realize that for many of us, when we think of the middle of the scriptures what we think of is Jesus. There is the Old Testament, filled with messianic predictions and the servant songs of Isaiah, all leading up to Jesus. Then there is the story of the church in Acts, filled with Peter, Paul and their adventures, leading away from Jesus. Therefore, we see Jesus as the pivot upon which the entire story moves. Yet, what I want to offer you today is that perhaps we ought to see Pentecost, the arrival of the Spirit to the disciples, as the true middle of the book…and here’s why and it has to do with potential energy. Now, being in a room full of engineers I ought to walk carefully when using terms of physics, however I will do my best to use terms we can all understand…and then all of you engineers can tell me later how I did not get it right. But for now, just go with me. So what is potential energy? It is the energy that children have when they have been cooped up too long. It is energy that is stored in a stretched spring, ready to be released. It is the energy that has yet to be set free to become kinetic energy. What I mean by all of this is that the work of Jesus on the cross, and the life transforming power of this resurrection, were stored as potential spiritual energy. We can see this in the story that Amy talked about last week. Jesus had died for the sins of the world. Jesus had been raised and the power of death had been broken. Yet, nothing had really changed. The disciples were the same old guys and gals they had always been. They were afraid. They had gone back to their old ways of life. But then came Pentecost. Then came the Spirit and the Spirit took that potential energy of what God had created through the death and resurrection of Jesus and unleashed it on the unsuspecting disciples. The result of which is that the disciples are shot out of that upper room and out into the melee of the Jewish festival of Pentecost. And this Spirit energy did not stop there. It was poured out into the lives of thousands of people in the streets. And that the Spirit did not stop there. It sent men and women out into the Roman world telling people all about Jesus. It sent men and women like Paul and Barnabas out into harm’s way to establish churches and change lives. The gift of the Spirit for us is that unlike the energy of a spring which quickly diminishes, or of children who finally get tired and fall asleep, the energy of the Spirit continues unabated. This is why the church in Africa, Asia and the Americas is growing exponentially. This is why we had such marvelous confirmation statements last week. This is why we are here. We are here because the Spirit drew us here. We are here because the Spirit changed our hearts. We are here because the power unleashed on Pentecost is still at work in the world. What that means for us is that as members of the body of Christ we are not simply members of a religious organization. We are men, women and children whose lives have been touched by the very power of the Holy Spirit. We are Pentecost people. The challenge then is for us to unleash this power in our daily lives; unleash it in such a way that it touches the lives of others, through what we do and what we say. The challenge then for this Pentecost week is to ask whether we will allow this Spirit power to get bottled up as potential spiritual energy, or whether we will allow it to push us out into a hurting world in order to make a difference for God; to make a difference for Jesus Christ. My question to you this week then is this, “How am I allowing the Spirit of God to not only help to transform this world, but to tell others about this amazing energy in Jesus that can be theirs as well. Rev. Amy Morgan
May 17, 2015 Listen Print Version Psalm 1, John 21:1-19 “I’m just blessed – I can’t explain it right now.” Those were the words of Malcolm Butler, cornerback for the New England Patriots after his win-clinching interception in this year’s Super Bowl. In interviews after the big game, Butler declared his belief in God, saying he had been praying all week and had a vision that he would make a big play. This miraculous catch for a man who just a few years ago was working in a fast food restaurant was not just a game-changer, but a life-changer. The rookie defensive player is now a sports-world superstar, gracing the cover of magazines, gobbling up endorsements, negotiating for a higher salary. He’s suddenly got more fame and fortune than he can handle, admitting to one news source that “being in the spotlight does take a toll on you.” But doesn’t this just affirm the words of the very first Psalm, “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked…in all that they do, they prosper…the LORD watches over the way of the righteous.” Through prayer and faithfulness, Malcolm Butler was blessed with a miraculous catch. Just like those disciples. They followed Jesus and did what they were supposed to do, and here at the end of the gospel of John, they, too, are blessed with a miraculous catch…of fish, of course. Our church has been blessed, too, with a kind of miraculous catch. Today as we confirm 11 young people into the membership of our church, we are blessed with their gifts and energy and faith and joy. Just like Malcolm Butler, and just like those disciples, we must be doing something right. Because that’s how Christianity works, right? You do the right thing – you believe in Jesus, you trust in him – and good things happen to you – like a miraculous catch. This gospel of prosperity fills football stadiums with believers and is broadcast internationally. But this isn’t the gospel shared by our Confirmation students in their faith statements. They talked about Christianity as service to others and being together in community. They spoke of Christianity as a personal identity, a way of love and hope, and a path to forgiveness, grace, and affirmation. The Confirmands also described their faith as a means of breaking down the wall between God and humankind, as a source of strength and support in challenging times, and lens for seeing our challenges as opportunities for God to make us better people and the world a better place. Not one of them mentioned being good so that God would bless them. And that’s why I know God is doing something right. Because our culture would tell these young people, and all of us, that we must pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, that “God helps those who help themselves,” that faith is between you and God, that God blesses us for our efforts, and these young people have resisted those ideas. They’ve heard a different message about Christianity. And I think they got it right. Because the disciples were not blessed with a miraculous catch because they followed Jesus and did what they were supposed to do. In fact, they were acting like total slackers. Let’s start with Peter, the ringleader, the one who is supposed to be the rock upon which Christ will build his church. He is the one who, after Jesus was arrested, denied knowing him three times. And is he on his knees, asking for forgiveness? Is he rejoicing in the resurrection? Leading the disciples out to spread the good news? Doing good works in the name of Jesus? No, Peter decides to go fishing. He doesn’t even invite the others to come. He just says, “I’m going fishing. I’m going right back to where I came from. I’m going to pretend nothing has happened and nothing has changed.” And the rest of the disciples follow along. They listen to Peter’s terrible suggestion and fish all night long and don’t catch a thing. Their faith is completely bankrupt. And this is right after the resurrection, people! What is going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on – the disciples are dumbfounded, and probably a little terrified. They have, for the most part, been pretty awful disciples. Not a one of them understands what’s been going on from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. None of them did a great job of standing by Jesus through his crucifixion. And they all find the resurrection entirely incomprehensible. These are not the “righteous” ones blessed by God in the first Psalm. These are men who are completely lost and overwhelmed and have no idea what to do next. And after their fruitless all-night fishing adventure, we can’t even give the disciples credit for listening to Jesus and casting their net on the other side of the boat. Because they had no idea that the man whose instructions they were following was Jesus. As far as they are concerned, Jesus could have been an expert fisherman or just some guy on the shore trying to mess with them after a long night. “Throw your net over there! Now throw it over there! Now haul it in the boat and wrap yourselves up in it!” They didn’t know who he is. They weren’t trying to follow Jesus and do the right thing. They were humoring this guy. Why not? They’ve been out fishing ALL NIGHT LONG. There are no more fish on one side of the boat than on the other. But if this stranger on the beach wants to watch them throw their net out one more time, fine. After their net is filled with fish, one of the disciples recognizes Jesus, and one of the disciples responds by jumping out of the boat and swimming to him. If you’re doing the math, that’s two out of seven who are in any way faithful to Jesus. But they all get to split 153 fish. And if this grace wasn’t enough, Jesus then takes Peter aside and asks him three times if he loves him. Now, this may not seem like grace, but think about it. Peter denied Jesus three times after his arrest. That would leave a person with a fair burden of guilt to carry around, especially if that person died shortly after the betrayal. But imagine if that person then came back to life, and you actually had to face up to them. Now that’s a whole other level of guilt. But here on the beach, Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to bring his dark secret out into the open and transform his denial into a declaration of love. This is even better than forgiveness. Peter doesn’t say, “I’m sorry,” and Jesus says, “it’s okay, no big deal.” Jesus gives Peter the chance to say what he’s wanted to say since he heard the cock crow on that fateful morning. He gets to say, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” That is grace. Our Confirmands expressed experiences of this grace, too. They shared how they see God transforming hurtful behaviors in themselves and others. They have felt God’s love through their family and Covenant Partners and classmates on this Confirmation journey. They have articulated a theology of God’s activity in Jesus Christ making a way for sinful humanity to say, “I love you, God, more than anything.” And in those words of love is a commitment to love and care for others. “Feed my sheep,” says Jesus, the Good Shepherd, to Peter. Our Confirmation class fed people experiencing homelessness in Chicago, taught Sunday school for younger children, and shared their faith with their friends. They have loved and cared for pets, and seen in that experience a metaphor for God’s love for humanity. They have cared for the earth and befriended those in need of a friend. They are feeding God’s sheep, physically and spiritually. They are those ones the first Psalm refers to when it says that “They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.” They are producing fruit. They are feeding sheep. At the end of this story, Jesus predicts that Peter will suffer and die to glorify God. For those who would believe that Christianity is about being good and getting blessed for it, this is bad news. Christianity, at its core, is dangerous. It recognizes a higher authority than any earthly authority, which tends to make earthly authorities uneasy. It challenges comfortable systems of oppression. It doesn’t conform to social norms of acquisition, achievement, and appearance. Who in their right mind would want to join this movement? You don’t get credit for being good, and bad things happen to you anyway. Sounds like a party. And here we have eleven 8th and 9th graders ready to sign up for this. Why? Because they are no strangers to suffering. They have experienced divorce and death, betrayal and broken hearts. They have been let down and disappointed, and they’ve messed up and fallen down. They have even stood out in the freezing cold waiting for a bus, and they have gotten totally lost on rerouted L trains. And so they know that God is with them in their suffering, just as Jesus was with the clueless disciples, standing on the beach, guiding and directing them, even before they knew it. They know that suffering is part of life, but that it doesn’t have to define your life. A life defined by grace and love and service is a life that is blessed, no matter what we do, no matter what happens to us. The last thing Jesus says to Peter in this story is “follow me.” We know Peter can’t physically follow him much longer as Jesus ascends into heaven shortly after this episode. Jesus’ invitation is to follow his way, his ministry, his movement. It’s an invitation to suffering and sacrifice, and an invitation to miraculous catches and life out of death. It’s an invitation to love and service and grace and peace. I am grateful today for a miraculous catch, for a group of young people willing to follow the way of God’s love in Jesus Christ. We are blessed, not because of our goodness or righteousness, but because of God’s grace. We’re just blessed. Amen. Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 10, 2015 Listen Print Version Psalm 22:25-31, John 20:19-23 The memo read: “Dear Mr. President, I think that it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter. I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office but have not urged it since the account of the pressure you have been under. It, however, has such a bearing on our present foreign relations and has such an important effect upon all my thinking in this field that I think you ought to know about it without much further delay. Faithfully yours, Henry E. Stinson, Secretary of War.” So what was this important matter? It was the atomic bomb. Harry Truman had been Vice-President for 82 days when President Roosevelt died. The two had only met privately twice and nothing of substance was discussed. Then in the midst of the tragedy of Roosevelt’s death and the Second World War, raging around the globe, Truman was told that he and his nation now wielded the most powerful weapon ever made; the atomic bomb. And, more importantly, it would be up to Truman alone to decide whether or not to use it. He had to decide if it was a power for good or for evil. In some ways this is always the way it is with power. People have to examine the power they have been given and make decisions as to its use. Will they use it for good or for evil? Parents have power. That power can be used for the good by giving order and structure to the lives of children in hopes that their children will ultimately choose a right path. That same power can also be used to diminish children, through abuse and fear. Supervisors or business owners have power. They can use that power to create a safe, nurturing environment in which people are encouraged and empowered to do their best; to be creative and caring. Supervisors or bosses can also use that power in the opposite manner, terrorizing their employees, causing them to live in fear. Politicians have power. They can use it to faithfully serve those who elected them, as well as those who did not. Or they can choose to use that power to enrich themselves and their families. Power in and of itself is not evil. Power is simply a tool. My purpose in offering up these images this morning is to set the stage for what happens in our Jesus story; and that is the giving of power to the disciples. I realize that this may not be all that obvious in the story itself. If, however, we look at this story in the overall context of the Gospel, it becomes apparent. Here is how it works. First God has all the power. We know this because the opening of the Gospel of John draws us back to the creation account with the words, in the beginning. Second God share this power with Jesus. In the Gospel we hear things such as whatever the Father has, has been given to the Son, and even as the Father is working, the son is working. They share power. Now in the upper room Jesus is giving that same power to the disciples. This is evident when Jesus says, “Even as the Father has sent me, now I send you” and then gives them the Spirit. This is John’s Pentecost moment when the disciples are given the power mentioned last week by Jesus to his followers. The extent of this power becomes clear when Jesus tells them that they have the power to forgive or not to forgive…a power which at one point only belonged to God and then to Jesus. The disciples, like Harry Truman, have been give immense power. The power to forgive or not to forgive is one that can either create life or take it away. The question would be, how would the disciples, and after them, the church, use this power? Unfortunately for the church, and in some cases the world, the church did not use this power for the good. As with all power, it tends to corrupt. The church, while beginning well, quickly saw this power to forgive or not to forgive as one that could give them control; control not only over the religious life of individuals but over their political and economic lives as well. It became a weapon to humble kings, princes and paupers. It became a source of revenue by selling it. It became one of the central weapons used to insure the power of the church. And even after the Reformation, Protestant churches used it as well to exclude those that they believed had not lived up to the religious expectations of their peers. In some ways, this checkered past makes those of us here loathe to take up this power. We want to find some way to avoid seeing ourselves as those who possess this kind of power. Like a proverbial hot potato, we want to toss it back to God. Yet, we cannot. It is ours. It is the church’s. What I would like us to do this morning then, is to take a second look at this text and perhaps see it through a new lens. Here is how I propose we do it. We see this gift of power, the power of the Spirit and the power to forgive, as a test. Jesus has finished his mission. He has died and then been raised and now he turns to the disciples and says, here is your final exam. Will you forgive or not. That being the case, then let’s remember what the disciples had been taught about forgiveness. They were to forgive seventy times seventy times. They were to forgive as they had been forgiven. They were to forgive others so that they might be forgiven. They knew that on the cross Jesus had forgiven those who had crucified him. They knew that Jesus had not only forgiven Peter for betraying him, but had given him a mission of great importance after he had been restored. In some ways I believe that Jesus is saying, you know what to do, now go and do it. The same is true for us. We as the church have been given the power to speak forgiveness into the world. We have been given the power to offer forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ. We have been given this power and the question is, will we use it. I ask, because forgiveness is the power to restore. It is the power to break the chains of hate, anger and dysfunction. It is the power to free; to set people free from their past and bring them back into right relationship with God and others. Forgiveness is in some ways the greatest power in the world. Many of you who have been here for the past couple of years will remember me talking about my friend Suzanne. She was one of the many “mothers” I had in my last congregation. I would have been about the age of their children, so they adopted me. Suzanne had grown up on a dairy farm south of San Antonio. She and her five siblings had worked hard and given all that they could to help their parents. When their second parent died, and the will was read, five of the siblings got ten acres of land. The sixth sibling, the oldest son got everything else; most of the farm land, the house, its contents, the farming equipment and the cash that went with it. Needless to say, Suzanne and her other siblings were stunned. But Suzanne, being who she is, went to her brother and told him that there was only one thing she wanted from the house, a picture that her mother had promised her. Her brother told her to get off of his land. Everything was his and he was keeping it. Years later, following a sermon of mine about forgiveness, she decided that she would go make amends. She found out where he lived…he had sold the farm for a great price…and went to see him. The upshot was he told her to leave and if she ever showed up again he could call the police. Fast forward ten years. About a month ago Suzanne’s only remaining sibling, outside of her brother, died. Two days before the funeral, Suzanne’s phone rang. It was her brother. He first asked if he could come to the funeral. It was free country, Suzanne replied. Then her brother asked for forgiveness for what he had done and how he had treated her. In that moment Suzanne held the power. She could forgive or not forgive. It was up to her. And she forgave. Since that time they have spoken on the phone on numerous occasions and are making plans to get together. This is the power of forgiveness used for the good; to give life. You and I, both individually and collectively hold the power of forgiveness. The question is then, how will we use it? My challenge to you for this week is this, to ask yourselves, “How am I wielding the power for forgiveness, for the good? How am I passing the test that Jesus has given me?” Rev. Dr. John Judson
May 3, 2015 Listen Luke 24:36-49, Genesis 1:26-31 All she could do was roll her eyes and sigh. The “she” in this story is my children’s high school tennis coach, Coach Sam. When our son Andy made the varsity tennis team I decided that it was time for me to take up tennis again so that I could at least hit with him and help him practice. When Coach Sam found out she asked if I would like some pointers. With great certainty that I knew exactly what I was doing, having played in Middle School, I said sure. So one day after the tennis team had finished practice, I showed up with my racket and hit and few balls with her. It was in that moment that she sighed and said, “John, show me how you are holding the racket.” OK, so let’s just say that by the end of that that short session Coach Sam had shown me how I was doing everything, and I mean pretty much everything wrong. Now she was very nice about it, but she realized that I needed to go back to the basics. I needed to relearn the fundamentals of the game if I was ever to be good at it. Back to the basics has become one of those often overused and abused terms. It has been used by school districts to emphasize a small part of the curriculum over other parts which don’t seem as basic. At least in Texas it is the basis of driver reeducation courses. When you have received a ticket you can remove the ticket from your record if you take a course that reminds you of the basics of good driving. Back to the basics is used as the basis for helping couples reestablish their relationships…they are taught to go back to the basics of good communication. And in some ways it is used in the life of the church. We in the Christian faith have always believed that there are certain basic understandings that all Jesus’ followers ought to understand and that ought to guide our thoughts and actions. We see this lived out every time we conduct a baptism as we recite the Apostle’s Creed. The Creed contains the most basic elements of our faith about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as certain beliefs about the church and the age to come. Where this back to the basics idea ties in with our story this morning is that I believe this is what we are getting in these closing verses of the Gospel of Luke. The writer wants his readers to be sure that they know what the basics of the resurrection are before Jesus leaves the scene. And the surest way to do this is to focus on what was surely a very small portion of the conversations that Jesus had with this followers after his resurrection. And in these closing verses I believe we see the three basic beliefs that form the foundation for how we are to understand what the resurrection is all about. The first basic believe is that life wins. When Jesus appears to the disciples, they are afraid that he is a ghost, a spirit. Jesus wants to disabuse them of this belief and so he does two things. First he asks them to touch, knowing that spirits have no physical substance. Second he asks for something to eat, again knowing that spirits or ghosts don’t eat. By so doing he let them know that life has defeated death; and by life I do not mean the eternal existence of the spirit or soul. What I mean is that physical life, the life God created in the beginning and declared to be good, has won over death which robs us of that life. What this means for Jesus’ followers is that they are to care about this world and all the people in it because they matter to God. They matter so much that God raised Jesus back into this physical world. The second basic belief is that love wins. Jesus explains to the disciples that his death was not a tragedy but was part of God’s plan for the redemption of the world. That when Jesus went to the cross and gave his life, it was not an accident of history or merely the outworking of an oppressive political process, but was the love of God at work. It was the love of God at work transforming the creation; reshaping the creation back into the good place that God had created it to be. Thus the love of God for humanity wins out over all of the powers of evil which would rob of us of our potential to become fully alive as those made in God’s image. The third basic belief was that the world wins. After Jesus has proved that he is more than a spirit and has explained that his death was part of God’s plan, he then commands the disciples to go into all of the world, telling everyone about basics number one and two. This is remarkable because it says that Jesus was not simply the Jewish messiah, but that he was the world’s messiah; that all people are invited to find forgiveness and new life; that all people are now invited into God’s family of faith in which they can rediscover what it means to be fully human and fully alive. I realize that in traditional Christian practice these are not the kind of basics we are used to. Instead we are accustomed, as I said earlier, to doctrinal statements about aspects of our faith. Yet I believe that these three basics, life wins, love wins and the world wins, underlie all the other particularities of doctrine because they are rooted in all of scripture from the creation in Genesis to the re-creation in Revelation. They are God’s story. They are our story. My challenge for you on this day then, is first to see these three basics here at the communion table, and second to ask yourselves, how these basics are shaping who I am and what I believe, say and do. Rev. Dr. John Judson
April 26, 2015 Listen Print Version Psalm 23, Luke 24:13-35 She looked so familiar. I was in Beaumont hospital about two weeks or so ago and was hurrying through the food court in the South Tower. As I did, there was a woman eating something at one of the small tables. She was not in a position where I could clearly make out who she was. But to myself I said, “Boy that sure looks like Judy.” At the same time though I knew it could not be her. Though her husband had been in Beaumont recently, he had been transferred out to a rehab facility elsewhere in the city. Continuing on my journey I wondered if I should have stopped but, not being sure of her identity I thought it would be a bit creepy for me to go up to a stranger and say, “Oh, you looked like someone I know.” It was only later that day, when I received an email about Judy’s husband, that he had indeed gone back to Beaumont, that I realized it had been her in the food court. Have you ever had that kind of experience when you see someone out of context and think, that can’t be so and so, only to realize later that it was? Well, if you did then you were not experiencing whatever those disciples experienced. Over the years people have tried a variety of ways to explain how the disciples, who had been with Jesus for three years, could fail to recognize him. The usual one is the one I just described…seeing someone out of context and not realizing it is them. However, let’s be honest, if I had actually stopped and said hello to the woman in the food court I would have instantly realized that it was Judy, just as the disciples would have recognized Jesus. A second explanation is what I call the similar but different, or the Gandalf the Grey theory. For those of you who do not know Gandalf, he was a wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. At one point in the book he sacrifices his life in order that his friends could live. He does so by being cast into a proverbial fiery hell. Later in the books he reappears transformed from Grey to White; a transformation that happens when he defeats evil and “rises from the dead.” Yes a Jesus metaphor to be sure. Anyway, at first his friends don’t recognize him because even though he is similar to his old self, he is different at the same time. Yet they soon recognize him, just as the disciples, in other resurrection accounts, recognize Jesus when they see the nail marks in his hands. This is a nice try but it still can’t explain this story. There are other theories offered including the “Jesus blinded them until he was ready to disclose himself” theory. But somehow I believe all of these are, pardon the irony, looking at the story and not seeing what Luke was trying to tell us. In other words we look at the story and miss the point because we are attempting to deal with the physics of the event and not with the narrative itself. And, my friends, let’s be honest here, there are many things in the scriptures, including the resurrection, which physics cannot explain. So what then is Luke really trying to tell us? What I believe is going on here is that Luke wants us to understand that the disciples did not recognize Jesus because they never really knew him at all. Yes, I know that Jesus and the disciples hung out and travelled together for three years. Yet in the end, if we listen carefully to the conversation on the road we will see that the disciples had no idea who this Jesus was. And we see this in one often overlooked sentence. One of them says, “…but we hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” In other words what they had been looking for, even after three years of Jesus’ teaching was a new Moses. They were looking for the reenactment of the Exodus story. Regardless of Jesus’ stories about love, forgiveness and a very different kind of Kingdom, it had not registered at all. This new-Moses narrative was in fact so powerful that even when the women had returned from the tomb with the news that Jesus was alive, it could not register with the other disciples because Jesus was still just one more dead messianic pretender. He had been the one who was supposed to stop the suffering of Israel, rather than suffer himself. In the end then, these two disciples hadn’t a clue as to who Jesus was and why he had come. Little wonder that they were not able to see him. If Jesus is going to open their eyes then it will take more than a physical appearing. It will take reeducation. In order to accomplish this, Jesus takes them through the entire Old Testament in order that they see more clearly who he is and why he had come. In verse 27, Luke tells us that Jesus began with Moses and all of the prophets and interpreted to the disciples the things about himself in all of scripture. This action has often been portrayed as Jesus going back and pointing to specific scriptures and saying, “See, there’s Jesus,” in sort of a Where’s Jesus Game. What I believe is that Jesus is doing more than that here. He is in fact retelling the entire story of Israel in such a way that the disciples will begin to recognize that, as NT Wright puts it, rather than saving Israel from suffering, that the messiah was supposed to save Israel through suffering. Let me say that again. Jesus wanted to show them that the messiah was not supposed to save Israel from suffering by being a new Moses, but was supposed to save Israel through suffering like the suffering servant of Isaiah. The true test of Jesus’ re-teaching comes when they all stop for the night. When the disciples stop for the night they ask Jesus to stay with them. This invitation also extended to the sharing of their bread, which they allowed Jesus to bless and break. When Jesus does this, blesses and breaks, their eyes were opened and they knew him. They knew him in that moment because finally the broken bread made sense. It was an intentional reference to Jesus’ willingness to suffer for Israel and for the world. Now they got it. Now they knew him. Now they were able to see fully why he had gone the cross, and had been raised. Jesus’ remedial work had been successful. We also know that his teaching succeeded because of the kind of community those disciples created. When they returned they did not do so in a politically triumphal manner, but in a way that led to the creation of a non-violent, self-sacrificing community. They discovered who Jesus was to the extent that they followed his lead. The problem with which we are faced is that most of us, like the disciples, have found ourselves drawn to and holding tightly to a particular image of Jesus. These images might be Jesus as a CEO, an insurance salesman or perhaps a great trainer of individuals. They might be the pietistic images of Jesus as the guy we are supposed to be going steady with or the Santa Jesus who is supposed to give us everything. While each of these images carry with them a kernel of truth, they all fall short of the complex nature of the one who was the suffering servant; of the one whose body was broken and shed blood; of the one who was willing to lay down his life for the world; of the one who would suffer for us. The challenge for each of us then is whether or not we are willing to see a Jesus different from the one to which we hold tightly; whether or not we are willing to have our eyes opened to the one discovered by those two disciples. My challenge then for all of you is this, to ask yourselves, am I willing to see Jesus in a new way; a way that might call me to a life which reflects that of the servant who gave his life for all? |
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