Rev. Amy Morgan
September 21, 2014 Listen Print Version Genesis 27:30-40, Matthew 20:1-16 The kingdom of heaven is like this: Jane is starting up a new tech company. Totally out of her garage, Steve Jobs-style. But she wants a team to work with. She’s not really the go-it-alone type, and a startup needs a variety of variety of talents to make it work. So she recruits some smart and energetic recent college grads. They all agree on a compensation package, nothing extravagant, but certainly enough to get by on. Their agreement also includes a guarantee that when the company goes public in three years each of them will be granted a $100,000 bonus. These promising young people are ready to start their careers, to work their way up in the world. The idea for the company seems promising, and the compensation is comparable to what their peers are finding elsewhere, so they sign on and get to work. A year later, there have been some bumps in the road, and the work is getting hard. Jane has gotten a good deal on some office space in a hip but seedy part of Detroit, and there is more work to do than they can possibly keep up with, especially if they want to go public in two years. But the workers Jane hired stick with it, so Jane decides to add a few people to the team to share the load. She explains to the new team members that they will be paid enough to live on. She also tells them that they are hoping to go public in two years, and if they do, she’ll give them a fair bonus for their contribution. Another year in, the company has had its ups and downs, now has three floors of office space in Troy, and development is really going places. Everyone is working crazy long hours, and it feels like they may be close to breaking out. In this hopeful spirit, Jane once again brings more people on board. The new hires understand that if the company goes public, they’ll be compensated fairly, but again, no specifics are discussed. Things go so well that this hiring scenario is repeated a couple of months later. But by the end of the year, things are looking much less optimistic. They really haven’t found the right market for their product, their expenses have ballooned, and their investors are running for the door. They’ve got just a little capital left for one last push to try to make a go of it before the sun sets on this whole enterprise. Jane goes out once more to try to bring a few more people on board. It’s slim pickings in the employee market these days, and it’s hard to find people interested in coming to work on a sinking ship. One of the company’s first employees, however, connects Jane with a few friends he went to school with who have been looking for work since graduation. He assures Jane that they were all just as smart and energetic and motivated, but the job market has just been really lousy for the last few years, especially for people with no experience. Their resumes are great, they interview well, and they’re skilled and well-educated and ready to work. But they just haven’t gotten picked up yet. They might just be desperate enough to help Jane with the 11th hour push to make this thing work. She makes them no promises, but tells them there is work if they want to do it. Going off of the logic that it’s easier to look for a job when you have a job, the last group of employees dive in and give it their all for the last month of the year. By some miracle of market forces, something clicks at the last minute, and the company goes crazy, practically overnight. Within weeks, there are multiple buy-out offers, the company goes public, and Jane’s company is instantly worth billions. She calls her staff together to share the good news. Addressing the employees who have only been there a month, she thanks them for joining in the last-ditch effort, and she gives each of them a $100, 000 bonus. They are thrilled and grateful. And everyone else starts to get excited. If Jane is so lavishly generous with the last group to be hired, clearly the bonuses will only get bigger for those with a greater investment of time and loyalty and hard work. When Jane addresses those employees hired on in the last couple of years, she thanks them for their service and dedication through good times and bad, and she gives each of them a $100,000 bonus. While those who have been in the company less than a year are happy to get such a grand bonus, there is grumbling from those who have been in the company longer. Didn’t Mike deserve more for his innovation? Didn’t Andrea deserve more for all the extra-long hours she worked? Didn’t Carrie deserve more for the brilliant ideas she had that saved the company more than once? Jane ignores their chatter and addresses the first employees of her company. Everyone is waiting with baited breath now. These are the people who first took a chance on Jane and her dream. These are the people with the most time and energy and talent invested in the company. They are waiting to see what lavish rewards Jane has in store for them and plotting their first expenditures. Maybe the trip to Italy they’ve always dreamed of and never had time or money for. Maybe a home in the fashionable part of Birmingham. Maybe just blow it on something fun, like that hot new Corvette. Or maybe they’ll end up with enough money to start up a company of their own. Jane thanks these first employees for their loyalty and hard work, and she gives each of them a $100,000 bonus. The room erupts in protest. Didn’t they deserve more for taking risks, for working hard, for sticking with the company even when it looked like it was failing? How could they possibly get the same meager bonus as those slackers who’d only been working a month? Those people couldn’t get their act together to find a job for almost three years after graduation, and they get the same reward as those of us who got ourselves a job right out of school? This is crazy! Outrageous! Unfair! Jane waits for them to quiet down and asks them, “Isn’t this what you agreed to work for? Isn’t this the deal we made? What is so unfair about paying you what was promised?” Adam, one of the senior employees, speaks up. “You are giving them,” he says, pointing angrily at the last group to be hired, “the same thing you are giving us. That is not right, it’s not fair. They haven’t been here as long. They haven’t worked as hard. They haven’t earned it.” “Yeah,” pipes up another of the long-timers, “we deserve more. We made this company what it is. We jumped at this opportunity even though it was risky. We took this company from nothing and made it a success. We are…we are…” “We’re better than them!” interrupts another senior employee. “There, I said it, and you know you all think it’s true. We got jobs right out of school instead of bumming around unemployed and living in our parents’ basements for years. We worked long, hard hours when this company had no money, no office even, and these late-comers walked into this cushy office space with a fully-staffed operation and acted like they owned the place. And now you want to make us all equals? Well, we’re not. We’re not equal.” The room grows quiet, and no one is quite sure what to say. Even through the last difficult month, the employees had worked as a team, doing whatever needed to be done, helping each other out. They had genuinely enjoyed working with each other, and they were all proud of their work. Now, the senior employees felt exposed. Did they all secretly harbor feelings of superiority? The newer employees felt ashamed. Had they really earned their bonuses in just a month? Jane took a deep breath. “First, I’d like you all to remember that all of this is my money. It is my company. I started it. I invested in it. I kept it going. I hired all of you. And I made a lot of money in the end. I can do whatever I want with what is mine.” “The only thing I am required to do in order to be fair, in order to be just, is to pay you what we agreed on. And I’ve done that, haven’t I?” she said, looking at the senior employees. Begrudgingly, they nodded. “So then, it’s up to me if I want to be generous to others. None of you received bonuses because of your hard work, loyalty, accomplishments, or seniority. None of you earned them. The first employees got a bonus because I chose to give you one, and you thought that was a fair deal when you were hired. The rest of you got a bonus because I choose to give it to you now. It’s my call. Are those of you who have been here longer really going to be jealous because of my generosity?” The senior employees looked around. The bonus was radically unfair and perfectly just, all at the same time. It was unmerited and wildly generous. It didn’t fit into any reasonable economic model. No capitalist reward for the quantity or quality of their work. No socialist taking from the rich to give to the poor. Maybe it was communist? They weren’t sure. No one had gotten less than they’d bargained for. They all had plenty. Not enough for fashionable neighborhoods, high-risk investments, or sports cars maybe. But they all had at least what they were planning on, and some had more than they ever could have hoped for. They all had enough. It wasn’t about merit. It wasn’t even about equality. It just didn’t make sense. Finally, someone spoke up. “Why did you do it?” “Because it’s who I am,” Jane replied. “I am just, and I am gracious. These two parts of my character live in irreconcilable tension. My corporate economics demand an equality so radical it isn’t fair, a generosity so expansive it isn’t equal. It leaves no space for division and competition, winning and losing, superiority and shame. To work with me is to live in that tension, too. It is a tension that requires us to see the world through the lens of gratitude and sufficiency. Where we look for equity, we find generosity. Where we seek justice, we find grace.” “But that’s not how the world works!” piped up one employee. “No,” replied Jane. “You’re right. It’s not.” The kingdom of heaven is like this. Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 14, 2014 Listen Printable View Genesis 27:18-29, Romans 14:1-12 “You’re not folding the towels right.” This was one of the first revelations of our marriage after Cindy and I had walked down the aisle, gone on the honeymoon and driven to seminary. “What do you mean I am not folding the towels correctly? They are folded and hung up.” As far as I was concerned the towels were hung exactly as they should have been. You take one edge fold it over and then hang it up. This is the way I had always hung my towels. It was the way we hung our towels at the house where I grew up. “I know they are hung up,” Cindy said, “But they are not hung up correctly.” At this point I was getting a bit miffed. “So what is the correct way?” “Like this,” she said, as she neatly folded one side of the towel in and then the other side in for a neat, clean look. “There is no right way to fold a towel,” I said. Yes there is, she replied. This morning then, I want to take a poll. How many of you fold your towels in half and hang them? OK, how many of you fold each side in and hang them? (the congregation was split) Now you understand where Paul found himself in the church at Rome; in the middle of a towel fight. The church had divided itself into camps over two issues. Each side of each issue believed that they were right and the other side was wrong. The first issue was whether or not to eat meat. This had nothing to do with health and everything to do with the fact that all meat in Rome had been sacrificed to idols at temples. One side said that to eat meat was worshipping idols. The other side said that since idols are not real it didn’t matter. The second disagreement was over holy days; namely on which days people ought to worship. Should they follow a Jewish calendar or simply worship on Sunday, the day Jesus was resurrected? Though Jesus did not speak to either of these issues, the people involved knew that they were right and their opponents were wrong. These disagreements were dividing the church. It would be nice to believe that these were the last disagreements in the church and that everyone lived happily ever after. However we all know, or soon will know, that this is not true. In fact this kind of “I am right and you are wrong…be gone with you” would become a fact of life in the church. About 300 years after this debate the church divided over the divinity of Christ. One side said he was divine, the other said he was not. The church divided. Around the year 1000 one side of the church said all authority belonged to the Pope. The other said all authority belonged to councils of bishops. The church divided east and west. Five hundred years later one group said that salvation is by the sheer grace of God. The other side said no it was by merit. The church divided between Catholic and Protestant. Over the next five hundred years the church divided again and again over issues such as baptism, adult or child; speaking in tongues, yes or no; ordination, men and women, or only men, or persons regardless of their sexual orientation; as well as a host of other matters. And each time both sides claimed to be correct and were more than happy to either leave or cast out those who believed differently. Each side had to be correct. What fascinates me about all of this is that it is as if no one actually took the time to read what Paul had to say to the church at Rome about their issues. I say this because to sum up Paul first, he says that it is OK to disagree, to hold different viewpoints on the same issue and stay together. Second, he says that it is not OK to judge others and declare that you are right and they are wrong. And in so doing he offers three reasons that this is so. First, he says that we have no right to judge those whom God has welcomed into God’s party. “Who are you,” Paul writes, “to pass judgment on servants of another?” In essence he says that if we judge others and declare that they are wrong, it would be like you or I being invited to a party, seeing some other guests that we didn’t like and asking them to leave because it is not proper that they should be there. Paul remarks that this action would make us very rude guests. Paul knows the Christians in Rome. He knows that they have all been called and chosen by God. He knows that they all believe in Jesus Christ and that the Spirit is in them. To judge another, he writes, is to judge someone whom God has invited to the table. Second, he says that they believe what they believe because they believe that it honors God. “Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.” Paul is making it clear here that there are beliefs and practices that differ, but what matters is the intent behind the belief and practice. If some Christians believe that speaking in tongues honors God, fabulous. If some Christians believe not speaking in tongues honors God, fabulous! He continues by reminding us that we do not live to ourselves and we do not die to ourselves, but to the Lord…meaning we are not the last word on what is right or what is wrong. Third, Paul tells us that we are not the judge or the jury. “Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God. So then, each of us will be accountable to God.” God is the judge, we are not. I’m not sure if there is a more overlooked and forgotten passage of scripture than this one. As Christians we have spent two thousand years pretending that we get to judge and God merely signs off on our judgments, because after all we are right and they, whoever they are, are wrong. Paul wants us to remember that ultimately we will all stand before God and have to account for our judgments and our choices. What is so interesting about us as Presbyterians is that we have split about as many times as any denomination can split, even though we supposedly agree with Paul. How so? It is so because within our tradition we acknowledge that we will never have perfect beliefs or perfect practices. We acknowledge that every confession and every council will make mistakes. All we can do is try to be the best we can as imperfect children of God and followers of Jesus Christ. Let me be clear that this does not mean that we do not set out what we believe, for we do. We have a great history of striving to understand the will of God as best we can, so we can be the best Christ followers that we can be. At the same time though, we know these beliefs and practices are proximate and not perfect. For many of us in an anxiety ridden world, in which there is an ever increasing desire for absolute truth and absolute certainty, it can be a difficult to believe that we do not know exactly what is the truth about every doctrine and practice. Yet Paul reminds us that this is OK. It is OK to hold two very different sets of beliefs over issues even though some consider one or the other to be essential. But he does so because he believes that the church is better together rather than split apart. For if Christ is one, why ought we to be more than one? The challenge then for us is to be open to hearing what those on the other side of issues have to say. The challenge is to be open to the possibility that each side may be right and be open to the possibility that God may be opening our eyes to new possibilities of being the church. My challenge for you this week then is to ask, “How am I being open to the new things that God might be doing in the world, in the church and in my life?” Rev. Dr. John Judson
September 7, 2014 Listen Printable View Genesis 27:1-17, Matthew 18:1-4, 10-14 There are moments when I believe that if some intelligent alien race ever came to earth and tried to figure out how we spend our time, the conclusion that they would draw is that we append our time on creating top-ten lists. It seems as though every day brings a new list. We have the top ten richest Americans, the top ten largest corporations, the top ten hospitals, the top ten best universities, the top ten best bang for your buck colleges, the top ten party schools, the top ten best looking and best dressed people (I did not make either list) and on and on. In fact, I would bet that whatever you are interested in; there is a top ten list for it. In a way this should not surprise us. After all we human beings are a competitive lot. Ever since we Homo-sapiens figured out how to move to the top of the food chain and demote the Neanderthals, we have been competing against one another for the top of whatever list mattered. And we do virtually anything to get to the top…which is where our story and this morning’s story meet. Both of our stories have this striving to be number one as their theme. Our first story is about Esau and Jacob’s struggle to be number one to receive their father’s blessing. Jacob and his mother even resort to lying and trickery to get it. Our second story concerns Jesus and his disciples. The disciples had spent their lives as outsiders to power. They were from Galilee, a small provincial kind of place that was looked down on by other Jews. They had staked their futures on this Jesus guy and so now they wanted to know where they would be ranked in the Kingdom of God. “So Jesus,” they asked, “Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” We are not sure if they wanted Jesus to rank order them, or simply wanted an assurance that they would be top dogs when the Kingdom arrived. Regardless, Jesus response probably caught them off guard. It caught them off guard because instead of giving them an assurance of their place at the top of the heap in the coming age, Jesus told them that if they even wanted to enter the kingdom they had to become like a little child; meaning humble and vulnerable. Chances are this disturbed them greatly, almost as much as being humble and vulnerable disturbs us. I say this first because they had followed Jesus as a way of leaving being humble and vulnerable behind. I say this second because the images which humility and vulnerability conjure up for us are often indeed disturbing. It is as if Christians are supposed to exist only in the background of life, always deferring to others, saying things like, “Oh, I don’t want that job, give it to someone else. They are probably better than I am.” Or it is as if Christians are to hang a sign on our backs reading, “Kick me, I’m a Christian.” In other words we are to become the door-mats of the world. What I want to offer you this morning though, is that I believe this is not at all what Jesus meant when he brought the child into the midst of the disciples…and here is why; because this is not the way Jesus lived. What I mean by that is that Jesus is the model of both humility and vulnerability. He is the model of humility because he stood with the poor, the marginalized and the outcasts in such a way that they knew that they mattered to him and to God. Jesus’ presence with those on the margins was never condescending, but always compassionate. He treated them with the dignity and respect due to children of God. It was as if he was one of them and they were truly his friends. He did not act like Super-Messiah sweeping in to save those who were lesser than himself. Jesus was indeed one with those he served. He is also the model of vulnerability because when he ate with sinners and tax collectors; when he met with the wrong kind of people he was criticized and condemned. He became vulnerable because he dared to step across the acceptable cultural divides of race and status and stand with those who were the unacceptable. Ultimately these actions would lead to his death. The year was 1977. The place was El Salvador. In that year the Catholic Church elected their new Archbishop and it was a conservative who had strongly supported the church hierarchy’s practice of focusing on spiritual salvation and avoiding any work with the poor. The local priests, who lived side by side with the poor were stunned by the election. Three weeks after his installation a personal friend of the new Archbishop, Father Rutiilo Grande, was murdered along with an elderly man and the man’s grandson. Grande had been an advocate for the poor and the marginalized. The new Archbishop, looking at his murdered friend said, “If they killed him for what he did then I need to walk the same path.” And in that moment Archbishop Oscar Romero began his short career as one who stood with the poor. He spoke out against poverty, social injustice and the assassinations carried out by government supported death squads. Three years later, while saying mass, Romero was killed as well. He was a man who had discovered what it meant to be humble, and vulnerable. The question before us today then is with whom will we stand as we are called to be humble and vulnerable? Will we stand with the children in Detroit and Pontiac in need of a good education? Will we stand with foster children and youth who need love and support? Will we stand with the hungry of Metro Detroit to see that they have adequate food for each day? Will we stand with the poor in Yucatan who do not have adequate health care? Will we stand with the people of Kenya who have no access to clean water or education? Will we stand with the 70% of women in rural India who cannot read? My challenge to you today is this, as we come to this table which reminds us that Jesus stood with as and ask, “With whom will I stand in humility and vulnerability, as Jesus Christ stood with me?” Rev. Dr. John Judson
August 31, 2014 Listen Printable View Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Romans 12:9-21 This morning I want to begin with a question, when you were a child what did you want to be when you grew up? Second, how many of you have hopes and dreams for the children around you? What are those hopes and dreams? As I suspected two of the key answers that come through is that you want them to be happy and healthy. In some ways your answers mirror the answers of humanity across the centuries and in this book (the Bible). People wanted their children to be blessed and filled with joy. But there was one hope and dream that towered above even these two. They wanted their children to be God followers. When I say God followers I don’t just mean God believers I mean God followers; those who walk in the path that God has set before them. For the people of Israel this path was well marked. It was marked by the Torah; by the Law of God, meaning all 613 laws that had been given to Moses. Now many of us may think of this as being very legalistic, but I want to think of these laws as road signs that kept God’s people on the path to a blessed and joy filled life. Everyone knew where the dangerous curves were. Everyone knew where the bumps in the road were. Everyone knew what the safe speed limit was. The laws guided them in being God followers. We can sense the importance of these laws in the Shema, or our Old Testament lesson from this morning. “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and with all of your soul and with all of your might. Listen again. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the door posts of your house.” The words” referred to in the statement are the 613 laws of Moses which are the road signs that allowed the people to love and follow God. They were to always be in front of the people directing them into the life and blessing God offered. Those were the laws which the Apostle Paul grew up with. He knew all 613 of them and strived to follow them every day of his life. Yet when he was encountered by Jesus on the road to Damascus, something happened. He understood that Jesus was the completion or fulfillment of all of these laws, so that a life of blessing and joy was no longer to be guided by the law but by something else. The question before him then was if those laws were not present as road signs guiding him in being a God follower; guiding him to a life of blessing and joy, how was he to know the way? Though Paul refers to being led by the Spirit, which at times can seem a bit vague, he also offers to us a more detailed look at the signs that are to guide us, as he does in the Romans passage that we read this morning. In fact he sums the road signs up in one verse. “Let love be genuine, hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good.” Let love be genuine. Over my career as a pastor I have been asked numerous times how can I genuinely love those who whom I do not like; such as those who have harmed me? My answer has been that the love Pal is describing is not about feeling but doing; not about liking but serving. Love, in the manner that Paul is using it here, means to be actively serving others, even when we don’t feel “loving” towards them. Love then is a choice to act, and Paul calls upon us to choose to love by serving even our enemies. That love becomes genuine, again not by feeling better about it, but when it is true service in which the other is first and we are second. Genuine here means “the real thing”, real service and sacrifice. We see Paul using this concept when he tells the Romans to love one another with mutual affection, contribute to the needs of the saints and extend hospitality to strangers. This is the first mark of a God follower, loving genuinely. Hate Evil. Before we look at this one we need to understand what Paul means by hate. There are two kinds of hate; the kind of hate that is filled with anger and rage, “I hate you!” The second kind of hate is one where we are repulsed by something, “I hate beets!” Though you may love beets, I want to stay as far away as I can from them. This is how Paul uses the term hate. He tells us that we are to be repulsed by evil, again evil being anything that diminishes the image of God in any person, or anything that diminishes the humanity of any person. This means evil can be as simple as gossiping about someone in a way that tears them down, to the horrors of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The reason that we are to be consciously repulsed by evil is that it masquerades as good. It pretends that it can make us better than others; that we are the center of the universe; that we deserve more than others. Thus we are to see evil for what it is, destructive and stay as far away from it as we can. This is the heart of Paul’s warning that we are not to repay anyone evil for evil or be overcome by evil. Paul wants us to see evil clearly, be repulsed by it so that we can stay on the path of blessing and joy. Hold fast to what is good. What is the good? The good is whatever builds up the image of God in another human being; it is whatever assists another person in becoming the human beings God designed them to be. For Paul the ultimate example of “the good” is the life and work of Jesus Christ. We are to bless those who persecute us, live in harmony with one another, associate with the lowly, live peaceably with all persons, feed our enemies and give them something to drink and overcome evil not with evil, but with good; meaning love and forgiveness. In a way we can see Jesus standing behind all of these road signs. They were the ones that Jesus gave his disciples. By so doing we stay on the road following the way of God and the way of blessing and joy. How many of you have Jewish friends? When you have gone to their house have you seen a small scroll-like item tacked to the front door post? If you have, that is a mezuzah. Inside that case is a copy of the Shema. It is intended to be touched by everyone coming into and leaving the house as a reminder to love God and be obedient to God’s words. With that in mind, I have a bit of a different challenge for you this morning…and this is something that the children can help with. I would challenge everyone here to create their own Christian mezuzah. You can do this by writing down these three road signs, let love be genuine, hate evil and hold fast to what is good, and posting them in a place where you can see and touch them, every day when you leave and return to your home. I do this because there is something powerful about touching what is important. By seeing and touching these words my hope is that they will affect how we live our lives on a daily basis. And when you do that, I would also like you to take a picture of the mezuzah and email it to me. I will create a page on our website to show people what we are up to; how we are allowing ourselves to be guided down the path as God-followers toward a life of blessing and joy. Rev. Amy Morgan
Listen Printable View (PDF) Genesis 24:34-52; Matthew 16:13-20 The church has a marketing crisis. Not our church in particular. In fact, as Protestant churches go, we’re doing pretty well in the marketing department. But the Christian church as a whole, particularly in Western society, has a major marketing problem. According to a number of surveys conducted in the last decade, people in the 40 and younger crowd overwhelming testify that the church is homophobic, judgmental, hypocritical, overly political, irrelevant, insensitive, boring, chauvinistic, arrogant, anti-intellectual, and confusing. Now, this may not sound like the church you know. Hopefully it doesn’t match up with your experience here. But if you ask the average non-churchgoing person what they think about Christianity, you’re likely to hear several of these adjectives used. If the church were a name-brand product, we’d be in serious trouble. The executives would be firing the entire marketing department, and the board would be calling for the executives’ resignations. But we’re the church. What do we care what people think about us? We know we’re awesome. We’ve got Jesus on our side. We know who we are, what we’re about. In fact, we’re Everybody’s Church. That’s awesome, right? Right. What’s not awesome is that we’re in the same sinking ship as the rest of Western Christianity. Our church is called the same names as all the others. I’ve talked with many youth and adults in this church who are frustrated by experiences of being misunderstood, mislabeled, and misinterpreted because of their Christian identity. Many of us don’t even bother identifying ourselves as Christians in mixed social situations anymore because we don’t want to deal with the hassle of defending the church against name-calling and misrepresentation. Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Church (USA) loses thousands of members a year. Protestant Christianity hemorrhages membership in the U.S. and Europe. Western Christianity as a whole is in massive decline. We’ve got a major marketing crisis on our hands, and no one seems quite able to figure out what to do about it. In our story from Matthew today, Jesus seems to have encountered a marketing crisis of his own. He asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” It would be similar to the CEO of Coca-Cola asking the market research department, “what are people saying about the Cokes with the names on them?” Jesus is doing market research with his disciples. And just like executive yes-men, the disciples are quick to devise flattering responses. John the Baptist returned from the dead. Elijah, Jeremiah, or whatever prophet Jesus might fancy himself as embodying. The truth is, most people are saying that Jesus is a dangerous zealot or a delusional wanna-be. Sure, maybe some people who have heard Jesus preach or experienced his healing power are proposing more positive possibilities for his identity. But that is more akin to people trying to peek under Batman’s mask or match Superman to the bespectacled Clark Kent. The miraculous teacher and healer might have a secret identity as a resurrected past prophet and hero of Israel. What people are really saying about Jesus, for the most part, is highly unflattering. Jesus, however, sees right through the disciples’ flattery. And so he puts the question to them directly. The disciples have travelled with Jesus for three years. They have witnessed his miracles, heard his teaching, and experienced the challenge and rejection that has overshadowed his entire ministry. They know him better than anyone else. They see behind the mask, they receive special instruction and interpretation. And so, Jesus asks them, “who do you say that I am?” And wouldn’t you know it, Simon Peter hits the nail on the head with the first try. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Way to go, Peter. For all of his mistakes and misunderstandings, his denials and difficulties, we see here that Peter at least gets something right along the way. Like a cracker-jack marketing director, he is right on message. Peter is rewarded for his prompt and sincere response. Jesus calls him blessed. But Jesus also reveals something about the nature of Peter’s response. It isn’t the product of hard work, study, devotion, or market research. Jesus asserts that “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Peter’s answer is not based on Jesus’ reputation but on God’s revelation. Even so, Jesus is willing to build his church on this “rock.” Peter is rewarded for something he allegedly didn’t even do. Following this victory, Peter then goes on to object to Jesus’ plans and misunderstand what kind of Messiah Jesus will be and to deny Jesus after his arrest. But because he gets one right answer, the church is really going to be built upon a guy who, a few verses later, Jesus refers to as “Satan”? Seems like a bad move, Jesus. That is, unless we take a closer look at the meaning of revelation. I don’t know about you, but my picture of revelation has always been this beam of light that suddenly shines down on me as I’m puzzling over the mysteries of the universe with the clarity of insight that I’m seeking at the moment. Revelation comes in a number of shapes and sizes throughout the Bible, ranging from encounters with divine messengers to the very presence of God. The prophets receive messages from God, and the apostles see visions while waking and sleeping. But in today’s story, we don’t hear about God’s activity until after it happens. Peter doesn’t even realize that his insight is divinely inspired until Jesus points it out. The nature of this revelation is entirely different from Elijah’s encounter with God in a desolate silence or Jeremiah’s call to be a prophet. It looks nothing like Peter’s later vision of unclean animals leading to the inclusion of Gentiles in the church or Paul’s encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. This revelation is an insight that is only discerned to be the work of God in retrospect. It is a revelation that results from Peter’s experience of Jesus. He has experienced Jesus to be one who is uniquely anointed, one gifted with divine power and blessed in a way only the Son of the living God could be. And this is the revelation, the testimony, the rock upon which the church is built. Lest we think this is a new kind of revelation inaugurated by Jesus, we have our story from Genesis this morning to remind us that human experience of everyday encounters and relationships has always been a form of revelation for God’s people. Abraham’s servant is charged with finding a wife for Isaac from Abraham’s tribal people, the Arameans. Abraham expresses trust that God will provide a wife for his son. The servant prays for a sign as to which woman is the right one. And the servant worships and thanks God when he meets Rebekah and when Rebekah is free to go with him. Notice that there are no visions, no heavenly agents, no divine words. Just the very human experience of tribal and family relationships, the struggle to find a suitable life partner, the business-like transaction of a marriage contract in the ancient world. And yet, God is acknowledged as the orchestrator of these events and the source of all positive outcomes. This story, like many others in the Bible, is, as Walter Bruggeman says, a testimony to “a world-view in which there are no parts of life experience which lie beyond the purpose of God.” All of life is interpreted in relationship to the character of God. This is Peter’s revelation, Peter’s testimony. His experience of life in relationship to Jesus leads him to the conclusion that he is no one other than the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. This is not whispered in his ear by the Holy Spirit or given to him in a flashy vision, at least not from what we’re told in the text. But rather, God has led Peter to this revelation through long walks on dusty roads, meals shared with sinners and outcasts, healing touches and harsh words, inspiring teaching and confounding questions. All of this somehow adds up for Peter to an experience of Jesus that reveals him as the Messiah. And that revelation is the foundation of the church, a church so strong that even the “gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” Now, the reference to Hades here is not the notion of hell – a place of punishment or evil. This is the Old Testament concept of Sheol, the place of the dead. In other words, the power of the church will be even stronger than the power of the greatest enemy of humankind – death itself. When I read that, I wonder if this is consistent with our view of the church today. What if, instead of judgmental or hypocritical, the church was known as that place more powerful than death? What if, instead of trying to be warm and friendly, we saw ourselves as powerfully life-giving? When Jesus tells Peter that “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” he is connecting his church and his kingdom. The church is to be the epicenter of “God’s kingdom come,” as Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. Is that the church that is being described as chauvinistic, overly political, and homophobic? When Jesus tells Peter that “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven," he is giving the church the authority to do as Peter has done, to interpret our lived experience as having sacred significance. And the church is where we remember that sacredness, where we discover that meaning. Is this the church that is being described as irrelevant, insensitive, and boring? In the end, it would seem that Jesus is not concerned about his marketing crisis. Jesus tells his disciples to keep his identity a secret. People will continue to call him all kinds of names, including false prophet, blasphemer, and finally, sarcastically, King of the Jews. Perhaps we could wish Jesus had had a better marketing department. If he had fired his disciples and hired some cracker-jack PR firm, maybe things would have gone another way for him. But it is sometimes only in retrospect that we can see the activity and purpose of God in the events of our lives. If we accept “a world-view in which there are no parts of life experience which lie beyond the purpose of God,” we interpret Jesus’ life differently. We understand our own experiences differently. God’s revelation is all around us – in the work we do, the strangers we meet, the meals we share. The prayer imploring “God’s kingdom come” is being answered here and now in this time and place. And so, I have a question for you all. A real question. We have heard the words that many people use to describe the church today. I want you to imagine that, just as Jesus turned to his disciples and asked, “who do you say that I am?” the church, the body of Christ, has turned to you and asked, “who do you say that I am?” Is the church judgmental, irrelevant, or confusing? What does your experience tell you? Are even the positive words we often have about the church really adequate to describe the locus of God’s power over death? What is sacred about our experience here, what experiences have lasting meaning, eternal reverberations? There are sheets of plain white paper in each of the pews. I’m going to ask you to pass those along to your neighbors, maybe share some pens. And I invite you to take a minute to choose a name, a word - maybe not the only word, maybe not even your best word – but a word that describes your experience of church, your reason for being here this morning. When you are done, if you feel comfortable sharing, I invite you to hold up your sheet of paper so we can hear one another’s responses. Responses included: Hope, Love, Caring Community, Teacher, Peace, Working for Justice, Renewal, Support, Affirmation, Family. Rev. Dr. John Judson
Listen Print Version (PDF) Genesis 22:1-14, Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32 It had to be a scam. That was the only conclusion they would draw when a nicely dressed stranger appeared at their door and told them that a Count had left them an inheritance. They wanted to know what the catch was, because all the people had to do was sign a piece of paper and they would receive a check. As it turned out, this was not a scam at all but a rather odd event. The place was Portugal. And what had happened was that seven years before his death, Luis Carlos de Noronha Cabral de Camara, a Portuguese Count, had gone to a registry office in Lisbon, and in front of witnesses had chosen, at random, seventy people to whom to leave his money. This is odd enough in and of itself, but it was even odder in Portugal where people do not make wills. Instead the laws are very clear on who inherits, usually the family, and how the money is divided. So all in all this was one of those moments when both the family and the ultimate recipients were taken by surprise. I offer that story as a way of getting at the question Paul addresses in this part of his letter to the Romans; who will inherit God’s coming Kingdom? Will it be the “family” the biological children of Abraham or will it be those “chosen” by God outside of the family? First we have the family, the Jewish community. Their claim to the inheritance is that they are the descendants of Abraham; the one to whom the promise of a renewed Kingdom was originally made. As a review for all of us who are here this morning, once upon a time, God came to Abraham and made a covenant, a contract, with him and his descendants that they would inherit land, children and blessing, as well as being a blessing to the world. This promise was one that was often tested, such as the time when God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. In the story Abraham upholds his end of the bargain by almost sacrificing his son, and God upholds God’s end of the bargain by providing a sacrifice, thus preserving the promise and the inheritance of the Kingdom. So Jews in the time of Jesus and Jews today see themselves as the family to whom the inheritance promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob ought to come. The second group consists of those who have been “chosen.” This group includes those who believe that they are the recipients of the inheritance of the Kingdom are followers of Jesus of Nazareth, including the Christians in Rome to whom Paul is writing. The Christians believe this because it is what Paul has taught them. Paul taught them that those who have faith in Jesus are those who will be saved. Paul has told them that they have been called, chosen, justified and glorified. Paul has told them that the true children of Abraham are those who have faith, just as did Abraham; the kind of faith that allowed Abraham to almost offer up Isaac. In a sense this is Paul’s great theological move that the promise of blessing that had come to Abraham and his descendants had now been made available to everyone through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In a sense then Christians are those people who had been chosen at random to receive an inheritance. The question thus arises, who ought to receive the inheritance? Is it Jews or Christians? The answer Paul gives us is that it is both. Evidently what was happening in the church at Rome was that the Christians were saying that they were the only ones who would inherit. Paul makes it clear that this is not so. Paul states that the Jews will also inherit. Earlier in Romans Paul stated that to the Jews, his people by the way, belonged “the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; 5 to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 9:5) Paul continues this argument in the passage we read this morning where he writes, “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew….for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” Paul can do this because he is a good Jew, who understands that when God makes a promise, God keeps that promise. Even though, at the moment, his brother and sister Jews do not believe in Jesus, he trusts that in God’s infinite grace, God will grant them their inheritance. At the same time Paul makes it clear that Christians will inherit as well. And as he does he wants them to be clear that their inheritance comes because they have been adopted, or grafted into Abraham’s family. This is how he puts it. “But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot, were grafted in their place to share the rich root of the olive tree, 18 do not boast over the branches. If you do boast, remember that it is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you. 19 You will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” 20 That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe.” (Romans 11:17-20) If Paul had our story of the Portuguese Count in front of him, he would probably remind the Christians in Rome that they had done nothing to receive their inheritance but instead, had been picked by God to receive something amazing. And, just as importantly, Paul had already told them that there was nothing that could separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, meaning that when God makes a promise, God keeps it. What then are the practical applications of this understanding? First it is that we are to see our Jewish brothers and sisters, as just that, our brothers and sisters. We are all part of the great Abrahamic family. This means that we ought not to push Jesus on them, for in fact not even Paul did that. He offered them his insights and teachings, felt badly when they did not accept, but did not try and either shame them or force them into converting. Second we are to be clear about what we believe as Jesus’ followers. Sometimes people want to pretend that all religions are basically the same. This is not so. We as Christians hold that we believe that in Jesus, God became incarnate, lived, was crucified, died, was buried and rose again. We believe that because of our faith in Jesus we have become new people, capable of living new lives. We are not to be afraid of making this claim, not as one that makes us superior, but as one that makes us grateful for having been chosen by God. Finally we are to take seriously our call to live a life that reflects the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ; a love that is offered to everyone we meet. The challenge for us then is to, on the one hand be certain of who we are and what we believe, and on the other hand living a life of service and humility in which we treat every other human being we encounter as children of God. My challenge to you then for this week is to ask yourselves, how am I showing the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ to everyone I meet in order that they might see the love of God within me? Rev. Dr. John Judson
Listen Print Version (PDF) Genesis 21:8-21, Romans 10:5-15 It was one of the great advertising images of all time; the Easy Button. How many of you remember the Easy Button? It was the center of Staples advertising for a considerable period of time. The commercials would run like this. A man would bemoan the fact that he had just run out of ink cartridges or toner. Someone else would say, here use my easy button. The man would press the button and suddenly the supplies would appear. Or it was someone who needed to have a presentation printed by the next day…and presto, hit the easy button and there it was. It was a great campaign then not only because it made us remember Staples but because we all wanted an easy button. The house is a mess, company is coming and you know there is not enough time to clean…Easy Button and it is spotless. Or you are trying to remove a rusted head bolt from your 67 Camaro…easy button and it just pops loose. Finally it was a great campaign because it was imitated thousands of times. One of my favorite YouTube knock off Easy Button videos had a kid who couldn’t get a date and even his mother tells him he needs a better body to do it…and as he hits the Easy Button he suddenly looks like a kid from a boy band. Over the years one of the places that I have heard people desiring an easy button is with the Christian Faith. They have been very confused about many of the doctrines that the church has historically held and they come to me looking for easy answers. “John, what is this Trinity thing?” As I begin to explain the history of the development of the doctrine I can see them hitting the easy button and I say, “Just think of an egg; white, yoke and shell, three in one” Or they come to me asking, “John, listen will you please explain to me how Jesus can be both fully human and fully divine. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Does that mean he prays to himself?” Again as I draw on Biblical references they mentally hit the Easy Button and I saiy, “OK, think about an egg…” Finally they ask me about predestination. As the Reformed pastor I am, I begin to explain how Calvin used it and once again they hit the Easy Button. Whereupon I reply, “God chose you. You did not choose God.” The bottom line then is that Christians have always looked for an easy button and many have found it in verse 9 of our text from Romans. Verse nine reads in this way. “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believer in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There it is, the Easy Button. All of Christianity can be boiled down to a simple formula. First one publically proclaims that Jesus is Lord. Then one believes that God raised him. There is nothing else that one needs to do. This understanding is at the heart of the entire revivalist movement, stretching from the Great Awakening to our current day. Revivals are held with one aim in mind, convincing people to profess and believe. This simple Easy Button formula is intended, as the preachers will tell you, to save you from hell and get you into heaven. Don’t do this and you belong to the guy with the pitch fork. Do it and you get to be beamed up to heaven and hang out with all of the true Christians who have preceded you by pushing the same Easy Button. This is why certain churches have altar calls at the end of each service. They want people to push the Easy Button. All of that button pushing would be fine if that was what Paul actually had in mind when he wrote this letter. But what I want to offer you this morning is that I do not believe that Paul understood this profession and belief as an Easy Button; as a short cut out of hell and into heaven. Instead I think Paul would have seen this as the Difficult Button, and here is why; Paul wasa good messianic Jew. Let me explain. Paul was a good Jew who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the long awaited messiah who had ushered God’s Kingdom into the world. As a good Jew, Paul understood clearly that a profession about God, or the messiah, was not an Easy Button. It was in fact an agreement to do whatever God asked of you. When Jews said the Schema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one…” they were not making an intellectual statement. They were saying that they would do whatever that one God asked of them. We can see this in our Old Testament lesson. Abraham finally got the son with Sarah that he had always been promised. Sarah, however was jealous of Abraham’s other son, Ishmael. She tries to force Abraham to send Ishmael and his mother Hagar into the desert to die. Abraham resists, or resists until God comes to him and reminds him of the covenant promise that Abraham would be the father of many nations. God tells Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael into the desert because God would not only take care of them, but bless them. So Abraham does as God asks and sends them out. He does so because this is what it meant to profess this one God…you were to do whatever that God asked. So when Paul tells the Roman church that they are to profess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, Paul is asking them to act upon that profession. Paul is asking them to live as if those things were true. What he is asking them to do is to commit to forgiving as Jesus and God forgave them. He is asking them to take up their cross daily and suffer on behalf of Christ trusting that one day they would be raised as was Jesus. He is also asking them to share their worldly goods with other believers as Jesus had asked. He is also asking them to pray for and love their enemies just as Jesus did. He is asking them to risk their careers, their family ties, their place in society and everything else to be obedient to the one whom they have proclaimed as Lord, because by proclaiming Jesus as Lord, they were publically declaring that Caesar is not their Lord and master. That title belonged to a crucified and resurrected carpenter. This is no Easy Button allowing one to escape hell and enter into heaven. This is a Difficult Button calling them to lead a radically different and difficult way of life in the here and now. And if you do not believe me, ask those Iraqis who have lost everything because they refuse to convert to another faith, but instead steadfastly call Jesus, Lord. I understand clearly that the Difficult Button is not nearly as attractive as the Easy Button. After all we are the people who invented paint by numbers so that we would not have to learn how to paint…and the player piano so we would not have to learn to play the piano. Yet I hope that we will listen to Paul as he concludes this section of his letter. He reminds us that the Difficult Button is good news and that we ought to be telling others about how they too can push it as well. He does so because by pushing the difficult button, anyone, any human being can become part of God’s in-breaking kingdom of love, grace and compassion. Anyone can find themselves drawn closer to the creator and redeemer of the world. Anyone can rediscover the fullness of what it means to be a child of God. It will not be easy, but it will be worthwhile. My challenge to each of us then is to ask, am I willing to push the difficult button and live as a child of God’s Kingdom by showing the love and grace of Jesus Christ to all that I meet? Rev. Amy Morgan
Listen Print Version (PDF) Genesis 17:9-14, Romans 8:26-39 Scratched onto a wall at Auschwitz are three lines of a poem: I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it. I believe in God even when He is silent. The person who wrote these words was surely experiencing the terrifying silence of God. As the camp’s inhabitants were led, as Psalm 44 says, “as sheep to be slaughtered,” this person managed to keep faith somehow, to believe in a God who would stand silently aloof in the face of this human atrocity. What is it that makes such faith possible? To use the poem’s reasoning, when clouds obscure the sun, we don’t give up hope of seeing its rays or turn to believing it was a figment of our imaginations. Likewise, when we don’t feel love, it is the hope of someday finding it that keeps us going. Most of us don’t give up on the notion of love entirely each time our heart is broken or we feel lonely or outcast. But when God is silent, when God doesn’t come through for us, when God fails to provide what we want or need when we want or need it, well, we begin to wonder. We begin to question. Not just about the existence of God. But about the character of God. About the trustworthiness of God. Are we really safe following this God? Does God have our best interests in mind? We might imagine these kinds of questions arose for Abraham fairly regularly throughout his life with God. God made a profound promise to Abraham, a long-term investment in him, as John said last week. But in our text today, that promise is still in jeopardy. God promised Abraham a land and a people who would be as numerous as the stars and who would bless all the nations of the earth. But Abraham and Sarah are old. The clock isn’t just ticking for them – that ticker is dead and done for. Abraham’s son Ishmael is still in the picture, but because Hagar is a slave and not Abraham’s wife, Ishmael is a somewhat tenuous offspring to carry so weighty a promise. God has been anything but silent, but Abraham is at the point where actions will speak louder than words. At the time this story from Genesis was likely written down, somewhere around the 5th century BC, Abraham’s descendants were in captivity in Babylon. They knew God as the one who resided in, and spoke to them from, the temple in Jerusalem. How, then, could they hear God speak to them in a foreign land? In God’s silence, they feared losing their cultural and religious identity. They were surrounded by people who seemed to prosper from the provision of other gods. Was their God - this God who would abandon them in their captivity - really trustworthy? Was God for them or against them? When the world erupts in violent chaos, when our lives begin to quickly unravel, when we pray for a sign that never comes, when God is silent in our distress, it is easy to question the trustworthiness of God. We wonder if we can really count on God, “lean on the everlasting arms,” and “take everything to God in prayer.” Is Jesus really our friend if he won’t heal our loved ones from illness or protect our children from harm? Can we lean on one who allows us to fall into sin and fail to love our neighbors? When we look around our lives and our world, Christ’s promise to be with us always, “even to the end of the age” sounds hollow. But if a person in a Nazi death camp can see God differently, if an inmate of Auschwitz can have faith in the face of God’s silence, perhaps we can retain our trust in God, even through the worst of our life experiences. But it may require us to look more closely at our understanding of God’s promises and the character of God. When the apostle Paul wrote his letter to the Roman church, Jews, including those who were Christian, had only recently been allowed to return to the city after having been expelled for several years. In the meantime, the churches had been populated with Gentiles, and the Jewish and Gentile Christians now had to work to find common ground on any number of beliefs and practices, including the question of whether or not Gentile Christians had to be circumcised. And so, it became of crucial importance to articulate what circumcision meant, and what it did not mean. When God commanded Abraham to be circumcised, and to circumcise all in his tribe, God was putting the covenant promise into the flesh of the people. It was a lived theology of providence, a physical reminder of God’s everlasting covenant with Abraham to be the God of his people. It was not a badge of honor to be worn like a Star-Bellied Sneech. It wasn’t a promise that life would always go well for God’s people. Instead, it was a sign of God’s trustworthiness. Because as long as there are people on this earth who bear God’s covenant in their flesh, the descendants of Abraham continue, and therefore God’s promise lives on. Circumcision ultimately meant – for Abraham, for the Israelites in Babylon, and for the Jews in Auschwitz – that God would keep God’s promise to be their God forever. God would not allow Abraham to remain childless or the Israelites to become subsumed into Babylonian culture or for all of the Jews to be exterminated as Hitler desired. Circumcision was a sign that even when God is silent, God is still faithful to the promise. The Roman Christians struggled with that reality as they faced opposition from their families and friends and eventually persecution from the Roman emperor. At the beginning of our reading today, Paul assures the church that God does indeed hear their prayers, even though it may not seem like it. Imagine the subtext of these verses: the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. We might imagine that things aren’t going well for the Roman Christians. We can imagine the letter written to Paul by the Roman church. Dear Paul, we have prayed for God to help us. It doesn’t seem to be working. We’re not seeing God come through for us. Bad things are happening to us because of our faith in Jesus. Are we doing something wrong? And Paul says, no, you’re not doing it wrong. This is how life is. It’s no different for Christians. But just because God is silent doesn’t mean God isn’t trustworthy. In fact, God is at work, God’s Spirit is interceding for you when you don’t even know what or how to pray. You can’t possibly do it wrong. And even though bad things are happening, God can use them for good. Paul goes on to reassure the church that nothing they can do and nothing that is done to them can separate them from the love of God in Jesus Christ. According to Genesis, being uncircumcised means a Jewish man is cut off from God’s people. But according to Paul, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Through circumcision, God put the covenant with Abraham in the flesh of God’s people. But in Jesus Christ, there is a new covenant, an everlasting covenant with all people, which is not marked in our flesh. Instead, this covenant is God in the flesh. This does not in any way negate the necessity of circumcision for the Jewish people. As Jesus himself said, “I come not to abolish the law but to uphold it.” God’s covenant with Abraham remains, and it remains in the flesh of the descendants of Abraham. But in the covenant God establishes in Jesus Christ, God promises to be with us always, to love us always, no matter what happens to us in our lives. Like circumcision, it is a lived theology, alive and present in the person of Jesus Christ. And like circumcision, it lives on through each new generation as the body of Christ remains in the world, continuing his ministry on earth. God’s covenant in Jesus Christ continues in the flesh of each person gathered here, each person, who, as Paul says, is “called according to his purpose.” God is at work, through the Holy Spirit, in me and in you and in all who follow Christ’s call to “come and follow me.” The mark of Christ placed upon us in baptism is the only sign we need to live out God’s promise, to be a part of God’s redeeming work in the world. The writer of the poem at Auschwitz understood that the trustworthiness of God has no direct correlation with our life’s circumstances. Holocausts and plagues, exiles and persecutions are the realities of a fallen creation. When Paul says that We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, he doesn’t mean that only good things happen to those who love God. It means that God can work even the violence and hatred, the death and destruction into something good that serves the purpose of redeeming the world. This also doesn’t affirm the adage “everything happens for a reason.” Life happens, people make choices, we live and we die, we are broken and we are put back together. And through it all, God has chosen to love us and is working God’s purpose out in and through us. We are the promise of God, in the flesh, the living, breathing new covenant. In the face of God’s silence, we believe in God. Because the sun will shine again. And we will feel love again. And we will see God’s goodness again. Because nothing, nothing, can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. Amen. The Rev. Dr. John Judson
Listen Printable Version Genesis 17:1-8, Romans 8:18-25 Laughter and anticipation filled the cabin. Families were headed for vacations in tropical paradise. Men and women who had given their adult lives to fighting the scourge of HIV/AIDS were headed to a meeting with their colleagues in order to further their work. College students were headed to a rendezvous with families. Men, women and children were headed home. It was a day like any other. They were arriving at work early in the morning. Business men and women headed to their offices, cooks and maintenance crews into the building, firefighters to their stations. It was a day just like any other. They had all gone to the market to buy what they needed for dinner. Children scurried around. Vendors and buyers haggled over the price of lintels and bread. It was a day just like any other day. A father was taking his daughter on a stroll. They had survived the winter and now it was time to enjoy the sun. It was a day like any other. Then a finger pushed a button and the plane was blown out of the sky. Men filled with hatred flew planes full of people into buildings. Suicide bombers blew themselves up. A man stepped from a car and shot a two year old and her father. Unfortunately in our world even these days are like any other day. They are days like any other days because evil is real. I realize that speaking of evil is a dangerous thing. It is dangerous because we use the word evil too often. It has become almost passé. Liberals describe conservatives as evil. Conservatives use it to describe liberals. We use it to encompass entire religions; Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, or even religion itself. We use evil to describe anyone and anything we do not like. This morning though I use it in the sense we use it in our baptismal vows. We ask people to reject the evil that defies God’s righteousness and love. For that is what evil is. Evil is whatever defies the purposes of God; the purposes to bring peace, love and joy to all of creation. Evil can be subtle; the long term verbal abuse and bullying of a teen that destroys their life. Evil can be obvious; the destruction of a plane filled with innocent people by an untrained militiaman filled with hatred. But evil is real. Evil is alive and infects us all. The question what do we do in the face of evil? There are two things I hope that we will keep in mind when we feel overwhelmed by evil and simply want to pretend it’s not there…or we want to run and hide from it. First we need to remember that God is making a long term investment in eliminating evil and bringing about a world in which God’s righteousness and love guide all of creation. This concept is at the heart of both of our passages this morning. First we have Abram who is now 99 years old. Though God had promised him land, children and blessing, Abram still had neither land nor children, and he had yet to be a blessing to the world. In a moment when most of us would have given up hope, God appears to Abram, reminds Abram of the promises that had been made, and then gives Abram a new name, Abraham, as a reminder that God’s commitments do not fade. God will indeed bless Abraham with descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. And it is through those offspring that God will bless all of the nations and renew creation. This idea of God renewing creation is picked up by Paul in this 8th chapter of Romans. Paul acknowledges that there is evil in the world. He speaks of the sufferings of those to whom he is writing. By following Jesus Christ they had placed themselves in the line of fire of the Roman government. The Christians would be hated, persecuted and killed. Paul continues however and reminds his readers that those sufferings are not worth comparing with the creation that God is bringing about through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He speaks of the whole of creation waiting for the moment it will be set free and experience the freedom that is offered to God’s children. He also reminds them that they have tasted the very first fruits of God’s liberating work. In a sense he is retelling the story of the Exodus, but this time the liberation is not merely from a Pharaoh, but from evil itself. This is freedom from all of that which defies God’s righteousness and love. The second thing we need to do is for each of us to commit ourselves to a long term investment in this recreative work. We do this first by holding on to hope. Paul writes, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The hope to which Paul refers is not a, “I wish I may, I wish I might, wish upon a star tonight” kind of hope. The hope to which Paul refers is a powerful trust and belief that the God who created the world; the God who made a covenant with Abram; the God who liberated God’s people from captivity; the God who sent God’s only son into the world and raised him from the dead, will continue to work. Hope is the belief that this God is working to make all things new; to make all things such that they reflect God’s righteousness and love. God is working at, as Paul writes, “…that the creation itself will be set free from change and decay.” In other words, once again, God is making a long term investment in the recreation of the world and we can find hope in that promise. The second way in which we make a long term investment in God’s recreating work is to reveal ourselves. Paul uses an interesting phrase in this section. He says, “For the creation waits on tiptoe for the revealing of the children of God.” I was often puzzled by that phrase. But then it began to dawn on me, that part of what Paul is implying in those words is that creation is waiting to see God’s children remove the old garments of sin and evil and show their true selves; selves that love God and neighbor; selves that show forth God’s grace; selves that offer forgiveness; selves that work to restore creation; selves that turn aware from the allure of evil and toward the calling of Jesus Christ. Creation waits for this because it is a sign that God’s recreative work is actually happening. Our task then is to reveal our true Christ-centered selves to the world. We do this not only by resisting the evil that defies God’s righteousness and love, but also by being proactive in showing that righteousness and love to the world. Can you imagine what would happen if every one of those descendants of Abraham revealed that love to the world? Can you imagine what a different and wonderful world this would be? If every person of faith across the planet offered love and not hate, forgiveness and not revenge, compassion and not contempt? This would be the blessing that God intended for this world. Creation would indeed rejoice. The question then that presents itself is whether or not we are willing to make a long term investment in God’s recreative work. Are we willing to make it in this place as a community that cultivates mission, inclusion and community? Are we willing to make it in Detroit and Pontiac by insuring that all children receive a good education? Are we willing to do so in our places of work or our schools by treating all people as beloved children of God? Are we willing to do so by how we treat our own family members? So here is my challenge for the week, for each of us to ask ourselves, how I am making a long term investment in God’s recreative work, so that God’s righteousness and love shine forth from me? Rev. Ernest F. Krug, III, MD
Link to Audio File Link to Print Version Genesis 25:19-34, Romans 8:1-11 There is nothing more aggravating for a pediatrician than to have a family refuse immunizations for their child. I won’t ask if any of you fall into that category - I don’t want to know! We know that immunizations protect children from a host of deadly or neurologically impairing conditions. During my time in practice I saw the occurrence of pneumococcal meningitis, H. Flu meningitis, and H. Flu epiglottitis, to name just three potentially devastating diseases, almost completely disappear. So why do some parents chose not to immunize their children? Some feel that the very small risk of an adverse effect from the vaccine should be avoided, even if it exposes their child to the greater risk of death or disability from the diseases from which the child would be protected. There is also the argument that enough children are being immunized that their child will be protected by “herd immunity.” In other words, the diseases won’t occur because they are warded off by the “herd” of vaccinated persons. That doesn’t work, of course, if an unimmunized foreign traveler brings the illness into the environment. And it leaves children who have not been able to receive live vaccines because of immunosuppression from cancer treatment or other circumstances at greater risk. How should we think about our responsibility to a community threatened by disease? Last Sunday John described sin as a spiritual disease, and St. Paul laments in Romans 7 how this condition of sin keeps us from doing what we know we should do as children of the living God. In Romans 8, from which we just heard the first eleven verses, Paul now rejoices in our freedom “from the law of sin and death.” He goes on to say, “...the Spirit of God dwells in you.” How can Paul shift so quickly from his negative commentary on the human condition in Romans 7 to his optimistic view about the power of God’s Spirit at work in us? One way to think about this is to consider our baptism into Christ as a spiritual immunization that protects us from the ravages of sin and death. It does not change our human condition. Moreover, it does not protect us from challenges, hardships, or suffering in this life. It does enable a new way of being in the world. In fact, once we are baptized we are called by God to live into our baptism by being agents of Jesus Christ for the renewal and reconciliation of this world. Christ becomes the center as we seek to live as persons whose minds are set on “the things of the spirit.” Baptism is therefore a very serious business. When parents choose this for their children, they also agree to model this living into one’s baptism so that their child grows to understand how the Christian life is a different way of being, not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds [Romans 12:2]. Now I admit that we and our children often don’t live this out. But we can look to God’s grace to help us live into our baptism if we pay attention to opportunities God gives us to do so, and take seriously our birthright as children of God. Now I don’t need to remind you that the history of God’s people contains many instances of rebellion against God, an example being multiple outbreaks of rebellion following the exodus from Egypt. The people of God were not taking the birthright of their covenant with God seriously enough and in sufficient numbers to prevent the ravages of spiritual disease. Yet God continues to claim them and lead them. Esau did not take his birthright seriously. He and his twin brother, Jacob, were not bad people, although we would not see either one as a role model for godly behavior. They started fighting in the womb, and their mother, Rebekah, figured she was in for a rough delivery. You’ll recall from the Genesis passage we heard that she even wondered if she could survive the pregnancy. Jacob is described as grasping Esau’s heel at delivery, presumably to try to get delivered first. As young adults, one is willing to sell his birthright for food; the other is conniving and willing to take advantage of a brother in need. Recently, at our Rejoicing Spirits’ service in June, John and I acted out the roles of the brothers in a skit prepared by Terry Chaney. I found myself definitely in sympathy with Esau, and took that role. Esau is strong, athletic, and confident; Jacob hangs around the home and thinks up a way to cheat his brother. But be clear about one thing: Esau does not take his birthright seriously. Esau knew that he was his father’s favorite. He also knew, birthright or no birthright, that he would receive his father’s blessing when the old man died. The culture was totally on Esau’s side. The first born received all the father’s property and other assets period! So what does it matter if a person takes his birthright for granted or gives it away? This is the heart of the matter. God chooses Jacob to be the father of the chosen people of Israel--in spite of the fact that Jacob is a clever scoundrel--because God recognizes in Jacob the qualities he needs. And the most important quality is that Jacob takes God seriously. Recall that Jacob has a dream at Bethel in which a ladder extends from earth to heaven. He has a vision of God standing next to him and blessing him, promising to be with him forever. The relationship is not perfect, however. Jacob does experience conflict with God. Remember when Jacob wrestles with God at Peniel [Genesis 32: 22-31]. He asks God for a blessing, which God gives along with a permanent disability. In spite of ups and downs and questionable character, what distinguishes Jacob and Esau is the fact that Jacob has a real relationship with God. He seeks God. He cares about and wants God’s blessing. Normal power relationships in this ancient world are turned upside down. This is not to say that being a clever scoundrel is a good thing! It is to say that God’s grace does not discriminate against those WE would consider unworthy. It looks into the heart and finds those who care about their relationship with God. Unlike his brother Esau, Jacob looks into a future controlled by God and trusts God with his life. Esau has a shorter perspective. He relies on the conventions of the day and grasps a prize he can see because he believes he needs it to secure his own future--yes, a pot of stew for a starving brother. As Walter Brueggemann points out, we are taught in this story that the future is not secured by rights or claims of family, but by the grace of God securing God’s future--even when we humans make bad choices. Jacob and Esau make a bargain involving birthright because Esau believes he controls his own future. We know, of course, that it is God’s purposes that are secured. So how do we fall into the same trap that ensnared Esau? What are ways that we sell our birthright of baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection? When do we choose to satisfy our strong hungers with those material things the world provides with promises of a better life--things present here and now--no waiting, no trusting in God’s promises required? There are plenty of bargains out there for an immediate reward, but they are truly no bargain. When we trust God’s promise to restore, renew, and reconcile the world, and accept our birthright to be part of that work, we live our lives with a different perspective. It is a perspective that seeks to be in relationship with God through our Lord, Jesus Christ. We strive to make good decisions regarding our life choices, not decisions that grasp at spurious opportunities to control our own future. The Romans’ passage and the Genesis’ passage are both about conflict and promise. Conflict is inevitable in life, but our response to it can seek to discover God’s intention for humankind or ignore God’s intention. God is at work creating a future where our fellow travelers in this life are free to love God and each other. When we try to control the future to our own advantage, when we try to create a future out of material benefit we can see, we can miss out on the material benefits God is establishing for the people of God. Even worse, we may ignore and despise the power of God to create transforming life out of nothing we can see or perceive. Remember that Paul uses ‘flesh’ in his letter to the Romans to describes not our bodies but rather whom we serve. We do not have a ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ nature. We have our being, which is either in Christ or focused on gratifying the self. The transforming Spirit of God is a gift from God-- unbidden and undeserved--not a part of our nature. It requires our attention to perceive God’s intention and to trust the Spirit of God at work among us. Conflict is inevitable because there are two ways of understanding reality--one defined by God’s purposes and one defined by immediate, perceptible rewards. The promise that defines God’s reality is the reconciliation of the world to God and eternal life for all who live into God’s claim upon his people. Our baptism immunizes us, if you will, to live in freedom as children of God. Our challenge as disciples of Jesus Christ is to live into the freedom we have in Christ to choose reconciliation where there is conflict; to choose love and inclusion where there is hatred, apathy, or exclusion; to choose a future shaped by the life-giving power of God rather than one dictated by narrow self-interest. We are called to live into our baptism as free agents of Jesus Christ bringing love and life wherever we see conflict and death. We have been immunized by the power of Christ against the life- constricting effects of sin. We cannot defer to the community of other Christians to live into this new life. We cannot depend on a “spiritual herd immunity.” We have been immunized against sin to live into our own calling because the decisions we make matter to God, and God works through each one of us. The alternative is to choose a path dictated by our own limited vision, but that is no bargain. Esau discovered this the hard way, and we should be careful not to despise our own birthright. Work hard to live into your baptism, so that you may daily increase in God’s Holy Spirit more and more until you pass into that relationship with God that has no end. Thanks be to God for the spirit which brings life and peace through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. |
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