Last Sunday was the final Sunday of the liturgical year. Next Sunday, we will celebrate the first Sunday of Advent usually with a Hanging of the Greens Service. So today, I would like to revisit with you the journey we have made through the Scripture over the last almost three months. My first Sunday blogging was September the 7th and the Scripture for that day was Matthew 18:15-20. I talked about our identity in Christ, who we are as Christians and how we should act radically different than the culture around us so that we are a witness to God’s love and the unifying nature of the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
As I read through the sermons that I have preached in this pulpit (and from this blog), I found again and again that I spoke about the hard work of being in community with each other, the difficult and often emotionally messy work of relationship, about call and change, leading our hearts instead of our hearts leading us, God’s glory and God’s goodness. We have journeyed through Exodus, Deuteronomy and Joshua, through the Red Sea and the Wilderness with the tribes of Israel. I reminded you through the words of a song that God won’t play ‘Second Fiddle’ in our lives. We have walked with Jesus through the eyes of Matthew as Jesus told parables that tell us what His Kingdom, the kingdom of God is like. Wise and foolish bridesmaids, fearful servants who sit on the gifts the Master gives them, and today, sheep and goats, those who are hungry, naked, thirsty, strangers, sick and in prison. Again and again, Jesus told his followers and he tells us what time it is and what we are to be about. And just as Jesus’ followers stood looking up to the sky after his resurrection and ascension, we stand on the edge of a great adventure.
There are signs of the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom all around us. Last week at the Martha Project (in Belhaven, NC), I watched a lot and helped a little. And it came to my mind two criteria that I had learned to assess a mission project. There are two questions to ask: “Do they see Jesus in us?” and “Do we see Jesus in them?” It was humbling and gratifying to see that the answer in both cases was a resounding “yes!” And also to see us work alongside folks from outside our church here witnesses to the unity of Christ, to his call that we all be one in Him.
There are also signs of change as we look to new people doing new things here. Change is hard but it is a characteristic of the ‘with-God’ life. The ‘with-God’ life is a life that doesn’t say “what about me?” It is a life that says “It’s about God.” It is when we re-frame our lives to not tell our story from our tunnel vision. But we re-frame our stories in the light of who God is in the world. That is the true and good history, when history is seen in the light of it being “His-story” and not simply being about us.
How do we live into this ‘with-God’ life? Through practicing the spiritual disciplines we see demonstrated in the life of Christ: prayer, fasting, caring for the poor, teaching, healing and self-sacrifice. Richard Foster wrote a book called Celebration of Discipline. In that book, he talks about each of the disciples of the spiritual life, the life ‘with-God’ and he says that for each discipline there is a corresponding freedom but when we turn the discipline into a law that must be obeyed, into legalism, that freedom disappears.
I see many signs here of people beginning to stretch out into God’s freedom, into gift-based service. It is exciting to watch and humbling to be your pastor, the one God has called to empower and to educate as this Christian community begins to individually and communally name and live into God’s vision for this church. As the tide of loving service rises, it runs along the channel that keeps it within the banks of God’s love and discipline. What forms the banks are Scripture, human reason and experience of God and the traditions handed down to us by those who came before, those others who have lived life with God in this world.
As we move into a new season in the church calendar and in the life of the church here, we can look forward with faith and confidence and hope knowing that the Christian life, the ‘with-God’ life isn’t something so mysterious we can never comprehend it, something so difficult we can never achieve it, something so painful we can never bear it. But when we look at the mystery, the difficulty, the pain from God’s perspective, it all gets put into focus. Our circumstances may not be easy to bear but we know we are safe within the sheepfold of God’s love, that he is the good Shepherd, in whom all things work together for good for those that love Him.
In today’s text from Matthew, Jesus reminds us of the coming judgment, when the sheep and the goats will be separated. But almost in the next breath, he tells us how to live in the reality of that judgment. How do we know what we are to be about? The message rings loud and clear through both the Old and New Testaments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and love your neighbor as yourself. That sums up all the law and the prophets. And whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.
In the coming days, we will begin to articulate a vision, a mission statement and a strategic plan. But there is no better mission statement than those words of Jesus. Every vision that is cast, every statement and strategy must fit securely within that parameter.
Let me leave you with one final image. As we move into the Advent season, we will begin to talk a lot about waiting for the light, watching for the light of Christ to come into the world. Advent is a time that is balanced by lent. They are both times of waiting, times of discernment and prayer. They are both culminated by the major celebrations of the church: Christ’s birth into our space and time and his death and resurrection in our space and time. And the image of light is important in both.
I challenge you in this season of Advent to look for the light of God’s grace and goodness in your world. It seems there isn’t much light these days. We barely have lunch before the darkness sets in. Many people go to work in the pre-dawn darkness and go home from work in the post-sunset darkness. You can work all day and never see the sun. And you can live all of your life and never see the light of Jesus Christ shining though the power of the Holy Spirit all around you. How do we find the light? By asking two simple questions? Do they see Jesus in me? And do I see Jesus in them? Amen
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Living in Fear?
20081116Matt25Talenta
When we read or hear the parable of the talents, it is easy for our minds to make the leap from a unit of money to talking about what we know of as talents, our giftedness, the things we are good at. And so it is easy for us to make the step to application of this parable in our lives. It means that God wants us to use what we have wisely, to be the most effective. In certain ways, that’s true. But there is a sneaky human element that creeps into that interpretation. One that twists the text ever so slightly and instead of proclaiming and living into the gospel, the good news, we find ourselves on the endless treadmill of searching for better performance and measurable results.
We need to take a look at the wider scope of Scripture to let the whole voice of the Bible speak, not just lift out a couple of sentences and then say that we are finished. Looking at the context of the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30, we see that it immediately follows the parable of the ten bridesmaids and is just before Jesus’ description of the separation of the ‘sheep’ and the ‘goats’ on the day of Judgment, the parousia in Greek. There is an urgency to Jesus’ words here for this is one of the last things he teaches before Gethsemane, Calvary and the empty tomb. Again and again, Jesus had told the disciples he had to go away and one of the last parables he tells is about a master who does go away and stays away longer than expected. Here again, we have to realize that hindsight is 20/20. It’s so easy for us think: “why didn’t they get it? He was standing right there telling them what was going to happen?” And yet, why don’t we get it? For he told us then that all of this would happen and we still are stumbling around in the dark. Making it all harder and more complicated than it has to be, tying millstones around the necks of our children and ourselves.
What are we missing? Look at the text again, considering these things. One, the talenta was one of the largest measurements of money in the ancient world. It was worth 15 years of a normal man’s income. Jesus wasn’t pointing to a specific amount of money here because this was more than most of his hearers could even conceive of. The first thing we have to see is that Jesus was talking about the generosity of the Master. Trusted servants were often left in charge of their master’s household accounts for years at a time and they were expected to support themselves, other servants and take care of business for the master in ways that were honorable and profitable. Entrusting this much money to another means the master knows he will be gone for a long time. And yet, he doesn’t settle all the talenta on one servant.
That’s the second point, the servants. Each of the three of them were given different amounts and Jesus doesn’t tell us what any of them think about anything until the end of the parable. We don’t know why the master divided things as he did and we don’t know how the servants felt about the division of the materials. We don’t really hear from the servants at all until the one given the single talent speaks up at the end. “Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you had not scattered seed, so I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Almost literally, the servant is saying ‘I buried your money and sat on it.’ You have to admit this man has some guts to even say that to his boss, to name what he thinks the trouble is. “Look, I am basically afraid of you and afraid of what you would do to me if I didn’t measure up. If I didn’t make you a profit or do something amazing and fantastic, I knew that I’d be in trouble anyway, so I didn’t do anything at all.”
And in our human opinion, the master then lives up to that slave’s assessment of him. He takes the talenta away, gives it to the servant who had the most to begin with and throws the man out into that most frightening of biblical images, into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Where is the gospel in this? Where is the good news? The good news is hard to hear because of how we have twisted this story. We concentrate on the judgment. We zero in on the fruit of the labor of the servants. Why? Because the human element hooks us. We get hung up on what, for us, is the hinge of the story. “I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” The fear speaks to us, we can relate to it, we know what it means to be afraid of not measuring up, of not performing well, we can see the disappointment in the eyes of our parents and teachers, our spouses and our children when we don’t measure up, we don’t fulfill their expectations. And so, to protect ourselves and to keep from failing anyone, we work harder and harder and we make more and more rules, so we all know how the game is played, what it takes to succeed and what you have to do to get in. Even up to what it is you have to do to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. And even then, we aren’t so sure that the outer darkness isn’t waiting for us after all.
And we hear the servant’s characterization of the master as a condemnation instead of an accurate assessment. The servant meant it as a condemnation, he called the master ‘a harsh man’. Yet, look at the image he uses, one of the sower and the seed, sowing and reaping without regard for rules and regulations, sowing and reaping abundantly and fearlessly.
I was talking to a fellow clergyperson one day who was describing a funeral that he had attended with some of the leaders of the congregation where he was serving. After the funeral, they were all sitting down at a meal when one of the women commented on how difficult it was not knowing if you would really make it to heaven or not until you got there. That you just had to work and hope. And he turned to her and asked “Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God and died for your sins?” Taken aback, she replied “Of course.” “Then what are you worried about?”
That’s where the disconnect is. We don’t think that having faith and living in grace and gratitude is enough. We are afraid there must be something more and we end up living into a works-righteousness mindset that says: “If I just work hard enough I can get there on my own.” That my work can equal God’s righteousness and works-righteousness is the wheel in the hamster cage where the hamster runs faster and faster, harder and harder but never gets anywhere, never gets out of the cage.
Brothers and sisters hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ: You can’t get there on your own. You can never work hard enough, be holy enough, you can’t fulfill the Law of Moses any more than you can be just like Jesus. Salvation is not a wage you earn but a gift that’s free. This parable isn’t about our behavior.
It’s about God.
It’s about a Master who gives freely. This is Jesus again telling them and us that he is going away and he may be gone a long time, longer than we expect. But he is giving us what we need to take care of ourselves and each other in his absence. What if the talenta isn’t about money or our personalities? What if the talenta he bestows is the presence of the Holy Spirit and that is what we an either live into and multiply or we can bury deep in our hearts because we are afraid?
There are two things that people seem to be most afraid of: death and meaninglessness. Being afraid of dying physically and being afraid of living life with no purpose, no meaning. Our loving God has delivered us from both.
Our lives in our time seem to be characterized by rules and regulations. Life in Christ is about living deeply into the presence of God, so deeply that his love and grace spill over into the lives of those around us. Life is about living abundantly and fearlessly in the kingdom of God in the world. We can know we are saved. John Wesley wrote about his heart being strangely warmed that night at Aldersgate. He wrote: “And I knew that God loved me, even me.” We as United Methodist Christians claim that we can know by real human experience that we are saved from our sins and we live lives of grace and gratitude, not works-righteousness and trying to make it. I am not talking about cheap grace here. This is not about well, I’ve been baptized so my ticket is punched and I am waiting at the station. Not at all. I am talking about knowing we have been given the gift of salvation and living out our lives in gratitude.
We celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism as the outward sign of the inward grace of being adopted into God’s family. And you can’t be un-adopted, emancipated from God unless you work really hard at it and you are the one doing the emancipating. We enter into the Sacrament of Holy Communion as the outward sign of the inward grace of belonging at God’s family table, that Thanksgiving Table when we all will be gathered together not on this side of Gethsemane and Calvary but full yon the other side.
How are you living today? Are you living fearlessly, abundantly, sowing and reaping, walking with God through the salvation of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit? Or have you buried your talenta so it is muffled and powerless, so you don’t have to think about it or deal with it? The choice is yours today, while it is still day, to dig down deeply, let the light of Christ shine into your life and the lives around you, to face your fear head on and know that the victory has been claimed, the battle is over and that grace is abundant and free.
When we read or hear the parable of the talents, it is easy for our minds to make the leap from a unit of money to talking about what we know of as talents, our giftedness, the things we are good at. And so it is easy for us to make the step to application of this parable in our lives. It means that God wants us to use what we have wisely, to be the most effective. In certain ways, that’s true. But there is a sneaky human element that creeps into that interpretation. One that twists the text ever so slightly and instead of proclaiming and living into the gospel, the good news, we find ourselves on the endless treadmill of searching for better performance and measurable results.
We need to take a look at the wider scope of Scripture to let the whole voice of the Bible speak, not just lift out a couple of sentences and then say that we are finished. Looking at the context of the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:14-30, we see that it immediately follows the parable of the ten bridesmaids and is just before Jesus’ description of the separation of the ‘sheep’ and the ‘goats’ on the day of Judgment, the parousia in Greek. There is an urgency to Jesus’ words here for this is one of the last things he teaches before Gethsemane, Calvary and the empty tomb. Again and again, Jesus had told the disciples he had to go away and one of the last parables he tells is about a master who does go away and stays away longer than expected. Here again, we have to realize that hindsight is 20/20. It’s so easy for us think: “why didn’t they get it? He was standing right there telling them what was going to happen?” And yet, why don’t we get it? For he told us then that all of this would happen and we still are stumbling around in the dark. Making it all harder and more complicated than it has to be, tying millstones around the necks of our children and ourselves.
What are we missing? Look at the text again, considering these things. One, the talenta was one of the largest measurements of money in the ancient world. It was worth 15 years of a normal man’s income. Jesus wasn’t pointing to a specific amount of money here because this was more than most of his hearers could even conceive of. The first thing we have to see is that Jesus was talking about the generosity of the Master. Trusted servants were often left in charge of their master’s household accounts for years at a time and they were expected to support themselves, other servants and take care of business for the master in ways that were honorable and profitable. Entrusting this much money to another means the master knows he will be gone for a long time. And yet, he doesn’t settle all the talenta on one servant.
That’s the second point, the servants. Each of the three of them were given different amounts and Jesus doesn’t tell us what any of them think about anything until the end of the parable. We don’t know why the master divided things as he did and we don’t know how the servants felt about the division of the materials. We don’t really hear from the servants at all until the one given the single talent speaks up at the end. “Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you had not scattered seed, so I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Almost literally, the servant is saying ‘I buried your money and sat on it.’ You have to admit this man has some guts to even say that to his boss, to name what he thinks the trouble is. “Look, I am basically afraid of you and afraid of what you would do to me if I didn’t measure up. If I didn’t make you a profit or do something amazing and fantastic, I knew that I’d be in trouble anyway, so I didn’t do anything at all.”
And in our human opinion, the master then lives up to that slave’s assessment of him. He takes the talenta away, gives it to the servant who had the most to begin with and throws the man out into that most frightening of biblical images, into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Where is the gospel in this? Where is the good news? The good news is hard to hear because of how we have twisted this story. We concentrate on the judgment. We zero in on the fruit of the labor of the servants. Why? Because the human element hooks us. We get hung up on what, for us, is the hinge of the story. “I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” The fear speaks to us, we can relate to it, we know what it means to be afraid of not measuring up, of not performing well, we can see the disappointment in the eyes of our parents and teachers, our spouses and our children when we don’t measure up, we don’t fulfill their expectations. And so, to protect ourselves and to keep from failing anyone, we work harder and harder and we make more and more rules, so we all know how the game is played, what it takes to succeed and what you have to do to get in. Even up to what it is you have to do to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. And even then, we aren’t so sure that the outer darkness isn’t waiting for us after all.
And we hear the servant’s characterization of the master as a condemnation instead of an accurate assessment. The servant meant it as a condemnation, he called the master ‘a harsh man’. Yet, look at the image he uses, one of the sower and the seed, sowing and reaping without regard for rules and regulations, sowing and reaping abundantly and fearlessly.
I was talking to a fellow clergyperson one day who was describing a funeral that he had attended with some of the leaders of the congregation where he was serving. After the funeral, they were all sitting down at a meal when one of the women commented on how difficult it was not knowing if you would really make it to heaven or not until you got there. That you just had to work and hope. And he turned to her and asked “Do you believe that Jesus was the Son of God and died for your sins?” Taken aback, she replied “Of course.” “Then what are you worried about?”
That’s where the disconnect is. We don’t think that having faith and living in grace and gratitude is enough. We are afraid there must be something more and we end up living into a works-righteousness mindset that says: “If I just work hard enough I can get there on my own.” That my work can equal God’s righteousness and works-righteousness is the wheel in the hamster cage where the hamster runs faster and faster, harder and harder but never gets anywhere, never gets out of the cage.
Brothers and sisters hear the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ: You can’t get there on your own. You can never work hard enough, be holy enough, you can’t fulfill the Law of Moses any more than you can be just like Jesus. Salvation is not a wage you earn but a gift that’s free. This parable isn’t about our behavior.
It’s about God.
It’s about a Master who gives freely. This is Jesus again telling them and us that he is going away and he may be gone a long time, longer than we expect. But he is giving us what we need to take care of ourselves and each other in his absence. What if the talenta isn’t about money or our personalities? What if the talenta he bestows is the presence of the Holy Spirit and that is what we an either live into and multiply or we can bury deep in our hearts because we are afraid?
There are two things that people seem to be most afraid of: death and meaninglessness. Being afraid of dying physically and being afraid of living life with no purpose, no meaning. Our loving God has delivered us from both.
Our lives in our time seem to be characterized by rules and regulations. Life in Christ is about living deeply into the presence of God, so deeply that his love and grace spill over into the lives of those around us. Life is about living abundantly and fearlessly in the kingdom of God in the world. We can know we are saved. John Wesley wrote about his heart being strangely warmed that night at Aldersgate. He wrote: “And I knew that God loved me, even me.” We as United Methodist Christians claim that we can know by real human experience that we are saved from our sins and we live lives of grace and gratitude, not works-righteousness and trying to make it. I am not talking about cheap grace here. This is not about well, I’ve been baptized so my ticket is punched and I am waiting at the station. Not at all. I am talking about knowing we have been given the gift of salvation and living out our lives in gratitude.
We celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism as the outward sign of the inward grace of being adopted into God’s family. And you can’t be un-adopted, emancipated from God unless you work really hard at it and you are the one doing the emancipating. We enter into the Sacrament of Holy Communion as the outward sign of the inward grace of belonging at God’s family table, that Thanksgiving Table when we all will be gathered together not on this side of Gethsemane and Calvary but full yon the other side.
How are you living today? Are you living fearlessly, abundantly, sowing and reaping, walking with God through the salvation of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit? Or have you buried your talenta so it is muffled and powerless, so you don’t have to think about it or deal with it? The choice is yours today, while it is still day, to dig down deeply, let the light of Christ shine into your life and the lives around you, to face your fear head on and know that the victory has been claimed, the battle is over and that grace is abundant and free.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Knowing what time it is
20081109IThessMatt
Wisdom is knowing what time it is. (NTW) That is the essential truth behind all of today’s lectionary readings. In Joshua, he stands before the children of Israel as they prepare to cross into the Promised Land. He guides them into entering a solemn covenant with God. The reading is a conversation between Joshua and the people: “Joshua said:” “The people said:” At one point, Joshua bluntly tells them they aren’t ready, they aren’t holy enough and he issues that stirring question that echoes down through the ages: Choose you this day whom you will serve. It was time to cross over into this new land full of challenges and promise but it was up to the Israelites to decide what time it was, time to follow or time to turn away. Two of the tribes decided to stay on the eastern side of the river. They crossed over but then, when the country was secure, they returned to the eastern shore. Eternally, it seems to me, straddling the fence, trying to both live inside God’s promises and outside them. But wisdom is knowing what time it is, what decisions have to made in the here and now that must be lived up to and lived into in the future.
In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he mixes three different images of the end times in this short space of verses. If you unravel this tightly-knitted imagery, you hear the echoes of , in Exodus, Israel’s leaders going up the mountain to meet Moses. There is the echo of Daniel 7 and people exalted ‘on the clouds’ and the historic Roman Empire image of the people of a city going out to meet their ruler and escorting him back into their city. That was common practice in Bible times for the people of a city to go out along the road to meet the ruler, who wasn’t normally resident in the city, came to visit, to enforce the law and introduce new law, the people would go out to meet him on the road as he came and they would form a joyful procession back into the city and into the throne room. (My thanks to N.T. Wright for his pulling together of these exegetical threads. A Year of Sundays, Year A, pg. 123). Paul’s point in his description of this apocalyptic eschatology (which is a $20 term for discussions of what the end times will be like) is that it is vital to know what time it is. Paul’s point is to remind the Thessalonians that in the midst of their current problem: their impatience for Paul’s return to them. By using all of these images knitted tightly together, Paul is redirecting their focus from his return to the return of Jesus, the One for whom and with whom they are all waiting and working in the first place. Paul is reminding them that the wise choice is to know what time it is, in God’s time looking forward to God’s return.
So in turning to the gospel of Matthew and the parable of the ten bridesmaids, it is easy to see the point of the parable. As Brenda Lewis reminded us Wednesday night, parables are earthly stories with heavenly meanings. In this earthly story we hear again the echo of the ‘going out.’ The bridesmaids were waiting for the groom, some were ready, some were not. When they received word that the groom was on his way, they went out to meet him. Those that were prepared went into the house with him and the door was shut. Those who were not ready, who didn’t know what time it was, were left outside.
So wisdom is knowing what time it is. So what do we do with that wisdom? We make sure we are ready, make sure our lamps are filled, that we are listening for the voice of the bridegroom. The wise bridesmaids knew what was going to happen, they knew what their place in the ritual was and they were prepared to do what they needed to do.
Let’s take that to our level. Knowing what time it is means that we know that we are waiting for Christ’s breaking in to our lives. We know the Bible tells us that someday Jesus will return in triumphal glory but it is also true that He breaks into our lives every day when He asks us to choose whom we will serve. Christ calls us to come out and meet him, to move from where we are to where He is at work in the world. As Christians we know we are part of the Biblical story and that we each have a unique place, a unique part to play. We can discover that part through knowing God, studying the Bible and being part of a faithful Christian community.
So let me ask you this morning, do you know what time it is? And are you ready? Maybe being ready for you means accepting Christ as He is breaking into your life, asking for your heart, for your love. Maybe being ready for you is realizing that you have been using the oil in your lamp, your God-given giftedness in ways that are wasteful and don’t reflect God’s glory. Maybe it’s time to think again about what your life is really like, where you’re headed, what the goal is. Maybe for you being ready means making the commitment to this body of believers, saying that yes, I believe God is at work in the community here and I want to be part of it. Whatever ‘being ready’ means in your life, my prayer for you this morning is that you heed the question of Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus: Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Wisdom is knowing what time it is. (NTW) That is the essential truth behind all of today’s lectionary readings. In Joshua, he stands before the children of Israel as they prepare to cross into the Promised Land. He guides them into entering a solemn covenant with God. The reading is a conversation between Joshua and the people: “Joshua said:” “The people said:” At one point, Joshua bluntly tells them they aren’t ready, they aren’t holy enough and he issues that stirring question that echoes down through the ages: Choose you this day whom you will serve. It was time to cross over into this new land full of challenges and promise but it was up to the Israelites to decide what time it was, time to follow or time to turn away. Two of the tribes decided to stay on the eastern side of the river. They crossed over but then, when the country was secure, they returned to the eastern shore. Eternally, it seems to me, straddling the fence, trying to both live inside God’s promises and outside them. But wisdom is knowing what time it is, what decisions have to made in the here and now that must be lived up to and lived into in the future.
In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he mixes three different images of the end times in this short space of verses. If you unravel this tightly-knitted imagery, you hear the echoes of , in Exodus, Israel’s leaders going up the mountain to meet Moses. There is the echo of Daniel 7 and people exalted ‘on the clouds’ and the historic Roman Empire image of the people of a city going out to meet their ruler and escorting him back into their city. That was common practice in Bible times for the people of a city to go out along the road to meet the ruler, who wasn’t normally resident in the city, came to visit, to enforce the law and introduce new law, the people would go out to meet him on the road as he came and they would form a joyful procession back into the city and into the throne room. (My thanks to N.T. Wright for his pulling together of these exegetical threads. A Year of Sundays, Year A, pg. 123). Paul’s point in his description of this apocalyptic eschatology (which is a $20 term for discussions of what the end times will be like) is that it is vital to know what time it is. Paul’s point is to remind the Thessalonians that in the midst of their current problem: their impatience for Paul’s return to them. By using all of these images knitted tightly together, Paul is redirecting their focus from his return to the return of Jesus, the One for whom and with whom they are all waiting and working in the first place. Paul is reminding them that the wise choice is to know what time it is, in God’s time looking forward to God’s return.
So in turning to the gospel of Matthew and the parable of the ten bridesmaids, it is easy to see the point of the parable. As Brenda Lewis reminded us Wednesday night, parables are earthly stories with heavenly meanings. In this earthly story we hear again the echo of the ‘going out.’ The bridesmaids were waiting for the groom, some were ready, some were not. When they received word that the groom was on his way, they went out to meet him. Those that were prepared went into the house with him and the door was shut. Those who were not ready, who didn’t know what time it was, were left outside.
So wisdom is knowing what time it is. So what do we do with that wisdom? We make sure we are ready, make sure our lamps are filled, that we are listening for the voice of the bridegroom. The wise bridesmaids knew what was going to happen, they knew what their place in the ritual was and they were prepared to do what they needed to do.
Let’s take that to our level. Knowing what time it is means that we know that we are waiting for Christ’s breaking in to our lives. We know the Bible tells us that someday Jesus will return in triumphal glory but it is also true that He breaks into our lives every day when He asks us to choose whom we will serve. Christ calls us to come out and meet him, to move from where we are to where He is at work in the world. As Christians we know we are part of the Biblical story and that we each have a unique place, a unique part to play. We can discover that part through knowing God, studying the Bible and being part of a faithful Christian community.
So let me ask you this morning, do you know what time it is? And are you ready? Maybe being ready for you means accepting Christ as He is breaking into your life, asking for your heart, for your love. Maybe being ready for you is realizing that you have been using the oil in your lamp, your God-given giftedness in ways that are wasteful and don’t reflect God’s glory. Maybe it’s time to think again about what your life is really like, where you’re headed, what the goal is. Maybe for you being ready means making the commitment to this body of believers, saying that yes, I believe God is at work in the community here and I want to be part of it. Whatever ‘being ready’ means in your life, my prayer for you this morning is that you heed the question of Joshua, Yeshua, Jesus: Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Legalism or Messy Sentiment? Neither!
Why two Scripture readings today (Matthew23: 1-12, I Tess. 2:9-13) ? Because they strikingly show how the life and words of Christ continued to echo, to be lived out in the life and work of the Apostle Paul and must continue to be lived out in our lives as well. Not as legalism and not as sentimentality, but as the true love of God.
"Paul’s life was more than a ministry project. As I read and re-read these verses, I am struck by the frequent terms of endearment used. From all appearances, the Thessalonians had become as dear to Paul's company as family members. Ministry among them was so important to Paul that he worked with his hands to avoid being a financial burden to them and reminded them in this letter that his only reason for sharing the good news with them was his love for them and their need for the good news from God. I am not sure that we know what it means to be that in love with people -- either inside or outside the family circle. Remember these are not my words….
If Paul were writing these words to us, what pleadings might he make?
• I did not come to you for the prestige of the appointment…
• I did not come for salary…
• I did not come to impress the DS or to placate my spouse…
• I am simply here because I love you and I love God.
For God so loved the world… " GBOD/Worship
Compare and contrast the Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking and Paul, the apostle who so tenderly loved the Christians at Thessalonica. Jesus told the people to do what the teachers said (their preaching was OK) but not to live like they did. For their lives spoke louder than their words. Paul lived that out among the Thessalonians. His life was congruent with his message about Jesus.
What does that look like in the here and now, in our Monday through Saturday lives? It means leading our heart instead of letting our hearts lead us. How many times have we heard and even used the self-justification “It just feels right”? There are a lot of things that may feel right at the moment but are dead wrong in the long run.
That’s why we must be so careful about guarding our hearts, being carried away with emotionalism and sentimentality and calling it the tide of the Holy Spirit. That’s why in Methodism we hold Scripture as foundational and allow our interpretation of Scripture to be informed by tradition, reason and experience. Too much emphasis on one of those three over and above the other two is a recipe for disaster. And throwing any one of those three out also leads to a life that is unbalanced, a life lived disfigured and mutated.
Let’s give the Pharisees some credit here. I do believe that they were trying to get it right, trying to fulfill the Mosaic Law the best way they could. At least the 98% of them that weren’t trying to get rid of Jesus. But they had tied heavy burdens of do’s and don’ts on their followers. In the days after Jesus, it would get even worse with the Midrashic laws and the interpretations of the great rabbis. The Midrash was the interpretation of the laws of the Pharisees and over time the laws have been interpreted again and again so that there has been an exponential adding-to of the law code and it is impossible to fulfill.
Protestants can’t escape from this condemnation either. One of the things we celebrate today is that it is Reformation Sunday, the remembrance of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, nailed to the cathedral door at Wittenberg, 95 protests against the excesses and excessive legalism of the church and in some ways, it is time for another Martin Luther, another dramatic reckoning and reformation of the way we DO church, who we are AS the church. Martin Luther's definition of sin was a person 'turned in on themselves." Doesn't thats till echo true across the centuries. As I told a chapel full of students the other day, it is no accident that the word SIN has an "I" right in the middle.
It is our human tendency to want rules, logic and order, measurable results. One of the things I find personally frustrating about my pastoral ministry is that when someone asks me how church was last Sunday, I immediately reply with how many people were there, or how much money we raised. As if those measurable things were what God was really concerned with.
I believe he is much more concerned with
• The condition of our hearts,
• with the ways we love each other,
• with the ways we are challenged and empowered to change,
• to step out in faith,
• to be more like Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
But it is easier to resort to numbers instead of discerning and celebrating the moving of the Holy Spirit.
On the other extreme, we can float off, soar off, on a whirlwind of emotion, of feel good music and preaching that reminds us how great we are, how great God is, how easy we will have it in the long run, in the sweet by and by. And that makes it easy to forget and to dismiss the hard work of the here and now.
Jesus said: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach……The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. Paul told the Thessalonians: As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
As we move to the Communion Table this morning, I want to tell you of a man who had a great influence on me in the years when I was a stay-at-home mom. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s before there was Food Network, PBS had all the good cooking shows and one of them was a show called “The Frugal Gourmet.” Jeff Smith was an ordained Methodist minister in Seattle, WA, who somehow or another had become a TV chef. He wrote a theology/cookbook in about 1995 called The Frugal Gourmet Keeps the Feast. It is an exploration of food and food traditions in the biblical world and how that translates into today. At the end of the book, he tells what he thinks that eternal communion table will be like. That the 5 people he least wants to spend eternity with will be there seated right across from him. And he said that image motivates him to work on forgiving them, to work on changing, doing the hard work of love, intentional love that wants the best for the other, the love God has for us.
Humility, forgiveness, self-giving love – that is the hard work to which we are called. And that is the life we are empowered to live through him who first loved us.
"Paul’s life was more than a ministry project. As I read and re-read these verses, I am struck by the frequent terms of endearment used. From all appearances, the Thessalonians had become as dear to Paul's company as family members. Ministry among them was so important to Paul that he worked with his hands to avoid being a financial burden to them and reminded them in this letter that his only reason for sharing the good news with them was his love for them and their need for the good news from God. I am not sure that we know what it means to be that in love with people -- either inside or outside the family circle. Remember these are not my words….
If Paul were writing these words to us, what pleadings might he make?
• I did not come to you for the prestige of the appointment…
• I did not come for salary…
• I did not come to impress the DS or to placate my spouse…
• I am simply here because I love you and I love God.
For God so loved the world… " GBOD/Worship
Compare and contrast the Pharisees to whom Jesus was speaking and Paul, the apostle who so tenderly loved the Christians at Thessalonica. Jesus told the people to do what the teachers said (their preaching was OK) but not to live like they did. For their lives spoke louder than their words. Paul lived that out among the Thessalonians. His life was congruent with his message about Jesus.
What does that look like in the here and now, in our Monday through Saturday lives? It means leading our heart instead of letting our hearts lead us. How many times have we heard and even used the self-justification “It just feels right”? There are a lot of things that may feel right at the moment but are dead wrong in the long run.
That’s why we must be so careful about guarding our hearts, being carried away with emotionalism and sentimentality and calling it the tide of the Holy Spirit. That’s why in Methodism we hold Scripture as foundational and allow our interpretation of Scripture to be informed by tradition, reason and experience. Too much emphasis on one of those three over and above the other two is a recipe for disaster. And throwing any one of those three out also leads to a life that is unbalanced, a life lived disfigured and mutated.
Let’s give the Pharisees some credit here. I do believe that they were trying to get it right, trying to fulfill the Mosaic Law the best way they could. At least the 98% of them that weren’t trying to get rid of Jesus. But they had tied heavy burdens of do’s and don’ts on their followers. In the days after Jesus, it would get even worse with the Midrashic laws and the interpretations of the great rabbis. The Midrash was the interpretation of the laws of the Pharisees and over time the laws have been interpreted again and again so that there has been an exponential adding-to of the law code and it is impossible to fulfill.
Protestants can’t escape from this condemnation either. One of the things we celebrate today is that it is Reformation Sunday, the remembrance of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, nailed to the cathedral door at Wittenberg, 95 protests against the excesses and excessive legalism of the church and in some ways, it is time for another Martin Luther, another dramatic reckoning and reformation of the way we DO church, who we are AS the church. Martin Luther's definition of sin was a person 'turned in on themselves." Doesn't thats till echo true across the centuries. As I told a chapel full of students the other day, it is no accident that the word SIN has an "I" right in the middle.
It is our human tendency to want rules, logic and order, measurable results. One of the things I find personally frustrating about my pastoral ministry is that when someone asks me how church was last Sunday, I immediately reply with how many people were there, or how much money we raised. As if those measurable things were what God was really concerned with.
I believe he is much more concerned with
• The condition of our hearts,
• with the ways we love each other,
• with the ways we are challenged and empowered to change,
• to step out in faith,
• to be more like Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
But it is easier to resort to numbers instead of discerning and celebrating the moving of the Holy Spirit.
On the other extreme, we can float off, soar off, on a whirlwind of emotion, of feel good music and preaching that reminds us how great we are, how great God is, how easy we will have it in the long run, in the sweet by and by. And that makes it easy to forget and to dismiss the hard work of the here and now.
Jesus said: "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach……The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. Paul told the Thessalonians: As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.
As we move to the Communion Table this morning, I want to tell you of a man who had a great influence on me in the years when I was a stay-at-home mom. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s before there was Food Network, PBS had all the good cooking shows and one of them was a show called “The Frugal Gourmet.” Jeff Smith was an ordained Methodist minister in Seattle, WA, who somehow or another had become a TV chef. He wrote a theology/cookbook in about 1995 called The Frugal Gourmet Keeps the Feast. It is an exploration of food and food traditions in the biblical world and how that translates into today. At the end of the book, he tells what he thinks that eternal communion table will be like. That the 5 people he least wants to spend eternity with will be there seated right across from him. And he said that image motivates him to work on forgiving them, to work on changing, doing the hard work of love, intentional love that wants the best for the other, the love God has for us.
Humility, forgiveness, self-giving love – that is the hard work to which we are called. And that is the life we are empowered to live through him who first loved us.
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