"Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another." Romans 14:19
It is difficult to estimate the damage done by saying to a child:
- You'll never amount to anything.
- You can't do anything right, can you?
- Why can't you be like him?
- You're no son of mine!
- I'm not going to invest any more money in you.
- You're just like all the other kids.
Why not communicate your trust instead and give your child something to live up to? See the potential, not the problems. Looking for the good in your children will bring out the best in them and you.
Imagine how Peter felt when Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas (which translated means Peter [rock])" (John 1:42). Peter went on about his business of fishing. Sometime later Jesus called him to be a disciple. After Peter's great confession that Jesus was the Christ, Jesus said to him, "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church" (Matthew 16:18). What confidence Jesus expressed in a smelly, uneducated fisherman who would later deny Him three times!
Would you have chosen Peter and expressed confidence in Him? Would you have stuck with Peter after he betrayed you? Jesus did, and He is sticking with you, too. He has entrusted you with His message, gifted you to serve, and blessed you with children. Are you trustworthy? Not completely. But His trust sure gives you something to live up to, doesn't it? Your trust in your child can do the same for him. Amen and Amen.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Eccl. 3:6
"A time to gain, And a time to lose; A time to keep, And a time to throw away" Eccl. 3:6
It's scary, it really is. In the good old days of three or four years ago, if I couldn't find something, which was generally all the time, I could ask Carmel and she could find it in a few minutes. I think this is typical of most couples. The scary thing is that now I can find things when Carmel can't! This is a serious case of role reversal.
At least we haven't come to Solomon's suggestion yet. Most of our lost items turns up eventually. I couldn't find a software CD the other day. I knew it was in our home office. Couldn't find it at all. So, in the process of cleaning the office, wham! There it was, on my desk, under a stack of stuff.
Speaking of stacking and cleaning. Solomon does tell us that there is a time to keep and a time to throw away. The keeping is the easy part. My desk is full of things I have kept over the years. Then there is the "key drawer." It is full of keys. Some of them are marked with a note telling us what it goes to. Some we know because we use them on a regular basis. Then there are others. We have keys to door locks we have replaced; keys to things we have no idea what they are or were. We even have keys that we inherited and I think I picked a couple off the ground while out walking! It is probably time to throw them away.
Of this I am certain, I'm glad God didn't stop searching for me when I was lost. I am glad He found me. And I'm equally glad He didn't throw me away the first time I stumbled and fell from His grace. Sure, I was dirty, soiled, ruined, broken, and useless, but the Father picked me up, cleaned me off, fixed my broken spirit, and gave me a renewed sense of worth.
Do you feel the same way? Hallelujah, Amen and Amen.
It's scary, it really is. In the good old days of three or four years ago, if I couldn't find something, which was generally all the time, I could ask Carmel and she could find it in a few minutes. I think this is typical of most couples. The scary thing is that now I can find things when Carmel can't! This is a serious case of role reversal.
At least we haven't come to Solomon's suggestion yet. Most of our lost items turns up eventually. I couldn't find a software CD the other day. I knew it was in our home office. Couldn't find it at all. So, in the process of cleaning the office, wham! There it was, on my desk, under a stack of stuff.
Speaking of stacking and cleaning. Solomon does tell us that there is a time to keep and a time to throw away. The keeping is the easy part. My desk is full of things I have kept over the years. Then there is the "key drawer." It is full of keys. Some of them are marked with a note telling us what it goes to. Some we know because we use them on a regular basis. Then there are others. We have keys to door locks we have replaced; keys to things we have no idea what they are or were. We even have keys that we inherited and I think I picked a couple off the ground while out walking! It is probably time to throw them away.
Of this I am certain, I'm glad God didn't stop searching for me when I was lost. I am glad He found me. And I'm equally glad He didn't throw me away the first time I stumbled and fell from His grace. Sure, I was dirty, soiled, ruined, broken, and useless, but the Father picked me up, cleaned me off, fixed my broken spirit, and gave me a renewed sense of worth.
Do you feel the same way? Hallelujah, Amen and Amen.
Monday, June 28, 2010
2 Kings 6:5
"But as one was cutting down a tree, the iron ax head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, "Alas, master! For it was borrowed" 2 Kings 6:5
Sometimes we do really stupid things. Like this fellow in Elisha's day. He borrowed an ax to do some community work. He failed to check the quality of the workmanship or the worthiness of the ax. I suspect that the head was loose to start with. Actually, the fact that the ax head fell into the water was a blessing. It could have flown off the handle and landed in another person's head! But loose the ax head he did. Evidently the water was deep or cold or very muddy for he could have just dove into the depths and found the missing bit of iron. Instead he cries out to Elisha.
So what is the prophet to do? Is he expected to dive for it? Perhaps he can buy a new one. Or it just might be that he could pray and God would grow a new ax head on that old handle. I really don't know what he expected, except that he expected Elisha to do something.
Apparently without thinking too much about it, Elisha pulls a branch from a small tree, tosses it into the river and - guess what? - the iron ax head floats! Unbelievable! The only person who got wet is the fellow who reached into the water to pluck the floating ax from the river. Amazing.
God, through Elisha took care of a man who borrowed an ax, failed to check its worthiness for use, and lost it.
I have done some dumb things in my life, said something stupid, did something wrong out of ignorance. Some of them were even a bit dangerous. But God always provided His protection - even though I didn't deserve it.
Perhaps you have done some really dumb things in your life. May I suggest that you not get down on yourself. I rather suspect that you can see God's protection throughout your "dumb period" of life. Not that you always escaped danger, but He was always there to keep it from getting out of hand. He may have even used these situations to draw you closer to Himself. Continue relying on Him. Keep on learning from your mistakes. You never know when a modern day Elisha will toss a stick in the waters of your life and save your hide! Hallelujah, Amen and Amen.
Sometimes we do really stupid things. Like this fellow in Elisha's day. He borrowed an ax to do some community work. He failed to check the quality of the workmanship or the worthiness of the ax. I suspect that the head was loose to start with. Actually, the fact that the ax head fell into the water was a blessing. It could have flown off the handle and landed in another person's head! But loose the ax head he did. Evidently the water was deep or cold or very muddy for he could have just dove into the depths and found the missing bit of iron. Instead he cries out to Elisha.
So what is the prophet to do? Is he expected to dive for it? Perhaps he can buy a new one. Or it just might be that he could pray and God would grow a new ax head on that old handle. I really don't know what he expected, except that he expected Elisha to do something.
Apparently without thinking too much about it, Elisha pulls a branch from a small tree, tosses it into the river and - guess what? - the iron ax head floats! Unbelievable! The only person who got wet is the fellow who reached into the water to pluck the floating ax from the river. Amazing.
God, through Elisha took care of a man who borrowed an ax, failed to check its worthiness for use, and lost it.
I have done some dumb things in my life, said something stupid, did something wrong out of ignorance. Some of them were even a bit dangerous. But God always provided His protection - even though I didn't deserve it.
Perhaps you have done some really dumb things in your life. May I suggest that you not get down on yourself. I rather suspect that you can see God's protection throughout your "dumb period" of life. Not that you always escaped danger, but He was always there to keep it from getting out of hand. He may have even used these situations to draw you closer to Himself. Continue relying on Him. Keep on learning from your mistakes. You never know when a modern day Elisha will toss a stick in the waters of your life and save your hide! Hallelujah, Amen and Amen.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Colossians 1:1-14; Psalm 25; Luke 10:25-37
A certain man - a lawyer - stood up to put Jesus to the test, asking him: " Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus answers: What is written in the law? What do you read there?"
The lawyer replies, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."
Jesus then says: "You have answered rightly, do this and you will live."
Up to this point in the conversation between Jesus and the lawyer everything has gone fine - the questions and the answers exchanged by Jesus and the lawyer have encapsulated the essence not only of Judaism, but indeed of all religions.
Love God - love your neighbour.
But then comes the real question the lawyer wanted to ask, - the question to test the character and the faith of Jesus - a question that indeed tests the character and the faith that each one of has, that question has only five words in it - five words that each of us should try to remember and to answer for ourselves at least once a week, if not once each and every day.
That question is this -- "And who is my neighbour?"
It is a pretty heavy question my friends, - a question upon whose answer depends much of what we say and do - a question upon whose answer may even depend our relationship with God.
And who is my neighbour?
Who is it that I am to love as I love myself? Who is that I am to show favour to? Who is that I am called to work for? To sacrifice for? To pray for?
The scripture states that the lawyer asked Jesus this question as a means of justifying himself - as a means of showing that he - a teacher of the law of God - was doing all that God asked him to do.
It has been suggested - and I think rightly so given some of the teachings of the time and the reality of human nature at all times, that the lawyer is really asking Jesus:
"Who is NOT my neighbour? Who is that I am allowed to ignore or to neglect? Perhaps even to hate? What is the minimal thing that I need to do to keep God's law of love - and what can I safely get away with not doing...
That is a horrifying approach to keeping the law of God isn't it? Who must I love - and who can I get away with not loving...
It is a horrifying approach to keeping the law of God - but it makes sense when you think about it; it makes sense when you look at the world and consider the problems within it.
There are sinners my friends - people so evil that even God surely cannot love them - Rudolph Hitler - Joseph Stalin - Mao Tse Tung - people who have broken God's law in the most horrible ways imaginable.
Surely these people are not our neighbours. Surely we do not need to love them.
Surely there are other folk who are not our neighbours as well - folk who deserve our rebuke, our contempt, our anger, or simply our neglect?
Surely those who live outside the law of God live outside of the law that says we should love them.
Such, I think, was the kind of reasoning that lay behind the lawyer's question, "And who is my neighbour?"
Think about it:
- How often do we write people off because they are beyond the pale?
- How often do we focus our attention, our time, our love, upon particular kinds of people because of where they live and what they do and how they are related to us, and deliberately ignore, neglect, or slight others because of where they live and what they do?
I know that in myself I sometimes feel a tremendous anger toward the lazy, towards the freeloaders and the takers of our society. I recall the words of scripture that state that those who would eat should work - and I allow myself at times to get carried away by my feelings - by my sense of what is right - and to judge those whom I have NEVER MET by whether or not they have a job or are even trying to work.
And I know that in almost every place I have lived in this country there is a resentment towards an entire class of people who happen to come from another land - a resentment that is built upon some true horror stories - but which, in the end, fails to discriminate between persons in that class of people who have done wrong and those who have not.
Refugees, immigrants, boat people, people with AIDS, drug users, welfare bums, criminals, the list of the unworthy at times seems endless, the list of those who are not worthy to be called our neighbours. The list of those who for one reason or another do not deserve our love, or at least not as worthy of as much love as we might give to those we regard as more pure, more deserving, more esteemed by God. Of not love them as much as we might love those who do good.
Yes indeed, the lawyer was seeking to justify himself when he asked Jesus "And who is my neighbour", and perhaps - in a silent way - in an unspoken way - so do we when we hear the commandment of God to love our neighbours as our self.
But wanting to justify himself, the lawyers asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?"
And Jesus replied: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Pakistani, an Indonesian, a Mexican Mennonite - an East Indian - A Serb - A Croatian - a man who had been on welfare for many years - an unrepentant sinner - while travelling came near the man, and when he saw him, he was moved by pity and he wrapped up his wounds, and took him in his own car, and took care of him, and paid for his lodgings until he was well again.
We know, don't we, the answer to the question that Jesus then asks the lawyer - the question: "which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
We know the answer because we have heard it before. And because deep within us the law of God is indeed written upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We know - and - if we are honest - we, like the lawyer, feel unjustified, unholy - not really as loving as we thought we were at the first.
And so it should be - for each of us has indeed fallen short of the glory of God.
Who was a neighbour to the man?
The lawyer knew the answer - it was written in his heart as well. He knew that the one who showed the man mercy was neighbour to him, and with Jesus' next words, the words, "Go and do likewise" he realized that the really important question concerning loving others was not so much "And who is my neighbour" but rather "What must I do to be a neighbour?" "To whom must I become a neighbour?"
It is not always an easy question to answer. It is not always easy because while we know the answer in our head and our hearts - real life keeps getting in the way.
Quite a few years ago a study was done at a certain University.
The study dealt with people's readiness to help others. Forty students were involved. Half of them were given a manuscript on vocational placements of seminarians of which they were to make a recording. The other half were given the text of today's parable with the same instructions. The recording session was to take place on the other side of the campus from where they were.
One third of the students were told that they had plenty of time to reach the recording session. One third was told that they had to go immediately in order to make it on time. And one third were told that they were already late. Each student was given a designated route to the recording studio. Along that route, although the students did not know it, a man had been placed. He was in one of the longer and darker alleys - and he was to pretend to be in pain and in obvious need of help.
The results are very instructive. First of all the reaction of the students to the man in the alley was not affected in the slightest by the material that they had read and practised before heading for their recording session.
The main factor in whether or not the students stopped to help the man in pain was whether or not they had enough time to get to the recording studio.
Only 16 of the 40 students stopped at all. Of this number the most were from students who had plenty of time - 63% of those students stopped. Only 45% of those with just enough time stopped, and only 10% of those who were told that they were late stopped.
"What must I do to inherit eternal life" is the question the lawyer first asks Jesus.
It was a question meant to test the knowledge and faith of Jesus.
The answer to that question - and to the follow-up question, "Who is my neighbour", test us.
What are your priorities? What keeps you from loving others? From not only recognizing them as your neighbours, but actually helping them, actually loving them?
Perhaps it is time to stop and think about what is important - about what leads to eternal life, and what does not.
Each day God sends people to us - people for us to love - whether those people be clerks in our banks and our stores, panhandlers on our streets, teenagers on our corners, or the people who live a few blocks over from us.
But it isn't always easy to love the folk we meet.
God has also sent to me on different days to people who have hurt me or hurt others - and my natural reaction- which is not always one of kindness or mercy - tries to get in my way - and in the way of Christ's love coming out from within me. I want to turn away from - to ignore - to forget certain people. I want to be angry at certain people and groups of people and to feel good about that anger - to feel righteous in it - and so it is for most of you as well.
There are people out there who do not act like they are our neighbours, or the neighbours of anyone else. People who do not show love to me - or to anyone or anything else I care for.
That is the way it is in the world around us.
But we are not of the world my friends. We are of God - we are born of the Spirit into Christ, and we are called to live differently - to think differently - to do differently.
We are called to be neighbours to those who are not our neighbours - to love those who do not necessarily love us, to give to others who may not ever give back to us.
"Who was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" "What must I do to be a neighbour?" "To whom must I become a neighbour?"
These are all good questions, questions that each of us do well to ponder as we consider the larger question that Jesus responds too in today's gospel
"Teacher. What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
And as we ponder his answer:
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' ; and, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"
May God bless you in your meditation. Amen.
Jesus answers: What is written in the law? What do you read there?"
The lawyer replies, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself."
Jesus then says: "You have answered rightly, do this and you will live."
Up to this point in the conversation between Jesus and the lawyer everything has gone fine - the questions and the answers exchanged by Jesus and the lawyer have encapsulated the essence not only of Judaism, but indeed of all religions.
Love God - love your neighbour.
But then comes the real question the lawyer wanted to ask, - the question to test the character and the faith of Jesus - a question that indeed tests the character and the faith that each one of has, that question has only five words in it - five words that each of us should try to remember and to answer for ourselves at least once a week, if not once each and every day.
That question is this -- "And who is my neighbour?"
It is a pretty heavy question my friends, - a question upon whose answer depends much of what we say and do - a question upon whose answer may even depend our relationship with God.
And who is my neighbour?
Who is it that I am to love as I love myself? Who is that I am to show favour to? Who is that I am called to work for? To sacrifice for? To pray for?
The scripture states that the lawyer asked Jesus this question as a means of justifying himself - as a means of showing that he - a teacher of the law of God - was doing all that God asked him to do.
It has been suggested - and I think rightly so given some of the teachings of the time and the reality of human nature at all times, that the lawyer is really asking Jesus:
"Who is NOT my neighbour? Who is that I am allowed to ignore or to neglect? Perhaps even to hate? What is the minimal thing that I need to do to keep God's law of love - and what can I safely get away with not doing...
That is a horrifying approach to keeping the law of God isn't it? Who must I love - and who can I get away with not loving...
It is a horrifying approach to keeping the law of God - but it makes sense when you think about it; it makes sense when you look at the world and consider the problems within it.
There are sinners my friends - people so evil that even God surely cannot love them - Rudolph Hitler - Joseph Stalin - Mao Tse Tung - people who have broken God's law in the most horrible ways imaginable.
Surely these people are not our neighbours. Surely we do not need to love them.
Surely there are other folk who are not our neighbours as well - folk who deserve our rebuke, our contempt, our anger, or simply our neglect?
Surely those who live outside the law of God live outside of the law that says we should love them.
Such, I think, was the kind of reasoning that lay behind the lawyer's question, "And who is my neighbour?"
Think about it:
- How often do we write people off because they are beyond the pale?
- How often do we focus our attention, our time, our love, upon particular kinds of people because of where they live and what they do and how they are related to us, and deliberately ignore, neglect, or slight others because of where they live and what they do?
I know that in myself I sometimes feel a tremendous anger toward the lazy, towards the freeloaders and the takers of our society. I recall the words of scripture that state that those who would eat should work - and I allow myself at times to get carried away by my feelings - by my sense of what is right - and to judge those whom I have NEVER MET by whether or not they have a job or are even trying to work.
And I know that in almost every place I have lived in this country there is a resentment towards an entire class of people who happen to come from another land - a resentment that is built upon some true horror stories - but which, in the end, fails to discriminate between persons in that class of people who have done wrong and those who have not.
Refugees, immigrants, boat people, people with AIDS, drug users, welfare bums, criminals, the list of the unworthy at times seems endless, the list of those who are not worthy to be called our neighbours. The list of those who for one reason or another do not deserve our love, or at least not as worthy of as much love as we might give to those we regard as more pure, more deserving, more esteemed by God. Of not love them as much as we might love those who do good.
Yes indeed, the lawyer was seeking to justify himself when he asked Jesus "And who is my neighbour", and perhaps - in a silent way - in an unspoken way - so do we when we hear the commandment of God to love our neighbours as our self.
But wanting to justify himself, the lawyers asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?"
And Jesus replied: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Pakistani, an Indonesian, a Mexican Mennonite - an East Indian - A Serb - A Croatian - a man who had been on welfare for many years - an unrepentant sinner - while travelling came near the man, and when he saw him, he was moved by pity and he wrapped up his wounds, and took him in his own car, and took care of him, and paid for his lodgings until he was well again.
We know, don't we, the answer to the question that Jesus then asks the lawyer - the question: "which of these three, do you think, was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?"
We know the answer because we have heard it before. And because deep within us the law of God is indeed written upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We know - and - if we are honest - we, like the lawyer, feel unjustified, unholy - not really as loving as we thought we were at the first.
And so it should be - for each of us has indeed fallen short of the glory of God.
Who was a neighbour to the man?
The lawyer knew the answer - it was written in his heart as well. He knew that the one who showed the man mercy was neighbour to him, and with Jesus' next words, the words, "Go and do likewise" he realized that the really important question concerning loving others was not so much "And who is my neighbour" but rather "What must I do to be a neighbour?" "To whom must I become a neighbour?"
It is not always an easy question to answer. It is not always easy because while we know the answer in our head and our hearts - real life keeps getting in the way.
Quite a few years ago a study was done at a certain University.
The study dealt with people's readiness to help others. Forty students were involved. Half of them were given a manuscript on vocational placements of seminarians of which they were to make a recording. The other half were given the text of today's parable with the same instructions. The recording session was to take place on the other side of the campus from where they were.
One third of the students were told that they had plenty of time to reach the recording session. One third was told that they had to go immediately in order to make it on time. And one third were told that they were already late. Each student was given a designated route to the recording studio. Along that route, although the students did not know it, a man had been placed. He was in one of the longer and darker alleys - and he was to pretend to be in pain and in obvious need of help.
The results are very instructive. First of all the reaction of the students to the man in the alley was not affected in the slightest by the material that they had read and practised before heading for their recording session.
The main factor in whether or not the students stopped to help the man in pain was whether or not they had enough time to get to the recording studio.
Only 16 of the 40 students stopped at all. Of this number the most were from students who had plenty of time - 63% of those students stopped. Only 45% of those with just enough time stopped, and only 10% of those who were told that they were late stopped.
"What must I do to inherit eternal life" is the question the lawyer first asks Jesus.
It was a question meant to test the knowledge and faith of Jesus.
The answer to that question - and to the follow-up question, "Who is my neighbour", test us.
What are your priorities? What keeps you from loving others? From not only recognizing them as your neighbours, but actually helping them, actually loving them?
Perhaps it is time to stop and think about what is important - about what leads to eternal life, and what does not.
Each day God sends people to us - people for us to love - whether those people be clerks in our banks and our stores, panhandlers on our streets, teenagers on our corners, or the people who live a few blocks over from us.
But it isn't always easy to love the folk we meet.
God has also sent to me on different days to people who have hurt me or hurt others - and my natural reaction- which is not always one of kindness or mercy - tries to get in my way - and in the way of Christ's love coming out from within me. I want to turn away from - to ignore - to forget certain people. I want to be angry at certain people and groups of people and to feel good about that anger - to feel righteous in it - and so it is for most of you as well.
There are people out there who do not act like they are our neighbours, or the neighbours of anyone else. People who do not show love to me - or to anyone or anything else I care for.
That is the way it is in the world around us.
But we are not of the world my friends. We are of God - we are born of the Spirit into Christ, and we are called to live differently - to think differently - to do differently.
We are called to be neighbours to those who are not our neighbours - to love those who do not necessarily love us, to give to others who may not ever give back to us.
"Who was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" "What must I do to be a neighbour?" "To whom must I become a neighbour?"
These are all good questions, questions that each of us do well to ponder as we consider the larger question that Jesus responds too in today's gospel
"Teacher. What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
And as we ponder his answer:
'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind' ; and, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'"
May God bless you in your meditation. Amen.
Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19; Mark 8:27-38
Listen once more today to the word of God as found in our reading from the Book of Proverbs. It begins like this:
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
And it ends this way -
The waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm."
Today we are told that Wisdom ignored - leads to death, and that Wisdom heeded - leads to life.
It is not something that I believe many people care to hear. They do not care to hear it - because it is ever the human desire to do as we want to do without having to suffer any negative consequences.
Many of us believe that with regard to the promises of God that it is enough to say I believe, and to attend church from time to time - to receive the rich inheritance that God has said he will give to us.
But it is not so. God calls us to listen to him - and to follow in his way - to live by his wisdom. And his promise is that it is when we do this - that then we will find what we seek and enjoy the fullness of what a relationship with the creator of the world is meant to bestow upon us.
So what is the wisdom of God like? This wisdom that leads to life?
Well, the scriptural record is clear about it. The wisdom of God seems foolish in the eyes of men. It seems foolish because it goes against our natural tendencies - because it reverses all that the world teaches us as being wise.
The Wisdom of God teaches that we must give up our selves if we are to find ourselves, that we must acknowledge our weakness if we are to become strong, that we must die - if we are live.
The gospel today puts this in the starkest terms possible.
Jesus has just told Peter and the disciples for the first time that he must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
As you know - Peter protests against this teaching.
He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, and we can imagine can't we - what he might have being trying to say to Jesus before Jesus cuts him off?
Not you Lord you are good - no-one would kill you. Stop thinking negatively. You will be OK. It's not right to say that one who is meant to save Israel will be rejected by his own people, you are meant to deliver us from bondage - not to suffer and die.
But Jesus turns all this around. And he tells Peter - "Get behind me! Satan You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
And then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said:
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
It is hard stuff to hear is it not? Hard stuff to deal with.
Especially when we are so often a people who keep our faith to ourselves for fear of ridicule, especially when we are so often a people who work day and night to build our homes and our futures, and who judge the success of a matter by how much pleasure or how much profit it affords us.
This past year has been a particularly difficult one for Carmel and I. I have been out of work since January and we have been in great financial difficulties.
When I lost my job in January, it was quite a blow, for I have been giving it my best, and yet in the end the company was too greedy and not wanted more than I could give during the short time I was with them. In our very human wisdom we want job and financial security. especially when you got a young baby. To be honest, we had a struggle with God's purposes for.
I think that it was likely a very similar gut reaction that Peter had when he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him when he announces his coming rejection and suffering and death.
How much do we set our mind on human things rather than divine?
I am reading a novel by a Christian writer right now. It is called "The List". It concerns a non-believer by the name of Renny and Christian woman he meets by the name of Jo.
Near the beginning of their relationship Jo tells Renny "The panorama of the sky and the water is a much better sermon about freedom and the nature of God than you would hear in many churches."
Renny replies: "Is that like the guy who says he doesn't need to go to church because he can meet God in bass boat?"
Jo replies - "There is some truth to that old excuse. 'The heaven's declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.' However, you have to be looking for God to see Him."
You have to be looking for God to see Him. How similar that is to the message from the book of Proverbs this morning. And to the words of Jesus.
God may indeed be all around us. And even within us. But that is not enough.
We are called to look for that God and to listen to his word. We are called to set our minds on the way of the divine and to strive to live by it, for only by doing so can we in fact live.
We are saved by grace alone, most certainly. But it is by grace through faithfulness - the faithfulness of God towards us in Christ Jesus and our faithfulness towards him and his way.
The way of divine things does not at first appear to be an easy road. It holds some mystery. The human part of us doesn't want to deal with the hard stuff; we don't want to deal with talk of mortality - of suffering - of sacrifice and of death. Even when there is attached to it talk of resurrection and of eternal life.
Hard or not - Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, to deny our fear and our weakness and pettiness and to pick up our own cross of faith and to follow him.
He asks us to lose our lives, to give up our own little restricted imaginations in order to embrace the larger vision of God's will, God's plan.
He reminds us that none of us can "buy" our lives or stave off the inevitable, for we all die.
And he tells us, as does Wisdom in our reading from Proverbs today, that we can only choose life - that we can only live and prosper - if we embrace his way, if we take into ourselves the divine way.
The divine wisdom tells us too that we need to walk in the way of Christ and by his
power if we are to inherit with them all that has been given to them. That we must take up our crosses - that we must give up our lives to God - if God is in fact to take us up with him, if we are to receive the life that God wants to give to us.
These are things divine. To inherit them we are called to set our minds upon them, and upon the wisdom of God which leads us to them.
The apostle Paul writes in the first chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians:
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
In order for you to take up your cross what in your life would have to change? What are you most afraid of losing?
For many of us it is what I call our comfort margin.
Throughout the scriptures we hear stories of what God is like and how God operates in our lives. All of them point to the need for us to have a radical trust in Him - to give up our strength in favour of his.
We see it in the stories of the wars in the Old Testament - where God reduces the number of the men of Israel going into battle to the point where the odds are overwhelmingly against them - so that when they later win the battle they may not claim the victory - but rather see it as being his.
We see it in Jesus' talk of how hard it is for the rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and Paul's talk about how when he is weak - then is strong.
How often my friends do we look at task that we believe we may be called to perform, and rather than asking if it is truly God's will that we perform it, we ask if it is possible for us to do it?
God's wisdom is no head counting wisdom - no resource counting wisdom. Rather it is that in trusting in him - in listening to him - and then doing what he tells us to do, that all that we need to have happen will happen.
It is not a comfortable thing this kind of radical reliance upon God and God's way of doing things. It can lead us - as it led Jesus - from the familiar territory of Judea - to the city of Jerusalem - from the place where we fit in easily with those around us - to the place where the authorities may indeed plot against us and where those who oppress the people of God are indeed ready to strip us and beat us, and put us to death should we disturb their peace and their comfort, their rule over us with talk of a better way - a way that shares with all people - a way that is just and loving and merciful.
What might we lose if we are to let it be known that we value the ways of God over the ways of man? What might we have to give it up if we are to actually live according to the vows we have made to God?
What might we have to do if we are to heed God's words and desires rather than our own or those of our friends, our families, and our neighbours? Those who tell us that we will be doing the right thing - and they will care for us forever and that we will be blessed beyond all people, if only we do things the way they tell us we should be doing them?
A few years ago now, after giving an address in Melbourne, Australia, the famous Viennese psychiatrist Victor Frankl was given a boomerang as a gift.
Dr. Frankl thought for a few minutes and then said that he felt the boomerang symbolized human existence. People assume that the function of the boomerang is to return to the thrower. But this isn't true. The boomerang returns to the thrower only when it misses the target.
The same is true of in life, he said. We return to ourselves to become self-centred and self absorbed when we have failed to find meaning in life. If we live for ourselves, spend our money only on ourselves or those closest to ourselves, if we squander our time, and exert our strength only for those things that please us, we pay the price of a meaningless existence.
That analysis of life coincides with what Jesus has to say in today's Gospel.
"For those who want to save their life will lose it. And those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."
God's wisdom is not like ours. God's thoughts are vaster than our thoughts. His ways greater than our ways. Blessed be the name of God. Amen
Wisdom calls aloud in the street, she raises her voice in the public squares; at the head of the noisy streets she cries out, in the gateways of the city she makes her speech: "How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge?
And it ends this way -
The waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm."
Today we are told that Wisdom ignored - leads to death, and that Wisdom heeded - leads to life.
It is not something that I believe many people care to hear. They do not care to hear it - because it is ever the human desire to do as we want to do without having to suffer any negative consequences.
Many of us believe that with regard to the promises of God that it is enough to say I believe, and to attend church from time to time - to receive the rich inheritance that God has said he will give to us.
But it is not so. God calls us to listen to him - and to follow in his way - to live by his wisdom. And his promise is that it is when we do this - that then we will find what we seek and enjoy the fullness of what a relationship with the creator of the world is meant to bestow upon us.
So what is the wisdom of God like? This wisdom that leads to life?
Well, the scriptural record is clear about it. The wisdom of God seems foolish in the eyes of men. It seems foolish because it goes against our natural tendencies - because it reverses all that the world teaches us as being wise.
The Wisdom of God teaches that we must give up our selves if we are to find ourselves, that we must acknowledge our weakness if we are to become strong, that we must die - if we are live.
The gospel today puts this in the starkest terms possible.
Jesus has just told Peter and the disciples for the first time that he must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
As you know - Peter protests against this teaching.
He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, and we can imagine can't we - what he might have being trying to say to Jesus before Jesus cuts him off?
Not you Lord you are good - no-one would kill you. Stop thinking negatively. You will be OK. It's not right to say that one who is meant to save Israel will be rejected by his own people, you are meant to deliver us from bondage - not to suffer and die.
But Jesus turns all this around. And he tells Peter - "Get behind me! Satan You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
And then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said:
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."
It is hard stuff to hear is it not? Hard stuff to deal with.
Especially when we are so often a people who keep our faith to ourselves for fear of ridicule, especially when we are so often a people who work day and night to build our homes and our futures, and who judge the success of a matter by how much pleasure or how much profit it affords us.
This past year has been a particularly difficult one for Carmel and I. I have been out of work since January and we have been in great financial difficulties.
When I lost my job in January, it was quite a blow, for I have been giving it my best, and yet in the end the company was too greedy and not wanted more than I could give during the short time I was with them. In our very human wisdom we want job and financial security. especially when you got a young baby. To be honest, we had a struggle with God's purposes for.
I think that it was likely a very similar gut reaction that Peter had when he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him when he announces his coming rejection and suffering and death.
How much do we set our mind on human things rather than divine?
I am reading a novel by a Christian writer right now. It is called "The List". It concerns a non-believer by the name of Renny and Christian woman he meets by the name of Jo.
Near the beginning of their relationship Jo tells Renny "The panorama of the sky and the water is a much better sermon about freedom and the nature of God than you would hear in many churches."
Renny replies: "Is that like the guy who says he doesn't need to go to church because he can meet God in bass boat?"
Jo replies - "There is some truth to that old excuse. 'The heaven's declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.' However, you have to be looking for God to see Him."
You have to be looking for God to see Him. How similar that is to the message from the book of Proverbs this morning. And to the words of Jesus.
God may indeed be all around us. And even within us. But that is not enough.
We are called to look for that God and to listen to his word. We are called to set our minds on the way of the divine and to strive to live by it, for only by doing so can we in fact live.
We are saved by grace alone, most certainly. But it is by grace through faithfulness - the faithfulness of God towards us in Christ Jesus and our faithfulness towards him and his way.
The way of divine things does not at first appear to be an easy road. It holds some mystery. The human part of us doesn't want to deal with the hard stuff; we don't want to deal with talk of mortality - of suffering - of sacrifice and of death. Even when there is attached to it talk of resurrection and of eternal life.
Hard or not - Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, to deny our fear and our weakness and pettiness and to pick up our own cross of faith and to follow him.
He asks us to lose our lives, to give up our own little restricted imaginations in order to embrace the larger vision of God's will, God's plan.
He reminds us that none of us can "buy" our lives or stave off the inevitable, for we all die.
And he tells us, as does Wisdom in our reading from Proverbs today, that we can only choose life - that we can only live and prosper - if we embrace his way, if we take into ourselves the divine way.
The divine wisdom tells us too that we need to walk in the way of Christ and by his
power if we are to inherit with them all that has been given to them. That we must take up our crosses - that we must give up our lives to God - if God is in fact to take us up with him, if we are to receive the life that God wants to give to us.
These are things divine. To inherit them we are called to set our minds upon them, and upon the wisdom of God which leads us to them.
The apostle Paul writes in the first chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians:
For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.
In order for you to take up your cross what in your life would have to change? What are you most afraid of losing?
For many of us it is what I call our comfort margin.
Throughout the scriptures we hear stories of what God is like and how God operates in our lives. All of them point to the need for us to have a radical trust in Him - to give up our strength in favour of his.
We see it in the stories of the wars in the Old Testament - where God reduces the number of the men of Israel going into battle to the point where the odds are overwhelmingly against them - so that when they later win the battle they may not claim the victory - but rather see it as being his.
We see it in Jesus' talk of how hard it is for the rich to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and Paul's talk about how when he is weak - then is strong.
How often my friends do we look at task that we believe we may be called to perform, and rather than asking if it is truly God's will that we perform it, we ask if it is possible for us to do it?
God's wisdom is no head counting wisdom - no resource counting wisdom. Rather it is that in trusting in him - in listening to him - and then doing what he tells us to do, that all that we need to have happen will happen.
It is not a comfortable thing this kind of radical reliance upon God and God's way of doing things. It can lead us - as it led Jesus - from the familiar territory of Judea - to the city of Jerusalem - from the place where we fit in easily with those around us - to the place where the authorities may indeed plot against us and where those who oppress the people of God are indeed ready to strip us and beat us, and put us to death should we disturb their peace and their comfort, their rule over us with talk of a better way - a way that shares with all people - a way that is just and loving and merciful.
What might we lose if we are to let it be known that we value the ways of God over the ways of man? What might we have to give it up if we are to actually live according to the vows we have made to God?
What might we have to do if we are to heed God's words and desires rather than our own or those of our friends, our families, and our neighbours? Those who tell us that we will be doing the right thing - and they will care for us forever and that we will be blessed beyond all people, if only we do things the way they tell us we should be doing them?
A few years ago now, after giving an address in Melbourne, Australia, the famous Viennese psychiatrist Victor Frankl was given a boomerang as a gift.
Dr. Frankl thought for a few minutes and then said that he felt the boomerang symbolized human existence. People assume that the function of the boomerang is to return to the thrower. But this isn't true. The boomerang returns to the thrower only when it misses the target.
The same is true of in life, he said. We return to ourselves to become self-centred and self absorbed when we have failed to find meaning in life. If we live for ourselves, spend our money only on ourselves or those closest to ourselves, if we squander our time, and exert our strength only for those things that please us, we pay the price of a meaningless existence.
That analysis of life coincides with what Jesus has to say in today's Gospel.
"For those who want to save their life will lose it. And those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it."
God's wisdom is not like ours. God's thoughts are vaster than our thoughts. His ways greater than our ways. Blessed be the name of God. Amen
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Deuteronomy 4:1-9; Psalm 15; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8,14-23
I would like to start off with a little joke which I would like to share with you today. It goes like this:
A father is in church with three of his young children, including his six year old daughter. As was the family custom, they sat in the very front row so that the children could properly witness the service.
During this particular service, the pastor was doing a baptism of a tiny infant. The little six year old girl was quite taken by this, observing that he was saying something and pouring water over the little one's head.
With a puzzled look on her face, the little girl turned to her father and asked, "Daddy, why is he brainwashing that little baby?"
When I thought of that joke I happened to be thinking of today's scripture readings - that part where Jesus says to his disciples: "Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'" and it struck me that there was something quite profound about the little girl's question; that indeed what is required by each of us is that we allow our brains to be washed - our brains and our hearts as well.
Today's readings speak about laws and regulations and about purity of heart, mind, and soul. About what makes for cleanliness in the eyes of God and what does not.
Some Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gather around Jesus. They are interested to know what it is that he is teaching. They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands that were ritually unclean, that is they had not washed them in the way the Pharisees said people should, and they complained to Jesus about this saying:
"Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?"
The scripture goes on to say that the Pharisees had many rules about such things, about what was the proper way to prepare food, to wash cups and pots and bowls and indeed one's very self if one was to be regarded as "clean" in the eyes of God.
Jesus responds to them in what seems to be an unduly harsh manner - calling them hypocrites and telling them that they worship God in vain because they follow the traditions of men instead of the law of God.
I said that it seems to be an unduly harsh response because the important thing to understand about the rules and traditions of the elders that are mentioned in today's gospel reading is that each rule, each tradition, was devised to help people be in closer relationship to God. To keep them pure and holy in his sight.
Ritual cleanliness and traditions about what one could or could not do on the Sabbath, or who one could or could not talk to or associate with, or what one could or could not eat or touch were devised for the good of the people, for the good of their relationship with God as individuals and as a called and chosen people, a called and chosen community of faith.
Each such rule - each such tradition was based upon Biblical passages, just as today, in some churches, regulations about divorce, advice about how you should raise your children, what foods cannot be eaten and information about how women should be subject to their husbands, are based on Biblical passages.
The difference between the rules and traditions of today's elders and the elders of Jesus' time is only this - the traditions of our modern day elders are based on Old and New Testament passages instead of only on the Old.
The traditions of Christianity do not require us, as the traditions of the Pharisees required the Jews, to worry about how we wash before eat, - nor do they prohibit us from walking over a mile on the Sabbath, but they can be just as restrictive, and ultimately just as meaningless as those kinds of rules were in Jesus' time.
Some of today's traditions claim that a person is not a true Christian if they do not believe in the literal wording of the Bible, or if they have not had a particular kind of "born again" experience.
Some state that a person is unclean if they associate with unbelievers, or if they take a drink, or if they do not believe that God did not create the world and all that is in it in six days and nights some six thousand and four years ago,
I said that Jesus seemed unduly harsh in his response to the pharisee's criticism of his disciples, but - perhaps - after having thought about in the terms I have just outlined to you - maybe not. Perhaps Jesus was not harsh enough!
The net effect of the traditions of the elders in the day of Jesus, and the traditions that are found today in so many churches today, is to misdirect people - to misdirect them by turning righteousness - by turning cleanliness - by turning holiness - into matters of how well we adhere to the external rules and understandings of our faith rather than to the law that God writes upon hearts that are open to him.
How is your heart?? Are you trying to conform the laws and the traditions of our faith - but inwardly are empty??
Suze Orman, financial planner and author of "The Courage to be Rich", tells of her successful career that went through a period when it was unsuccessful.
During that time she struggled to save face, to maintain an image of success. She continued to entertain her friends at fine restaurants and to drive her luxury car to keep up the image of a successful professional. The truth was that every dinner, every car payment, every tank of gas was taking her deeper into debt.
Many folk who believe in God are like Suze. They look good. They keep up the appearances. But inwardly they are impoverished - and the more they try to conform on the outside to what is supposed to come from inside the worse off they get - and in the end those around them are worse off as well.
What defiles a person are the unclean things that originate from within a person, not those that come to us from without.
What defiles a person is not what it is we eat, nor who it is that we eat with, rather it is our anger, our pride, our refusal to listen to others, our sense of superiority, our sense of our own righteousness.
And what makes a person pure and holy is not who or what we avoid in the outer world - though there are things that we should avoid, but whether or not we allow our insides - our hearts and our minds and our souls to be washed in the love of God. And having been washed, to bring forth from inside us those things that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
I want you all to take special note of that today.
The things that are good those good things that come from within us are the fruit of the spirit that is within us.
Our acts of goodness and love arise out of what we allow God to do within us.
Our gentleness, our faithfulness, our kindness grow not according to our attempts to keep some eternal law about how we should be faithful, kind or gentle, but rather they grow out of the word that is implanted within our hearts and minds by God.
And joy and peace and self control, things that are the marks of holiness and purity, come about not through constant striving to follow some regulations that are meant to help us be that way, but through meditating upon what it is that God has done for us - and is doing for us - and allowing God to direct our steps with all this in mind.
"Every good and perfect gift is from above," writes James, "coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. God chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created".
Holiness, purity, cleanliness is a gift from above. One that we should aspire to.
But in aspiring to it we need to remember that it has nothing to do with that which is without us and everything to do with that which is within us.
And that which is within us can only be changed by the power of God's word at work within our lives - it can only be changed as we take that word inside us and allowing it to rule us.
"Do not merely listen to the word", James writes, "and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does"
What we need to learn is that the word that is heard in this church, the word that God has given us in the scriptures, the word that God puts into our hearts so that we may meditate on it day and night, must be lived out.
This can occur only if we welcome the word, if we let it take root and then allow it to prompt us to action.
If we don't then like some of the pharisees and scribes who gathered to hear Jesus we will end up being critics of those who are seeking to follow him faithfully - rather than helpers, rather than friends, rather than brothers and sisters who seek to build one another up in love.
We need to allow a place for God to work in our hearts, a place where we in fact listen to God - as well as ask things of God, a place where we listen and then we allow God to direct our actions, our deeds, in the world beyond us.
It is God who makes us holy and it is God who wants us to be holy.
Receive his word into your hearts each and every day. Listen for it as you worship with your brothers and sisters, and then, - putting aside those emotions and feelings and thoughts that would lead you astray, - and praying in everything that God will lead you and help let God's word come forth from within you and shine about you in acts of love and compassion, and in deeds of patience, understanding, and mercy.
Blessed be the name of the one who washes our hearts and our minds and makes us acceptable in God's sight, both now and forevermore. Amen.
A father is in church with three of his young children, including his six year old daughter. As was the family custom, they sat in the very front row so that the children could properly witness the service.
During this particular service, the pastor was doing a baptism of a tiny infant. The little six year old girl was quite taken by this, observing that he was saying something and pouring water over the little one's head.
With a puzzled look on her face, the little girl turned to her father and asked, "Daddy, why is he brainwashing that little baby?"
When I thought of that joke I happened to be thinking of today's scripture readings - that part where Jesus says to his disciples: "Nothing outside a man can make him 'unclean' by going into him. Rather, it is what comes out of a man that makes him 'unclean.'" and it struck me that there was something quite profound about the little girl's question; that indeed what is required by each of us is that we allow our brains to be washed - our brains and our hearts as well.
Today's readings speak about laws and regulations and about purity of heart, mind, and soul. About what makes for cleanliness in the eyes of God and what does not.
Some Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gather around Jesus. They are interested to know what it is that he is teaching. They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands that were ritually unclean, that is they had not washed them in the way the Pharisees said people should, and they complained to Jesus about this saying:
"Why don't your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?"
The scripture goes on to say that the Pharisees had many rules about such things, about what was the proper way to prepare food, to wash cups and pots and bowls and indeed one's very self if one was to be regarded as "clean" in the eyes of God.
Jesus responds to them in what seems to be an unduly harsh manner - calling them hypocrites and telling them that they worship God in vain because they follow the traditions of men instead of the law of God.
I said that it seems to be an unduly harsh response because the important thing to understand about the rules and traditions of the elders that are mentioned in today's gospel reading is that each rule, each tradition, was devised to help people be in closer relationship to God. To keep them pure and holy in his sight.
Ritual cleanliness and traditions about what one could or could not do on the Sabbath, or who one could or could not talk to or associate with, or what one could or could not eat or touch were devised for the good of the people, for the good of their relationship with God as individuals and as a called and chosen people, a called and chosen community of faith.
Each such rule - each such tradition was based upon Biblical passages, just as today, in some churches, regulations about divorce, advice about how you should raise your children, what foods cannot be eaten and information about how women should be subject to their husbands, are based on Biblical passages.
The difference between the rules and traditions of today's elders and the elders of Jesus' time is only this - the traditions of our modern day elders are based on Old and New Testament passages instead of only on the Old.
The traditions of Christianity do not require us, as the traditions of the Pharisees required the Jews, to worry about how we wash before eat, - nor do they prohibit us from walking over a mile on the Sabbath, but they can be just as restrictive, and ultimately just as meaningless as those kinds of rules were in Jesus' time.
Some of today's traditions claim that a person is not a true Christian if they do not believe in the literal wording of the Bible, or if they have not had a particular kind of "born again" experience.
Some state that a person is unclean if they associate with unbelievers, or if they take a drink, or if they do not believe that God did not create the world and all that is in it in six days and nights some six thousand and four years ago,
I said that Jesus seemed unduly harsh in his response to the pharisee's criticism of his disciples, but - perhaps - after having thought about in the terms I have just outlined to you - maybe not. Perhaps Jesus was not harsh enough!
The net effect of the traditions of the elders in the day of Jesus, and the traditions that are found today in so many churches today, is to misdirect people - to misdirect them by turning righteousness - by turning cleanliness - by turning holiness - into matters of how well we adhere to the external rules and understandings of our faith rather than to the law that God writes upon hearts that are open to him.
How is your heart?? Are you trying to conform the laws and the traditions of our faith - but inwardly are empty??
Suze Orman, financial planner and author of "The Courage to be Rich", tells of her successful career that went through a period when it was unsuccessful.
During that time she struggled to save face, to maintain an image of success. She continued to entertain her friends at fine restaurants and to drive her luxury car to keep up the image of a successful professional. The truth was that every dinner, every car payment, every tank of gas was taking her deeper into debt.
Many folk who believe in God are like Suze. They look good. They keep up the appearances. But inwardly they are impoverished - and the more they try to conform on the outside to what is supposed to come from inside the worse off they get - and in the end those around them are worse off as well.
What defiles a person are the unclean things that originate from within a person, not those that come to us from without.
What defiles a person is not what it is we eat, nor who it is that we eat with, rather it is our anger, our pride, our refusal to listen to others, our sense of superiority, our sense of our own righteousness.
And what makes a person pure and holy is not who or what we avoid in the outer world - though there are things that we should avoid, but whether or not we allow our insides - our hearts and our minds and our souls to be washed in the love of God. And having been washed, to bring forth from inside us those things that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
I want you all to take special note of that today.
The things that are good those good things that come from within us are the fruit of the spirit that is within us.
Our acts of goodness and love arise out of what we allow God to do within us.
Our gentleness, our faithfulness, our kindness grow not according to our attempts to keep some eternal law about how we should be faithful, kind or gentle, but rather they grow out of the word that is implanted within our hearts and minds by God.
And joy and peace and self control, things that are the marks of holiness and purity, come about not through constant striving to follow some regulations that are meant to help us be that way, but through meditating upon what it is that God has done for us - and is doing for us - and allowing God to direct our steps with all this in mind.
"Every good and perfect gift is from above," writes James, "coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. God chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created".
Holiness, purity, cleanliness is a gift from above. One that we should aspire to.
But in aspiring to it we need to remember that it has nothing to do with that which is without us and everything to do with that which is within us.
And that which is within us can only be changed by the power of God's word at work within our lives - it can only be changed as we take that word inside us and allowing it to rule us.
"Do not merely listen to the word", James writes, "and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it - he will be blessed in what he does"
What we need to learn is that the word that is heard in this church, the word that God has given us in the scriptures, the word that God puts into our hearts so that we may meditate on it day and night, must be lived out.
This can occur only if we welcome the word, if we let it take root and then allow it to prompt us to action.
If we don't then like some of the pharisees and scribes who gathered to hear Jesus we will end up being critics of those who are seeking to follow him faithfully - rather than helpers, rather than friends, rather than brothers and sisters who seek to build one another up in love.
We need to allow a place for God to work in our hearts, a place where we in fact listen to God - as well as ask things of God, a place where we listen and then we allow God to direct our actions, our deeds, in the world beyond us.
It is God who makes us holy and it is God who wants us to be holy.
Receive his word into your hearts each and every day. Listen for it as you worship with your brothers and sisters, and then, - putting aside those emotions and feelings and thoughts that would lead you astray, - and praying in everything that God will lead you and help let God's word come forth from within you and shine about you in acts of love and compassion, and in deeds of patience, understanding, and mercy.
Blessed be the name of the one who washes our hearts and our minds and makes us acceptable in God's sight, both now and forevermore. Amen.
Ephesians 6:10-20; Psalm 84; John 6:56-69
It is good to be home in the sanctuary of God. It is good to be with you here today to hear the words of life read from the scriptures and to meditate upon the statements made by Jesus and by Peter in today's Gospel Reading.
Today, as we gather here to worship as a Christian community, as a congregation of the church of Christ Jesus, it is laid upon me to speak to you about Christ and the gospel that we have received in and through him. I will strive to proclaim what I believe are the core issues revealed in today's Gospel Reading, issues which apply not just to our church, but to all who would follow Christ. Indeed part of the power of the scriptures that we have received is that they are of significance not just to those who first heard them some 2000 years ago - but to all who would follow Christ in every place and every generation.
Hear again the first part of today's gospel reading. Jesus says this:
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe."
And then John records for us that from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
The really difficult part of our faith as followers of Christ lies in our coming to grips with the claims that Jesus makes about himself - his claims about how he not only points to God and God's love for us but that in him and through him the life that God wants to give us is conveyed to us.
There are many seekers after truth who recognize Jesus as a great teacher, even as a great miracle worker - but who cannot accept his claim - and the claim that the Apostles have ever made about him - that he is the way, the truth, and the life. As with many of those who had followed Jesus around the land of Israel and Palestine 2000 years ago, the statement made by Jesus in today's reading , in which he claims to give life to us through his body and his blood - that body and that blood which we hold up to all every time we gather before this table - is too hard for them.
Too hard for them to accept.
Too hard for them to believe.
Too hard for them to commit themselves too.
We must remember that the world 2000 years ago was very much like the world is today. Most certainly some of us have comforts and conveniences unheard of in times gone by - our technology and our knowledge of the physical world is far beyond even what the most educated could have grasped as being possible back them - but in social and spiritual terms we of the 21st Century are far closer to what the world was like back then than in virtually any other time in the intervening centuries.
We live today, as we are constantly told, in a pluralistic world. So did they. The Roman world, and within it the Jewish culture, was awash in diversity. Many religions existed and claimed to be the way to the truth. Many cults flourished and claimed to give the secrets of life to their followers.
Jesus was but one claimant among many in that world. As it is today.
And like today, many of those who respected and followed Jesus about the countryside as he taught and performed miracles were reluctant to ascribe to him the power and the glory that he claimed for himself as "the" way to God.
For some this was based in the fact that they had a firm commitment to a different understanding of how God works in the world. For others (such as some Roman Catholic priests, even some teaching in their seminaries) it was based in the idea that all religions point to the same God - and all therefore are equally valid - and that therefore any claims they have to exclusivity are simply wrong.
To those who have another faith commitment I can only say - may God be with you and may you find that which you seek.
To those who claim that there are other ways to God, I can only say what the gathering at the San Antonio Conference on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches in 1989 said - and I quote:
"We cannot point to any other way to salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits to the saving power of God."
This statement is quite in line with the other thing that is said in today's gospel reading, when after many of those who had followed Jesus left him, Jesus says to the disciples who have remained with him:
"You do not want to leave too, do you?"
And Simon Peter answers him, saying:
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
To whom shall we go?
We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.
You have the words of eternal life.
The Christian Church is defined within this question and this assertion.
We are a gathering of people who, while acknowledging that the saving power of God cannot be limited, have found in Christ that saving power and have committed ourselves to exploring and living within that power as Christ has both revealed it and embodied it in his own person.
We proclaim in our Baptism that God loves us and embraces us as part of his family - and that we wish to be a part of that family.
In our weekly worship - and particularly as we celebrate the Lord's Supper - we proclaim that we wish to remain part of God's family - that we need the strength, the forgiveness, the love; and the life of God in our lives - and that in the broken body and the poured out blood of Christ Jesus - God grants us those things in a unique and special way.
Our baptism - our profession of faith - and our coming together as a worshipping community to receive and share the gifts of God as mediated to us in and through Christ Jesus are the things that define who we are - the things that define our relationship with God and one another. We are followers of the Christ - we are brothers and sisters in his name.
Out of our embracing Christ Jesus and his embrace of us come the various things that make us, as a people, ones who show forth the love and grace of God for the whole world. Our commitment and our desire to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with our God find their source in Christ Jesus and are empowered by him.
It is Christ Jesus whom we proclaim - and it is his love and his care and his justice that we embrace because it is in Christ Jesus that we have found life, and it is through him and in him that we know the saving love and the righteous power of God.
We need not make any apologies to those of other faiths about this - and in fact people of other traditions tell the church that they wish we would not.
In interfaith dialogues held at every level of the church those of other faiths tell us that we should value and prize what makes us different - rather than seeking to say - as so many seek to say - that we are really all alike.
"Yes", our interfaith partners tell us, "there are many things that we share in common - but there are many differences too. Let us work together on those things we are agreed about - and respect those things in which we differ."
It is kind like a gathering at a great reunion. Each person there shares things in common - but is the differences between us that make us who we are - that make us distinct persons.
If all people and all ways to God are really all the same, then what point would there be to our conversations? Why would we bother - as we are about to here having reunions if, in fact, none of us can distinguish ourselves from the other? Why eat at a table together and share the gifts of God with one another if each of us already has the all the gifts that the other offers? If each of us thinks the same thoughts and lives the same experiences?
'We cannot point to any other way to salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits to the saving power of God.'
We gathered here today are not simply the family of God, we are the church of Jesus Christ.
It is Christ who defines us. It is Christ who makes us who we are.
As Peter says to Jesus when many of those who had followed Jesus fall away from him because they find his claims to be too hard.
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
To whom shall we go?
All people are welcome in our midst. We are not called to judge them before God. God, we believe is more than able to make his own judgements. But the church is, in the end composed of those who with Peter say to Jesus:
You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
and who then gather in his name that they might receive that life and be strengthened to show forth that life to the world.
Those of us in this part of the church of Christ Jesus who recognize this, and who take part in the gathering of the faithful week by week, are one with those in other parts of his body who do the same thing.
It is not the wisdom of human beings or even the knowledge of scripture that we might have that makes us one, nor is it the power of human organizations - even if they be called churches, that gives to us life, rather it is Christ Jesus - crucified and risen - the Holy One of God who gives us life.
Keep that ever before you - in your hearts and in your minds, in your words, and in your deeds and you will not soon go wrong.
Praise be to God - in and through Christ Jesus - who makes us who we are and who grants to us the life that we, and the whole world needs. Amen
Today, as we gather here to worship as a Christian community, as a congregation of the church of Christ Jesus, it is laid upon me to speak to you about Christ and the gospel that we have received in and through him. I will strive to proclaim what I believe are the core issues revealed in today's Gospel Reading, issues which apply not just to our church, but to all who would follow Christ. Indeed part of the power of the scriptures that we have received is that they are of significance not just to those who first heard them some 2000 years ago - but to all who would follow Christ in every place and every generation.
Hear again the first part of today's gospel reading. Jesus says this:
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever."
On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you? What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe."
And then John records for us that from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
The really difficult part of our faith as followers of Christ lies in our coming to grips with the claims that Jesus makes about himself - his claims about how he not only points to God and God's love for us but that in him and through him the life that God wants to give us is conveyed to us.
There are many seekers after truth who recognize Jesus as a great teacher, even as a great miracle worker - but who cannot accept his claim - and the claim that the Apostles have ever made about him - that he is the way, the truth, and the life. As with many of those who had followed Jesus around the land of Israel and Palestine 2000 years ago, the statement made by Jesus in today's reading , in which he claims to give life to us through his body and his blood - that body and that blood which we hold up to all every time we gather before this table - is too hard for them.
Too hard for them to accept.
Too hard for them to believe.
Too hard for them to commit themselves too.
We must remember that the world 2000 years ago was very much like the world is today. Most certainly some of us have comforts and conveniences unheard of in times gone by - our technology and our knowledge of the physical world is far beyond even what the most educated could have grasped as being possible back them - but in social and spiritual terms we of the 21st Century are far closer to what the world was like back then than in virtually any other time in the intervening centuries.
We live today, as we are constantly told, in a pluralistic world. So did they. The Roman world, and within it the Jewish culture, was awash in diversity. Many religions existed and claimed to be the way to the truth. Many cults flourished and claimed to give the secrets of life to their followers.
Jesus was but one claimant among many in that world. As it is today.
And like today, many of those who respected and followed Jesus about the countryside as he taught and performed miracles were reluctant to ascribe to him the power and the glory that he claimed for himself as "the" way to God.
For some this was based in the fact that they had a firm commitment to a different understanding of how God works in the world. For others (such as some Roman Catholic priests, even some teaching in their seminaries) it was based in the idea that all religions point to the same God - and all therefore are equally valid - and that therefore any claims they have to exclusivity are simply wrong.
To those who have another faith commitment I can only say - may God be with you and may you find that which you seek.
To those who claim that there are other ways to God, I can only say what the gathering at the San Antonio Conference on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches in 1989 said - and I quote:
"We cannot point to any other way to salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits to the saving power of God."
This statement is quite in line with the other thing that is said in today's gospel reading, when after many of those who had followed Jesus left him, Jesus says to the disciples who have remained with him:
"You do not want to leave too, do you?"
And Simon Peter answers him, saying:
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
To whom shall we go?
We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.
You have the words of eternal life.
The Christian Church is defined within this question and this assertion.
We are a gathering of people who, while acknowledging that the saving power of God cannot be limited, have found in Christ that saving power and have committed ourselves to exploring and living within that power as Christ has both revealed it and embodied it in his own person.
We proclaim in our Baptism that God loves us and embraces us as part of his family - and that we wish to be a part of that family.
In our weekly worship - and particularly as we celebrate the Lord's Supper - we proclaim that we wish to remain part of God's family - that we need the strength, the forgiveness, the love; and the life of God in our lives - and that in the broken body and the poured out blood of Christ Jesus - God grants us those things in a unique and special way.
Our baptism - our profession of faith - and our coming together as a worshipping community to receive and share the gifts of God as mediated to us in and through Christ Jesus are the things that define who we are - the things that define our relationship with God and one another. We are followers of the Christ - we are brothers and sisters in his name.
Out of our embracing Christ Jesus and his embrace of us come the various things that make us, as a people, ones who show forth the love and grace of God for the whole world. Our commitment and our desire to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with our God find their source in Christ Jesus and are empowered by him.
It is Christ Jesus whom we proclaim - and it is his love and his care and his justice that we embrace because it is in Christ Jesus that we have found life, and it is through him and in him that we know the saving love and the righteous power of God.
We need not make any apologies to those of other faiths about this - and in fact people of other traditions tell the church that they wish we would not.
In interfaith dialogues held at every level of the church those of other faiths tell us that we should value and prize what makes us different - rather than seeking to say - as so many seek to say - that we are really all alike.
"Yes", our interfaith partners tell us, "there are many things that we share in common - but there are many differences too. Let us work together on those things we are agreed about - and respect those things in which we differ."
It is kind like a gathering at a great reunion. Each person there shares things in common - but is the differences between us that make us who we are - that make us distinct persons.
If all people and all ways to God are really all the same, then what point would there be to our conversations? Why would we bother - as we are about to here having reunions if, in fact, none of us can distinguish ourselves from the other? Why eat at a table together and share the gifts of God with one another if each of us already has the all the gifts that the other offers? If each of us thinks the same thoughts and lives the same experiences?
'We cannot point to any other way to salvation than Jesus Christ; at the same time we cannot set limits to the saving power of God.'
We gathered here today are not simply the family of God, we are the church of Jesus Christ.
It is Christ who defines us. It is Christ who makes us who we are.
As Peter says to Jesus when many of those who had followed Jesus fall away from him because they find his claims to be too hard.
"Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
To whom shall we go?
All people are welcome in our midst. We are not called to judge them before God. God, we believe is more than able to make his own judgements. But the church is, in the end composed of those who with Peter say to Jesus:
You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."
and who then gather in his name that they might receive that life and be strengthened to show forth that life to the world.
Those of us in this part of the church of Christ Jesus who recognize this, and who take part in the gathering of the faithful week by week, are one with those in other parts of his body who do the same thing.
It is not the wisdom of human beings or even the knowledge of scripture that we might have that makes us one, nor is it the power of human organizations - even if they be called churches, that gives to us life, rather it is Christ Jesus - crucified and risen - the Holy One of God who gives us life.
Keep that ever before you - in your hearts and in your minds, in your words, and in your deeds and you will not soon go wrong.
Praise be to God - in and through Christ Jesus - who makes us who we are and who grants to us the life that we, and the whole world needs. Amen
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
I Kings 19:1-8; Psalm 34; John 6:41-51
The Story of Elijah is an interesting one - he was one of the first of the great prophets, a prophet to the nation of the Northern Israel - to the people who would later become known as the 10 lost tribes.
Like us, Elijah is on a journey - a journey of the Spirit - a journey that has led him to a confrontation with the priests of Baal - the god of Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab - on that journey Elijah has earned the hatred of Jezebel - which, given her "charming personality" was a very easy thing to earn - and she wishes him dead - and so he flees from the city of Jezreel to Beersheba - and then - he goes out into the wilderness about a day's walk, and came to a solitary broom tree in the midst of this wilderness, and sits under - and asks God that he might die.
There are times, are there not, when people we know and love despair to the point of wanting to die.
Perhaps there have been times when we ourselves have thought death a sweet alternative,
- an alternative - as it was to Elijah - to being a solitary voice
- an alternative to the stress of being under attack from those who
were once our neighbours,
- an alternative to the loneliness and fear of being the odd person
out, the person who has done what was right only to find that all who
have stood with him or her have vanished away - and every hand seems
set against you
- an alternative to feeling that perhaps - just perhaps - you are no
better - and perhaps even worse than those who have gone before you - no
better even than those who are against us.
Our journey through life takes us through some very dangerous country our pilgrimage can leads us into some very desolate wilderness..
And so Elijah prays that he might die:
"It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."
And then he lies down under the broom tree and falls asleep, a sleep that I know that each one of you here today understands - the sleep of exhaustion, - the sleep of stress so high and the energy to go on fighting so low that it sweeps over you - and normally is too soon gone - the new day comes too quickly.
And in the night - something happens. Some answer to his prayer. An angel comes and touches him - wakens him - and tells him to "get up and eat". And there is food - a Cake of Bread upon a hot stone - and drink - a jar of water set near to hand.
And he eats and he lies down again, till again - some time later - the angel returns and touches him once more, and says: "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
And he rises, and he eats and he drinks - and then, the scriptures say, he went forty days and forty nights to Horeb - the mountain of God - the place we call Mount Sinai - and there he comes to cave and spends the night there.
Other interesting things happen to Elijah while he is at the Mountain of God. At the end of this journey through the wilderness he is granted a vision of God - and given a message of hope for his own life and for the nation - and he is given a disciple - one who will keep him company and help him on his journey - and at last take his place as prophet over Israel when he grows old - the young man Elisha.
But, with me, think of the words of the angel to Elijah, the words "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
To survive on our journey, to have the strength to go through the barren places of life, those places where we are alone - because of divorce, or illness, or death - we need to eat to drink the food and the drink that God has prepared for us: the food that he grants each one of us in the sacred stories of this holy book and in the newer tales told by people of faith who enter our lives from time to time.
We need to cry out to God when we are in need, when we are in despair, and then heed the tap that comes upon our shoulder in the middle of the night - the voice that whispers in our inward most ear - and tells us to believe, to trust, to rise up and take the bread and the water that will be there for us and to eat and drink - and to eat and drink again -- and go forth to complete our journey.
Are you running on empty? Do you sometimes feel that you do not have the strength to travel onward for another day? let alone another 40?
Perhaps it is time to eat.
The food is all round us - especially in this place - and in the people who sit beside you - people who have faith - people who know the story and who know where God is to be found.
God is here - God's angels hover round us.
God is here - in the truth that we proclaim - in the bread that has been passed around this sanctuary - in the light that enters through the windows - in the water that flows in the water pipes outside these doors - in the ordinary things - the daily miracles that so many take for granted - the rising and setting of the sun, and the moon and the stars, and the ever changing mountains and the rhythm of the seasons - in the breath that comes in and out of our lungs each minute - in the crying of a baby and the laughter of a child and the care of a lover.
God is here in the Christ, the son of Joseph - whose parents indeed we do know; in Jesus, the carpenter with whom we are well familiar.
God is in the one who says:
"I am the bread of life" and again "I am the living bread that came down from heaven - whoever eats of this bread will live forever."
God is in the one who said to his disciples and to us:
"Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Solid food is available my friends, food that will sustain us on our spiritual journey.
It is a great tragedy not to take it up and eat it - a tragedy that can so easily be avoided if one but takes the time to look around, and to think about what will truly satisfy.
Jean Pierre Caussade writes in the book "Abandonment to Divine Providence":
"God speaks to every individual through what happens to them moment by moment." He goes on - "The events of each moment are stamped with the will of God.... we find all that is necessary in the present moment." Again: "We are bored with the small happenings around us, yet it is these trivialities - as we consider them - which would do marvels for us if only we did not despise them."
Bread - ordinary bread -- bread simply for the eating.
Rich and filling - something we know well - something that endures when other more exotic foods are not available, or proves - as so much of the food that we eat in this society does - to lead to death instead of life.
Ordinary stuff. Stuff we know.
Stuff that is so familiar to us that many of us fail to understand it - and either try to make it out to be more than it is - or despise it for being less than they think it ought to be, for being ordinary - familiar - common: rather than magical, powerful, immaculate, glorious, and wondrous beyond even the ability of Cecil B DeMille to portray in a movie.
But the ordinary is powerful, it is magical - it is immaculate and glorious and wondrous, for those who have the eyes to see - those who seek God and are willing to get up and eat and drink what he has provided.
God has provided us with food for our journey - take and eat that you may be strong in him and so reach the place he is calling you to.
Let us Pray a prayer by Janet Cawley:
God of the way, you are the road we travel, and the sign we follow; you are bread for the journey, and the wine of arrival.
Guide us as we follow in your way, holding on to each other, reaching out to your beloved world.
And when we stray, seek us out and find us, set our feet on the path again, and lead us safely home.
In the name of Jesus, our Companion we pray. Amen.
Blessed be God - day by day. Amen
Like us, Elijah is on a journey - a journey of the Spirit - a journey that has led him to a confrontation with the priests of Baal - the god of Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab - on that journey Elijah has earned the hatred of Jezebel - which, given her "charming personality" was a very easy thing to earn - and she wishes him dead - and so he flees from the city of Jezreel to Beersheba - and then - he goes out into the wilderness about a day's walk, and came to a solitary broom tree in the midst of this wilderness, and sits under - and asks God that he might die.
There are times, are there not, when people we know and love despair to the point of wanting to die.
Perhaps there have been times when we ourselves have thought death a sweet alternative,
- an alternative - as it was to Elijah - to being a solitary voice
- an alternative to the stress of being under attack from those who
were once our neighbours,
- an alternative to the loneliness and fear of being the odd person
out, the person who has done what was right only to find that all who
have stood with him or her have vanished away - and every hand seems
set against you
- an alternative to feeling that perhaps - just perhaps - you are no
better - and perhaps even worse than those who have gone before you - no
better even than those who are against us.
Our journey through life takes us through some very dangerous country our pilgrimage can leads us into some very desolate wilderness..
And so Elijah prays that he might die:
"It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors."
And then he lies down under the broom tree and falls asleep, a sleep that I know that each one of you here today understands - the sleep of exhaustion, - the sleep of stress so high and the energy to go on fighting so low that it sweeps over you - and normally is too soon gone - the new day comes too quickly.
And in the night - something happens. Some answer to his prayer. An angel comes and touches him - wakens him - and tells him to "get up and eat". And there is food - a Cake of Bread upon a hot stone - and drink - a jar of water set near to hand.
And he eats and he lies down again, till again - some time later - the angel returns and touches him once more, and says: "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
And he rises, and he eats and he drinks - and then, the scriptures say, he went forty days and forty nights to Horeb - the mountain of God - the place we call Mount Sinai - and there he comes to cave and spends the night there.
Other interesting things happen to Elijah while he is at the Mountain of God. At the end of this journey through the wilderness he is granted a vision of God - and given a message of hope for his own life and for the nation - and he is given a disciple - one who will keep him company and help him on his journey - and at last take his place as prophet over Israel when he grows old - the young man Elisha.
But, with me, think of the words of the angel to Elijah, the words "Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you."
To survive on our journey, to have the strength to go through the barren places of life, those places where we are alone - because of divorce, or illness, or death - we need to eat to drink the food and the drink that God has prepared for us: the food that he grants each one of us in the sacred stories of this holy book and in the newer tales told by people of faith who enter our lives from time to time.
We need to cry out to God when we are in need, when we are in despair, and then heed the tap that comes upon our shoulder in the middle of the night - the voice that whispers in our inward most ear - and tells us to believe, to trust, to rise up and take the bread and the water that will be there for us and to eat and drink - and to eat and drink again -- and go forth to complete our journey.
Are you running on empty? Do you sometimes feel that you do not have the strength to travel onward for another day? let alone another 40?
Perhaps it is time to eat.
The food is all round us - especially in this place - and in the people who sit beside you - people who have faith - people who know the story and who know where God is to be found.
God is here - God's angels hover round us.
God is here - in the truth that we proclaim - in the bread that has been passed around this sanctuary - in the light that enters through the windows - in the water that flows in the water pipes outside these doors - in the ordinary things - the daily miracles that so many take for granted - the rising and setting of the sun, and the moon and the stars, and the ever changing mountains and the rhythm of the seasons - in the breath that comes in and out of our lungs each minute - in the crying of a baby and the laughter of a child and the care of a lover.
God is here in the Christ, the son of Joseph - whose parents indeed we do know; in Jesus, the carpenter with whom we are well familiar.
God is in the one who says:
"I am the bread of life" and again "I am the living bread that came down from heaven - whoever eats of this bread will live forever."
God is in the one who said to his disciples and to us:
"Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
Solid food is available my friends, food that will sustain us on our spiritual journey.
It is a great tragedy not to take it up and eat it - a tragedy that can so easily be avoided if one but takes the time to look around, and to think about what will truly satisfy.
Jean Pierre Caussade writes in the book "Abandonment to Divine Providence":
"God speaks to every individual through what happens to them moment by moment." He goes on - "The events of each moment are stamped with the will of God.... we find all that is necessary in the present moment." Again: "We are bored with the small happenings around us, yet it is these trivialities - as we consider them - which would do marvels for us if only we did not despise them."
Bread - ordinary bread -- bread simply for the eating.
Rich and filling - something we know well - something that endures when other more exotic foods are not available, or proves - as so much of the food that we eat in this society does - to lead to death instead of life.
Ordinary stuff. Stuff we know.
Stuff that is so familiar to us that many of us fail to understand it - and either try to make it out to be more than it is - or despise it for being less than they think it ought to be, for being ordinary - familiar - common: rather than magical, powerful, immaculate, glorious, and wondrous beyond even the ability of Cecil B DeMille to portray in a movie.
But the ordinary is powerful, it is magical - it is immaculate and glorious and wondrous, for those who have the eyes to see - those who seek God and are willing to get up and eat and drink what he has provided.
God has provided us with food for our journey - take and eat that you may be strong in him and so reach the place he is calling you to.
Let us Pray a prayer by Janet Cawley:
God of the way, you are the road we travel, and the sign we follow; you are bread for the journey, and the wine of arrival.
Guide us as we follow in your way, holding on to each other, reaching out to your beloved world.
And when we stray, seek us out and find us, set our feet on the path again, and lead us safely home.
In the name of Jesus, our Companion we pray. Amen.
Blessed be God - day by day. Amen
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 78:1-16; John 6:24-35
I would like to begin today by telling you an old Japanese story - a fable actually - about Tasuku - a stonecutter.
Tasuku was a poor man who cut blocks of stone from the foot of a mountain. One day he saw a well-dressed prince parade by. Tasuku envied the prince and wished that he could have that kind of wealth. The Great Spirit heard Tasuku, and he was made a prince.
Tasuku was happy with his silk clothes and his powerful armies until he saw the sun wilt the flowers in his royal garden. He wished for such power as the sun had, and his wish was granted. He became the sun, with power to parch fields and humble people with thirst.
Tasuku was happy to be the sun until a cloud covered him and obscured his powerful heat. With that, he had another wish, and the Spirit complied. Thereafter Tasuku was a cloud with the power to ravage the land with floods and storms.
Tasuku was happy until he saw the mountain remain in spite of his storm. So Tasuku demanded to be the mountain. The Spirit obeyed. Tasuku became the mountain and was more powerful than the prince, the sun, or the cloud. And he was happy until he felt a chisel chipping at his feet. It was a stonecutter working away - cutting blocks to sell to make his daily living.
How many of you know people who seem to be driven - unable to relax - unable to find satisfaction for more than a few moments at a time?
There are people, a majority actually, who are constantly seeking something - they work or they play, they build or they drink, they join clubs and societies or they party, hoping to find in these activities some form of peace, some form of inner quiet, some form of satisfaction. - yet, despite all they do, they continue to hunger and thirst.
What are you looking for???
What will make you happy??
What will set your soul at rest??
Tasuku never found out - even though all his wishes were granted by the Great Spirit. Nor - it seems did the people of Israel after they were led by God out of bondage in Egypt.
They demanded water at Marah, - and what was once bitter was made sweet. They demanded bread and meat in the wilderness of Sin, complaining to Moses and Aaron that God had brought them out of the security of their bondage in Egypt only to kill them with hunger, - and manna was provided - and meat - enough each day for each day
Yet within a few days the people were complaining again to Moses and Aaron, complaining that God was trying to kill them, and their children and their livestock.
What were they looking for? They prayed and God answered them. What would have made them happy? They complained, and God responded. What would have set their souls at rest? Their wishes were granted - yet they still were unsatisfied.
What is it that you desire?
Is it that which will allow you to "let go? That which will allow you to trust? That which help you to face life with all its uncertainties? Or do you seek that which will only lead you to want more? Or to want something different? Do you seek the things of God? Or the things of this world?
When Jesus fed the crowd of 5000 with five loaves and two fish all ate and all were filled - all had as much as they wanted. And they hailed Jesus as the prophet who was to come into the world. And they sought to make him king
- for they realized that he could satisfy their hunger,
- that he could free them from Roman control,
- that he could put their nation on easy street.
Yet Jesus was not flattered by their interest in him when they sought him out after he crossed the sea.
He knew what would last, what has the ability to truly satisfy, and what - by its very nature - is only temporary and passing, quick to wither and fade.
"Very truly, I tell you", said Jesus, "you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life - which the Son of Man will give you."
There is another kind of bread, another kind of food - and to come to realize this is not to despise the things that we already know, the things we need for our daily existence, but it is to discover a balance and a harmony to life. It is to find oneself, to discover the possibility of a lasting peace and an enduring happiness, to uncover the hidden connectedness of life - that connectedness that satisfies the hunger and quenches the thirst.
The well known comedian, Richard Pryor, was critically burned in an "accident" some years back.
When he had recovered sufficiently, he appeared on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show". In his conservation with Carson, he said he learned that when you're seriously ill, suddenly money isn't that important anymore. Then he said, "All I could think of was to call on GOD. I didn't call the Bank once!"
Some things are more satisfying than those things which money or success can bring you.
It is often said that health is one such thing. But the discerning realize that even health is a passing thing, that we will all die, and they claim that instead VIRTUE is that which should be sought, that honesty, integrity, compassion, a forgiving spirit, a kind heart are of greater and more lasting value than large houses, new cars, and large bank accounts.
But the bread of heaven that Jesus speaks of in today's gospel is more than honesty and integrity; it is even greater than a compassionate and forgiving heart, it is even better than virtue - and striving to lead a moral and upright life - because these things too may perish, or at the very least be confounded by our innate sinfulness, our innate selfishness.
Virtue is ever mixed with baser instincts, and less noble actions often mingle with our more noble ones - confounding our righteousness, and showing us just how far from perfect we really are.
LISTEN, my brothers and sisters! HEAR the Good News!
When Jesus spoke of the bread of heaven - of the food that endures - of the drink that satisfies, he did not speak of what we should or should not do each and every day. He did not preach about our leading a more noble and more righteous life. He did not recommend particular behaviours and condemn certain others.
No - when Jesus spoke of the bread of heaven he spoke of himself, and of belief in him and of faith in God.
"What must we do", ask the people after Jesus tells them of the food that endures for eternal life, "What must we do to perform the works of God."
* And he replies - "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." *
That is, in some way, too much for the crowd around Jesus to accept, and they ask Jesus to give them another sign so that they may believe him, a sign like that which Moses gave their ancestors in the wilderness, and finally - at the end of it all - when Jesus tells them that the bread that their ancestors ate in the wilderness came not from Moses - but from God, they ask NOT that Jesus might help them believe, but that he might always give them the bread that gives life to the world.
Like so many people today, including all too many people in the churches of the world, they missed the point of what Jesus says. They refuse to do the work that Jesus says that they need to do if they are to eat and be satisfied - if they are to drink and find that their thirst is quenched. They refuse to simply believe in him! They seem unable to simply trust in God.
Instead, like their ancestors, they grumble and complain, and suggest to one another that Jesus is a hoax, a fraud, a person who is either mad or a blasphemer; a person set on leading them astray and causing them to perish.
But my friends - this was and is not the case - Faith in Christ has satisfied many a person. Trust in God has quenched the thirst of many a thirsty soul. Belief in the Lord has filled many a hungry heart.
There is a greater world, a greater reality, than the physical world we live in. And this reality, this world, is within, and all around the physical world, it enters our time and our space, and it endures beyond it.
The sun and the moon and the stars that we see at night, are greater than we, yet even they will perish.
But God, who made them all, will not perish; even as his chosen one, his messenger, his son, did not perish when he died for us on the cross, but rather passed through death into eternal life.
We are connected to this greater world, to this greater reality. We are linked to it, and to the God who made it, because God wants it to be so for us.
The power, and the beauty, and the peace, and the joy, of God's realm is accessible to us when we believe in Him and the One whom he has sent; when we trust in Him and the One who calls us to eat and drink of the bread and the wine he provides.
Say now in your heart "Yes Lord - Yes - I know that there is more - and I thank you for offering it to me. I thank you for offering it freely, without regard to my virtue or reference to my sins. I thank you for showing me where my home is, where my hope is, where my future is.
Say YES each day to God, YES each day to the one who said:
"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
And then SHARE the Good News with others, the news that in the midst of the hunger and thirst of our world there is a drink that satisfies and a bread that endures; that God rains it down upon his people like dew upon the morning grass.
Each morning, my friends, that food it is made new. Each day, as it is gathered, it gives life to those for whom it is meant, those who embrace its sender and believe in his goodness.,
Blessed be God - day by day. Amen
Tasuku was a poor man who cut blocks of stone from the foot of a mountain. One day he saw a well-dressed prince parade by. Tasuku envied the prince and wished that he could have that kind of wealth. The Great Spirit heard Tasuku, and he was made a prince.
Tasuku was happy with his silk clothes and his powerful armies until he saw the sun wilt the flowers in his royal garden. He wished for such power as the sun had, and his wish was granted. He became the sun, with power to parch fields and humble people with thirst.
Tasuku was happy to be the sun until a cloud covered him and obscured his powerful heat. With that, he had another wish, and the Spirit complied. Thereafter Tasuku was a cloud with the power to ravage the land with floods and storms.
Tasuku was happy until he saw the mountain remain in spite of his storm. So Tasuku demanded to be the mountain. The Spirit obeyed. Tasuku became the mountain and was more powerful than the prince, the sun, or the cloud. And he was happy until he felt a chisel chipping at his feet. It was a stonecutter working away - cutting blocks to sell to make his daily living.
How many of you know people who seem to be driven - unable to relax - unable to find satisfaction for more than a few moments at a time?
There are people, a majority actually, who are constantly seeking something - they work or they play, they build or they drink, they join clubs and societies or they party, hoping to find in these activities some form of peace, some form of inner quiet, some form of satisfaction. - yet, despite all they do, they continue to hunger and thirst.
What are you looking for???
What will make you happy??
What will set your soul at rest??
Tasuku never found out - even though all his wishes were granted by the Great Spirit. Nor - it seems did the people of Israel after they were led by God out of bondage in Egypt.
They demanded water at Marah, - and what was once bitter was made sweet. They demanded bread and meat in the wilderness of Sin, complaining to Moses and Aaron that God had brought them out of the security of their bondage in Egypt only to kill them with hunger, - and manna was provided - and meat - enough each day for each day
Yet within a few days the people were complaining again to Moses and Aaron, complaining that God was trying to kill them, and their children and their livestock.
What were they looking for? They prayed and God answered them. What would have made them happy? They complained, and God responded. What would have set their souls at rest? Their wishes were granted - yet they still were unsatisfied.
What is it that you desire?
Is it that which will allow you to "let go? That which will allow you to trust? That which help you to face life with all its uncertainties? Or do you seek that which will only lead you to want more? Or to want something different? Do you seek the things of God? Or the things of this world?
When Jesus fed the crowd of 5000 with five loaves and two fish all ate and all were filled - all had as much as they wanted. And they hailed Jesus as the prophet who was to come into the world. And they sought to make him king
- for they realized that he could satisfy their hunger,
- that he could free them from Roman control,
- that he could put their nation on easy street.
Yet Jesus was not flattered by their interest in him when they sought him out after he crossed the sea.
He knew what would last, what has the ability to truly satisfy, and what - by its very nature - is only temporary and passing, quick to wither and fade.
"Very truly, I tell you", said Jesus, "you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life - which the Son of Man will give you."
There is another kind of bread, another kind of food - and to come to realize this is not to despise the things that we already know, the things we need for our daily existence, but it is to discover a balance and a harmony to life. It is to find oneself, to discover the possibility of a lasting peace and an enduring happiness, to uncover the hidden connectedness of life - that connectedness that satisfies the hunger and quenches the thirst.
The well known comedian, Richard Pryor, was critically burned in an "accident" some years back.
When he had recovered sufficiently, he appeared on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show". In his conservation with Carson, he said he learned that when you're seriously ill, suddenly money isn't that important anymore. Then he said, "All I could think of was to call on GOD. I didn't call the Bank once!"
Some things are more satisfying than those things which money or success can bring you.
It is often said that health is one such thing. But the discerning realize that even health is a passing thing, that we will all die, and they claim that instead VIRTUE is that which should be sought, that honesty, integrity, compassion, a forgiving spirit, a kind heart are of greater and more lasting value than large houses, new cars, and large bank accounts.
But the bread of heaven that Jesus speaks of in today's gospel is more than honesty and integrity; it is even greater than a compassionate and forgiving heart, it is even better than virtue - and striving to lead a moral and upright life - because these things too may perish, or at the very least be confounded by our innate sinfulness, our innate selfishness.
Virtue is ever mixed with baser instincts, and less noble actions often mingle with our more noble ones - confounding our righteousness, and showing us just how far from perfect we really are.
LISTEN, my brothers and sisters! HEAR the Good News!
When Jesus spoke of the bread of heaven - of the food that endures - of the drink that satisfies, he did not speak of what we should or should not do each and every day. He did not preach about our leading a more noble and more righteous life. He did not recommend particular behaviours and condemn certain others.
No - when Jesus spoke of the bread of heaven he spoke of himself, and of belief in him and of faith in God.
"What must we do", ask the people after Jesus tells them of the food that endures for eternal life, "What must we do to perform the works of God."
* And he replies - "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." *
That is, in some way, too much for the crowd around Jesus to accept, and they ask Jesus to give them another sign so that they may believe him, a sign like that which Moses gave their ancestors in the wilderness, and finally - at the end of it all - when Jesus tells them that the bread that their ancestors ate in the wilderness came not from Moses - but from God, they ask NOT that Jesus might help them believe, but that he might always give them the bread that gives life to the world.
Like so many people today, including all too many people in the churches of the world, they missed the point of what Jesus says. They refuse to do the work that Jesus says that they need to do if they are to eat and be satisfied - if they are to drink and find that their thirst is quenched. They refuse to simply believe in him! They seem unable to simply trust in God.
Instead, like their ancestors, they grumble and complain, and suggest to one another that Jesus is a hoax, a fraud, a person who is either mad or a blasphemer; a person set on leading them astray and causing them to perish.
But my friends - this was and is not the case - Faith in Christ has satisfied many a person. Trust in God has quenched the thirst of many a thirsty soul. Belief in the Lord has filled many a hungry heart.
There is a greater world, a greater reality, than the physical world we live in. And this reality, this world, is within, and all around the physical world, it enters our time and our space, and it endures beyond it.
The sun and the moon and the stars that we see at night, are greater than we, yet even they will perish.
But God, who made them all, will not perish; even as his chosen one, his messenger, his son, did not perish when he died for us on the cross, but rather passed through death into eternal life.
We are connected to this greater world, to this greater reality. We are linked to it, and to the God who made it, because God wants it to be so for us.
The power, and the beauty, and the peace, and the joy, of God's realm is accessible to us when we believe in Him and the One whom he has sent; when we trust in Him and the One who calls us to eat and drink of the bread and the wine he provides.
Say now in your heart "Yes Lord - Yes - I know that there is more - and I thank you for offering it to me. I thank you for offering it freely, without regard to my virtue or reference to my sins. I thank you for showing me where my home is, where my hope is, where my future is.
Say YES each day to God, YES each day to the one who said:
"I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty."
And then SHARE the Good News with others, the news that in the midst of the hunger and thirst of our world there is a drink that satisfies and a bread that endures; that God rains it down upon his people like dew upon the morning grass.
Each morning, my friends, that food it is made new. Each day, as it is gathered, it gives life to those for whom it is meant, those who embrace its sender and believe in his goodness.,
Blessed be God - day by day. Amen
Monday, June 21, 2010
II Kings 4:42-44; Psalm 145; John 6:1-15
Today's readings present us with the story of two different miracles: - the story of Elisha, who in the midst of a famine feeds a hundred men with 20 loaves of barley bread - and the story of Jesus, who when faced with a great crowd of hungry people, over 5000 men, women, and children according to the other gospel accounts of this story, feeds them with five loaves and two fish.
Both stories share certain things in common.
Elisha's servant, on being told to feed the men with the offering brought by the man who came from Baal Shalishah, does not think it possible and complains to the prophet saying: "How can I set this before a hundred men?"
And with Jesus too, as with Elisha, there is a servant, a disciple, who does not think it is possible to feed the people with what is available - the five loaves and two fish offered by the child that Peter's brother, Andrew, had found in the crowd.
And in both stories - despite these small beginnings, the hungry are fed, and there are leftovers - indeed in the story involving Jesus there is an abundance of leftovers - there is more than when the feast first began.
The feeding of the great crowd, as John calls it, is the only miracle that Jesus did that is described in all four gospels. For this reason, if no other, we need to pay close attention to it. We need to ask ourselves - why is this so? What is it about this miracle - unlike all the other miracles performed by Jesus - that so catches the attention of the gospel writers.
I think it has to do with at least three separate things.
The first is the fact that this story tells us that Jesus is used of God - that like Elisha he has God's favour and is able to feed the hungry - much as the people of Israel were fed by God in the wilderness with Manna.
In fact John goes on after the telling of this story to speak of Jesus as the bread of heaven come down to earth - the one who is not only able to satisfy the physical hunger of his people - but their spiritual hunger as well.
Jesus has, and is able to use, the power of God to feed the hungry.
The second thing is that the story shows us not only God's power at work in Jesus, but also God's care. God reaches out through Jesus to meet the needs of those who are following him - much as God reached out through Elisha to meet the needs of the men who had followed him into the wilderness.
Jesus cares for those who seek him out. He wants to meet their needs, and he wants to see their needs met.
The third thing is that the story shows us is that Jesus is able to take what is offered to him and to multiply it - so that where there first seemed not enough ends up being more than enough.
It is this latter point that I want to focus on for the remainder of the sermon.
It has been talked about a lot, this miracle of feeding the great crowd of people, and perhaps more than any other miracle, people have tried to figure out how Jesus did it.
Most people more readily accept the healing stories, they understand that the mind has a strong effect on health, that faith can in fact bring about healing.
But multiplying loaves and fish? This seems more incredible, more difficult, and so theories have arisen to explain how it was done.
The most notable theory is that when the boy who had the loaves and fish shared them with others his example inspired others to bring out what they had brought with them and share as well.
I can't say how it the loaves and the fish multiplied nor do I want to try.
But I do want to stress to you the fact that they do, much as does the offering made to Elisha by the man from Baal Shalishah.
I think that we really need to meditate on that fact. We really need to consider how too little becomes more than enough when it is offered to God.
Recall once again the context of the stories we heard this morning.
Think of the story about Elisha.
A man comes to bring the prophet an offering during a famine in Gilgal - some bread made from the first ripe grain of the season. It was a faith offering, the type recommended by Moses in the Torah.
And Elisha, after receiving the offering, says to his servant "give it to the people to eat". Give it to the hungry ones here with me, feed them, for they need it.
And what does he get in return - what is said to him?
He is told that it is not possible, that there will not be enough to go around.
Let us not doubt that assertion. There was not enough to go round.
In the four gospel stories about the feeding of the great crowd we hear something similar.
Jesus is teaching on a hillside - there are over 5000 people there, and when evening approaches the disciples become concerned, they fear that the crowd will go hungry, and their solution is to ask Jesus to send the crowd away.
But Jesus says to them - you feed them, and he asks Philip - who was from the region in which the story takes place, "where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?"
Philip replies "eight months wages would not buy enough bread to for each one to have a single bite"
Immediately afterwards Andrew, who has found a boy with 5 loaves and two fish among the crowd, pipes up about his discovery - and then adds - "BUT how far will they go among so many."
How far indeed.
The scene is set then for us and for our meditation upon it. There is a great need. And there are not enough resources to meet that need.
It all sounds so familiar doesn't it?
You can hear words like this just about anytime, especially when there are social or political problems that require an infusion of resources.
- How can we help with what little we have? We don't even know how we will
make do ourselves.
- How can we feed so many? How can we fund so many. We have so little and
the need is so great.
- What we can do is only a drop in a bucket. We don't have enough money to
help out. We don't have what it takes.
And we can also hear the same tune about our emotional and spiritual resources when confronted with problems of caring for those who are lost and alone, those caught up in guilt and despair, in doubt and confusion. The chorus goes something like this, doesn't it?
We don't have enough time.
We don't have enough energy.
We aren't smart enough.
We aren't wise enough.
We haven't the training we require.
We aren't professionals.
There aren't enough of us to make a real difference,
there aren't enough of us to get the job done.
But Jesus, like Elisha, didn't listen to this from his disciples, rather, like the prophet, he took that which was offered to him in faith, blessed it, and handed it back to his disciples so that they might distribute it.
Just as Elisha commanded his servant to give the twenty loaves of bread that he had received to the people anyway, saying, "They will eat and have some left over", so Jesus, after giving thanks to God, divided the five loaves and the two fish, and begins to feed the crowd.
And there was enough to go around.
And there were leftovers -
so many that there was more than there was to start with.
What voice do we listen to in these stories?
The voices of the disciples - the servants - who say, when told to feed the crowd - there is not enough - it is impossible.
Or the voice of the one who tells us "feed the people" and who takes what we have to offer and makes it enough?
Mark, Matthew, and Luke all begin their account of the feeding of the great crowd by saying when Jesus saw the crowd he had compassion for them, that he cared for them.
Jesus aks us to do the same - he asks us to care, to have compassion, and to go out into the world, and teach, and heal, and feed the people.
That is part of the great commissioning found at the end of the gospel of Matthew - that portion we so often quote in our baptismal services which says "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you", and that is part of the commissioning Jesus imparts to Peter just before his ascension saying "Do you love me Peter?" and when Peter says "Yes Lord, you know that I love you.", he says to him "Feed my sheep".
We are called to be like Jesus - - we are called to feed those in need, to feed them with both the bread of heaven and the bread worked upon by human hands.
And we are not left alone in the doing of it. God's power is promised us in it. All we need to do is to do is bring what we have, as did the man of Baal Shalishah to Elisha and as did the boy on the hillside to Jesus.
To bring it with thanksgiving - as Moses commanded. To bring it with joy - as the boy must surely have brought Jesus his meagre offering. To bring it - not with regard to what it might or might not be able to do - but with regard to the one to whom we present it, with regard to God and God's love.
The story of the loaves and the fish show us that Jesus is used of God, that he has the power of God and it shows us too that God cares.
It also shows us that what is small and insignificant in the face of this world's need can, when offered to God, be multiplied and provide for the world what is needed.
Miracles all have beginnings, and almost always those beginnings are to be found within us.
Several years ago I heard the story of a man named Paul.
Paul had received a special pre-Christmas gift from his brother. It was a beautiful new car - fully loaded and ready to go. On Christmas Eve, when Paul came out of his office, a street kid was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it. "Is this your car, mister?", the kid asked. When he replied that it was., and that his brother had given it to him for Christmas, the boy said, "You mean your brother gave it to you, and it didn't cost you anything? Free? For Nothing? Gosh, I wish..."
The boy hesitated, and Paul knew what he was about to say. He had heard it many times over the past few days. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the boy said shocked Paul.
"I wish", the boy said, "I wish I could be a brother like that."
We can be a brother like that. Or a sister like that. All it takes is that we offer ourselves and what we have to God. All it takes is that we cease to worry about how little we have and begin instead to think about what it is that we can offer.
Praise be to God who multiplies that which is given to him, day by day. Amen.
Both stories share certain things in common.
Elisha's servant, on being told to feed the men with the offering brought by the man who came from Baal Shalishah, does not think it possible and complains to the prophet saying: "How can I set this before a hundred men?"
And with Jesus too, as with Elisha, there is a servant, a disciple, who does not think it is possible to feed the people with what is available - the five loaves and two fish offered by the child that Peter's brother, Andrew, had found in the crowd.
And in both stories - despite these small beginnings, the hungry are fed, and there are leftovers - indeed in the story involving Jesus there is an abundance of leftovers - there is more than when the feast first began.
The feeding of the great crowd, as John calls it, is the only miracle that Jesus did that is described in all four gospels. For this reason, if no other, we need to pay close attention to it. We need to ask ourselves - why is this so? What is it about this miracle - unlike all the other miracles performed by Jesus - that so catches the attention of the gospel writers.
I think it has to do with at least three separate things.
The first is the fact that this story tells us that Jesus is used of God - that like Elisha he has God's favour and is able to feed the hungry - much as the people of Israel were fed by God in the wilderness with Manna.
In fact John goes on after the telling of this story to speak of Jesus as the bread of heaven come down to earth - the one who is not only able to satisfy the physical hunger of his people - but their spiritual hunger as well.
Jesus has, and is able to use, the power of God to feed the hungry.
The second thing is that the story shows us not only God's power at work in Jesus, but also God's care. God reaches out through Jesus to meet the needs of those who are following him - much as God reached out through Elisha to meet the needs of the men who had followed him into the wilderness.
Jesus cares for those who seek him out. He wants to meet their needs, and he wants to see their needs met.
The third thing is that the story shows us is that Jesus is able to take what is offered to him and to multiply it - so that where there first seemed not enough ends up being more than enough.
It is this latter point that I want to focus on for the remainder of the sermon.
It has been talked about a lot, this miracle of feeding the great crowd of people, and perhaps more than any other miracle, people have tried to figure out how Jesus did it.
Most people more readily accept the healing stories, they understand that the mind has a strong effect on health, that faith can in fact bring about healing.
But multiplying loaves and fish? This seems more incredible, more difficult, and so theories have arisen to explain how it was done.
The most notable theory is that when the boy who had the loaves and fish shared them with others his example inspired others to bring out what they had brought with them and share as well.
I can't say how it the loaves and the fish multiplied nor do I want to try.
But I do want to stress to you the fact that they do, much as does the offering made to Elisha by the man from Baal Shalishah.
I think that we really need to meditate on that fact. We really need to consider how too little becomes more than enough when it is offered to God.
Recall once again the context of the stories we heard this morning.
Think of the story about Elisha.
A man comes to bring the prophet an offering during a famine in Gilgal - some bread made from the first ripe grain of the season. It was a faith offering, the type recommended by Moses in the Torah.
And Elisha, after receiving the offering, says to his servant "give it to the people to eat". Give it to the hungry ones here with me, feed them, for they need it.
And what does he get in return - what is said to him?
He is told that it is not possible, that there will not be enough to go around.
Let us not doubt that assertion. There was not enough to go round.
In the four gospel stories about the feeding of the great crowd we hear something similar.
Jesus is teaching on a hillside - there are over 5000 people there, and when evening approaches the disciples become concerned, they fear that the crowd will go hungry, and their solution is to ask Jesus to send the crowd away.
But Jesus says to them - you feed them, and he asks Philip - who was from the region in which the story takes place, "where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?"
Philip replies "eight months wages would not buy enough bread to for each one to have a single bite"
Immediately afterwards Andrew, who has found a boy with 5 loaves and two fish among the crowd, pipes up about his discovery - and then adds - "BUT how far will they go among so many."
How far indeed.
The scene is set then for us and for our meditation upon it. There is a great need. And there are not enough resources to meet that need.
It all sounds so familiar doesn't it?
You can hear words like this just about anytime, especially when there are social or political problems that require an infusion of resources.
- How can we help with what little we have? We don't even know how we will
make do ourselves.
- How can we feed so many? How can we fund so many. We have so little and
the need is so great.
- What we can do is only a drop in a bucket. We don't have enough money to
help out. We don't have what it takes.
And we can also hear the same tune about our emotional and spiritual resources when confronted with problems of caring for those who are lost and alone, those caught up in guilt and despair, in doubt and confusion. The chorus goes something like this, doesn't it?
We don't have enough time.
We don't have enough energy.
We aren't smart enough.
We aren't wise enough.
We haven't the training we require.
We aren't professionals.
There aren't enough of us to make a real difference,
there aren't enough of us to get the job done.
But Jesus, like Elisha, didn't listen to this from his disciples, rather, like the prophet, he took that which was offered to him in faith, blessed it, and handed it back to his disciples so that they might distribute it.
Just as Elisha commanded his servant to give the twenty loaves of bread that he had received to the people anyway, saying, "They will eat and have some left over", so Jesus, after giving thanks to God, divided the five loaves and the two fish, and begins to feed the crowd.
And there was enough to go around.
And there were leftovers -
so many that there was more than there was to start with.
What voice do we listen to in these stories?
The voices of the disciples - the servants - who say, when told to feed the crowd - there is not enough - it is impossible.
Or the voice of the one who tells us "feed the people" and who takes what we have to offer and makes it enough?
Mark, Matthew, and Luke all begin their account of the feeding of the great crowd by saying when Jesus saw the crowd he had compassion for them, that he cared for them.
Jesus aks us to do the same - he asks us to care, to have compassion, and to go out into the world, and teach, and heal, and feed the people.
That is part of the great commissioning found at the end of the gospel of Matthew - that portion we so often quote in our baptismal services which says "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you", and that is part of the commissioning Jesus imparts to Peter just before his ascension saying "Do you love me Peter?" and when Peter says "Yes Lord, you know that I love you.", he says to him "Feed my sheep".
We are called to be like Jesus - - we are called to feed those in need, to feed them with both the bread of heaven and the bread worked upon by human hands.
And we are not left alone in the doing of it. God's power is promised us in it. All we need to do is to do is bring what we have, as did the man of Baal Shalishah to Elisha and as did the boy on the hillside to Jesus.
To bring it with thanksgiving - as Moses commanded. To bring it with joy - as the boy must surely have brought Jesus his meagre offering. To bring it - not with regard to what it might or might not be able to do - but with regard to the one to whom we present it, with regard to God and God's love.
The story of the loaves and the fish show us that Jesus is used of God, that he has the power of God and it shows us too that God cares.
It also shows us that what is small and insignificant in the face of this world's need can, when offered to God, be multiplied and provide for the world what is needed.
Miracles all have beginnings, and almost always those beginnings are to be found within us.
Several years ago I heard the story of a man named Paul.
Paul had received a special pre-Christmas gift from his brother. It was a beautiful new car - fully loaded and ready to go. On Christmas Eve, when Paul came out of his office, a street kid was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it. "Is this your car, mister?", the kid asked. When he replied that it was., and that his brother had given it to him for Christmas, the boy said, "You mean your brother gave it to you, and it didn't cost you anything? Free? For Nothing? Gosh, I wish..."
The boy hesitated, and Paul knew what he was about to say. He had heard it many times over the past few days. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the boy said shocked Paul.
"I wish", the boy said, "I wish I could be a brother like that."
We can be a brother like that. Or a sister like that. All it takes is that we offer ourselves and what we have to God. All it takes is that we cease to worry about how little we have and begin instead to think about what it is that we can offer.
Praise be to God who multiplies that which is given to him, day by day. Amen.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
II Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; Luke 10:1-11,16-20
I call today's sermon "small matters" because the texts for today speak to us about small and insignificant things.
In the first reading we hear about a miracle of healing that occurs in a most unexpected place, in the River Jordan- which is not much more than a muddy creek along much of it's course, a river unlike the great rivers that Naaman, the commander of the armies of Aram, was familiar with.
And in the Gospel reading we hear about the disciples of Christ - who are few in the face of much need - and who are commissioned to go into the world - into the harvest that God has prepared - like lambs in the midst of wolves: and to carry with them none of those things that people normally rely upon as they travel - no purse, no bag, no sandals - and to proclaim peace to all who will accept it - peace, and healing, and the nearness of the Kingdom of God.
The story of Naaman's healing is one of my favourite bible stories. As I read it this week I asked myself, what I would want to hear if I was in the congregation? What's the good news?
I think the good news here is found in the solution of the story.
Naaman has a problem, leprosy, one of the most dreaded diseases of the ancient world, and he needs a solution, he needs a healing. That is something we can all relate to.
Naaman seeks his solution and, by the grace of God, he finds his solution. All he has to do is "Do it".
All he has to do is to humble himself and to recognize that his great problem can be taken care of: taken care of in a simple act of obedience within a small and insignificant river.
As you know, Naaman resists this idea.
Naaman believes that his healing should come from the prophet Elisha himself. That Elisha should come out of his house and stand before him and call on the name of God and wave his hands over his leprous spots and so heal him.
Naaman is much like us.
He has a hard time grasping that the small things - the seemingly unimportant things are the things that God most often uses to accomplish great things.
And he has a hard time grasping that solutions - especially divine solutions - are most often wrapped up in obedience - obedience in what are seemingly small matters.
I can think of people who have gone to their doctor after a heart attack and have been told to walk for 30 or so minutes each day. It's a small thing (relatively speaking) but many don't do it.
Diet change is another one. The solution is there. And it's up to us to obey. But many do not.
In these folk, and indeed in my own life when I have been confronted with a large problem, I can hear a bit of Naaman saying,
"I want the cure, but I don't want to be part of it. Elisha is supposed to care of things for me. I should only have to show up and be healed."
Naaman is told that his healing will be found in washing seven times in a muddy river and he tramps off in a rage because he wants - and expects - the solution to be something different, something more dramatic, something more special, something that is more proportional to who he his and to what the problem is.
How close Naaman came to walking away from the cure!
Fortunately, his servants loved him enough to confront him and counsel him with loving reason,
"If it had been a great thing that had cost a lot of money,"
"if it had required a long journey,"
"if it had required some heroic effort,"
"you would have done it..."
And Naaman responds to this reasoning, he listens to his servants.
I wonder what it must have been like for Naaman after the first dunk in the River Jordan?
And after the second, third, fourth, and nothing had happened...
I wonder if Naaman began to doubt.
Fifth. Still no healing.
Sixth. Nothing.
I wonder if he said, with mud dripping off his hair: "Let's get this over with. Yuck!" or "What's the use!"
Yet he persevered - he immersed himself the seventh time - and lo - the blessing came!
Obedience. And then the blessing! That's usually the way God works.
We don't earn the blessing. But are granted the blessing when we surrender our will in obedience to His will.
When we earnestly seek a solution to our problems, God is faithful and will supply a solution.
If we choose to be obedient to that solution, our problem will be taken care of. And more. Because not only is Naaman cured physically, but his soul is healed too. He knows afterward not only is there a prophet in Samaria, but that there is a living God in Israel.
When we are obedient to God's solution, even though God's solutions appear disguised as small matters, the results end up to be more than we wanted, more even than we could have hoped for.
Small matters matter - especially when those matters are God directed and we are obedient in them.
As for the gospel reading - well, small matters there as well.
In the case of the gospel reading it is the disciples themselves who are small. Small in the face of the task that Christ assigns them - the task of being the ones who go into the abundantly populated fields of God and bringing in the harvest.
Like Naaman the disciples are told to do something that seems foolish. They are told to perform their tasks with absolutely none of the support that people normally have when they set forth on a journey or go out to harvest an earthly crop.
No purse containing a change of clothing or tools to make the job easier, no bag containing food to sustain them as they labour, no sandals to protect their feet from the rocks of the roadways or the hot sands of the wilderness.
They are told to rely only upon the welcome of those who will receive their greeting of peace and to shake off the dust from their feet against those will not and go on to the next place.
Indeed they are told not even to rejoice in the powers that God will give them as they go forth: the power to heal - the power to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the powers of evil, but to rejoice only that their names are written in heaven.
In short they are told to rely on nothing familiar to them, but to rely only upon what God will provide for them through men and women of peace as they proclaim the message concerning the nearness of the kingdom of God.
"The harvest is plentiful - but the labourers are few" says Jesus. "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field."
And then - his command and his statement of what things will be like....
"Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves."
Isn't it like that for us today?
We are constantly told by people both within the church and those outside it that we are few in number and that the need around us is great; greater than our ability to address it.
How can we build an addition here - with so few people - and so many of them elderly people?
How can we even make the regular budget, let along build something beautiful for the work of God?
How can we touch the community with God's love when the worldly forces around us are so strong and so opposed to that love.
How can we speak to our neighbours of God's peace and perform healings and announce the coming of the Kingdom of God - when we have so few resources and when the kingdom itself seems so small in comparison to the greed, to the injustice, to the evil, of this world.
Indeed, how can we do anything for God - for Christ - when we are ourselves are so small, so uncertain - and at times so divided among ourselves?
But we are commanded to go. To go with nothing but the word of peace and the promise that we will be looked after.
Like Naaman, like the disciples, we are confronted with a big problem - a big task, and as with them the solution that has been proposed to us requires of us two things: - to abandon our ideas of what the solution should look like - and to wash ourselves in the cleansing waters of humble obedience, in those same waters in which Naaman was immersed and Jesus himself was baptised.
I don't know what all your special and individual problems may be. All I know is that most of us, like Naaman, have one.
I don't know all the difficulties that each of you face as individuals.
I do know, however, what the problem of our world is: - I do know that every home needs the peace of God to come upon it, - and that every nation needs the kingdom of God to draw close to it, - and that, indeed there is a huge task - a huge harvest - waiting for the servants of God - out there....
And I do know from the story of Naaman, and from the story of the sending out of the 72 disciples, and from so many other passages of holy scripture - that the answer to our problems is most likely already before us, - and that it is most likely bears a humble form, - and requires of us nothing more than a humble submission, a humble obedience.
In our finances - which so often look desperate, the Word has long told us that if we give a 10th of what we have to God, that the windows of heaven will be opened and our land, our crops, our families, will be richly blessed.
In our longing for peace of mind and a sense of hope and wholeness, the Word has long told us that if in everything we make our requests known to God with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving; and if we but meditate on those things that are worthy, those things that are good, beautiful, and true, that the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep us safe in the knowledge and love of God.
In our desire to have our burdens lightened or removed altogether, the word has long told us that if we but offer to Christ our burdens and take upon ourselves his burden, his cross, that we will have rest.
Small matters - with big consequences; big consequences for those who accept the word - who accept the solution - and who do what it asks.
Naaman's servants went to him and said,
"My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!"
So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
What is it that you need to do today?
What have you put off doing because it seemed too simple, too small, too silly to do?
What act of humble obedience do you need to perform so that you might claim what God is offering to you, and through you - to your family, your neighbours - and indeed to your world?
Is it as simple as remembering to pray each day? To pray as Christ told his disciples to pray - for more workers for the harvest? Or to pray for the peace of those homes which you enter - and to accept that which those who receive your greeting of peace offer to you without question, and without seeking more?
Does it require you to abandon your reliance on the small but needful matters of life? - your home, your bank account, your job skills, your knowledge of the ways of the world? And to trust instead in God to do what he has promised to do even as you dip for the fourth, or the fifth, or even the sixth time into the muddy waters of a spiritual Jordan?
The solution is not out there somewhere in a place where you have to look for it. Rather the word - the solution is here - it is already in your hearts - and upon your lips, that is the word of faith that we are proclaiming, the word God wants you to believe and act upon so that peace may come upon your household and healing may be done in our community.
All in all today - the scriptures speak to us of today of small matters - with big consequences.
It is up to us to receive the word - or not.
It is my prayer, and it is the prayer of Christ and of the whole church - that you may indeed receive the word of peace, and be ones who live by it in trust and humble obedience.
Blessed be God, day by day. Amen
In the first reading we hear about a miracle of healing that occurs in a most unexpected place, in the River Jordan- which is not much more than a muddy creek along much of it's course, a river unlike the great rivers that Naaman, the commander of the armies of Aram, was familiar with.
And in the Gospel reading we hear about the disciples of Christ - who are few in the face of much need - and who are commissioned to go into the world - into the harvest that God has prepared - like lambs in the midst of wolves: and to carry with them none of those things that people normally rely upon as they travel - no purse, no bag, no sandals - and to proclaim peace to all who will accept it - peace, and healing, and the nearness of the Kingdom of God.
The story of Naaman's healing is one of my favourite bible stories. As I read it this week I asked myself, what I would want to hear if I was in the congregation? What's the good news?
I think the good news here is found in the solution of the story.
Naaman has a problem, leprosy, one of the most dreaded diseases of the ancient world, and he needs a solution, he needs a healing. That is something we can all relate to.
Naaman seeks his solution and, by the grace of God, he finds his solution. All he has to do is "Do it".
All he has to do is to humble himself and to recognize that his great problem can be taken care of: taken care of in a simple act of obedience within a small and insignificant river.
As you know, Naaman resists this idea.
Naaman believes that his healing should come from the prophet Elisha himself. That Elisha should come out of his house and stand before him and call on the name of God and wave his hands over his leprous spots and so heal him.
Naaman is much like us.
He has a hard time grasping that the small things - the seemingly unimportant things are the things that God most often uses to accomplish great things.
And he has a hard time grasping that solutions - especially divine solutions - are most often wrapped up in obedience - obedience in what are seemingly small matters.
I can think of people who have gone to their doctor after a heart attack and have been told to walk for 30 or so minutes each day. It's a small thing (relatively speaking) but many don't do it.
Diet change is another one. The solution is there. And it's up to us to obey. But many do not.
In these folk, and indeed in my own life when I have been confronted with a large problem, I can hear a bit of Naaman saying,
"I want the cure, but I don't want to be part of it. Elisha is supposed to care of things for me. I should only have to show up and be healed."
Naaman is told that his healing will be found in washing seven times in a muddy river and he tramps off in a rage because he wants - and expects - the solution to be something different, something more dramatic, something more special, something that is more proportional to who he his and to what the problem is.
How close Naaman came to walking away from the cure!
Fortunately, his servants loved him enough to confront him and counsel him with loving reason,
"If it had been a great thing that had cost a lot of money,"
"if it had required a long journey,"
"if it had required some heroic effort,"
"you would have done it..."
And Naaman responds to this reasoning, he listens to his servants.
I wonder what it must have been like for Naaman after the first dunk in the River Jordan?
And after the second, third, fourth, and nothing had happened...
I wonder if Naaman began to doubt.
Fifth. Still no healing.
Sixth. Nothing.
I wonder if he said, with mud dripping off his hair: "Let's get this over with. Yuck!" or "What's the use!"
Yet he persevered - he immersed himself the seventh time - and lo - the blessing came!
Obedience. And then the blessing! That's usually the way God works.
We don't earn the blessing. But are granted the blessing when we surrender our will in obedience to His will.
When we earnestly seek a solution to our problems, God is faithful and will supply a solution.
If we choose to be obedient to that solution, our problem will be taken care of. And more. Because not only is Naaman cured physically, but his soul is healed too. He knows afterward not only is there a prophet in Samaria, but that there is a living God in Israel.
When we are obedient to God's solution, even though God's solutions appear disguised as small matters, the results end up to be more than we wanted, more even than we could have hoped for.
Small matters matter - especially when those matters are God directed and we are obedient in them.
As for the gospel reading - well, small matters there as well.
In the case of the gospel reading it is the disciples themselves who are small. Small in the face of the task that Christ assigns them - the task of being the ones who go into the abundantly populated fields of God and bringing in the harvest.
Like Naaman the disciples are told to do something that seems foolish. They are told to perform their tasks with absolutely none of the support that people normally have when they set forth on a journey or go out to harvest an earthly crop.
No purse containing a change of clothing or tools to make the job easier, no bag containing food to sustain them as they labour, no sandals to protect their feet from the rocks of the roadways or the hot sands of the wilderness.
They are told to rely only upon the welcome of those who will receive their greeting of peace and to shake off the dust from their feet against those will not and go on to the next place.
Indeed they are told not even to rejoice in the powers that God will give them as they go forth: the power to heal - the power to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the powers of evil, but to rejoice only that their names are written in heaven.
In short they are told to rely on nothing familiar to them, but to rely only upon what God will provide for them through men and women of peace as they proclaim the message concerning the nearness of the kingdom of God.
"The harvest is plentiful - but the labourers are few" says Jesus. "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field."
And then - his command and his statement of what things will be like....
"Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves."
Isn't it like that for us today?
We are constantly told by people both within the church and those outside it that we are few in number and that the need around us is great; greater than our ability to address it.
How can we build an addition here - with so few people - and so many of them elderly people?
How can we even make the regular budget, let along build something beautiful for the work of God?
How can we touch the community with God's love when the worldly forces around us are so strong and so opposed to that love.
How can we speak to our neighbours of God's peace and perform healings and announce the coming of the Kingdom of God - when we have so few resources and when the kingdom itself seems so small in comparison to the greed, to the injustice, to the evil, of this world.
Indeed, how can we do anything for God - for Christ - when we are ourselves are so small, so uncertain - and at times so divided among ourselves?
But we are commanded to go. To go with nothing but the word of peace and the promise that we will be looked after.
Like Naaman, like the disciples, we are confronted with a big problem - a big task, and as with them the solution that has been proposed to us requires of us two things: - to abandon our ideas of what the solution should look like - and to wash ourselves in the cleansing waters of humble obedience, in those same waters in which Naaman was immersed and Jesus himself was baptised.
I don't know what all your special and individual problems may be. All I know is that most of us, like Naaman, have one.
I don't know all the difficulties that each of you face as individuals.
I do know, however, what the problem of our world is: - I do know that every home needs the peace of God to come upon it, - and that every nation needs the kingdom of God to draw close to it, - and that, indeed there is a huge task - a huge harvest - waiting for the servants of God - out there....
And I do know from the story of Naaman, and from the story of the sending out of the 72 disciples, and from so many other passages of holy scripture - that the answer to our problems is most likely already before us, - and that it is most likely bears a humble form, - and requires of us nothing more than a humble submission, a humble obedience.
In our finances - which so often look desperate, the Word has long told us that if we give a 10th of what we have to God, that the windows of heaven will be opened and our land, our crops, our families, will be richly blessed.
In our longing for peace of mind and a sense of hope and wholeness, the Word has long told us that if in everything we make our requests known to God with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving; and if we but meditate on those things that are worthy, those things that are good, beautiful, and true, that the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep us safe in the knowledge and love of God.
In our desire to have our burdens lightened or removed altogether, the word has long told us that if we but offer to Christ our burdens and take upon ourselves his burden, his cross, that we will have rest.
Small matters - with big consequences; big consequences for those who accept the word - who accept the solution - and who do what it asks.
Naaman's servants went to him and said,
"My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, 'Wash and be cleansed'!"
So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.
What is it that you need to do today?
What have you put off doing because it seemed too simple, too small, too silly to do?
What act of humble obedience do you need to perform so that you might claim what God is offering to you, and through you - to your family, your neighbours - and indeed to your world?
Is it as simple as remembering to pray each day? To pray as Christ told his disciples to pray - for more workers for the harvest? Or to pray for the peace of those homes which you enter - and to accept that which those who receive your greeting of peace offer to you without question, and without seeking more?
Does it require you to abandon your reliance on the small but needful matters of life? - your home, your bank account, your job skills, your knowledge of the ways of the world? And to trust instead in God to do what he has promised to do even as you dip for the fourth, or the fifth, or even the sixth time into the muddy waters of a spiritual Jordan?
The solution is not out there somewhere in a place where you have to look for it. Rather the word - the solution is here - it is already in your hearts - and upon your lips, that is the word of faith that we are proclaiming, the word God wants you to believe and act upon so that peace may come upon your household and healing may be done in our community.
All in all today - the scriptures speak to us of today of small matters - with big consequences.
It is up to us to receive the word - or not.
It is my prayer, and it is the prayer of Christ and of the whole church - that you may indeed receive the word of peace, and be ones who live by it in trust and humble obedience.
Blessed be God, day by day. Amen
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Ezekiel 2:1-7; Psalm 48; II Corinthians 12:1-10; and Mark 6:1-6
The story of Jesus's rejection in his own town is a classic one - it is a story that most of us can identify with because it is a story that has happened to most of us:
Often our families, our childhood companions, our husbands, or our wives, fail to listen to the wisdom and accept the words of grace and love and encouragement we offer - because they are too familiar with us.
The people of our home town know us too well, and therefore they simply can not accept, at times anyway, - that the boy who used to leave his dirty socks sitting on the kitchen table, - or the girl who used to skip school and go hanging around the mall can be for them God's appointed instrument, the agent of God's healing and saving grace for them.
It is partly for this reason that the royal family of England strives very hard to prevent too much detail about the private lives of the royals from becoming public.
They fear that the more that is known about them, the less effective they will be able to be as the representatives of the nations of the Commonwealth.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth calls the royal quest for privacy "not letting too much sunlight into the magic".
Consider the grumbling of the people in Jesus' home town when he spoke to them
"what is this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?"
And the scriptures go on to say that they took offense at him, and that as result Jesus was not able to do any miracles there.
Yes, Jesus was rejected by his own and all because his own thought that they knew him, and it is often for the same reason that we are rejected, - too much sunlight has been let into the magic.
But there is more to this story of rejection, for the story of Jesus' rejection by his villagers, is also a story about how we ignore and reject God.
It is a story about our unwillingness to be helped by God, or by anybody else; an unwillingness which comes out of our own certainties, our own knowledge, our own strength.
For the people who lived in Jesus' home town, their knowledge of him as a youth prevented them from seeing God's power in him as an adult.
But for most others the grace of God is shut out, not because they know Christ so well, but because they think they know what is best for themselves, and because they refuse to accept that perhaps they need help, that perhaps their understanding, and their own strength is getting in their way.
The road to spiritual wholeness is not travelled by exercising our own human powers,
but rather by acknowledging our human weaknesses, and then, in that weakness, allowing God to exercise his power in us.
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous probably understand the gospel better than most theologians - and indeed than most regular church goers.
They will tell you that the key to turning their lives around was admitting their weakness, admitting that they were, are, and always will be powerless, powerless over alcohol.
Listen to the first three of the twelve steps of the AA program.
-1 - We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had
become unmanageable.
-2 - We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity,
-3 - We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood him.
What we have here is:
ONE - An acknowledgment of weakness, of need.
TWO - A belief that God, and only God, can help
and THREE - the willingness to turn the whole matter, indeed ones's
whole life, over to God and let God take control of the
problem.
As it is with Alcohol, so it is with all the rest of life.
Until we admit our weakness, until we stop being afraid of it, until we stop denying it, we can't find the help we need.
There was a seminary student by the name of Mark. Mark had great ability, but he could not get along with other people.
Mark always wanted to control our discussions in class. He always was ready with an answer to the questions asked by the teachers and the rest of the class.
When there was silence - he felt he had to fill it. When there was confusion - he tried to bring order, and not just any order, but the order that he thought was best.
He never showed any hesitation or weakness to his classmates. He never shared his personal problems, and rarely left room for anyone to share, and so as a result the whole class hard a hard time liking him.
One day Mark was confronted with this behaviour by a group of students who, with a professor, were supposed to give Mark his final marks for the school year.
They asked Mark why he behaved like he did.
He went away and a week later returned with a paper that explained it all: he claimed his father had never accepted him, that he had come from a broken home, that other people refused to look deeper into him, and that, yes, he was a little careless about sharing time with others and listening to them, but that he could get a grip on it if they gave him a chance.
The group of students recognized the sincerity of his paper but they refused to accept it and they rejected his answers, calling them inadequate and self-deceiving.
At first he was dumbfounded - he thought he had done a good piece of work - that he had come up with the reasons why he behaved like he did, and then, when He saw that the group wasn't buying it, he grew frantic and began to break down in front of them - he began to cry and to say "I don't know what to do..I'm scared! I am confused! What do you want? What can I do? Please help me. I feel so out of control."
At that point one of the students listening to him got up and went over to him and hugged him and said:
"Its OK - just cry. There is nothing wrong with being out of control - as a matter of fact it is good - for now there is room for God to control you - room for God to help you - and room for us to show you that we love you too."
After that time a change came over Mark. He did not become perfect. But he did become a little more sensitive to the needs of others. He didn't try to run every situation, and you could see him actually listening to the viewpoints being expressed by others.
We in turn began to come to know him as a feeling and caring human being, as a person like us - with joys and with pain, with hopes and with fears.
Mark's confession of weakness became the occasion where God's grace, God's strength, finally could get a grip on his life.
The Apostle Paul, like us all, knew weakness. He had what he called a thorn in the flesh - some believe that he had severe migraine headaches, and three times, as he tells us, he prayed that this weakness, this affliction might be removed, that he might be cured.
On the third occasion when Paul prayed God answered him and said -"My grace is sufficient for you - for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Paul's response to this statement is a most beautiful one. He said:
"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses that Christ's power may rest on me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
WHEN I AM WEAK - THEN I AM STRONG
To the world this is nonsense. Power and strength are worshipped by most people, and weakness is despised above all things.
The world teaches us to conceal our vulnerability, lest we be hurt, and it teaches us to hide our weakness, lest we be taken advantage of.
The world teaches us to camouflage our inadequacies with self-confidence, self reliance and self assurance, so that we can build a heaven for ourselves here on earth.
The world teaches us that we can help ourselves, that we can do what we need to do on our own, and that all the answers we need we can find in ourselves.
This my friends is simply not true. It is the wisdom of the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve, it is not the wisdom of God.
Every alcoholic still hitting the bottle tells us he can quit, and every dysfunctional person caught behaving in a way that is offensive to others tells us that they know better and that they are on the way to licking the situation.
My friends - our weaknesses, our hardships, and our tribulations are not of themselves a blessing, they are real problems for us, and they can create problems for how we get along with others - BUT - when we acknowledge our weaknesses and our needs, and turn to God and ask for his help, instead of relying on our own skill & wisdom & strength to save us, then something profound happens - we discover that God's grace is sufficient for us, and that his power is made perfect in our weakness, and almost always in ways we do not expect.
When I am weak, then I am strong.
If the truth be known, we are weak in many many ways, ways that all too often we are afraid to admit, because we fear that we will be scorned, rejected, or taken advantage of somehow.
But that is not what need happen, nor normally is it what happens.
Rather what happens is that God's power comes to us and helps us in the way that we need help.
Our weakness may remain, as Paul's thorn remained, but God's power inhabits it and turns it to strength for us; strength for us to do what we as human beings and as followers of Christ are meant to do and in fact need to do, if we are to inherit the joy, the love, and indeed the very life, that God wants to bestow upon us.
The story is told about how one day a small boy was trying to lift a stone much too heavy for him.
His father walked by and seeing his struggles said "Are you using all your strength?" The boy said that indeed he was. But the father replied "No son, you aren't, for you haven't asked me."
How much haven't we asked God about?
How much of our weakness do we keep locked up inside us, because we think that there is no help for us, or because we think that other things are more important?
A part of our strength, the greater part, comes from our relationship to God - the God who is able and willing to help us.
But first we realize our need for him, and then we must ask him to take control.
Doing our best as Christians always includes asking God to help us do what we are striving to do.
God makes his power perfect in weakness, for it is there that he is able to do for us what we, in our strength, do not let him do.
I would like to conclude with a poem that sums up what I have being trying to say - it was written over a hundred years ago by a soldier:
I asked for health that I might do greater things, I was given infirmity that I do might do better things...I asked for riches that I might be happy, I was given poverty that I might be wise...I asked for power that I might have the praise of men, I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God....I asked for all things that I might enjoy life, I was given life that I might enjoy all things...I got nothing that I asked for but everything that I hoped for. Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered. I am among all men most richly blessed. May His name be praised day by day. Amen
Often our families, our childhood companions, our husbands, or our wives, fail to listen to the wisdom and accept the words of grace and love and encouragement we offer - because they are too familiar with us.
The people of our home town know us too well, and therefore they simply can not accept, at times anyway, - that the boy who used to leave his dirty socks sitting on the kitchen table, - or the girl who used to skip school and go hanging around the mall can be for them God's appointed instrument, the agent of God's healing and saving grace for them.
It is partly for this reason that the royal family of England strives very hard to prevent too much detail about the private lives of the royals from becoming public.
They fear that the more that is known about them, the less effective they will be able to be as the representatives of the nations of the Commonwealth.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth calls the royal quest for privacy "not letting too much sunlight into the magic".
Consider the grumbling of the people in Jesus' home town when he spoke to them
"what is this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?"
And the scriptures go on to say that they took offense at him, and that as result Jesus was not able to do any miracles there.
Yes, Jesus was rejected by his own and all because his own thought that they knew him, and it is often for the same reason that we are rejected, - too much sunlight has been let into the magic.
But there is more to this story of rejection, for the story of Jesus' rejection by his villagers, is also a story about how we ignore and reject God.
It is a story about our unwillingness to be helped by God, or by anybody else; an unwillingness which comes out of our own certainties, our own knowledge, our own strength.
For the people who lived in Jesus' home town, their knowledge of him as a youth prevented them from seeing God's power in him as an adult.
But for most others the grace of God is shut out, not because they know Christ so well, but because they think they know what is best for themselves, and because they refuse to accept that perhaps they need help, that perhaps their understanding, and their own strength is getting in their way.
The road to spiritual wholeness is not travelled by exercising our own human powers,
but rather by acknowledging our human weaknesses, and then, in that weakness, allowing God to exercise his power in us.
Members of Alcoholics Anonymous probably understand the gospel better than most theologians - and indeed than most regular church goers.
They will tell you that the key to turning their lives around was admitting their weakness, admitting that they were, are, and always will be powerless, powerless over alcohol.
Listen to the first three of the twelve steps of the AA program.
-1 - We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had
become unmanageable.
-2 - We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity,
-3 - We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood him.
What we have here is:
ONE - An acknowledgment of weakness, of need.
TWO - A belief that God, and only God, can help
and THREE - the willingness to turn the whole matter, indeed ones's
whole life, over to God and let God take control of the
problem.
As it is with Alcohol, so it is with all the rest of life.
Until we admit our weakness, until we stop being afraid of it, until we stop denying it, we can't find the help we need.
There was a seminary student by the name of Mark. Mark had great ability, but he could not get along with other people.
Mark always wanted to control our discussions in class. He always was ready with an answer to the questions asked by the teachers and the rest of the class.
When there was silence - he felt he had to fill it. When there was confusion - he tried to bring order, and not just any order, but the order that he thought was best.
He never showed any hesitation or weakness to his classmates. He never shared his personal problems, and rarely left room for anyone to share, and so as a result the whole class hard a hard time liking him.
One day Mark was confronted with this behaviour by a group of students who, with a professor, were supposed to give Mark his final marks for the school year.
They asked Mark why he behaved like he did.
He went away and a week later returned with a paper that explained it all: he claimed his father had never accepted him, that he had come from a broken home, that other people refused to look deeper into him, and that, yes, he was a little careless about sharing time with others and listening to them, but that he could get a grip on it if they gave him a chance.
The group of students recognized the sincerity of his paper but they refused to accept it and they rejected his answers, calling them inadequate and self-deceiving.
At first he was dumbfounded - he thought he had done a good piece of work - that he had come up with the reasons why he behaved like he did, and then, when He saw that the group wasn't buying it, he grew frantic and began to break down in front of them - he began to cry and to say "I don't know what to do..I'm scared! I am confused! What do you want? What can I do? Please help me. I feel so out of control."
At that point one of the students listening to him got up and went over to him and hugged him and said:
"Its OK - just cry. There is nothing wrong with being out of control - as a matter of fact it is good - for now there is room for God to control you - room for God to help you - and room for us to show you that we love you too."
After that time a change came over Mark. He did not become perfect. But he did become a little more sensitive to the needs of others. He didn't try to run every situation, and you could see him actually listening to the viewpoints being expressed by others.
We in turn began to come to know him as a feeling and caring human being, as a person like us - with joys and with pain, with hopes and with fears.
Mark's confession of weakness became the occasion where God's grace, God's strength, finally could get a grip on his life.
The Apostle Paul, like us all, knew weakness. He had what he called a thorn in the flesh - some believe that he had severe migraine headaches, and three times, as he tells us, he prayed that this weakness, this affliction might be removed, that he might be cured.
On the third occasion when Paul prayed God answered him and said -"My grace is sufficient for you - for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Paul's response to this statement is a most beautiful one. He said:
"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses that Christ's power may rest on me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."
WHEN I AM WEAK - THEN I AM STRONG
To the world this is nonsense. Power and strength are worshipped by most people, and weakness is despised above all things.
The world teaches us to conceal our vulnerability, lest we be hurt, and it teaches us to hide our weakness, lest we be taken advantage of.
The world teaches us to camouflage our inadequacies with self-confidence, self reliance and self assurance, so that we can build a heaven for ourselves here on earth.
The world teaches us that we can help ourselves, that we can do what we need to do on our own, and that all the answers we need we can find in ourselves.
This my friends is simply not true. It is the wisdom of the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve, it is not the wisdom of God.
Every alcoholic still hitting the bottle tells us he can quit, and every dysfunctional person caught behaving in a way that is offensive to others tells us that they know better and that they are on the way to licking the situation.
My friends - our weaknesses, our hardships, and our tribulations are not of themselves a blessing, they are real problems for us, and they can create problems for how we get along with others - BUT - when we acknowledge our weaknesses and our needs, and turn to God and ask for his help, instead of relying on our own skill & wisdom & strength to save us, then something profound happens - we discover that God's grace is sufficient for us, and that his power is made perfect in our weakness, and almost always in ways we do not expect.
When I am weak, then I am strong.
If the truth be known, we are weak in many many ways, ways that all too often we are afraid to admit, because we fear that we will be scorned, rejected, or taken advantage of somehow.
But that is not what need happen, nor normally is it what happens.
Rather what happens is that God's power comes to us and helps us in the way that we need help.
Our weakness may remain, as Paul's thorn remained, but God's power inhabits it and turns it to strength for us; strength for us to do what we as human beings and as followers of Christ are meant to do and in fact need to do, if we are to inherit the joy, the love, and indeed the very life, that God wants to bestow upon us.
The story is told about how one day a small boy was trying to lift a stone much too heavy for him.
His father walked by and seeing his struggles said "Are you using all your strength?" The boy said that indeed he was. But the father replied "No son, you aren't, for you haven't asked me."
How much haven't we asked God about?
How much of our weakness do we keep locked up inside us, because we think that there is no help for us, or because we think that other things are more important?
A part of our strength, the greater part, comes from our relationship to God - the God who is able and willing to help us.
But first we realize our need for him, and then we must ask him to take control.
Doing our best as Christians always includes asking God to help us do what we are striving to do.
God makes his power perfect in weakness, for it is there that he is able to do for us what we, in our strength, do not let him do.
I would like to conclude with a poem that sums up what I have being trying to say - it was written over a hundred years ago by a soldier:
I asked for health that I might do greater things, I was given infirmity that I do might do better things...I asked for riches that I might be happy, I was given poverty that I might be wise...I asked for power that I might have the praise of men, I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God....I asked for all things that I might enjoy life, I was given life that I might enjoy all things...I got nothing that I asked for but everything that I hoped for. Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered. I am among all men most richly blessed. May His name be praised day by day. Amen
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