Journey to Easter: Gratitude

 Deuterononmy 26:1-11

Lent has rolled around again, a season we most associate with the practice of giving up, fish on Fridays, a stronger resolution to avoid temptations, all somehow meant to prepare us for Easter.  But do these things work?  I read of a woman who gave up smoking with relish every Lent, only to get to Easter morning and joyfully light up and resume this unhealthy habit.  A few years ago I was invited join a clergy colleague and some others from her church to a most amazing all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet at a swanky hotel.  Chocolate covered fruit, chocolate sauce on pancakes and ice cream, hot chocolate to drink…. At the time it was only in operation during Lent. I guess the idea was that chocolate tastes that much sweeter when we think it’s a guilty pleasure.

In recent times some church folk have changed the emphasis on giving up some vice during Lent, to taking on a new virtuous habit, like more exercise, or volunteering.  There was hope that if we exchanged the negative feelings associated with trying to break a bad habit for the positive feelings of starting a new good habit we’d be better prepared for Easter joy.  Maybe.

Last year in worship we did some of both.  We gave up Alleluias, put them away in a box, and then took them out again for Easter.  And we worked on developing the habit of sharing what we have with the poor by giving out coin boxes for the Society of St. Andrew.

But this year the word of God found in Deuteronomy 26, other scriptures appointed for the weeks ahead and the creative vision of Sarah Chandler are pointing us to a different approach to Lent altogether.  The metaphor is a journey, and Easter is the destination.  When we set out to take a journey there is some giving up, because some things are too cumbersome to travel with.  And there may be something we start to do because it helps sustain us as we go, or God blesses us with it along the way.  But the experiences of the journey are far richer than giving up one random thing, or taking on something else.  On a Lenten journey everything is about moving toward Easter; but our focus is as much on the journey itself as on the destination. We have some expectations of what we will find at our destination, but the days of traveling themselves hold unimagined experiences, blessings from God that help to shape and change us.

The Lenten journey takes 40 days, a number chosen both because of Jesus’ 40 days of fasting in the wilderness and because the Israelites spent 40 years to journey from Egypt to the Promised Land.  Spiritually the Promised Land and Easter are one and the same place. But when we count to 40 days we skip over the Sunday mornings as we count. This is because every Sunday is meant to be a day that Christians celebrate the resurrected Jesus and that leads us to the new life of salvation. The Promised Land of Easter is the kingdom of God, where the Lord is the ruler and all living creatures are experiencing shalom because they are living according to God’s design.  All along the journey God prepares his people for life in the Promised Land by giving us gifts.  That’s what this Lent is going to be about for us, focusing on some of the gifts God gives us to enable us to live in Easter when we get there.

            Every so often we come to a point in the journey of life when significant change is about to take place.  Graduations, getting married, becoming a parent, getting a new job, entering retirement.  This is what was going on when the Israelites were given the instructions we read today in Deuteronomy.  They had been traveling through the wilderness with Moses for nearly 40 years.  Now the land was in sight and the Israelites needed some instruction about what to do once they got there.  First settle in, then plant, and when the harvest comes take some of the first fruit of each crop, put it in a basket and bring it to worship and give thanks.

            In a typical thanksgiving service we offer prayers of thanks for the present blessings.  But in this ceremony the people are instructed to recite a creed, a kind of national history all the way back to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…”  Abram and Saria had been living in the land of Aram when God called them to travel to the Promised Land, this very land they were now getting ready to enter with Moses.  Abraham’s family wandered around the Land for three generations   When Abraham’s grandson Jacob stole his brother Easu’s birthright and blessing and fled for his life he returned to Aram and lived with his uncle Laban for many years, acquiring two wives and 12 sons.  After Jacob returned to the Land with his much bigger family there was a famine in the Land and all of them had to relocate to Egypt. So the prayer continues, “My ancestor went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous.  When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Everything points back to God’s hand working through all of the past to bring them to this point.  God called Abraham and made a covenant to bless him with many children so his descendants would become a great nation.  God watched over Jacob even when he was disobedient and even used the dysfunction in Jacob’s family to bring about the seeds of that great nation – 12 sons.  God led them to Egypt to save them from famine, and even as they were being oppressed, God used the time in Egypt to turn the family with 12 sons into a mighty and populous people.  Then the Lord was the one who led them out of Egypt with ha mighty hand, displaying power and signs and wonders.  And finally it was God who had led them through the wilderness to this good land flowing with milk and honey. By recognizing the hand of God moving through their entire past the Israelites were being given a gift – the gift of gratitude.  A gift that grows deeper and more powerful when it is tied to a long term, faithful relationship.

In our relationship with God, it is an important practice to reflect back over our lives and see how God has been faithfully with us through the entire journey of life.  Especially when we come to these points of transition where the path ahead is leading us into new terrain – of parenting, of a new job, of retirement, of life after a loved one has passed…The gratitude grows deeper and stronger the longer we look and the more we can see God’s hand at work in our past.  The gratitude comes from seeing clearly how God was sustaining us through the tough times, and how often God’s “no” or “not yet” really was for the best.

My grandmother had a love of learning and a desire to go to college, something still not common for young women in the 1930s.  As a little girl her rich uncle promised to help her go, but when she was old enough that promise seemed to have been forgotten.  So she made due with secretarial school.  But God heard her desire and guided her life to facilitate learning.  God gave grandma a scholarly pastor for a husband, introduced her to a wide range of friends and acquaintances who freely shared their knowledge and perspectives with her, and God fed Grandma’s hunger for knowledge with lots of books, lectures and classes. Finally in their retirement the Elder Hostel program was developed and grandma and grandpa went on at least one educational vacation every year for over a decade.  At the end of her life Grandma could look back with gratitude for all the ways God had fed her intellect even without a formal college education.

As I noted before, this practice of looking back to see God at work in our lives is something we should do every time we are about to make a major transition.  For when we see God at work in the past our hearts are filled with the gift of gratitude.  As a church we are about to make a transition.  Fred Kingsbury has been directing music at our church for over 25 years, starting when Vivian Winn moved back to Australia and taking just a few years break in the middle.   When we look back there is much to be thankful for.  God has given Fred some incredible musical talents that he has shared with us.  From leading the choir, to learning how to play the organ, to managing equipment, which allowed the choir to sing to tapes and cds, to jumping in and singing whatever part needed strengthening.  Fred has seen his gift of music as a gift and willingly took a lower than normal salary for the benefit of the church. Sunday after Sunday Fred has been here helping us to worship God. And even when he’s been away Fred has blessed us by introducing Bob O’Connel to us as a substitute.

Next Sunday we will be our Sunday of gratitude for Fred’s ministry here as organist and choir director.  We will thank him and pray for him in worship, and we will celebrate all that God has given us in Fred at coffee hour as well.  Please plan to linger and offer your gratitude.

The lesson at this stop on our Journey to Easter is this: Any time we start a new leg of our journey of life it’s good to pause and reflect back, looking for where God has been, and what God has done and be thankful and celebrate before we move on. Let us each do this individually this week, and collectively as a church so that we might truly see the hand of God guiding us, blessing us and giving us gifts all the way through life.

The Symbols of Faith: The Challenging Word of God

Luke 4:21-30

February 3, 2013

            Last week we began to consider scripture as the comforting word of God; a gift; God’s living word that speaks to and guides followers of Jesus when we read it regularly expecting to hear God’s voice. The sermon was based on the first half of a story Luke tells of Jesus returning to his home town of Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry, and preaching to those gathered in the synagogue.  The scripture he chose, from Isaiah sure sounds like good news. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down to preach.  The opening words of his sermon were, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.  They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”  The congregation was filled with people who remembered what he was like as a kid, his neighbors, his teachers, the folks who worked at the market.  They were curious to know how Jesus had turned out.  They had heard news that he had spoken in the synagogues of other towns in Galilee.  They were curious and full of anticipation.

            But things got bad quickly. In the space of six sentences Jesus managed to offend them so badly the congregation chased him out of the synagogue and was about to throw him off a cliff!  What happened?  If Jesus was preaching the good news, sharing the gift of the living word of God with these people why were they insulted?  Was this “preachy” sermon a beginner’s mistake?

            Perhaps Jesus was irritated that their question, “isn’t this Joseph’s son,” had a hint of skepticism. We know him, he’s just Joseph’s son…we don’t need to take this too seriously. In any case he decided to name the skepticism in public.  I know what you’re thinking, Can you heal yourself?  We want to see you do for us what you did in Capernaum.  Then Jesus identified himself as not simply a preacher, but a prophet, asserting that “no prophet is accepted in his home town,” and reminding them of Elijah and Elisha.

            Prophets are strange characters in the Bible.  They are people who love God, talk to God and hear from God regularly so they often have glorious visions of how God wants the world to turn out, the way things are supposed to be.  Prophets give us dreams of the Peaceable kingdom where children play around snakes and lions and lambs sleep together.  They announce that these bad times we are in will get better, by the power of God.  The valleys will be lifted, the rough places made smooth. But their relationships with people are rocky because prophets are not afraid to tell the people the truth – that they have strayed like lost sheep from living according to God’s purposes.  But because they are so blunt prophets are usually loners, many have no established home, and some are quite eccentric like John the Baptist wearing itchy camel hair clothing and eating honey straight from the hive. 

What prophets have to say is offensive to people who think of ourselves as good people, honest people, hard working people who have deservedly earned all we have, because often we have overlooked a multitude of our own sins.  The truth of the prophets is jarring.  The people in Nazareth were probably thinking of themselves when Jesus read Isaiah.  Israel is poor, Jews are poor, they’ve been trounced by empire after empire, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and now Roman. Many of the ancestors of the people in Nazareth had been taken captive, forced to live as slaves in other lands.  They have suffered from oppression, unfair taxes, prejudicial treatment. So they expected a messenger anointed by God to bring them some good news, proclaiming release and freedom.  The congregation identified with the ones who would rightly receive God’s blessings.  

But as Jesus pressed on in his sermon he lifted up Elijah, a prophet who spoke out when Israel’s kings and the people were being unfaithful to the Lord, worshipping gods of other religions, living by a different set of ethics.  Once Elijah declared to Israel that the Lord was about to punish Israel for their unfaithfulness with a drought and famine.   This made the leaders so angry that Elijah had to flee town.  The Lord took care of Elijah and led him to Zarephath where he met a very poor gentile widow who gave him shelter and food. Though she was down to the bottom of her flour bin, and had only a few drops of oil left, she made bread for him, and miraculously there was enough food to last through the famine.  Elijah worked further wonders by bringing the widow’s dead son back to life.  In his sermon Jesus reminded the congregation of Nazareth that God did not send Elijah to the Jews during this famine, but to a gentile woman.  

Jesus then made a similar point as he reminded the people of the prophet Elisha – whom God used to heal a gentile commander of an enemy army.  Naaman had leprosy and one of his Jewish slaves suggested that he find the prophet in Israel who could heal.  And sure enough, the power of the Lord worked through Elisha to heal Naaman. As a result Naaman converted to only worship the Lord of Israel.  

By mentioning both stories Jesus is making it crystal clear that he doesn’t expect his good news to sound like good news to everyone and that by speaking the truth he expects to be rejected.  Taken as a model, Jesus sermon shows that God’s word both comforts and challenges.  It all depends on the context of the listener.  Those who are truly oppressed, struggling with the chains of addiction, or of ethnic prejudice, or a society that keeps wages lower for one gender than another, or that keeps some families from getting the full legal benefits that other families enjoy, then the Word of God is good news.  If you are someone who saw beloved family members tortured and murdered by unjust governments, and escaped and traveled through great hardship to a land of opportunity, only to need to live in secrecy and constant fear of deportation, then the Word of God is good news. If you are the prodigal son who has squandered your blessings until you hit rock bottom and you see that Jesus is waiting and watching for you like a loving father, calling you back home, ready to embrace you with open arms, the Word of God is good news.  But if you are like the people in Israel at the time of Elijah or Elisha, or the people in Nazareth during Jesus’ sermon, or like the older brother of the prodigal, the faithful one who stayed by the Father’s side and worked hard trying to earn his love, then the truth of the Good News will most likely catch you up short.  God’s embrace of outsiders, God’s free and abundant grace for sinners, and the God honest truth that you are not so good as you think you will not sound so good at first.  Especially if we aren’t expecting it, such preaching will take us off guard, make us angry, ready to through the preacher off nearest the cliff.

Bishop Willimon, who taught at Duke with ethics professor Stanley Hauerwas while I was at Duke tells this story. “In a seminar for preachers that I led with Stanley Hauerwas, one pastor said, in a plaintive voice, ‘The bishop sent me to a little town in South Carolina. I preached one Sunday on the challenge of racial justice. In two months my people were so angry that the bishop moved me. At the next church, I was determined for things to go better. Didn't preach about race. But we had an incident in town, and I felt forced to speak. The board met that week and voted unanimously for us to be moved. My wife was insulted at the supermarket. My children were beaten up on the school ground.’” Willimon said, “My pastoral heart went out to this dear, suffering brother. Hauerwas replied, “And your point is what? We work for the living God, not a false, dead god! Did somebody tell you it would be easy?”

In the recent worship survey we took there is a question about whether any sermon has been offensive.  Only one of the 33 respondents admitted that one sermon had.  If I shared this with Professor Hauerwas he would probably suggest that I haven’t been doing my job well enough.  To tell the truth I have a pretty strong prophetic streak, it’s one of my top three spiritual gifts.  I used it more freely in my early years as a preacher.  You might say age has tempered me, but I am also at a stage in my life when I’m more afraid for myself and my family to say something to make folks want to run me off a cliff. 

Yet refusing to speak the prophetic truth, the truth that makes people uncomfortable and challenges people to take a good look at themselves has its own danger. In the height of the Civil Rights movement and all the conflict about the Vietnam War a book came out called To Comfort and to Challenge presenting results of a survey of church goers. They discovered that parishioners, particularly those most deeply involved, primarily seek comfort from the church. The findings suggested that the preachers who stressed the church’s role in challenging injustice would likely lose the support of the staunchest members. The preachers who were better able to keep their jobs didn’t address the challenging parts of God’s Word so much. They focused on comfort. In the long run, however this has harmed our congregations. In a recent poll of unchristian people between 16 and 29 years old the Barna Group discovered that 85% think of us a hypocritical. Hypocrisy comes from saying we follow Jesus in a way of life, without making the effort at self reflection, seeing how we each have fallen short of the glory of God, failed to be obedient, and have even turned away from God and failed in loving even though we sit in the pews week after week. The only antidote to self reflection is to be challenged with the whole Truth of the gospel which leads us to truly and humbly acknowledge our own sin.

This leads me to ask whether we can do something as members of the church, followers of Jesus, to be better able to hear the challenging truth. Is there some way we can shift our expectations to be ready for times when God’s word feels offensive, pricks our consciousness, challenges some of our deepest assumptions, and most beloved ways of life and not act on our urges to do harm to the messenger? Perhaps it will help to remember the way of Salvation; a way that starts with us in an unawakened state, unaware of God, unaware that we are living sinful lives. The word of God often comes to people in this state as a challenge, a prick to the soul. In religious terms we don’t call it offended, we call it being convicted. Coming to terms with the realization of our sins, and the seriousness of them is tough and can be emotionally wrenching, involving feelings of guilt, and tears of repentance. Yet in receiving this convicting word we are once again awakened to God at work in the world and our relationship to God and neighbor. We become aware that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But this time of conviction is but a stage on the way to salvation. A necessary stage, but not one we are meant to stay in. Rather as we seek the guidance and prayers of fellow travelers on the journey we learn that all true Christians have been convicted of their sin from time to time, and wrestled with God until they got to a time of peace, a time of feeling forgiven, embraced, welcomed home again. As long as we don’t stay stuck in conviction – or try to hold others there – but all keep pressing forward to forgiveness we can start to see conviction as a good thing, an important part of our journey toward becoming the saints of God and living in perfect love with God and our neighbors.

When I was in high school our church youth group took over the entire Sunday School building, turning it into a haunted house, where guest could wander from room to room decorated with cob webs, and strobe lights. In one room they would meet Dr. Frankenstein and touch cold spaghetti brains, and peeled grape eyes, another room was filled with tombstones and skeletons, a warewolf would jump out from a corner. We had great fun putting it together. One year I was part of a small group who decided to create the “ungabunga room.” We dressed in shorts and bikini tops, gathered tall swamp grass for decoration and built a large cauldron with a fake fire underneath. Then we would take turns going to other areas to capture victims and put them into the pot. I thought this was great fun indeed. But if anyone looked at this and said my church was being hypocritical, they would be right.

Now I look back at my deeds, actions taken as part of a church, with the blessing of the other members of my church with shame. Since that time the Word of God has been proclaimed to me over and over in a way that pricked my conscience, and convicted me of my sin. Now I can see that what I was doing was stereotyping human beings, people created in the image of God, who live in different cultures, have different languages, and wear different clothing. I was presenting peoples of the two thirds world to my church and the community around us as if they were monsters, less than fully human, objects of ridicule and scorn. I was participating in the great sin of racism and the memory of my actions is grievous indeed.

But I am thankful for the convicting word of God, a word presented to me over and over again to help me understand racism, and to challenge me to carefully examine my heart, my words and my actions so that through the grace of God I can change. It hasn’t always been pleasant. I have sometimes been angry at the assertion that my words and actions were racist. But the function of conviction is to motivate us to open ourselves up to the Spirit of God so that we can be remolded and fashioned once again in God’s holy image.
When we can hear the challenging word of God, trusting that it is part of God’s grace to restore us and save us from the bonds of sin, then even the prick of conviction can become good news. For conviction of sin, combined with a true love of Jesus and faith in his forgiving love of us is what we all need to be saved. And when the preachers are humble enough to fully include ourselves among the sinful alongside the congregation, then we won’t be in danger of hypocrisy. And perhaps we will be less likely to be run out of town. God can’t use any of us to break someone else’s hearts of stone, until our own stony hearts have been softened by conviction, true confession and God’s gracious forgiving love.

This is why our worship always includes a confession of sin. And on communion Sundays, if we let our words be true, and we offer our own specific convictions in the silence, then the grace imparted through the bread and the cup can be all that more significant of God’s saving grace in our lives.

Symbols of Faith: God’s Comforting Word

Nehemiah 81-6, Luke 4:14-21 and Psalm 19

January 27, 2013

 

We are in the middle of a sermon series about the symbols of faith.  When we reflected on altars on January 6 I explained that the altar symbolizes sacrifice, and Christians believe that Jesus Christ became the ultimate sacrificial lamb, and so the symbol of an empty altar came into common use as Christianity began to spread across Europe.  The bread and chalice of Holy Communion, which reminds us of Christ’s sacrifice, and perhaps the candles which have come to symbolize the light of Christ are appropriate items to put on the altar.  But our congregation, like so many, had lost an understanding of what the altar meant.  Symbols need to be brought to consciousness, and explained from time to time or they lose their meaning.  Many Christians who don’t know the connection between the animal sacrifices on the altars of the Old Testament, and Christ the lamb of God sacrificed to take away our sins, have come to simply think of the altars in their churches as holy spaces. So they started putting other items on the altar as well, such as offerings of money, and sometimes that altar looked a little plain, so they began to perk it up a bit with some nice flowers.  When we don’t understand the symbols of our faith, we are in danger of using them wrongly, which in turn masks, or distorts the original meaning of the symbols in question.  Placing items on a Christian altar makes us look at the things we put there, rather than remembering that no more sacrifices are required of us and we are forgiven simply through the Grace of Jesus Christ. When we focus on the things on the altar we start to think of the altar as a place where we present our gifts to God – our tithes, canned goods around Thanksgiving etc. If then we put a Bible on such an altar it looks as if we are offering the Bible to God.  And it’s even worse if that Bible on the altar is one that no one ever opens and reads.

Of all the things that don’t belong on an altar, the Bible is at the top of the list.  For one thing Christians believe that the Bible contains God’s word for us. It is not something we offer to God – it is a precious gift God has given to us.  And not only that, offerings of sacrifice on the altar are typically dead, yet Christians believe that God’s holy word is very much alive.  We believe that God can and does speak to us through this book in a way different from any writing.  After all the term Bible simply means “Book.”  It is the book of books – God’s holy living word.

When bibles end up on church altars I believe it is a sign that the congregation is struggling with these two precepts – that the Bible is a precious gift of God for us, and that the Bible is God’s living word.  So today I begin a two part sermon to explore what these mean.

Gift

Did you notice how Psalm 19 waxed poetic about the gift of God’s word to us.  In the time the Psalm was written the focal point of God’s word was the Torah – which means law.  Torah is the first five books of the Bible, and though it contains the commandments it is far more than a list of rules.  The Bible Study folks are reading Genesis right now and can testify that it reads more like an adventure story than like a list of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots. In Psalm 19 the verses use several different words for Torah – law, testimony, precepts, commandments, fear of the Lord, ordinances – this is one of the Bible’s ways of making a poem.   

⁷ The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; 

the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple;

⁸the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; 

the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes;

⁹the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; 

the ordinances of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

¹⁰More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; 

sweeter also than honey, and drippings of the honeycomb.

Psalm 19 is shouting from the roof tops – God’s word is a wonderful, precious, delicious gift!

Nehemiah also shows us an example of the people of God receiving God’s word as a wonderful gift.  The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are the end of the History of Israel in the Old Testament.  They are written after the Kingdom was united by David, and the Temple was built in Jerusalem by Solomon, and after the Kingdom was invaded by the Syrians and the Babylonians and many of the Jews were taken into captivity and forced to move away from their homeland.  Finally the Persian Empire took over and under the policy of their Emperor Cyrus, the Jews were allowed to return from exile.  Ezra and Nehemiah were given official permission to help the Jews rebuild the temple and begin to worship rightly again.  The scene we are focused on today is when the people are gathered outside the gate to the temple.  Ezra the priest knew that before they could worship the Lord rightly they had to be introduced to the Torah which had been forgotten during the exile.  So early one morning Ezra, Nehemiah and thirteen elders gathered the people, men and women and children who could hear with understanding, by a gate to the Temple called the Water Gate.  And Ezra started to read from Genesis straight through the Torah, and the elders helped the people to understand, explaining the difficult and confusing parts.  We can tell that the people received this word of God as a gift because they stood from early in the morning until midday and were attentive and they answered Amen, Amen and lifted up their hands and then bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

What about us, today?  Do we view the Bible as a true gift.   Do we feel about the Bible like we feel about receiving just the right Christmas present, something we use all the time that reminds us of the giver and makes us smile?  I suspect this is not so for many of us.

I’ve been teaching Local Pastors’ School for about 6 years now and I also served on the staff of the Intro to Preaching course at BU for 4 years. One of the main questions we ask every new preacher is, “Where is the Good News?” It is extremely common for the sermons of new preachers to be overly moralistic.  Sermons are full of words like should, ought and must.  Listeners often come away feeling shamed, scolded, or discouraged.  And we have come to suspect that new preachers preach this way because that is the type of sermon they have been used to hearing.  This is where the term “preachy” comes from. If the people standing at the Water Gate for a whole morning were presented with such an interpretation they would have wondered away dejected and no one would be left to shout “Amen, Amen.” 

For people to start hearing the Word of God as a gift they need to always see the good news in the Bible.  I suspect the teachers were helping the people notice that God created them and said they are good; that God told Abraham and Sarah that they would be the parents of a great nation and that each of the people listening at the Water Gate was part of that nation.  The teachers insisted that now that they knew who they really were, they could keep God’s commandments and live more like God’s people. 

To find the good news you need to focus on God; God’s gifts, God’s grace, God’s healing, God’s vision of how the world is mean to be. Jesus first public teaching recorded in Luke was to teach about such good news.  He opened the scroll to Isaiah 61 and read: ¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  This is a vision of what God is doing in the world.  The poor whose lives are filled with bad news are given good news.  Those who are in prison, held captive, stuck in life are released.  Those who can’t see the beauty that is a sign of God’s hand at work are given sight.  Those who are burdened, battered, bullied and bruised are set free.  It is the “year of the Lord” the year of Jubilee when the Bible instructs all debts to be wiped clean – everyone has everything they need to live well, and no one is financially beholden to anyone else.  Jesus is announcing God’s work in the world, and it is good news.

Knowing you are a beloved child of God, that through Christ you are forgiven whenever you mess up, and through the power of the Holy Spirit you can live a life of shalom with God and your neighbors is Good News. When we read the Bible rightly, focusing on the Good News, then it becomes more precious than gold, sweeter than honey, a true gift of God for the people of God.

Living Word

Perhaps the best part about this gift of God’s word for us is that it is a living word.

I have a collection of letters stored away and among them are letters from my grandmother.  I treasure these letters because I had a close relationship with grandma, and these letters can help remind me of where I came from and that I was deeply loved.  Reading them over again would do me good, especially if I’m in a place where I feel bad about myself.  But my grandmother died in 1996, and I can’t turn to her any more in the current trials and questions of my life.  I can’t get the same comfort and guidance from the old letters that my living grandmother was able to give to me.

But when we say that the Bible is God’s Living Word we are saying that they are substantially different from old letters.  What we are saying is that any one of us can pick up the Bible and read it in a way that God speaks to us – speaks to our lives here and now.  When we embrace the Bible as the living Word of God we will find that it addresses our current situation, time after time, giving us guidance, comfort, hope.  It is God’s primary way of talking with us.

There was a time when Christians read their Bibles every day, searching the scriptures as a way of listening to God, and finding answers to their prayers.  But today, not so much.  Again this is a topic of discussion in the seminaries and amongst clergy, and professional religious folks have reached some general agreement that modern Biblical scholarship is much to blame for taking the Bible out of the hands and hearts of the people.  Modern Biblical scholarship has made us think we need certain particular tools to read the scriptures.  You have to have some sense of geography, where is Judea, where is Ephesis?  Where is Eden?  You have to have a working knowledge of ancient civilizations – their cultural practices, their religions.  You have to know how to read Hebrew and Greek – dead languages that don’t even use the same alphabet we use. You have to have to understand a bunch of technical words like covenant, ephphatha, agape and paraclete.  Sometimes the church tries to lower the bar a little.  The lectionary cut out the names of the 13 Levites who were helping Ezra  Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand; and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand.  But all in all, over the past 70 years folks in the pews have gotten the sense that the Bible is only something experts can read and understand, and they have given up trying.

            The good news for us today is that the Bible is the living word of God and you do not have to be a Bible expert, or wait for one to preach to you, to begin experiencing God speak through it to you on a regular basis.  This is all you need to do.

1.      Read it regularly.  Just like having a friend you never talk to or listen to isn’t much help, so you can’t experience the Bible as God’s word unless you read it.

a.       Get familiar with the books and how the chapters and verses work – table of contents

2.      Read it selectively.  Don’t just pick it up and decided to read from Genesis through to Revelation and expect God to speak to you all the time.  Through all of history I don’t believe many people received revelation through the begats, or even through lengthy descriptions of wars.

a.       Start with the lectionary – portions that our parents in the faith have found to be tried and true.

b.      Or use the Upper Room – or another devotional

3.      Read with this uppermost question in your mind – What is God saying to me through this passage today.

a.       Don’t get side tracked wondering too much about the geography, technical terms, ancient history.

b.      Trust that God can use the same portion of scripture to speak to you today, that God used three years ago – but that the meaning or significance can change.

4.      Study of the scriptures – learning more about the technical stuff – can help you – but just remember that reading devotionally – as a way of hearing from God – is not the same as reading it for knowledge.  We need to do both.

The Bible is more than a symbol of our faith.  It is not just an object to be placed in the front of the church for decoration.  It is to be proclaimed every Sunday. We use it to drive everything we do in a worship service, our hymns are based on it, our prayers come out of it, or liturgy quotes it and the sermons are meant to explain it and present it as good news for God’s people.  Just as the Bible directs our worship it is God’s plan that this living word will be the primary source of a two way conversation between God and us, guiding and shaping our lives.

God gave us his word as a gift, and it is a living word that can bring a great deal of comfort and insight as we seek to live as disciples of Jesus Christ.  But it takes practice to learn how to receive this gift and get the most out of it.  We are going to enter into a time of practice during our prayer time.  It is my hope that each of us today will leave this service having experienced this gift.  Let us move into this prayer time as we sing the next hymn 600 Wonderful words of life.  Amen.

The Symbols of Faith: Water

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

January 13, 2013

Water. cool and refreshing; a necessary element of life.  Somewhere around 60-70% of our total body weight is water.  A typical person can only live 3-5 days without water, we use between 2 and 3 liters a day.  We also depend on water for washing – our bodies, our clothing, our dishes, our cars.  How good it feels when we have been doing something that made our bodies sticky and grimy, to wash it all of and emerge clean and refreshed.

In Isaiah 44 God’s Spirit is said to be poured out like water.  In Ezekiel sprinkling water cleanses sin and leaves a clean heart. In Noah’s time the waters of the flood purified the sinful world.  Crossing the waters of the red sea meant leaving behind an old life of slavery and entering into the promised land of life the way God always intended it to be.  Our baptism liturgy reminds us that Jesus, like all of us, was nurtured in the waters of a womb.  Water is an important symbol of life, deep and rich with meaning.

Water also is the primary symbol of baptism.

On July 16, 2010 Nightline featured a story about Edwin Kagin, a leading atheist who was present at the annual American Atheist Convention meeting in Cincinnati.  Wielding a blow-dryer, Kagin invited fellow non-believers who had once been baptized to come forward as he symbolically dried up the waters that were sprinkled on their foreheads as young children.  A young woman named Cambridge Boxterman is reported to have said, "According to my mother I screamed like a banshee, and those are her words, so you can see that even as a young child I didn't want to be baptized. It's not fair. I was born atheist and they were forcing me to become Catholic." 

But as Kagin used this modern piece of equipment in an attempt to undo Cambridge’s baptism, they are showing some confusion about what the waters of baptism mean. 

What they have right is that in baptism we mark our identities. Identity has become increasingly important in our world when so many of us change jobs or even careers often, many people end up living in multiple homes, towns and even states or countries. Add all of this change to the instability of families and lots of folks are left wondering who we are, exactly. 

The celebration of Epiphany marks the revelation of Jesus’ identity.  In the early church Epiphany was the winter holiday long before Christmas was developed.  And originally Epiphany was not just about the magi visiting baby Jesus, but also included Jesus’ baptism and his first miracle of turning water into wine.  This year we will be looking at each of these events on separate Sundays.

In Luke’s telling of Jesus’ baptism we see that the people who were listening to John preach were wondering about his identity.  Maybe he was the Messiah.  John clarified for them that the Messiah was still coming.  And a few verses later we are introduced to Jesus, who is in prayer after his own baptism, when the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit came down like a dove and God’s voice said “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  Jesus was identified as a result of his baptism.  And as we read further in Luke Jesus’ identity as the Messiah become crystal clear.

But this message of God is not reserved only for Christ.  As the primary right of initiation into the church each baptized person is given the identity of a Christian.  One who belongs to Christ.  For us in the church the answer to who we are is all tied up into whose we are.  We belong to Christ, and to his church.  Baptism is a symbol of this.

Now when a person is old enough to make choices for themselves, and she has heard God tell her “You are my beloved daughter,” with her own “yes” baptism is like a marriage, where both parties freely enter into a covenant of life together.  And like a marriage we would expect a newly baptized adult to have first spent time with the members of the church in worship, fellowship, prayer and service, just as a couple spends time together for a while, getting to know one another well.  The change in identity happens gradually, and usually has taken place by the time a date for the formal union is set.  In a marriage the Wedding is a symbol of the union that has already occurred.  So to, in an adult baptism we celebrate the work the Holy Spirit has done in uniting a person to Christ and his church.

But what about identity when we baptize a child who cannot choose for herself weather she wants to belong to Christ, like Cambridge Boxterman?  Is she right in thinking it is not fair to force infants to become Christians by baptizing them?  Cambridge is thinking of the question of identity as “who she is.” And she currently identifies herself as an atheist, not a follower of Christ, not part of the Catholic church where she was baptized.  So she allowed Edwin Kagan to blowdry her forehead to symbolically remove an identity she didn’t choose for herself.

But if baptism is primarily about whose we are I would argue that baptism of infants and children is like adoption.  An adopted child doesn’t choose which family to join.  None of us choose our relatives. Yet the family we are part of and the way we are raised has a profound effect on who we become.  And the family who adopts a child claims that child as theirs, even when the child screams like a banshee.  Even if that child grows up and decides to distance himself from the church.  This is why churches keep baptismal records forever. Baptism can’t be undone – even with a blow-dryer.  It is like a watermark, permanently imbedded into the fabric of the paper.

But the greater mistake Edwin Kagin and his followers are making in their thinking is this.  By choosing a blowdryer to symbolically attempt to remove a baptism by water with hot air, they reveal that they think that there is something in the water itself that makes a baptism.  They have not been listening to the voice of John the Baptist that the water bath is only the work of God’s servants. The real heart of baptism is something God does by the Holy Spirit.  When we read Luke’s version of Jesus baptism we see that John has already been taken to prison before Jesus is baptized with water.  And Luke doesn’t think it important to tell us who baptized him, or to describe the baptism at all.  Luke says, “when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  Luke is showing us that the Holy Spirit of God is the primary actor in baptism.  Because baptism is wholly God’s work, one preacher* claims, “we may have confidence that no matter how often we fall short or fail, nothing that we do, or fail to do, can remove the identity that God conveys as a gift. Our relationship with God, that is, is the one relationship in life we can’t screw up precisely because we did not establish it. We can neglect this relationship, we can deny it, run away from it, ignore it, but we cannot destroy it, for God loves us too deeply and completely to ever let us go.”  

It is true that baptism is primarily God’s work in us no matter what age we are baptized, but it is even more evident when we baptize infants and children. God claims them, sends the Spirit into their lives to help them live as fully as possible as the image of God.  And God surrounds baptized children and adults with a congregation who is charged to do everything in our power to help them grow in trust of God’s love, and become faithful in serving others and following Christ on the path of life.

Having the baby “done” and never returning to church is like a couple going through a wedding only to each return home to live with their parents instead of living with each other after the celebration.  Just as the covenant of marriage entails constant living together that impacts each person’s identity as they live and grow, so the covenant of baptism rightly entails becoming part of the Body of Christ serving and being served by the other members.

Today we have the opportunity to remember our baptisms, to reaffirm them and be thankful that God has never let us go, but has called us “beloved” even at the times when we scream like a banshee, or turn away.  While those of us who were baptized as infants or young children don’t remember the event, we can still remember that we have been baptized and be thankful for all God has done in our lives since then.  Some churches keep bowls of water near the doors to the sanctuary, so that members can dip their fingers in, trace the sign of the cross – the watermark – on themselves, and be thankful for their baptisms.  Martin Luther suggested that we remember our baptisms every time we wash our hands, or clean our bodies with water.  I have been helping the children of our church remember they belong to Christ by sending cards on the anniversary of their baptism.  I think it would be nice to extend this practice to the adults of our congregation as well, or at least list baptismal anniversaries on our prayer list.  But I need your help in this matter because our records of members’ baptisms, especially those who were baptized somewhere else, are incomplete.

Remembering our baptism and place in the church is extra special today because in reaffirming his baptismal covenant and profession of faith Rob Belcher will be rejoining this church as a professing member.  Rob did some of his growing up in this church and was confirmed here on April 11, 1974.  The records show that he withdrew his membership in 1988.  As a new pastor one of the “Saints” of this church whom I met within days of by arrival is Rob’s dad, who died in 2003.  Captain Belcher is spoken of frequently with fondness, his fingerprints are on our church history, his family’s contribution to many Christmas Eve services is legend.  Because Rob is part of the Belcher family this congregation never really stopped thinking of him as “ours” regardless of what the records officially say.  It has felt good, very good, that Rob has resumed regular worship with us. And Rob has been happy to share his gift of music with us occasionally in worship and at the Ice Cream Social last fall. Before we reaffirm our baptismal vows Rob would like to share a few thoughts with us.  Welcome home!

*Quote from David Lose in the Working Preacher

Symbols of Faith: The Altar

Matthew 1:1-12; Isaiah 60

January 6, 2013

The Third Canticle of Isaiah is one of my favorite portions of scripture.  I became familiar with it when I participated in daily Morning Prayer with the Episcopalians at Duke.  The Book of Common Prayer suggests that it be read every Wednesday morning.  And while I was at Duke we took to chanting the whole prayer service on Wednesdays, which tattooed the verses in my heart.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.
For behold, darkness covers the land; deep gloom enshrouds the peoples.
But over you the Lord will rise, and his glory will appear upon you.
Nations will stream to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawning.

The images of Isaiah 60 are inspiring, they engender hope and excitement of what the Lord is about to do.

Nations stream to your light – kings to the brightness of your dawning. Lift up your eyes and look around; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from far away, and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms.  Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the sea shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you.  They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord. All the flocks...and rams…shall be acceptable on my altar and I will glorify my glorious house.”

My altar, my glorious house…what Isaiah is talking about here is the Temple – the one and only Temple of Israel in the capital city of Jerusalem.  From the time of King David son Solomon the center of Jewish worship was located in the Temple. A grand and glorious place of worship built with an open courtyard called the Sanctuary or holy place, and an inner room called the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was kept.  From the time of the Exodus the Israelites had considered this the most holy epicenter of the presence of God. The altar was in the sanctuary and was used for making sacrifices to God, which were the primary worship rituals for the Jews.

There were different kinds of sacrifice, but most of them involved burning.  The altar was a place of fire, a kind of holy barbeque. The people who were trained to tend this fire and oversee that the sacrifice was done properly were the priests – that was their main job.  And most of the time the sacrifice involved burning whole animals.  A lamb was sacrificed on the high altar every day, and on the Sabbath the High Priest offered a second lamb and cereal offerings as well.  Libations of blood and wine were also poured on the altar by the high priest as sacrifice. We can hardly imagine such a practice in this sanctuary on our altar.

Looking at Leviticus 5 we can see that the purpose of making sacrifice on an altar was to remove sin, even unintentional offenses to God. The animal sacrificed was killed as a substitute for the human transgressor who otherwise could have died. The offerer laid his hand on the head of the victim in order to identify himself with it (Lev. 1: 4) and offer himself to God.  The Israelites believed that the pungent smell of these burning animals and grains, was pleasing to God, this was the original incense.  This was the process by which sin was forgiven and guilt removed. 

There are some portions of the Old Testament that critique this practice of burning offerings on the altar, particularly if it is not accompanied by a suitable change of behavior on the part of the sinner.  Psalm 40 says, “Burnt offering and sin-offering you have not required, and so I said, “Behold, I come.” In the roll of the book it is written concerning me; “I love to do your will, O my God; your law is deep in my heart.”  In Psalm 50 God says “I will take no bull-calf from your stalls, nor he-goats out of your pens…If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the whole world is mine and all that is in it….Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and make good your vows to the Most High…Whoever offers me the sacrifice of thanksgiving honors me; but to those who keep in my way will I show the salvation of God.”

But it is important for Christians to know and understand what the temple and the altar meant to the people of Israel if we want to understand both the Old and New Testaments.  What Isaiah is prophesying in chapter 60 is that the Temple in Jerusalem will be like a magnet, drawing everyone to it.  Not only will the Jews in exile return, the sons from far away and the daughters carried on their nurses arms, but all the peoples, the Gentiles, those who were not part of the original covenant between God and Abraham, they too would stream to the light of the Lord in the Temple in Jerusalem.  They will come to worship the Lord; they will come bringing gifts. Even the descendants of “those who oppressed Israel” – the Babylonians and Assyrians and Egyptians – will come to the Temple, the place where sins are forgiven bending low, bowing down to the Lord’s feet in worship.

This prophecy is fitting for Epiphany because Matthew makes it clear that he sees Isaiah’s words being fulfilled in the visit of the wise men to the baby Jesus.   The wise men were gentles, astronomers who read the skies and were attracted to Jesus by the light of a great star.  And they came to worship, to pay homage to the child born king of the Jews. They came with the gifts of gold and frankincense mentioned in Isaiah 60.  When they found their destination they were overwhelmed with joy – the same feeling of joy that Isaiah 60 engenders.  They were in the right place!  They had arrived at the right time! And they went inside the house, knelt down before the child and Mary and worshipped some more.

But though Matthew is claiming that Isaiah’s prophecy is being fulfilled, he is also subtly showing that with the coming of Christ some things have changed there is something new going on.

For one thing the Magi did not find the baby Christ in the Holy of Holies, in the Temple, or even in Jerusalem.  He was in Bethlehem, nine miles away from the Temple.  The locus of worship for Christians is no longer the Temple in Jerusalem.  With the coming of Christ our focus has shifted to him.  Worship happens whenever we truly recognize that Christ is in our midst.

Another noticeable difference is the list of gifts.  While gold and frankincense are presented to the Temple in Isaiah 60 and to the Christ child in Matthew, the magi bring a third gift of myrrh.  As explained in the fourth verse of We Three Kings, myrrh represents the death that Christ would suffer, “sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, seal in a stone cold tomb.” In all the hopes Old Testament hopes for the restoration of the Temple and the return of an anointed descendant of King David to rule over Jerusalem, there was no thought that this Messiah would be killed.  He would be king of kings and lord of lords forever. 

The most novel claims of the New Testament are that Jesus Christ the Messiah is human and God, and that in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross God died.  As the early Christians pondered the vast implication of Christ dying they began to see he was like a sacrificial lamb, slain for the sins of the whole world – Jew and Gentile alike.  The historical event of Christ dying on the cross happened once and for all, and need never be repeated.  From this perspective altars are no longer necessary at all.  In face the whole Temple institution was considered obsolete. Though Jesus was circumcised in the Temple when he was eight days old, Christians replaced that right of initiation with baptism.  Laying on of hands no longer was used for sacrifice, but became associated with special commissions for ministry to the world.  Above all, a new form of sacramental worship developed with bread and wine to commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus and anticipate the joyous banquet when Christ will return and complete his work of salvation.

            So the earliest churches had no altars, and no special buildings for worship.  They were small groups of Christians gathered in homes and catacombs to share communion, the real presence of Christ in their midst, accompanied by prophesy, reading, singing and prayers in joy and thanksgiving.  As Christianity spread and became sanctioned by the Roman Empire church buildings were developed, and the architects turned to scripture, including descriptions of the Jerusalem Temple for their design, altars reappeared.  But still they were never used for bloody sacrifices and burnt offerings.  Instead Christian altars were used as the table to celebrate communion – the only offerings placed on the altar were the bread and wine.  Candles were often placed on the table to help the priests read the words of communion in the murky sanctuary.  The symbolic meaning of the light of Christ for altar candles did not fully replace this first practical purpose until the invention of electric lights. The only book on the altar was the one containing the thanksgiving prayer over the communion.

            During the Reformation many Protestants removed the altars from their churches.  They were concerned that the way Communion was practiced was leading the people to think that Christ was literally being sacrificed, day after day, in every Mass.  So they got rid of their altars, brought in communion tables and rewrote the communion service to help the people understand that they were remembering Christ and that the bread and wine were not magic items, but symbolic of his presence with us.

            This congregation of Methodists in South Walpole used such a table in its early days. But slowly things change over time.  Someone decided to add an altar, and they decided to put the candles on it, and then cross over it.  Then it became fashionable to put flowers on the altar. And then someone decided that putting a bible on the altar would be the thing to do.  All of these items obscure the original symbolism and meaning of an altar in worship – a place of sacrifice.  And for Christians that place is meant to remain empty to remind us that the sacrifice was done once and for all in the death of Jesus Christ, or it can have the communion elements which remind us of the same thing.

            And here we come to the crux of this sermon on Epiphany – the time when Jesus is revealed as not only a baby in a manger, not only a wise teacher, but as the Messiah, the Christ, Emmanuel, God here with us now.  What are we looking at when we come to worship?  Are they things that attract the eye, remind us of loved ones, draw our attention in so many different directions that we hardly notice that Christ is present?  Or are we like the magi, looking for Christ because what we have seen, the bright light of Christ, the baptismal waters, the bread and the cup all giving us hope that he is here and we want to see for ourselves?  When we come to worship what do we want to hear?  Some old entertaining stories peppered with a few jokes, or the living word of God ringing loud and clear to be imbedded in our hearts?  When we come to worship what do we bring with us?  Do we really believe that our gifts, our modest offerings belong on God’s altar of sacrifice?  Or are they gifts, like those of the wise men, who were overwhelmed when they found the living Christ, stopped first to offer their sacrifices of prayer and praise in worship and then offered their gifts to be used for whatever purpose Christ wants to use them?

When we share the bread and the cup this morning we will listen to a contemporary praise song by Chris Tomlin that is fitting of the Magi, fitting of the kind of worship God wants from us, fitting of Epiphany.

Light of the world you stepped down into darkness

Opened my eyes, let me see

Beauty that made this heart adore you

Hope of a life spent with you

So here I am to worship

Here I am to bow down

Here I am to say that you’re my God

You’re altogether lovely

Altogether worthy

Altogether wonderful to me

King of all days, Oh so highly exalted

Glorious in heaven above

Humbly you came to the earth you created

All for love’s sake became poor.

Or as Christian Rosetti put it in the next hymn (In the Bleak Midwinter), the only offering Christ wants on his altar is the gift of our hearts.