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Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch

Acts 8:26-40

Summer Series on Acts Week 7

July 21, 2019

         Last Sunday Phil and I worshipped at the Reformed Church of the Tarrytowns, in Tarrytown NY—located along the Hudson River about an hour north of New York City. The town is also known as Sleepy Hollow, as in Ichabad Crane and the headless horseman.  The church is adjacent to the cemetery where the headless horseman is said to have been buried, and one of their ongoing mission projects is their “midnight rides”, where they go into New York City and deliver food and clothing to people in need. If you’ve got a local legend as colorful as the headless horseman, why not capitalize on it?

We didn’t see the headless horseman while we were there, nor did the place feel haunted to me.  But it did feel old.  The building’s construction started in 1685.  That’s right, 1685.  To put that in perspective, that was a good 150 years before anyone was worshipping at Lima.  I think it may have been the oldest American church building I have ever been in.  These days the church has a modern building right in town that is their primary worship space, but in the summer and on Christmas Eve they open up the historic building and hold worship services there. As we waited for the service to begin, I thought about all the people who have come over the years to worship and pray in that space, which got me to thinking about the first people, those that got the church started.  Do you think those pioneering Dutch settlers who started the church had any idea what it would look like 300 years later?

Well I’m sure they didn’t anticipate that eventually wood stoves in churches would be replaced by oil heating systems, and outhouses would be replaced by indoor plumbing, and hymn books would largely be replaced by words projected on to screens!  How could they imagine any of that?  But my guess is, if they had enough faith to build a church building, they were people who understood that God is always at work expanding the Church.  There may be seasons of painful pruning, times of low harvest, and even times of local and regional decline.  But the big picture of God’s work is toward growth. Growth in terms of numbers, growth in terms of geography, and growth in terms of maturity.

We see this in the book of Acts.  First there is growth in numbers.  3,000 people converted on Pentecost!  Day by day the Lord added to the numbers of the very early church.  As we move further into Acts, we begin to see growth in terms of geography.  After the stoning of Stephen, persecution forced many members of the early church to scatter, and as they scattered, they preached the word of God wherever they went.  Jesus himself told his disciples this would be the case.  Acts 1:8 says, “And you will be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  

But this growth, in numbers and geography, could only be accomplished by people who were willing to grow in maturity.  It could only be accomplished by people who were willing to let go of the old so they could embrace the new.  The first Christians had to let go of their waiting and embrace Jesus as Messiah.  It takes a lot of courage to make a change like that!  Then they had to let go of their old prejudices.  Earlier in Acts chapter 8, which we didn’t have time to cover in church, Philip was amazingly cooperative and obedient when he followed God’s command to preach the gospel to the Samaritans.  For hundreds of years there had been terrible bad blood between the Jews and the Samaritans—and now, in Christ, their division was being healed.  But only because Philip, and then Peter and John, were willing to get over their prejudices.  The gospel grew only because people were willing to change and grow.

Witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria—the book of Acts records for us how Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled.  And now Philip has obeyed God’s call to head south from Jerusalem toward Gaza and shares the gospel with a Gentile.  The conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch is the lynchpin, the turning point for the gospel to be spread to the ends of the earth.

Luke doesn’t tell us his name.  But he does tell us he is an important man.  We can tell that by his ride.  Only very important people rode in chariots—most people walked, a few had donkeys, but a chariot?  That’s like having a Ferrari today!  Luke tells us that this man was secretary of the treasury.  He was in charge of all the financial resources of his country.  He most likely had very dark skin, because that was called Ethiopia then is northern Sudan now.  Luke also tells us he was a eunuch, which in scripture is an imprecise term, it can mean a range of things, but Luke includes this detail to show us the man was precluded from fully participating in Judaism.  But his physical issues would not be a problem in terms of the gospel.  He was fully acceptable to God, and was able to become a baptized believer on the spot. We can assume that the Ethiopian eunuch returned to his home a powerful evangelist!

Luke is basically hitting his readers over the head with the gospel message, that the good news of Jesus Christ was never intended for only one particular group of people, for one small subset of the human race. The good news of Jesus Christ was meant for ALL.  Rich and poor.  Dark and light.  Jew and Gentile.  We celebrate this at Christmas—for unto all of us a child is born.  But Jesus told us the good news of God’s love would no longer be conveyed only through him.  It would be conveyed through us.  We get to be his witnesses, his ambassadors, his body.  “And you will be my witnesses, in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  

We recall these words and don’t give them too much thought, but wow!  Talk about revolutionary!  First, that God would entrust the sharing of the gospel to regular people like us, okay, to me that’s a wow.  Second, that the gospel would be so transforming it would break down barriers and prejudices.  And third, that this work would continue until the ends of the earth are somehow made new.  You WILL BE my witnesses.  Not you were once.  Or you are for a minute or two.  But YOU WILL BE my witnesses eternally.  Even in heaven, we never stop being witnesses.  See what I mean when I say that the big picture of God’s work is always toward growth?

Let’s think for a minute about the ends of the earth. Growing up in a rural area, I was familiar with designations such as “the sticks”, “boondocks”, “East Jabip” and “Timbuktu”.  Turns out Timbuktu is a real place, not just a metaphor!  In Jesus’ day, if you wanted to talk about the ends of the earth, you know what you said?  Ethiopia! It was, in legendary and mythological terms, the way you expressed the ends of the earth.  God commands Philip to go to Gaza, which was in the desert—another place that might feel like the ends of the earth—and on his way he meets who? A eunuch from Ethiopia.  God uses Philip to share the gospel with a man who is, in some way, the end of his family line, who is from the ends of the earth, and who has reached the end of his understanding about God—God uses Philip to take this man who is at the end, and brings about in him a whole new beginning.

And God is still using people to do that work today.  This week we’ve heard a lot about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.  Did you know that while Neil Armstrong prepared to be the first person to walk on the moon, Buzz Aldrin set out elements for communion?  He said, “I poured the wine into the chalice.  In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.  It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon and the very first food eaten there were communion elements.”  Talk about the ends of the earth!  The big picture of God’s work is always toward growth. Not just numerical growth, but also geographic growth.  Human beings are carrying the Spirit of God every place they go. Even to the moon.  

Philip didn’t go to the moon.  Just to Samaria, and the desert, and a few other places listed later that are not familiar to us.  He was an “ends of the earth” kind of guy.  I think Luke spends so much time on this one person’s conversion so we can see the direct correlation between Philip’s willingness to serve, change and grow—and the direct impact that made on other people’s lives.  Earlier in Acts, Philip stepped up as a deacon to help care for the widows in the church.  Then he willingly went to Samaria, where he helped many people encounter God.  He was having quite a run there when God called him to head to the desert.  He wasn’t worried about staying where he could be “successful”.  He followed God to the new frontier, and there used all he had to serve well.  Maybe that is why, almost 54 years ago now, when my in-laws were blessed with a baby boy, they decided to name him Philip with one L, like it is in the Bible.  They wanted him to be a person who uses all he has to serve the Lord, just as they were doing.

About a month ago, I listened to a sermon online by Bishop Latrelle Easterling of the Baltimore Washington Conference.  She was preaching at their ordination service, not only to the newly ordained clergy in her conference, but to all the many lay people in attendance.  She made a distinction between being a volunteer, and being a servant.  Reading about Philip this week made me think more about that. Volunteers help when they feel like it; servants help when God calls them.  Volunteers help to get a certain personal reward; servants are only interested in glorifying God.  Volunteers retain the right to say no to any particular task that is too difficult, too demeaning, too controversial; servants strive to keep their hearts open to saying yes to whatever it is God asks of them.  Volunteers make a difference; servants make a sacrifice.

One of the sacrifices of servanthood is moving on. After his encounter with the Ethiopian official, Luke tells us Philip was suddenly taken away.  I’m sure this was sad for both of them.  The Ethiopian man would have loved more time with Philip, more time to ask him questions and develop a spiritual friendship.  Philip probably would have enjoyed more chariot rides!  But God needed Philip elsewhere.  Next week we will say good-bye to Pastor Brad and his family.  This will be sad for all of us.  But gracefully letting go is at the heart of being a servant.  Letting go of the old so we can embrace the new.  Letting go of the people who explained so much to us and made such a difference for us—so we can deepen our dependence on God.  Growing up means moving on.  And as bittersweet as that is, it is the primary way the gospel spreads.

We cannot imagine what Lima church, or any church, will look like in 300 years.  Our oil heating will no doubt be replaced by something much more efficient and sustainable by then.  I don’t know if indoor plumbing will change much, probably it will also be more efficient and sustainable.  Maybe we will compost all our waste and mow our lawn with goats!  No doubt the church of the future will be employing much different technology than we have today.

We cannot picture the specifics of what church will look like in the future.  But we do know that the big picture of God’s work is always toward growth.  And we can decide to join God in God’s work of expansion. Do you believe God is at work expanding the reach and impact of God’s Church in the world???  It’s true!  It’s not a headless horseman story.  It’s not legend or myth or fiction.  It is our faith.  Will you offer everything you have, in service to the greatest story of all time, the story of God’s love for the whole world as shown in the person and gospel of Jesus Christ?  Amen.

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Balancing Accountability and Grace

Acts 4:32-5:11

Summer Series on Acts Week 5

July 7, 2019

         There are stories that end with, “And they all lived happily ever after.”  This is not one of those stories!  And it’s not just Ananias and Sapphira who die.  Acts chapter 5 marks a change in the book of Acts. Things in the early church were perfect for a time; and then something happened that would explain why things are not perfect for the rest of time.  It’s a little like how in the book of Genesis, everything is perfect until Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden tree—and all of sudden, that paradise teeming with life becomes a place where there is death.  The start of the Christian church has a parallel beginning. At the end of chapter four, Luke sums things up:   the early church is like the Garden of Eden at first.  Everything is perfect.  No one has any need.  People are coming to Christ and selling off their possessions, resulting in a Christian utopia.  All for one and one for all!

         But this utopia will not last.  Sin will change things, and on some level, sin always leads to death.  This week we will see how sin sometimes leads to the death of the sinner.  And next week we will talk about Stephen, and see how sin sometimes leads to the death of innocent victims. And every week for the rest of the summer, we will see how sin led to the death of the extraordinary sharing and perfection of the early church. Read it for yourself and see if you can find a place after Acts 5 where someone sells their property and the whole Christian community lives together in exquisite communion.  

To help us see the change, Luke employs the old “compare and contrast” technique.  In chapter four, he mentions a Levite named Joseph, who was so inspired by the early church and its radical caring that he sold a field he owned and brought all the money and put it at the apostles’ feet.  He was such a helpful person that the apostles gave him a new name: Barnabas, which means "son of encouragement."  Barnabas went on to do great things in the church.  We will read more about him later in Acts.

But right after Barnabus, Luke shifts gears and tells us about Ananias and Sapphira.  They sold a piece of property, and instead of laying all the money at the disciples’ feet like Barnabas, they withheld some for themselves.  And, instead of going on to do great things in the church, they were killed.

This story is incomprehensible to us.  Imagine if a husband and wife in our day sold their home and gave most of the proceeds to the church?  We'd be jumping up and down.  Say you sell your house for $150,000, and you give 2/3 to the church.  So you keep $50,000 for yourself.  Who cares?  You're still giving the church $100K!  That is a very generous gift. We would not know what to do with all that money if someone gave us a gift like that.  Not that we wouldn't figure it out, mind you.  That is one problem we would work on until we had it solved, that is for sure!

         But in the early church, there was a problem with Ananias and Sapphira's gift. People don't just drop dead on the spot for nothing.  For one thing, they seemed to miss the point of selling the property.  All for one and one for all only works if everyone puts in their all.  It's like the Hokey Pokey--you can put in an arm or a leg, but eventually you gotta put your whole self in.  Perhaps Ananias and Sapphira were hedging their bets to see if this church thing worked out.

         But in the meantime, they wanted it to appear as if they were all in.  I think that is the big issue here.  They lied to the church about the money.  They wanted to appear more generous and faithful than they really were.  They missed the memo, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  Ananias and Sapphira thought they were pulling one over on a bunch of people. But really they were lying to God. The church isn’t just a human organization.  It is the body of Christ.  There was more at stake here than they realized.

Okay, fine we say, it’s important not to lie to God. But did they really have to die?  Why not give Ananias and Sapphira a warning and a chance to repent?  Exactly one year ago—it was July 8, 2018--I stood before you and preached my first sermon at Lima.  In those early weeks together, we talked a lot about grace.  We learned about prevenient grace, this Wesleyan idea that the Holy Spirit is always out ahead of us, planting seeds, lubricating pathways, always at work for good, showering people with grace to help prepare them to receive Christ.  We talked about justifying grace, which puts us right with God.  When we receive Christ, it’s like we walk through the door to a new way of living, which we call the Christian life.  That is why there is a third kind of grace, sanctifying grace, which helps us learn and grow.  It carries us up the staircase toward maturity and fruitfulness.  Prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace.  Grace is the bedrock of our faith.  Which one of those kinds of grace would you say is at work in the story of Ananias and Sapphira?  It doesn’t seem to me that there is any grace in this story at all!

I think Luke gives us this story to illustrate how, because the church is made up of real people and lives in the real world, in addition to grace it will also have to be an agent of accountability.  The Church is the Body of Christ and thus is called to be holy!  Which is tricky because the people who make up the Church are sinners.  Throughout its entire history, and for as long as the Church shall live, it will have to wrestle with balancing grace and accountability. What should it do when people within the church family resist sanctification and allow sin to manifest itself?  What should we do with the unholy in our midst?

This is a hard question for us even now, even with 2,000 years of Church history and tradition under our belts.  This is hard question for us even now as United Methodists, with our 898-page Book of Discipline.  You’d think with a rule book that big there would be no more gray areas. But real life is complicated.  I have a clergy colleague who asked me for advice one time, because a young woman in the church was stealing money from people’s purses.  It took time to figure out who the thief was in the congregation, but now there were two separate eyewitnesses who weren’t sure what to do with what they say, so they went to the pastor.  The pastor knew this behavior could not go on unchallenged.  The thief would have to be held accountable. But the thief was the daughter of the choir director, who had been a member of the church for forty years and whose extended family and close friends made up about a fourth of the membership.  How could they be fair, firm—and diplomatic???.  

For whatever reason, God was not worried about being diplomatic or fair with Ananias and Sapphira.  They were struck dead for a pretty common sin, hypocrisy. We don’t know why, and that bothers us. But there’s something that bothers me even more.  Even if Ananias’ death was not preventable, what about Sapphira?  I am really upset that no one went out and found Sapphira and warned her. Luke tells that “great fear seized all who heard about Ananias”.  Maybe they were so afraid they were paralyzed.  We are supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves.  I know I’d appreciate it if someone gave me a heads up if I was about to get into big trouble.  Wouldn’t it be loving to go and find Sapphira and give her a chance to tell the truth? Maybe people too stunned to talk to her.  Or maybe they thought they should mind their own business.  We don’t know exactly what happened in those three hours between Ananias dying and Sapphira dying.  But we do know that, for the first time, death marred the new Christian community. And it seems to me that, metaphorically, sin has been causing “death” in the church ever since.

But I can’t be too hard on the people for not confronting Sapphira, because I am afraid of confrontation, too.  A few weeks ago, I went out to run a few errands on Sunday afternoon.  My first stop was the Lima post office, where I slid some bills and cards into the blue mailbox.  As I was walking back to my car, I noticed a man come out of the Lima Beverage, pull a beer from the case he just purchased, get in his car, and as he sat in the drivers’ seat, drink half a bottle of beer in one gulp.  He then put the bottle in his cup holder, buckled his seat belt, and drove away.  

It was a warm day but not hot, so we both had our car windows open.  I remember thinking to myself, should I walk over to him and say, hey, you can’t go around drinking and driving!  I remember thinking to myself, maybe I should call 911.  I remember thinking to myself, “But Dorry, you are on your way to do some shopping on a Sunday, and you are supposed to be observing the Sabbath!  Get the log out of your own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s!”  And I also remember thinking, “What is going on in his life that on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, he is in so much pain that he has to have half a beer right this second, he can’t even wait the five minutes until he gets home?”  

I had never seen that man before.  I had no personal responsibility to him, but I do have a responsibility to my community, so I prayed that he would get home safely and not injure himself or anyone else on the way home.  But it left me feeling powerless and sad.  Even if that man’s “sin” didn’t lead to any kind of harm or death as he drove home, witnessing it made me die a little inside.  I think this is our human condition.  Reading the book of Acts, it blows my mind that people were willing to sell their land and give all the money to the church—but not a single person was willing to go and tell Sapphira to get her act together.  It just goes to show, holding each other accountable is the hardest thing we have to do in church.

But look at the consequences if we don’t.  When sin persists, there is always some kind of death!  Last week, when we read about how Peter and John were called out by the authorities for healing the lame man, they were very clear in saying that is wasn’t their power that healed the man, it was God’s power.  It was the name of Jesus that healed him.  But in our story today, Luke never says whose power killed Ananias and Sapphira. It’s hard to imagine they were killed by God’s power, because we trust God to always use God’s power for good. It’s hard to image them being killed by the apostles.  We all know that expression, “If looks could kill”, but I don’t think any of us believe there is a dirty look in the world dirty enough to kill someone!  

I think Luke never names the power that killed Ananias and Sapphira because there is no need to name it.  When we separate ourselves from God, a kind of death occurs. Death is never God’s intentional will—but it is the natural consequence of violating God’s will.  “The wages of sin is death”, the apostle Paul would later write.  Every one of us, we can name ways our sinfulness has hurt the church.  We have not always trusted.  We have not always tithed.  We have wanted to appear better than we are.  We have not always done what is right.  We have not always been courageous.  Our sins have hurt the church.  We have sinned and been sinned against.  This is the truth.  I started this sermon by saying, “There are stories that end with everyone lives happily ever after.  This is not one of those stories.”  The Church has suffered and died both literally and metaphorically from sin from its earliest days.  

And yet the church survives and thrives.  That is, I think, where the grace is in this story. The church is God’s agency for life. It is not just another human organization.  It is the Body of Christ, drawn together and held together by the Spirit of the Living God!  And because of that, the church is resilient.  The church marches on.  We are here today in this church, Christians are gathered everywhere on this day, as a living testament to God’s amazing grace.  

As we come to the table today, let us do so with praise and thanksgiving for the Prevenient Grace that drew us here, the Justifying Grace that forgives and restores us, and the Sanctifying grace, that is working in us and moving us toward perfection.  In the name of Jesus and for his sake, Amen.

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Generosity--Giving our Best

Acts 2:24-3:10

Summer Series on Acts Week 3

June 23, 2019

         Gathering for prayer three times a day is still an important custom in Judaism, but at the time Acts was written, this was an especially important part of Jewish religious life.  Morning, afternoon, and evening, Jewish men made their way to the Temple for a liturgy that included reading of Psalms, reciting various memorized prayers, and the Shema.  Shema means listen or hear, and it's a little like the Lord's Prayer for Christians--it's so important, every Jewish child memorizes is at a pretty young age.  It comes from Deuteronomy 6, just a few paragraphs after the Ten Commandments, and it is a summary of the Jewish faith. "Hear O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your strength."

         Peter and John were on their way to prayer when they met this lame man.  They were on their way to something important. They had a meeting to attend. Prayer couldn't start until there was a minyan--at least ten men.  Now, in Jerusalem at that time it was not going to be difficult to get a minyan. But Peter and John had a schedule, a mission, an obligation to do what all good Jewish men would do.

         But Peter and John were not just Jews.  They were disciples of Jesus.  During Jesus' ministry, when he was questioned about which of the laws in Judaism were most important, they heard him say, the most important, was the Shema. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."  But then he went on to say, the second is this:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Jesus was making the point that love of neighbor is what happens when we truly Love God.

         Luke writes that Peter and John took the time to "look intently at the man".  They recognized that the call to compassion took precedence over the call to prayer--or perhaps, as Jesus seems to teach us, the call to compassion is the natural response to a life of prayer.  Peter and John recognized that while it's important to get to church—in this case the temple--on time, their true mission, their true obligation, was to love their neighbor as their selves.

         If you live in a parsonage, you frequently experience tension around the issue of loving others versus fulfilling obligations.  For instance, last Saturday, while I was at Annual Conference, Phil was getting ready to leave for a meeting.  He is the board president of a non-profit called Artos, which provides support to clergy spouses.  He was taking our dog out for a quick walk before he left, when he saw a man in the church parking lot who needed help.  Phil didn’t want to be late for his meeting—but he didn’t want to ignore someone in distress. So Phil took the dog home, drove to the gas station with the man following behind, and filled up his gas tank for him.  

         Pastors and their families get a lot more requests for help than most church members realize.  We do not always say yes.  There are people who see churches as their personal ATM machines, and that’s not right. On the other hand, compassion and mercy are two of our core values.  If for some reason I feel my gut is telling me not to help, I always feel dis-ease about that.  But most of the time when I do help, I am left wondering about that, too.  It is a tricky situation.

But in the first days of the Christian church, helping others wasn’t tricky at all.  Luke records how, in the very beginning of the Christian church, there was a remarkable level of sharing.  People sold their possessions and shared the wealth.  Church historians are quick to point out that this practice has been tried other places, and almost always, like in Acts, it is short lived.  It is not sustainable, but this description of the early church gives us a picture of God’s ultimate will for humankind.  One day everyone will have all that they need! This description of the early church also gives us a glimpse into the Kingdom of God.  In God’s kingdom, there is no such things as landlord and tenant; no farm owners versus sharecroppers.  Everyone is equally able to participate in, and enjoy the benefits, of the Kingdom of God!

Peter and John, on their way to fulfill a religious obligation—stopped to help someone.  They did not have any silver or gold, and they did not apologize for that.  After all, silver and gold would only help the lame man for a limited amount of time.  Instead, of giving him a temporary gift, they gave him an eternal one! They gave him a share in the Kingdom of God!

         I wonder, would things have been different if Peter and John had some money with them that day?  Would they have just reached into their wallets, and given the man $20, and continued about their business?  Perhaps that would have been better than not giving him anything.  But I doubt a story like that would have made it into Luke's writing.  What was so amazing about this story was Peter and John gave something far more precious than silver or gold.  They gave him healing--and not just in his body.  They gave him healing in his soul.  For the first time in his whole life, the lame man was able to enter the Temple and worship!  Before he this, he was considered unclean because of his infirmity.  He was never able to attend public worship.  Peter and John healed the man's body, they healed his soul, they shared with the man the very best thing they could.    

         During Advent, we often sing "Emmanuel, Emmanuel, they call his name, Emmanuel.  God with us, revealed in us, his name is called, Emmanuel."  Peter and John were on their way to afternoon prayers, which always included recitations about God's presence, God's provision, and God's mercy.  Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  The Lord is real.  The Lord is here.  The Lord has one singular aim:  to love the world into abundant life.  I think that's what these somewhat extreme stories in the book of Acts are all about--offering proof that God is with us and it at work for good!  The first Christians sold their possessions and held everything in common—proof that God was with them and was changing their priorities.  Luke wrote that they were all in one accord.  And we’re not talking Honda Accord, although there is an old joke about that being the Christian’s favorite car.  They were in one accord, united, like-minded.  Their unity was proof that God is with us and is at work for good.  And now, Peter and John offered healing to the lame man.  True discipleship means using all we have to reveal the fact that God is with us.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was famous for giving all the money in his wallet to help poor people.  But when his wallet was empty, he didn't just shrug his shoulders and say, "Sorry, I can't help you!"  He wrote in his journal, and several other sources back this up, that Wesley would go door to door, asking for help for this stranger in need!  Like Peter and John, Wesley could honestly say, silver and gold have I none.  But what I do have, I will give you.  And what Wesley had was an unshakable conviction that every person matters to God, and if one person suffers, we all suffer. Wesley used his conviction, and dogged determination, went door to door on behalf of someone else in need. Wesley didn't have much cash.  But he had commitment.  He had chutzpah!  By using what he had, he revealed God's relentless love for all persons.

This information about John Wesley is impressive, but there are problems with this all-out giving.  It makes family life pretty impossible!  John Wesley was a notorious champion for the poor, but he also had a very unhappy marriage.  He himself suffered as a child because his father, an Anglican priest, was frequently in debtors’ prison because he was so generous to others he couldn’t pay his own bills.  It is impossible to give away all we have, and be faithful to our families.  Most of us, we are going to feel that tension between wanting to be generous with strangers while prioritizing the needs of our primary dependents.  I do not believe Jesus calls every person to take a vow of poverty.  Nor do I think we are expected to just hand someone $20 because they ask for it.  But Jesus does call all of us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  We can expect that our love for God will require us to show that love to others in ways that are sacrificial and expensive.

And the first step toward love involves seeing. Making eye contact.  Luke records that “Peter looked straight at” the lame man, and so did John.  They did not walk on by, but they stopped and looked.  They did not jump to conclusions, they had him look at them, too, and made a connection.  They didn’t just throw money at him and wash their hands of the situation.  They took an active interest in his reality, and responded with the best help they could give.

Our scripture lesson today has me wondering how often we do that.  The word disciple means “learner”.  One way we continue to learn more from Jesus is to learn more about others.  Looking at the situation as clearly as you possibly can.  That is the only way to know how to respond lovingly.  Co-dependence is not love.  Propping up unhealthy behavior is not kind.  Loving our neighbors as ourselves requires looking with discernment as well as grace.  It requires power from the Holy Spirit.  Peter and John were on their way to pray, but when the Holy Spirit prompted them to stop and look, they did.  And when the Holy Spirit prompted them to give, they did.  I hope this story will encourage us to become more like Peter and John—people who are in tune to the nuances of the Spirit’s movement in us.

But I also hope this story will help us become more like the lame man.  We can see how the Holy Spirit was working in his life for some time.  His friends brought him to the temple gates every day. But we could also say that was prevenient grace, getting him to the place where he would be able to receive Christ for himself.  Then, at the right moment, the Holy Spirit healed him.  It wasn’t Peter and John who instantly made the lame man’s feet and ankles strong.  It was God. It was God who transformed the lame man from only being able to go where others took him, to now having the agency to go wherever God wanted him to go.  

And God wants to work that same transformation in us.  The power of God is at work in each us of, helping us to become martyrs and witnesses—people who are willing to stand alone if need be as prophets and pioneers for justice and peace.  We all have some infirmities in us.  We all need our feet and ankles strengthened so we can stand on the truth, and go to the places Jesus needs us to go.

Tonight at Vacation Bible School, our children will be learning about Jesus, the ultimate super hero.  But they will also be learning they as Christians, little Christs, they can be heroes for God, too.  God’s heroes have heart, strength, courage and wisdom.  May the power of the Holy Spirit come upon us and give is the ability to attend to, and respond to, the world’s needs, in the best ways.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

In Their Own Native Language

Summer Series on Acts Week 2

Acts 2:1-13, 38-41

June 9, 2019  Pentecost Sunday

            Have you ever tried to learn a new language?  At my first church, we were part of a ministry at the Parx Casino and racetrack in Bensalem.  Each week different churches came and helped host a chapel service and dinner for the “backstretch” workers—not the jockeys who you see on race day, but everybody else: the stable hands, groomers, and trainers who work with the horses day in and day out.  Many of them were from outside the US, working here and sending money back home to support their families, and Spanish was their native language.  

I started practicing a few Spanish phrases with them at the dinners, and one night I got brave and introduced myself to the whole group at chapel.  “Buenos noches” I said.   They said, “Buenos noches” back.  Good evening.  Then I said, “Me llamo Dorry.”  Or at least that’s what I should have said.  I knew I goofed something up because right away there were stifled snickers and laughs. Turns out, instead of saying, “Me llamo Dorry” which means, I call myself Dorry, I said, “Me amo Dorry”, which means, I love myself!  No wonder they were laughing.  

To the untrained year, me amo and me llamo sound pretty close, but that one little sound, the “y”, makes all the difference! So I am completely wowed when I read in our scripture lesson today that the first Christians were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit enabled them to speak.  And they obviously spoke fluently, because people responded and, on the spot, became Christians!  Can you imagine, suddenly being able to fluently speak a different language?  Not just a few phrases and words here and there, but enough to be able to talk about and answer questions about your faith?

You may remember a few weeks ago when I brought in this Easter book written in Spanish.  It’s for kids—but it’s not an easy read!  First I asked my friend Debbie to read it with me.  She teaches high school Spanish and knew most of the words, but not all.  Then I had my daughter read it.  She was stumped by a few of the words, too.  Then I had my son’s girlfriend Jenn read it to me.  Spanish is her family’s primary language, which was obvious in how quickly she read the book compared to Deb and Adrienne.  But it made me feel a little better when she had to call her mom about a couple words!  A kids’ book about Easter—and three fluent adults had found it challenging.  

I’ll tell you what.  I think we underestimate what happened on Pentecost.   We read this scripture passage every year, but how often do we stop to consider just how amazing that day was?  That anyone could ever tell the story of Jesus in a different language from their own, that is a huge accomplishment, one that would take many months or years of study. But to be able to relate the story of Jesus in a different language spontaneously—that is a huge miracle!  

Let’s be sure to take note:  telling the gospel story in a multitude of languages is the very first miracle of the Church.  Pentecost is often called the birthday of the Christian church.  It was the first time the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was publicly proclaimed by people who witnessed it firsthand.  Three thousand people heard the story and became believers on the spot. They repented of their sins, were baptized, and from there, the Church grew and struggled and grew some more.  We are going to read all about the early Church’s growth and struggles this summer as we study the book of Acts.  But for today, let’s let this sink in: the very first miracle of the Christian church was to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in foreign languages.

That first miracle of the Church lines up perfectly with Christ’s commission to the Church at the end of the gospel of Matthew (28:19-20).  Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach my gospel to every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Our job is to replicate the day of Pentecost:  to go wherever people are gathered, and speak to them using words they will understand, so that they may believe and be baptized and learn how to be disciples.  

Since Day One, literally, the Church has been trying to translate the story of Jesus into every language in the world.  You’d think, in 2,000 years, that job would be finished by now.  But according to the American Bible Society, whose headquarters, incidentally, are right here in Philadelphia, at least some portion of the Bible has been translated into only 3,500 languages.  That sounds like a lot, right?  But there are 6,901 languages in the world used as primary first languages.  That means Bible translators still have a lot of work to do!  And, what’s more, researchers believe that about 2/3 of the world’s population are oral communicators—that is, they prefer non-literate means of learning.  As important as translating the Bible is, it’s not enough. Many people will never hear the message of Jesus by reading it for themselves.  They will need someone to tell is to them.  They will need someone to speak it to them in a language they can understand.

Seems to me, the job of “translating” the gospel story is work that will never get done.  We all get the privilege of being part of the Pentecost miracle!   We have Sunday school, so children can hear about God in their own language—not a foreign language, but in words and activities that speak to them.  That’s why we have Vacation Bible school, too.  So kids can come and hear about God’s love, and it gets reinforced with games and crafts and songs, and hopefully foster a lifelong connection to God.  We are blessed to have so many wonderful volunteers, to offer these ministries.

Because the world is always changing, our methods of sharing the gospel must always be changing. This year we are offering Vacation Bible school at night.  There are two main reasons for this change, one of which is that we have more volunteers available at night.  But the second reason is to try to help Vacation Bible school achieve its ultimate goal.  We do not offer VBS just to give kids a fun week and a few Bible lessons, although both those things are good.  We offer it to help children make a lifelong connection to God.  In recent years, our Vacation Bible school has had plenty of children attending for the week—but no families returning to the church afterwards. This year the number of children enrolled is less than half what we’ve had in the past.  But we are going to close the week with a mini worship-service in fellowship hall, to try to give the families a taste of what our 9:45 service is like.  We are hoping they will see, hey, this is pretty neat, and come back!

Of course, we have no idea if it will work. But I hope you are proud of your church for trying something new in an effort to be faithful to our calling.  This goal, communicating the gospel in ways that people understand and that will lead to a lifetime of discipleship—in other words, trying to fulfill Christ’s commission to us—is why our church has a Facebook page, and an Instagram account, and a Twitter feed.  How many of you use Twitter?  Instagram?  Facebook? For many of us, social media is a language we do not understand at all!  But among millennials—that is, people who are 23 to 38 years old, 90% of them use social media on any given day.  That means, if we want to reach younger people, we have to learn to use their language. We are blessed that our lay leader, Sabrina, is helping us in this area.

Wanting to connect to new people is also the reason why we are launching a new website.  More and more, people want to test drive everything before they go in person.  They look to the internet and want to see the entire menu posted before they will try a new restaurant.  They watch trailers online of new movies before deciding whether to buy tickets.  The same is true before they will visit a new church.  They want an anonymous way to see what the place is all about before setting foot inside.  

You may have noticed this trend in yourself and a change in your own shopping habits.  The difference with younger people, though, is they are almost always doing this research on their phones.  Our old website has been and continues to be maintained faithfully by a special volunteer. We are so blessed by her dedication! But the old website company was getting harder to work with, and the platform was not phone friendly.  So, in an effort to reach people in the language they understand and use all the time for everything else, we changed our website so it would connect well with people who are looking on their phones.

Again, I hope you are proud of your church for trying something new in an effort to be faithful to our calling.  Sometimes faithfulness means standing behind the old, but often faithfulness means courageously stepping in to the new. After our denomination’s special general conference in February, several people approached me about forming a Reconciling Team here at Lima.  I think everyone is a little nervous about this work.  But we are trying this new thing in an effort to be faithful.  We have church members, family members, and neighbors who need to know that Lima Church is indeed a safe place for all.  Our old ways of doing things have not communicated that message in a language everyone can truly understand.  So now we are searching for new words, new methods, of discerning our hearts and communicating that to the world.  

To do that, we need to expand our vocabulary. That is why we are having a workshop on June 18th on human sexuality.  You may think you know all there is to know about s-e-x, but none of us knows all there is to know on any subject, let alone something as mysterious as sex.  Did you know that our local public library has, I believe it’s one Friday a month, a drag queen come in and read books to children on diversity, acceptance, creativity and love?  Yes, I said drag queen.  If you don’t know what that is, or why one would come to the library and read to kids—well, that is why we are having the workshop on June 18th.  There is a lot happening that we simply never talk about in church, and there is no way we can tell the gospel story in words others can understand if we don’t know something about the words and ideas they live with every day.

Wanting to share the gospel in ways people can understand is at the heart of everything we do here at Lima.  We know that the Spirit is still empowering believers to speak in new ways.  But unlike that first Pentecost, we don’t get spontaneous fluency.  We have to work at it. Any time we learn a new language, we can expect to make mistakes.  We can expect to mis-speak.  We can expect some blunders.  We will say “me amo” instead of “me llamo.”  When things like that happen, we have the opportunity to humble ourselves and wash the feet of our sisters and brothers.  We get to practice using the language of grace with each other.  We may or may not be “successful” from an earthly standpoint. There is no guarantee we will reach and foster long-term connections with new people.  But by trying, we will be found faithful!  Our job is to do our best, and trust God with the rest.  

You don’t have to tell me that the world is changing fast, maybe even too fast.  It would be nice if church were the one place we could count on to be the same. That isn’t possible, because the Church is a living organism.  It is called together and sustained by the Living Spirit of God.  And that Spirit of God is calling us to change and grow and learn. The Living Spirit of God is here right now, expanding our souls, and at the same time, calling us to let go…all so that others may come to know Christ, just as have had the awesome privilege of coming to know Christ.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

You Can’t Be a Disciple Without the Divine

Easter Season Series on Discipleship Week 5

Acts 1:1-14

June 2, 2019  Ascension Sunday

            Today we begin our series on the book of Acts. The first thing we need to establish is that the book of Acts was written by Luke.  He wrote it as a sequel to the gospel of Luke and addressed it to an unknown recipient, Theophilus, which literally means lover of God.  That’s us!  

Luke begins the book of Acts with a little review of the Ascension, which he also wrote about in his gospel.  The Ascension is one of those lesser known holidays on the liturgical calendar.  It took place forty days after Easter, which would have been this past Thursday. Rather than call everyone back to church on Thursday night, most Christian churches today just celebrate the Ascension on the closest Sunday following, which is today.  Happy Ascension Sunday!

The Ascension is a mysterious event.  Luke tells us in his gospel that, forty days after Easter, after having appeared to his disciples multiple times, Jesus appeared to them one last time.  He led them out to Bethany, lifted up his hands and blessed them, and was taken into heaven.  The disciples were filled with awe and worshipped their risen and ascended Lord. Then they obeyed Jesus’ instructions and went back to Jerusalem, filled with joy.  They stayed continually at the temple, praising God.

I have to give the disciples a lot of credit for that, being able to be so happy.  We could certainly understand if, instead of being happy and filled with joy, they felt sad or confused, or just plain tired.  It has been quite a roller coaster ride for the disciples!  For three years they traveled with Jesus, listening to him teach the crowds, watching him challenge the authorities, and witnessing many miracles.   He predicted his death and resurrection several times, but when it happened, they weren’t ready.  Over the last few weeks we have been talking about his resurrection appearances and how the disciples used the time after Easter Sunday to reflect on their experiences and solidify their faith.  Just about when they were probably getting used to a new normal—the resurrected Jesus—he leaves them!

Something similar is happening all around the country these days, as parents of high school seniors attend graduation ceremonies. “Commencement” we call it, marking the end of K-12 education, yes, but the beginning, the commencing of a new phase of life.  Football stadiums and auditoriums will be filled with happy parents and even happier students.  There will be great joy!  But after the parties end, there will be a range of emotions during a transition time. Parents and young adults will have to figure out new ways of relating and staying connected to one another.  

This figuring out how to stay connected is a top priority for everyone who follows Jesus. It requires soul tending:  paying attention to that special invisible body part that all of us have.  Luke writes in his gospel that the disciples returned to Jerusalem after the ascension with “great joy”, and that they stayed continually at the temple praising God. In Acts he tells us that the followers of Jesus—the eleven remaining disciples plus about one hundred others—joined together constantly in prayer.  The gospel of Luke focuses on the joy of celebration; the book of Acts focuses on the business of transition.  The gospel of Luke emphasizes praise; the book of Acts emphasizes prayer.  Jesus has promised the disciples they would be his witnesses of the gospel in all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.  But before they can go out and do any of that, they need to stay home and wait.

But they didn’t wait in a passive way.  They waited in an active way.  They met together.  They worshipped.  They prayed. They continued to reflect on all Jesus had taught them and kept their hearts open so they could receive the gift Jesus had for them next.  They spent time caring for their souls.

Have you ever felt Jesus telling you to wait? To stand still, stay close to him, and wait?  Last week we talked about Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, and how we are all called to wash each other’s feet.  We said that being a servant is at the heart of being a disciple.

But we are not designed to serve 24/7.  Mary and Martha were both excited to have Jesus as a guest in their home.  Martha showed that excitement by cooking and cleaning and being the hostess with the most-est, while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to his teaching.  Serving is important, Jesus said.  But so is sitting still and listening!  

While pastoring at my first church, the local clergy got to talking about this paradox at one of our ministerium meetings.  Being a pastor involves a lot of serving, going out and doing for God, which is exciting—but also tiring.  No one can do all that serving without taking time for prayer and study and being still.  I was having a hard time finding a balance.

That’s when I heard about do-be-do-be-do rhythm of spirituality.  Do-be-do-be-do sounds like a song from Frank Sinatra, but it’s also a great way to think about our faith.  God calls us to DO.  There is absolutely no doubt about that.  To go, feed, clothe, serve, etc.  But God also calls us to BE.  To stop, and wait, and listen.

This do-be-do-be-do rhythm is so important to God, God even made it one of the Ten Commandments.  Six days we are to work; the seventh day is for rest.  Stop.  Listen. Reconnect.  Experience recreation, re-creation.  We are designed and commanded to be do-be-do-be-do people!  Without taking time to BE, we can’t expect to be able to DO those things God most wants us to do.

This rhythm is important for just not just as individuals, but as a church.  We gather for worship on Sundays as an expression of our desire to BE.  We come in order to get reconnected to God, to be reminded of who we are, to get rested up and equipped so that we can then got out and DO.  That is our weekly pattern.  But there is also a yearly pattern.  We know the season of Lent is a time to pull inward, and for us to pay special attention to our souls and our connection to God. In general, summer is another season of re-creation.  Often it means lighter schedules, going on a vacation, or enjoying good weather.  All things to help us BE, to help us reconnect to God and be reminded of, and transformed into, who God wants us to be.

This summer Lima Church will once again enter into a sort of Sabbath rhythm:  no choir rehearsal, no adult Tuesday night Bible study, fewer weekly meetings.  We do this every year.  But this year, we are also going to try, for the month of July, just having one service each Sunday morning at 10 am.  Church Council voted to do this for several reasons.  Because we normally have three morning worship services, Lima Church people don’t all know each other.  Meeting together for a month will hopefully help us connect with people who usually worship at different times.  Our praise band is all volunteer except for the director, Edda.  Only having one service in July will give them all a much-deserved month off.  But since music is so important to this church, one service allows us to bring in special guests each week to bless us with their unique witness.

The second thing I want to highlight is the Reconciling Ministry team.  You may have heard me mention that there is a group of about 20 people meeting every two weeks, with the focus of helping the Lima Church adopt a statement of inclusion and affirmation of people with differing sexual orientations.  We are already “welcoming”.  But there is a great deal of energy in our congregation around wanting to make it clear where we as a congregation stand.  

The Reconciling Team decided to spend the summer, devoting our time to prayer and study.  Everyone is welcome to attend the meetings.  We are using curriculum that centers on the idea of being bridge-builders, how to connect the church to the world, and how to connect people of various opinions in the church to each other through our mutual connection to God.  We are also learning more about human sexuality in general, and on Tuesday, June 18th, we are having a workshop presented by a Penn State Brandywine instructor.  We are meeting with a particular actionable goal in mind.  But for the summer, we are devoting ourselves to prayer and study, awaiting further instructions from the Lord.

This Do-Be-Do-Be-Do rhythm gets played out in many ways in us and our church, and it is a huge part of all church tradition. This week I read about an ancient church father, Anthony of Egypt, who lived from 251 to 356, that’s right almost 106 years.  He was raised in a wealthy Christian family but as a young man felt God speaking directly to his heart, telling him to see his possessions and give the money to the poor. So he did.  He embarked on a life of solitude in the Egyptian desert, not just for a few days or weeks away, but he lived there for 20 years!  “He renounced all his possessions to learn detachment; he renounced speech in order to learn compassion; and he renounced activity in order to learn prayer.”  (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Daily Office, p. 46)  When Anthony emerged from his solitude, he was transformed.  People remarked that he was whole in body, mind, and soul.  God used him to cast out demons, care for prisoners, and even provide spiritual counsel to Emperor Constantine!  Anthony emerged from his time of solitude ready and able to build bridges with everyone in his midst.

After the Ascension, the disciples waited ten days in Jerusalem before Pentecost, and they used that time well.  They emerged from that time ready to be witnesses for Christ.  Which meant that, for all but one of them, they emerged ready to be martyrs for Christ. John lived to be an old man, but he spent the last part of his life in exile on the island of Patmos, as punishment for being a Christian.  All of the other disciples, church tradition tell us, were killed for their faith. The Greek word for witness and martyr are one and the same.  

Where do you see yourself in the rhythm of discipleship?  Are you getting the do-be-do-be-do balance just right?  We can’t be effective witnesses without attending to our own souls. We can’t be disciples without the Divine.  We are all called to be servants.  But there are times when God calls us to stop and wait, to listen for further instructions, to be reminded of who we are.  How will you commit to caring for your soul this summer?  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Be A Bucket Filler

Easter Season Series on Discipleship Week 4

John 13:1-17

May 26, 2019

            During baseball season, every time I turn on the television, it’s always on Sports Philadelphia (formerly Comcast Sportsnet), because while I was upstairs the night before getting ready for bed, Phil took a few minutes to listen to the Phillies post game show.  What amazes me is, the next day when I turn on the tv at lunch time or in the late afternoon, people are still talking about the game!  And, having been married to Phil for almost 31 years now, I know that when something really unusual happens, baseball fans still talk about it, even years and decades later!  

So I think it’s a reasonable guess that in between Easter and Pentecost, the disciples spent a lot of time talking about their many experiences with Jesus.  My guess is they rehashed and analyzed and replayed every moment with him.  They sure did see him do some unusual things! He walked on water.  He fed thousands of people with tiny amounts of food. He healed the sick, cured the blind. Even raised the dead.  These events are so unusual, we are still talking about them!

But what about the things they saw Jesus do on his last night on earth?  Do you think they spent much time talking about how, during the Passover seder, he took the bread and the cup, and imparted new meaning to these symbols?  I bet they did talk about that, because we are still talking about that!  But what about how, during that same dinner, Jesus took the role of a servant, and washed the disciples’ feet?  It was the custom in Jesus’ day for a servant to wash the feet of dinner guests, because the roads were dusty and dirty, and the typical foot covering of the time was a leather sole attached to the feet with simple straps.  They provided protection for the bottom of the feet from hot or pointy.  But they did not keep out the dirt!

Since Jesus and his disciples did not have any servants, when they gathered for the Passover meal, they followed the custom of eating without footwashing.  It never occurred to them to wash each other’s feet, because none of them were “servants”. But servanthood is at the heart of what it means to be a disciple.

Jesus opened his public ministry by telling everyone that he had come to bring good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19).  All of those things sound pretty important, things only a powerful and noble person could accomplish.  But Jesus’ power and nobility were not like that of other kings. Jesus’ power and nobility came from his willingness to serve, to serve even those who were dead set against him, to serve even those who would desert him and disappoint him and had no real way of paying him back.  Jesus closes his ministry by showing us a different king of power:  the power of servanthood.

As he washed their feet, at least one disciple seriously questioned Jesus’ actions.  Peter asked him, Jesus, what on earth are you doing?  Jesus said, “You do not understand now what I am doing, but you will understand later.”  He went on to say, “ I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another's feet. 15 I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.”  I wonder if, at every meal the disciples shared between Easter and Pentecost, if they thought about Jesus washing their feet, and if they in fact performed that task for each other.  As far as I know there’s no account of that in scripture.  Perhaps the disciples realized Jesus gave those instructions to them, not to be taken literally, but as a model for how they were to live in the future.

I have been part of foot-washing services on Maundy Thursday at several churches now, and, this still amazes me, but hardly anyone likes it.  Everyone seems to agree that the meaning is powerful, but the execution is just kind of weird.  This is especially true when we’re dressed up, like we usually are for church.  Most Christians I know, agree that footwashing is very meaningful in theory, but it is complicated in practice!  So we go beyond the literal interpretation.  Just like the original disciples, we are left to figure out what Jesus meant when he said we would understand later.  What are we supposed to learn from this remarkable, “play at the plate” if you will?

One of my favorite authors, Joan Chittister, tells this story:

Once upon a time some disciples begged their old and ailing master not to die. “But if I do not go, how will you ever see?”, the master said to them.  

“But what can we possibly see with you gone?”, they insisted.

With a twinkle in his eye, the holy one answered, “All I ever did in my entire life was to sit on the riverbank handing out river water.  After I’m gone, I trust that you will notice the river.”

Truly great teachers don’t just give their students lessons while they are living.  Truly great teachers plant within us lessons we can only learn after we are no longer together.  When we reflect on Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, and then going on to serve them in an even more sacrificial and humbling way by going to the cross, we realize we are in the presence of a lesson, a teacher, than cannot be grasped all at once. We find ourselves at the river of life.

For three years, the disciples worked and lived with Jesus.  Any information they needed, and guidance or help they wanted, they just held out their cups, and Jesus filled them.  What an adjustment it must have been for the disciples, to have to make decisions and judgment calls without Jesus right there to guide them anymore.  They knew he was alive, they knew he would always be with them in a mystical sense, but they could no longer go to their teacher with every little thing and get an answer on the spot.  They would need to rely on their own experiences, their own judgment, and most importantly, their own spirituality now.  No longer able to touch and see and feel Jesus with their physical senses, they would have to develop the same skills required of us, and learn how to connect to Jesus using their souls.

You know, for all the times we mention the word “soul” in church, I am not sure we do a very good job of defining it, let alone teaching about how to care for it and utilize it.  It always seemed to me that knowing about souls was an innate ability you either had or you didn’t have.  Like being athletic, or artistic, some people are just spiritual.  At least that’s what I thought.  I remember in third grade my parents went out somewhere, and they asked a 12th grade girl who rode my school bus to babysit.  Rita and her family went to the Baptist church in town, which meant they went to church on Sunday mornings AND Wednesday nights. I thought that meant Rita knew all there is to know about God.  While she was babysitting me, I asked her all my questions about souls.  Does everyone have a soul?  Where is it?  What does it do?  How do I know if my soul is okay?  Poor Rita. I hope my parents paid her extra for having to deal with my questions!

I don’t remember anything Rita said, but I do remember has being patient and kind, which is probably all the evidence needed to conclude that Rita had a pretty good understanding of souls!  I had picked a good person to ask.  But many years would pass before I felt like I was starting to understand what having a soul is all about.  I was cleaning the bathtub the way my mom taught me to—with Comet and scrub brush, and then wiping it down with a sponge.  Since I never liked cleaning the bathtub, it had been a long time since I used the sponge, and it was totally dried out.  Dried out sponges are not good for wiping!  If you want the sponge to absorb anything, it has to already be wet.  Seems counter-intuitive, doesn’t it?  But that’s the way sponges work.

And I think that is the way souls work.  Every person has a soul and has the capacity to be “spiritual”.  But dried out souls cannot absorb God.  Our souls are a body part we cannot see, that have receptors.  Like our tongues have taste buds, and our hands have nerve endings, souls have God receptors.  Special sensory equipment to help us detect and absorb God’s presence and action in our lives.  We are born with our souls pre-moistened.  At baptism they get moistened some more.  But if we do not engage in the practices that keep our souls supple, we gradually lose our ability to connect to the good things God has for us.

I think that is part of why Jesus told his disciples to become foot washers.  Kneeling down to wash someone else’s feet is good for the soul!  It requires flexibility, it requires getting wet.  It squeezes the sponges of our souls and allows us to absorb God’s presence.  It reminds us of our baptism, and fills us with living water, even as we share that water with someone else.

Several months ago one of our church members gave me this children’s book, “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud. The book is intended for use in schools, so it’s not explicitly Christian.  But I think it captures some of what we’re talking about today.  

The thesis of the book is that everyone has a bucket—an invisible repository for love and good feelings.  We might call this invisible body part our souls.  The book calls it a bucket.  When people treat others will kindness and respect, we call them “bucket fillers”.  The book teaches children that even they can be bucket fillers when they express caring. And, by filling other people’s buckets, you fill your own, too!  Bucket filling makes everyone feel good.

The converse is also true.  When we’re unkind and disrespectful, that’s called bucket dipping.  Sometimes we think being mean will take good things from the other person’s bucket and fill up our own, but bucket dipping never fills up our own buckets.  Bucket dipping in the end always makes everyone feel bad.  It could be that the person who is hardest to love, the person who we see doing a lot of bucket dipping and mean stuff, is the person most in need of love.

Jesus lowered himself and embraced the dirtiest, grimiest, dung covered parts of the disciples’ bodies, and he asks us to follow his example.  He had compassion on the empty buckets in his midst, and did what he could to fill them with love.  What he did for us, we can do for each other!  “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Amen.  May it be so.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Communion Without Comparison

Easter Season Series on Discipleship Week 3

John 21:18-24

May 19, 2019

            We’ve been talking the last two weeks about Peter, but I want to start out by asking you a question about John.  What do you make of John calling himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved”???  Six times in the book of John the gospel writer refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loves, but this term isn’t used in any of the other gospels at all.  When John calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved”, or “the beloved disciple”, I’m sure John doesn’t mean that Jesus didn’t love the other disciples.  But we get the sense reading John’s gospel that he and Jesus had a special bond.  

I wonder then, how it felt for John to have Jesus pay such special attention to Peter on the beach after the amazing catch of 153 fish and having breakfast together.  Why was Peter being singled out for commissioning?  Peter had denied knowing Jesus on the night Jesus was arrested.  John had never denied Jesus.  Peter wasn’t there at Golgotha when Jesus was crucified.  The only male disciple present was John. John was the one whom Jesus picked to be his mother’s replacement son.  It was John who took Mary into his home and took care of her.  John was the beloved disciple!  But it wasn’t John who was specifically called to lead the Church.  That job would go to Simon Peter. He would be the rock upon which the Christian church would be built.

If John had any questions about whether Peter was deserving of all this, hearing that Peter would die for his faith probably calmed him down.  Jesus’ words implied that John would at least get to live a long time—which led to rumors that John would not die until Christ came back, which the early church expected to happen relatively soon.  As my friend Walter says, “Everyone gets a different deal.”  Some people get to live long, healthy lives; some people’s lives end many years too soon.  

Everyone gets a different deal.  Some people are called to serve as clergy; some as laity. Some are called to serve nearby; some are called to go abroad.   Peter was called to be a shepherd; John was called to be an evangelist and writer.  We each have a unique calling and role in the body.  The question, though, for all of us is:  do we have what it takes to fulfill our individual callings? Do we have what it takes to obey Jesus’ command to follow him every single day of our lives, no matter how long or short they may be?  Do we have what it takes, in the words of Rocky, to “go the distance?”

I suppose in some ways that question doesn’t matter at all.  We walk by faith, not by sight, taking one faithful step at a time.  If we concentrate on following Jesus one step at a time, we don’t have to worry at all about whether or not we have what it takes to go the distance, to be faithful to the end.  All we need is enough energy, courage and commitment to follow one step at a time.  Perhaps that is why this passage is not included in the Revised Common Lectionary, which is the 3-year cycle of scripture lessons endorsed by most Protestant churches in the English-speaking world.  For most people in English speaking countries, there is little worry about persecution, let alone martyrdom.  We might not get to live to be a hundred, but it is very unlikely we will die because of our faith in Jesus.

Not so, though, for people in the early church. Jesus predicted that Peter would die because of his faith.  Jesus said he would be carried off to a place not of his own choosing, which most interpreters think was an indication that Peter would be crucified.  In fact, we have non-scriptural accounts that Peter was indeed crucified, in or around the year 64, in Rome by the crazed Emporer Nero. There had been a great fire in Rome, which Nero blamed on the Christians, and in retaliation, he had them killed in all sorts of bizarre and brutal ways.  There is evidence that Peter was crucified upside-down, perhaps because he did not count himself worthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.  

In our scripture lesson today, Peter hears Jesus’ prediction, that he will be carried to his death by his enemies—and right after that, Jesus says, “Follow me.”  I am amazed at Peter’s response.  He doesn’t boast about being faithful like he did when Jesus predicted his own death. He also doesn’t question whether or not he will be able to withstand the pressure.  Perhaps because Jesus has restored and redeemed him, Peter no longer questions his ability to by loyal.  He knows he will be, in the words of the old hymn, truehearted, wholehearted, faithful and loyal.  What he does wonder about, though, is what will happen to John.  He does not say, “Lord, are you crazy, telling me to follow you, right after telling me I am going to die if I do what you say?  I can’t do that!”  Instead, Peter wants to know what is going to happen to John.  Is the disciple “whom Jesus loved” going to die for his faith, too?

Jesus’ answer to that question is, basically, Peter, it’s none of your business what happens to John.  In other words, “Mind your own beeswax.”  Or as my mother would say, “You just worry about yourself.” But isn’t it just like us to wonder and compare?  If we’re going to get something good, we’d like whatever we get to be better than whatever everyone else gets.  And if we’re going to get something bad, we don’t want to be the only one suffering. Misery loves company!

But again, as my friend Walter says, “Everyone gets a different deal.”  The number of days allotted to us, the health with which we get to enjoy those days, the circumstances of our lives—much of that is out of our control, and varies widely from place to place and person to person.  Instead of worrying about what someone else has or doesn’t have, or more accurately, what we have relative to what others have or don’t have, our primary concern should be on our own righteousness.  Our task is to stay true to what Howard Thurman calls the genuine within ourselves.  To walk by faith, the path that Jesus lays for us individually, in peace and joy and contentment.  For Peter, that meant martyrdom. For John, that meant living a long, long time and getting to write a gospel about his experiences.

Can you imagine being Peter, and hearing that you are going to be crucified, and deciding to follow Jesus anyway?  As I was thinking about that this week, I remembered something about my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Arnold.  One day he wore a short sleeve shirt and I noticed a tattoo on his upper arm.  I asked him about it at recess, and he explained that it was a tattoo of the emblem for being a paratrooper.  I didn’t know what a paratrooper was and couldn’t believe it when he told me he jumped out of perfectly good airplanes behind enemy lines in Vietnam.  “Weren’t you scared?” I asked.  He said he was, but he was willing to do it because it was a cause he believed in.  My guess is Peter was scared, too.  But he was willing to follow Jesus because the gospel was a mission he believed in.

Years later, I met another man who was a paratrooper in Vietnam.  He too enlisted because the mission was important to him.  What he didn’t anticipate was how upset it would make his mom.  When he came home from the recruiter, he thought she’d be proud.  Instead, she was so angry she didn’t talk to him for three weeks.  She was afraid for him and herself.  We can certainly see how that would be.  I wonder how Mrs. Simon Peter reacted to the news that her husband was going to follow Jesus even though it was not going to end well.  

If we could have our druthers, I think all of us would say that long life is important.  Physical health is important.  Relationships are important.  But to disciples, nothing is as important as the mission that Christ calls us to.  Nothing is as important to disciples as deepening their relationship with Jesus so we can faithfully follow where he leads.  That’s part of the reason Jesus told Peter not to worry about what was going to happen to John.  It sounds harsh to hear Jesus say, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?  You must follow me.”  But that is the essence of discipleship:  orbiting our lives around Jesus, prioritizing our relationship with him, and following no matter what the cost.

This is not new information for any of us. But I wanted to talk about it today because all of us are prone to straying off course, and collectively, churches are very prone to straying off course.  If we are not careful, churches allow their lives to orbit around what the traditions they have long held dear, or what programs they offer, or even around the pastor.  I don’t think anyone ever means for this to happen.  It’s just easier to organize ourselves around something we can see rather than the Jesus whose presence and leading is not always easy to discern.  But Jesus never told any of us to follow John Wesley, or to follow our Sunday school teacher, or to follow a particular denomination or theologian.  We are all called to follow Jesus Christ.  We are all called to follow, knowing there are special spiritual blessings that come with faithfulness—but also knowing there are sacrifices, too.  We follow because we believe in the mission. That’s what makes us Christians, little Christs.

Last week we talked about being disciples whose lives match with the meaning of our name.  Peter’s name in Greek literally means little rock.  Since we are all spiritual descendants of Peter, we are all called to feed God’s sheep and tend God’s flock.  We are all called to be servants, building blocks, in the kingdom of God.  But we are also spiritual descendants of John. Do you think we too can call ourselves “the disciples whom Jesus loves”?  Are we people who are cultivating a special bond with Christ?  You know, it may very well be that there were other disciples who thought they were special to Jesus, too.  What difference would it make in your life if you claimed the name John, and committed yourself to following Jesus because Jesus loves you?  What would you do with the power that comes from knowing you are beloved?

This week I talked with a clergy colleague who has been serving a small church in Springfield in her retirement.  A few weeks ago, that small church, CC Hancock, closed.  I should have done this weeks ago, but this week I emailed her to see if there was a way Lima could provide a special welcome to the displaced members of her church. She said they had decided to come as a group to Lima today.  There might be a few at the 9:45 service but she thought mostly they would come at 11.

I don’t know how many of you have ever been through it, but it is very painful when your church closes.  It takes a lot of courage to start looking for a new church. It takes knowing you are beloved. Knowing you are the disciple Jesus loves, and knowing that you having a spiritual home really matters to Jesus.  It takes trust.  It takes believing in the mission.  The Hancock folks are coming to Lima to see what we have to offer to them.  But I think as they come, they are offering something to us.  They are giving us a witness, a living example of people who, one step at a time, are trying to follow Christ—even though it’s hard, even though there’s loss, even though there’s pain along the journey.

The apostle Paul wrote, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”  We don’t know where that journey will take us.  Our eyes of faith can usually only see Jesus leading one step at a time. But with each faithful step we are putting ourselves on track to go the distance.  Everyone gets a different deal, but we don’t walk by fate.  When we believe in the mission, and know ourselves to be beloved, we can walk by faith our unique callings as disciples, all to the glory of God.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Restores My Life

Easter Season Series on Discipleship Week 2

John 21:15-19

May 12, 2019

            On Friday we went upstate to see my mom for Mother’s Day.  On the way, we saw a lot of election signs as Pennsylvania gets ready for primary elections on May 21st.  In Wysox Township, Bradford County, we saw signs for, I’m not kidding, a man named Bill Them.  I assumed he was running for tax collector, but it turns out he’s running for Wysox Township Supervisor.

Too bad.  I always like it when names line up with people’s professions.  We have a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church named Larry Goodpaster.  I wonder if he knew his whole life he was called to be a minister?  Sometimes you hear about a chef whose last name is Cook, or an orthopedic surgeon whose last name is Limb.  Psychologists call this “nominative determinism”, the idea that your name would somehow correlate to your career.  Apparently there are way more dentists named Dennis, statistically, than dentists with any other name.  What do you think?  Have you ever met someone whose name lines up with what they do and who they are?

I thought we would take a look at the name Peter today.  I imagine when Peter was born, his parents took great care in naming him something that would suit him well.   They chose the name Simon, the Greek form of the Hebrew name, Shim’on, which means, “he has heard.”  They raised their son in the faith.  By the time Simon met Jesus, he was a fisherman by trade, but he had heard all about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  He had heard about the promised Messiah.  When Simon first met Jesus, he had heard about Jesus from his brother Andrew. But he had not yet seen for himself. His name suited him well.

But at their first meeting, Jesus announced a name change.  “You are Simon son of John.  You will be called Cephus.”  Just like that, Jesus announced a change in this young man’s identity. Simon would be called Cephas, which is Aramaic for rock.  Translated into Greek, Cephas became Petros---not Petra, the rock, which is Jesus, but Petros, small rock or stone.  The Greek word Petros became Peter in English.  Simon “he has heard” son of John became “Cephas”—little rock, little brother and friend of Christ.

I imagine it took Simon Peter some time to get used to this new identity.  Good thing he had three years of traveling with Jesus, witnessing miracles, hearing sermons, and growing in his discipleship.  I hope he came to love his new name.  “Cephas.”  Petros. Peter.  Little stone.  Little Christ.  A name to be proud of!  It was Peter alone who risked getting out of the boat and, for a time, walked on water!  If that isn’t a wow, I don’t know what is.  It was Peter who was with Jesus and two other disciples at the transfiguration, and saw Jesus high and lifted up, full of God’s glory because Jesus is God.  It was Peter who was so empowered by all that he had seen and done, that he bragged that no matter what, he would never leave or forsake Jesus.

But then came that fateful night when Jesus was arrested.  The disciples were petrified.  They knew how drunk with power the Pharisees and Sadducees were.   They knew the brutality of the Romans.  They knew they were not safe!  Flight or fight kicked in.  Fighting would not work—even the best armies were no match for the Romans.  So they took flight.  They ran for their lives.  Even Cephas, Petros, Peter.  He forgot that he was Jesus’ little rock, that he was called to be a little Christ, and he hid himself.  He reverted back to being Simon, “he has heard”.  Standing around the fire, waiting for news about Jesus, he denied three times that he even knew Jesus.  Shame and cowardice hung like a heavy dark blanket over his soul.  

But we know that it is always sunrise somewhere, and on the third day, Peter’s world began to get brighter with the morning news of the Resurrection.  That night he saw for himself the risen Christ, when Jesus appeared in the room with the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.”  A week later, Jesus appeared again, and this time Thomas was there to see it, too.  Many scholars believe that should be the end of the gospel of John, and that chapter 21 was added by a later writer.  All we know for sure is that we have this account from the 21st chapter of John, of Jesus appearing to the disciples sometime after the first two appearances. We started working with this story last week, reading about how the disciples had been fishing all night in the Sea of Tiberius, without catching anything.  A man on the shore told them to cast their nets to the right side, and they immediately caught 153 large fish.  We talked about how Peter didn’t wait for the boat to get to shore, he enthusiastically jumped in the water, and swam to greet his Lord.  We can imagine how bright the world must have seemed to Simon Peter while he ate the meal that Jesus himself provided.

But there’s more to the story! Things get even better for Peter.  He not only gets fed and cared for by Jesus—he gets commissioned to get back to work for Jesus.  There’s nothing wrong with being a fisherman.  But Jesus has more for Peter to do than just fish for fish.  He wants him to fish for people.  Jesus wants Peter to feed his lambs and care for his flock.  Again, he calls for a change in Simon Peter’s identity.  Jesus “reinstates” Peter.  He isn’t supposed to go back to being the fisherman, Shim’on “he has heard.”  He is to be Peter, little rock, little Christ, a shepherd of people.  He is to go from being a person who has heard about God to becoming a person to tells about God, and even more, reveals God.  

This is wonderful news for Peter, but again, I want to say, there’s more to the story!  Do you remember on Palm Sunday, how we talked about the Procession of the Lambs? Every year in Jerusalem, a few days before Passover, everyone would line up and watch as the shepherds drove the spring lambs down from the hills into the holy city.  Every family would need to pick out a lamb to take home, and take care of it for three days.  Then each family would appear before the priests with their lamb to get it slaughtered so they could celebrate the Passover seder.  The priest would ask the head of the household, “Do you love your lamb?   The head of the household had three tries to answer convincingly, and show that they really did love their lamb.  If they couldn’t answer with enough enthusiasm, their sacrifice would not be accepted, and they would not be able to participate in the festival.  

When Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me”, we can imagine that Peter was thinking about that important ritual of the Jewish faith.  Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Peter, do you love your lamb?  I think Jesus knew all along that he did love his lamb.  But I think Jesus asked him three times so Peter would understand clearly, you are now head of this household.  You are not just reinstated as a disciple, you are now a leader in this new family of faith I am building.  By saying yes three times, Peter claimed the authority that Jesus was placing upon him, to be a leader and spiritual father figure.  A few short weeks before all of this, Peter thought he was a failure for denying Jesus.  Now he was being raised up as head of the household of faith.  

This is what Jesus wants to do for every single one of us.  At our baptisms, we were given a new identity.  When received the family name “Christian”.  Little Christs.  Jesus called himself the rock, so it is fair to say we are all little rocks, bedrocks if you will, on which the kingdom of God is built.  We are all little rocks, building blocks if you will, by which the kingdom of God is built.  We are all Peter:  people who were given a name at birth by our parents, but who were given a different name by Jesus.  You are Dorry, daughter of Raymond and Rowena, Jesus said to me.  “Now you will be called Christian.”  Jesus offers us his name, knowing full well that we will deny him, desert him, betray him, forsake him, fail him.  He offers us his name knowing full well we will not love him or anyone else perfectly.  He offers us his name knowing full well we will revert back to our old identity.  But he offers us his name knowing he alone has the power to transform, and retransform, us into something new.

We are new creations, and we are all leaders. This fall when I met with the parents at our pre-school’s annual back to school night, I told them, “You are the most important pastor your children will ever know.”  Every single one of us, whether we are parents or not, are leaders, pastors, and shepherds.  We are all commanded to feed Jesus’ sheep.  Even if we have failed in the past.  Even if we have really messed up as a parent, or as a friend, or as a church member, or as a pastor.  Us messing up is not the end of the story!  Jesus does not want us to go back to our old lives.  He wants to help us see our shortcomings, he wants to help us learn and grow, he wants to reinstate us, restore us, and put us to work.  

I have said this before, but it would be so nice if we were all perfect, wouldn’t it?  Then none of us would ever have to feel the pain of being hurt by someone we love, and we would never feel the pain of hurting someone else.   When I read this story, I find it amazing to realize that Jesus was not insulated from the pain of human relationships.  Even Jesus was hurt by people who loved and cared about him.  He was hurt by people who shared his name.  And I think this is why the first thing Jesus does for Peter is provide him breakfast.  He provides him a meal of bread and fish that he didn’t have to catch or make himself. Jesus gives us grace.  Jesus wants to put us to work, yes—but we cannot share with others what we have not received for ourselves.  Whatever you need this morning—whether it’s help forgiving someone who has hurt you, or help receiving forgiveness because you’ve hurt someone else, Jesus is here right now offering it.  And by his power, we can receive it, because we are Christians.  It is our namesake to be people of grace.

When you were little, your mother and father prepared meals for you all the time.  But somewhere along the way you realized, hey, I can make meals for them, too! Maybe you made your mother breakfast in bed, or helped make her a cookout lunch—or these days, maybe you are the one who knows how to use the internet to make restaurant reservations!  Whatever your family traditions, we all made the transition from eating the meals provided by our parents, to being the ones to start providing the meals.  

This is the essence of the communion meal.  We are invited to enthusiastically receive a meal prepared for us by Christ himself.  But again I want to say, there’s more to the story!  We are then commanded to take what we have received and share it with others.  To use the grace, love, and passion for justice we have received from Christ, and share it with the world.  No two people will do that in the same way.  But we are all little Christs. Little Rocks.  I guess you could call us all “Rocky”!  Jesus is with us, asking, “Do you love me?”  I know that you do.  So let me ask you a question about nominative determinism: Will you claim the authority Christ gives you, as a little Christ, as a little rock and leader in building God’s kingdom, and use that authority to fight for good? Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

When God’s Will Includes Sacrifice

Lent Week 6—Palm Sunday

Mark 11:1-11, Isaiah 53:4-12

April 14, 2019

           One of the things I have enjoyed about being a United Methodist pastor and itinerating from church to church is seeing the unique traditions at a variety of places. My second appointment was a small church in a pretty rural area, Rolling Hills UMC in Pipersville, which is north of Doylestown.  On Palm Sunday, their tradition was to invite Dolly the Donkey, who lived at a nearby farm, to come and lead a parade down the driveway into the sanctuary to start worship.  Even though I grew up in a dairy farming community, I had never had any up-close contact with a donkey before.  One of the things I liked about Dolly is that she was amazingly soft!  Her fur looks like it would be coarse and unpleasant to touch.  But it wasn’t.  Another thing I liked about her is the dark brown cross on her back.  Her coat is a light sandy brown, but down her spine and across her shoulder blades is a stripe of dark brown.  Turns out, this is very common in donkeys!  There are legends that donkeys developed this distinctive stripe after Jesus, but biologists think it was in place long before Jesus’ time. What an uncanny coincidence, that the animal used to bring Jesus into Jerusalem where he would die on a cross has a cross in its fur.

         But Jesus did not select the donkey because of the cross in its fur, or because its coat is soft and pleasing to touch.  I believe Jesus selected the donkey to fulfill Old Testament prophecy.  In Zechariah chapter 9, verse 9, the prophet wrote, “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!  Shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem!  See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  Jesus did not come in to Jerusalem on a stallion.  Jesus did not even ride on a mule like King David. Jesus came not on an equine of victory, but rather on a beast of burden, an animal of humility and service, not honor and splendor.  Jesus rides the donkey as if he were a living parable, teaching a lesson with every action and choice.

In our gospel reading, it seems as if the crowds caught on to at least part of the message Jesus was trying to send.  They recognized him as the holy one of God, as the messiah sent to save them.  They shouted, “Hosanna!  God saves us!”  They laid their coats in the road—giving Jesus the red-carpet treatment.  They waved palms and branches.  Jesus commanded their attention, he deliberately put himself in the spotlight, he accepted their praise and celebration of him.  But he came on a donkey, his first clue to let them know he wasn’t there to lead a military victory.  He had come to bring salvation by being a suffering servant, the sacrificial lamb of God.  

When we read the Palm Sunday story, it seems as if maybe all those people in Jerusalem just spontaneously lined up for Jesus. But it turns out, all those people were in Jerusalem in preparation for Passover, and the Palm Sunday parade was an annual event.  In Jesus’ day, every year on the 10th day of the month of Nisan in the Jewish calendar, there was something called the Procession of the Lambs.  Jews lined the streets every year to watch and cheer as sheep handlers would drive the young spring lambs from the fields around Bethlehem into the city of Jerusalem in preparation for Passover.  Every family would need a lamb for its Passover meal. In addition to that, one perfect lamb would be chosen to be the Paschal Lamb, the lamb slaughtered at the temple by the Jewish priests.  It was a little like a dog show, with everyone wondering which lamb would be chosen as best of show—the most perfect lamb to be their representative Passover lamb.

It is in this Procession of the Lambs that Jesus, the lamb of God, rode.  The Jewish people hailing him on Palm Sunday recognized him as their messiah, and they expected that Jesus would deliver them from the Romans.  They did not realize he had come to deliver from themselves. They expected Jesus to take charge, and overthrow the Romans, and be a King who had clout and power in an earthly kind of way.  But Mark tells us that after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he looked around the temple—and did nothing.  And for the next several days, Jesus did nothing of what they expected he would do. By the end of the week, the same people who had laid their cloaks in the streets for Jesus and shouted, “Hosanna!” had changed their tune.  If Jesus wasn’t going to be a military and political king, they wanted nothing to do with him. Their cries of “God saves” became cries of “Crucify Him”.  They could not understand a Messiah who had come to demonstrate his power through sacrifice.

Perhaps that is because sacrifice is not a concept that is easy to understand period.  But to those gathered for the Procession of the Lambs, sacrifice was very much a part of their religious practices.  Every family would need its own lamb for the Passover meal.  And it couldn’t be just any lamb.  You could not go buy it at Giant that morning and prepare it that afternoon.  It had to be a spotless lam, which means you had to select it while it is still alive. Then, you had to take the lamb home with you and live with it for four days.  All those people amassed on Palm Sunday, they were there to select a lamb to take home with them.  The priests required each family to live with their lamb, and care for it lovingly, and as you can imagine, grow attached to it, so that it would be a sacrifice from the heart.  No Jewish family would celebrate Passover, the observance of God’s deliverance, without an understanding of what it means to sacrifice something you love.

So on Palm Sunday, you picked your lamb, took it home, and for four days you dealt with your children asking, “Daddy, can we keep him?  He’s soooo cute!”  Then on Thursday, the whole household would go to the priest and present their lamb for sacrifice.  The priest asked the head of the household, “Do you love your lamb?”  If the priest detected any hesitance, any sense that you were just going through the motions and weren’t really invested, he would ask a second time, “Do you love your lamb?”  If you could not convince the priest in three tries that you really loved your lamb, your sacrifice would be rejected.  This was the ultimate humiliation—to be barred from observing Passover, the defining holy day of the Jewish faith.  Learning to give from the heart, to sacrifice something you loved, that was most important spiritual skill every Jew needed to develop.

I have been thinking about what it would be like to have to take the lamb home for four days, and then take it to be slaughtered.  And to do it year after year?  How do you explain that to your kids?  How do you eat that Passover meal with joy?  I don’t think I’ve ever eaten an animal I felt personally connected to!  But my dad did once.  He was born in 1931.  He was younger than his two brothers by 8 and 10 years, and I can imagine how tough it was for his parents, finding out they were going to have another baby in the midst of the Depression.  When my dad was 7 or 8, his dad won a contest at the oil refinery where he worked.  The prize was a live turkey, which he took home with him on the Friday before Thanksgiving.  They lived in a duplex in Elizabeth, New Jersey—not exactly farm country, right across the river from Manhattan.  They didn’t really have a yard, so my dad remembered the turkey tied up to the radiator in the dining room so it wouldn’t make a mess of the whole house.

Even though the turkey only lived with them for six days, and was from all accounts, a pretty annoying houseguest, on Thanksgiving morning, no one wanted to kill the turkey so my grandmother could cook it for dinner.  My Uncle Bob and my Uncle Harold were in high school, and neither of them had the stomach for it.  My dad was only in elementary school, so he was off the hook.  It’s unclear who finally took care of it—my grandfather or my grandmother.  Somehow the turkey that had spent almost a week tied to the radiator in the dining room ended up cooked to perfection on a platter on the dining room table.  His mom was a good cook!  But my dad said, it was not an enjoyable meal.  Everyone in his family felt bad eating the turkey, even though during the Depression they were thankful to have it.  It was a sacrifice from the heart.

That is the same kind of sacrifice required of those families who were at the Palm Sunday Procession of the Lambs.  They took their lamb home, a lamb much softer than Dolly the Donkey, much cuter, much more vulnerable, and they let it into their hearts.  How could you not?  Then, they brought it back to the temple later in the week.  Family after family, the priests would inquire, “Do you love your lamb?”  If the family could demonstrate their love for the lamb, the lamb would be slaughtered, and they could take the animal home to prepare it for the Passover seder. After all the family lambs had been sacrificed, the priest then sacrificed the Paschal Lamb.  Jesus’ last words from the cross, “It is finished” paralleled the words spoken by the priest at the end of the Passover sacrifices, when the Paschal Lamb had finally been sacrificed.

Because Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, Christians do not have any animal sacrifice in our rituals.  Our focus has always been on accepting Christ’s sacrifice for us. We call that justification, lining ourselves up right with God.  But we are keenly aware during Holy Week that there is something more to the Christian life than that.  There’s sanctification!  Becoming Holy.  Not just accepting Christ, but working to become more like Christ.  Working and praying to be as faithful to God’s will--as obedient and willing to sacrifice from the heart-- as Jesus was.

Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Palm Sunday is the perfect time to ask ourselves, how are we doing, beholding Jesus? Is he the center of our attention? If Jesus came riding in to town, would we be waving our palm branches for him, and laying down our cloaks, and publicly professing our faith in him?  I am sure we would be.  But what if life took us someplace unexpected?  Would we stay loyal to Christ?  Today is the perfect day to ask ourselves, is Jesus center stage in our lives?  Is it Jesus we worship—or something else?  Is it Jesus we are trying to serve—or ourselves? Is it God’s will we are really trying to fulfill—or our own?

We have been talking during Lent about God’s will. God’s intentional will for humanity for the very beginning was that we would live in perfect love with God and with our neighbors.  We know that sin has corrupted our love.  Someday God’s ultimate will, of perfect, eternal love, will be fulfilled in us.  But in the meantime, we are called to sacrifice. That is God’s circumstantial will for each and every one of us.  To repent of the ways we have allowed other things to charm us and preoccupy us and take first place in our lives, and reorient our lives around Christ. Learning to sacrifice from the heart is not only the most important spiritual skill for Jewish people, it is also the most important spiritual skill for Christians.

Like an adorable little lamb, Jesus wants to work his way into our hearts, and offer us all the gentleness and comfort and care that we need.  But like a sturdy donkey, Jesus also wants to carry us to our own Jerusalem.  To the place of sacrifice, but also to the place of festival and freedom and new life.  That is what Holy Week is all about.  Jesus wants to know, “Do you really love your lamb?”  If the answer is yes, then the next step is to sacrifice.  Let go of whatever keeps your life, your words, deeds, actions and thoughts, from being a true testimony to God’s grace.  That is God’s circumstantial will for each and every one of us.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Not Knowing

Lent Week 5

1 Corinthians 13:8-13, Matthew 18:1-4

April 7, 2019

           A long time ago a king was out hunting when he cut his finger.  He summoned his doctor, who always accompanied him on the hunt, and the doctor put a bandage on the wound.

“Is it going to be alright?” asked the King.

“Good?  Bad? Who knows?” replied the doctor, and they carried on hunting.

By the time they had returned to the palace, the wound had become infected, and so the king summoned his doctor again.  The doctor cleaned the wound, carefully applied some ointment, and then bandaged it.

“Are you sure it’s going to be okay?” asked the king, becoming concerned.

“Good?  Bad? Who knows?”  replied the doctor again.  The king became worried.

The king’s worry was confirmed when, in a few days, the finger was so badly infected that the doctor had to amputate it! The king was so furious with his incompetent doctor that he personally escorted him to the dungeon and threw him in a cell.

“Well, Doctor, how do you like being in jail?”

“Being in prison, Sire…Good? Bad? Who knows?” replied the doctor with a shrug of his shoulders.

“You are insane as well as incompetent!” declared the king, as he stormed out.

A few weeks later, when the wound had healed, the king was out hunting again.  Chasing an animal, he became separated from the others and ended up lost in the forest. Wandering in the woods, he was captured by the indigenous forest people.  It was their holy day, and by capturing the king, they had found a sacrifice for their jungle god!  They tied the king to a large tree, and their priest began chanting and dancing as the forest people sharpened their sacrificial knife.  The priest took the blade and was about to cut the king’s throat when they shouted, “Stop!  This man has only nine fingers.  He is not perfect enough to sacrifice to our god.  Set him free.”

In a few days, the king found his way back to his palace and went straight to the dungeon to say thank you to the wise doctor.

“I thought you were stupid saying all this ‘Good? Bad? Who knows?’ nonsense.  Now I know you were right.  Losing my finger was good.  It saved my life.  But it was bad of me to lock you in jail.  I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean, Sire?  Had you not put me in jail, I would have been there with you on the hunt, and I would have been captured, too.  And I have all my fingers!”

We’ve been talking the last several weeks about God’s will.  Since we pray for it every week as we recite the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it seemed like a good idea for us to get some clarity about what we are really praying for, and be sure we really mean what we are saying!  We have used three different terms to describe God’s will:  intentional, circumstantial, and ultimate.  God’s intentional will is what God wanted for humanity from the very beginning—perfect fellowship with each other, with God, and with creation.  But when sin entered the world, things changed.  God’s circumstantial will is that which God desires, given the reality of sin and evil in our midst.  

We know the day is coming when Christ will come again, and there will be no more wars, no more fighting or injustice or evil. This life abundant and life everlasting is God’s ultimate will for humanity.  While sin and evil are part of our world, nothing can prevent God’s ultimate will from being done.  Who can say if the king losing a finger was good or bad?  What we do know, though, is that God can use anything for good.  God can even take something meant for evil and use it to bring about salvation and wholeness.  

I have found it helpful to think about God’s will using this framework, especially in light of what is happening these days in our denomination.  For instance, God’s intentional will from the very beginning might have been that there would be one Christian church.  This summer we will study the book of Acts and see how it didn’t take long for serious disagreements to threaten church unity, and how this was handled.  We know God’s ultimate will is that there will be one unified Body of Christ—every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, we will ultimately be united in our worship and service to our King.  But in the meantime, what is God’s circumstantial will?  Where we disagree, should we be seeking a path of “graceful exit”, figuring out how to split—or should we still be trying to figure out how to live and work together?

Our denomination is wrestling with those very questions these days.  Were the decisions made at General Conference good?  Bad?  Who knows? We do know, though, that God can use whatever happens to bring about transformation, growth and change that God desires.

Last week Pastor Brad preached about discerning God’s will.  Assuming we are willing to follow God’s will, how do we know what God is asking us to do? Discerning God’s will is a nuanced combination of coincidence and fact; external event and internal feeling; general consensus and individual conviction.  It is certainly not something that boils down easily in to one 18-minute sermon!  One of the things I love about being the lead pastor here at Lima is, I get to hand some of those tough topics off to Pastor Karen and Pastor Brad!  But to be fair, this week’s topic isn’t easy, either.  What happens when we simply don’t know what God’s will is?  

In our gospel lesson today, the disciples ask Jesus a question, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Matthew doesn’t give us any background for this question, but we know from Mark and Luke that the disciples had been arguing amongst themselves about who is the greatest.  Jesus’ answer must have shocked them all.  “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”  Little children????  These twelve men had been sent out by Jesus two by two to heal the sick and cast out demons, and had returned from that assignment successful.  They had seen Jesus feed thousands of people with paltry amounts of food.  They had seemed him walk on water, and Peter walked on water for a bit, too.  Three of them had been to the mountaintop and had seen Jesus transfigured before their eyes.  These twelve men had been hand-picked to partner with the Son of God and do amazing spiritual feats.  And now Jesus was telling them that they could not enter the kingdom of heaven unless they became like little children?

What a poignant way to remind the disciples—and us—that although we are called and blessed to partner with God to do amazing spiritual feats, we are not God.  We are not in charge.  There is a great deal we do not know.  As much as we have experienced of God, there is great mystery we cannot begin to comprehend. On Friday night, two families from our church with young children came to the parsonage for pizza and communion. We talked about how Methodists refer to communion as “this holy mystery” and practice an open communion table. Even young children are welcome to take communion, at any age, for this is a mystery not even the smartest of us can understand or explain.  

We do well to remember that God is beyond our control.  Jesus has promised that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, his presence is among them.  But that does not mean God is obligated to speak on command.  Just because we have begun to ask God to show us God’s will does not mean God will instantly answer us.  In my experience, discerning God’s will almost always involves waiting.  Once in a while, someone will come to my office to tell me about a message they received from God and how they are wrestling to implement it.  Most of the time, people come because they haven’t heard from God.  They are seeking God’s guidance, they are seeking God’s will, but they have not heard a clear word from the Lord, and they wonder if they are doing something wrong.

This is where having a clear understanding of God’s goodness becomes critical.  We know from Paul’s writing that he was big on calling people to mature in the Lord. He urged us to put our childish ways behind us.  We are called to grow up—and by that I mean become less selfish, more responsible, more focused, etc.  But Paul admits that no matter how mature we become in this life, we are only seeing part of the picture.  In his day, mirrors were made of polished metal.  They did not reflect as clearly as our glass mirrors do.  No matter how mature we get, at best we see as if in a dim reflection.  We do not see or know it all.  That means we are going to have to be content holding on to faith, hope and love.  

Like little children, there is much we do not know. Last month our memory verse was Psalm 34:8, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.  Happy are those who take refuge in him.”  That is a great verse to hang on to during times of discernment, confusion, and waiting.  The best we can do is to take refuge in the Lord:  to wait in hope, and trust that, in time, God will show us the way.

Before I became a pastor, I was an accountant. What a great job!  There is never any ambiguity.  Every transaction can be easily categorized as debit or credit, asset or liability, good or bad.  There’s no wondering, no waiting.  But ministry—like real life—is much less black and white.  To help us cope with that, Jesus urges us to become children. Besides being comfortable with not knowing and not being in charge, there are other relevant childlike qualities that can be helpful in the spiritual life.  The first is imagination!  Maybe God is waiting on us to use our imaginations a while, before God leads us to the next step.  What do we see?  What would we like to create?  I believe God waits at times to lead us in order to give us the freedom to imagine and create.

The second quality is flexibility.  Not just physical flexibility, although God knows I would like to recover some of that from when I was younger!  But spiritual flexibility.  Even when we don’t know exactly what to do, we can always draw closer to God.  We can always rest in God’s love.  God is good, all the time!  We are always discerning.  But because of God’s goodness, we can also relax, and trust and go with the flow.  

 I’d like to close with this poem, “Seventy-six”, written by the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu:

 A person is born gentle and weak.

At his death he is hard and stiff.

Green plants are tender and filled with sap.

At their death they are withered and dry.

 Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.

The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

 Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.

A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

 The hard and strong will fail.

The soft and weak will overcome.

 There are some things we know for sure.  All of us, in Christ, are new creations.  We are re-created in Christ to be partner with God to do amazing things.  Let’s plant our roots deeply down into that soil.  But let’s remember to let ourselves sway in the breeze of the Holy Spirit.  For we are also re-created in Christ to be gentle, flexible, imaginative, tender, filled with sap, green, yielding, and growing.  This is God’s circumstantial will for us.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Called to Be Neighbors and Witnesses

Lent Week 3

Matthew 5:43-48

March 24, 2019

           We’ve been talking the last several weeks about God’s will.  Since we pray for it every week as we recite the Lord’s prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, it seemed like a good idea for us to get some clarity about what we are really praying for, and be sure we really mean what we are saying!  In the gospel of Matthew, right before Jesus gives his disciples the Lord’s prayer, he tells them, “When you pray, do not keep babbling like the pagans.”  Matthew 6:7 has also been translated, do not heap up empty phrases, or do not repeat vain petitions.  We do not want the Lord’s Prayer to be a bunch of empty phrases, or babbling, or vain repetitions.  We want to leverage the power of this prayer!  When we end the prayer with the word, “Amen”, which means, I agree, or more accurately, this I vow—I know the people of Lima mean it.  We are vowing to do God’s will every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.  

But, if you haven’t noticed already, God’s will is a mystery that we can only partially understand. It is not easy to define and articulate!  I was particularly thinking about this a couple weeks ago, reading yet again another news post about anti-Semitism in America.  I knew I wanted to address God’s will for us as it relates to our dealings with people of other religions, because this is a real-life issue for us.  Our key verse on the front of the bulletin this week is one we probably all have memorized:  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 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And remember, I am with you to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)  We call this the Great Commission, and it is our marching orders as disciple of Jesus Christ.  Yet despite two thousand years of evangelism and witness, only about 1/3 of the world’s population identifies as Christian.

We know God’s ultimate will is that, one day in the future, Christ is going to come again, and according to the book of Revelation, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus as Lord. But for now, we live in a religiously diverse society.  What is God’s circumstantial will for us?  Given the reality of so many other competing religions, what should we do?  One strategy is to move toward isolation. Some communities, such as the Amish, do this in an extreme way.  Another strategy is to water things down and conclude, “We’re all the same.”  Most Christians reject both of those pathways, at least in theory.  We want to love others as neighbors and friends, even as we retain our distinct beliefs.  Our United Methodist Social Principles contain a resolution detailing this commitment, to be both neighbors and witnesses.

The resolution is important, because, we have, inadvertently, become somewhat isolationist.  I have had many conversations over the years with church members, encouraging them to invite their friends to worship—and the response I get is, “But Pastor Dorry, all my friends already go to church!”  What could I say to that?  I’m glad people have Christian friends!  But maybe we should be trying to make some new friends.  Maybe it would do us good to intentionally befriend some people who are quite a bit different from us.  Not only would that help us build community, I think it might help us better define and articulate what it is about our faith that matters so much.  One of the boys in my son’s cub scout troop was Jewish, and one time he told me, “My faith has served me well over the years.”  Then he proceeded to tell me what he valued most about being Jewish.  It really impressed me, and made me wonder how many Christians could do something similar.  

Christianity was born in to a religiously diverse world. Its immediate roots of course are Judaism.  But get out of Jerusalem, and right away there were other faiths, and of course, as the gospel spread throughout the Roman empire, it was one option among hundreds of religions.  This has always been a source of difficulty.  In the early church, violence and hatred and persecution were a part of things from almost the very beginning.  Later, it was the Christians who took up the sword, mostly against Muslims, in the Crusades. It would take an historian hours to name for us all the religiously inspired wars over the years.  Violence and hatred in the name of God continue, in heartbreaking ways, in our world today.

That any person of faith would think that hatred is God’s will is pretty troubling.  And especially that any Christian would think hatred is God’s will.  If there is anything we know about God’s will, it is this:  It is God’s will that we love one another (John 13:34).  This the new commandment Jesus gave his disciples on the night he was arrested and is the reason we call Holy Thursday, “Maundy Thursday”, from the Latin word mandatum, or commandment.  Jesus’ command, God’s will, is that we love one another.  The two central obligations of our faith are to love God with our whole beings, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And Jesus did not mean just the nice neighbors!  It is laid out very clearly for us in this gospel lesson, that we are called not only to love the neighbors we agree with, the ones who are easy to get along with, or the ones who love us.  We are called to love ALL our neighbors.  Even our enemies.  

But what about people who aren’t our enemies exactly, but they aren’t our friends, either?  Can you picture someone like that?  Maybe a family member whose choices you don’t agree with, who consumes more than their fair share of resources or commands more than their fair share of attention. Or maybe you have a co-worker like that, or even someone with you in this room right now!  You want to love them—but they are WRONG about so many things. Can you picture a person like that?

I sure hope so, otherwise I’m preaching a sermon that only I need to hear!  There’s a country song by Lee Brice, “I’m Hard to love, hard to love, I don’t make it easy.  I couldn’t do it if I stood where you stood.”  We can all imagine a hard to love person, and if we’re honest, we know it’s true of ourselves at times, too!  I think we can get some comfort from verse 45.  “I cause the sun to rise on the evil and the good.  I send the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  God’s love and provision extend to all people.  Not just the ones who agree with us or who like us! Thanks be to God for being all good, all the time!  

But after those words of comfort, Jesus goes on to challenge us to love better.  To love perfectly. Whew! Talk about a tall order. But loving God and neighbor perfectly is God’s will. That is God’s intentional will for us—what God wanted for us from the very beginning.  That is God’s ultimate will for us—what we will one day be able to do.  And it is God’s circumstantial will that we be working on it!  Or as John Wesley would say, we are “going on to perfection”.  We are called to be growing closer to God so we can love ourselves and our neighbors the way God loves us.  

It’s interesting how many people have fought wars for PURITY, so that a whole people would love and worship the same way.  But what God really wants is PURITY in each of our hearts, an ability to love that not only tolerates differences but blesses them!  Pray for your enemies.  We are called to transcend our conflicts, in part by respecting and even celebrating differences.

Have you heard that line, “God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”? It’s true!  The gospel of John says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son.” The world—the whole world!  The Greek word there is ha cosmos.  The entire creation, the entire population, the good, the bad, the ugly is loved by god. Everyone.  God loves all people, and that is why God sent his son Jesus.  

I grew up singing, “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world.”  But I want to tell you that, this week I realized that somehow along with that, I also absorbed the idea that God loves some people more than others, and that means it is okay for me to love some people more than others, too. Not that anyone ever said it so explicitly.  I learned it because that is how people acted.  I got the idea that God’s love has a hierarchy:  God loves Christians the most, and then Jews, and then maybe people of other faiths. And then there are probably some bad people God doesn’t love at all.

This may sound shocking to you, but I don’t think it’s uncommon.  When someone in my little dairy farming community bought a Japanese car in the early 1970’s, that was very controversial!  On paper maybe God loved everyone equally.  But the assumption was that everyone stilled hate the Japanese for what they did to us in World War II.  Many people thought it was okay to be mad at them, we certainly didn’t want to help them profit and flourish, and that seemed to me the prevailing “righteous” view.  

Here’s another example.  A few years ago I went to a preaching workshop the required staying in a college dorm with shared bathrooms.  I met a woman from Canada with beautiful red hair; all of us in the ladies’ room admired it.  But the woman from Canada said, where I come from, it’s not a source of admiration. It’s a source of shame.  Being a ginger gets you picked on.  She hated her red hair and felt terrible for passing it on to her children.  In theory she knew God loved her.  But her lived experience was, God loves red heads less than other people; it’s okay to pick on or treat certain people as less than because of some arbitrary characteristic.

This has given me a lot to think about.  I admit to you today that I do not have a single Muslim friend.   One-fourth of the world’s population identifies as Muslim, and I don’t know a single one. There is an Islamic Center in West Chester, and when I did some reading this week on their website, I was really impressed.  I am going to reach out to them.  I admit to you today that, although I don’t want this to happen, I sometimes have unkind immediate thoughts about certain groups of people.  That is racism.  That is sin. I admit to you today that I have had an unconscious belief, that God loves certain people more than others.  I admit to you today that I feel called to sort through the remnants of that belief, and see how it continues to influence me today.  

I like to plan worship well in advance, but honestly, I never really know where a sermon is going to take me until I sit down and write it.  As I anticipated this week, I thought I would feel convicted to draw my circle wider and get to know some “non-church” folks.  But as I worked on the sermon, I got convicted in an even bigger way.  I felt like God was holding a mirror in front of me and I could see things this week that I never saw before, and it was scary. Kind of like trying on a swim suit at the mall.  Do I look as bad in real life as I do in this dressing room?  I saw ugliness in my heart.  Maybe you are seeing some in your heart, too.  

So let me use this opportunity to assert one of our distinctively Christian beliefs:  God loves you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!  Nothing can separate us from God’s love for us, including our sin.  God is here today to give us a fresh start.  We call that fresh start grace.  It is what makes the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous, and the sun to shine on the good and the evil.  This grace is available to us in its most potent form in the person of Jesus Christ.  This grace turns us from God’s strangers into God’s friends, and calls us to go and do likewise.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

God’s Circumstantial Will

Lent Week 2

Luke 13:10-17, 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

March 17, 2019

           “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  Of all the quotable quotes in the Apostle Paul’s writings, this is one we really wrestle with.  I think it’s because we love the idea of God’s grace being sufficient for us---but we HATE the idea of weakness!  We want to be strong, we want to be powerful.  We want to be able to fix what’s broken and right what’s wrong. But Paul tells us that, sometimes, there’s no fixing what’s wrong, at least not for now.  

As you know, I’m the world’s worst joke teller. So I am going to tap into God’s power being made perfect in weakness, as I attempt to start of us with a little humor.

 One day a wife asks her husband, "How would you describe me?"  The husband thinks for a minute and says, "ABCDEFGHIJK."  Surprised, the wife asks, "ABCDEFGHIJK, What does that mean?"  The husband quickly lists, "Adorable, beautiful, cute, delightful, elegant, fashionable, gorgeous, and hot."  "Aw,” the wife says, very pleased.  “Thank you, but what about IJK?"  Husband: "I'm just kidding!"

 Last week we said that God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good—and we were not kidding!  Properly understanding God’s will hinges on us properly understanding God’s nature.  The witness of scripture is clear.  God is “abounding in steadfast love.”  God IS love. God created the world and called it good; God created humankind and called us “very good”.  God desires that not a single one of us be lost or suffer. God’s will for humankind is all good all the time, and there’s no IJK after that.  

But what do we do with the fact that, despite God’s goodness, so much bad happens in life?  In our gospel lesson, the synagogue ruler criticized Jesus for not keeping the letter of the law.  Healing was considered “work” and therefore forbidden on the Sabbath.  But Jesus says, wait a second.  Don’t you all work, each and every Sabbath when you unbind your donkey or ox from the stall and lead it to get some water?  

We consider that responsible and humane.  How much more responsible and humane, then, is it to, on the Sabbath day, unbind this woman who has been hurting for 18 years? All of us, if one of our animals was thirsty, we wouldn’t make it wait another day for water.  Why would we make a person wait another day for healing?  Healing is God’s desire.  The Greek word, “sozo”, which means healing, is often translated as salvation.  This is why Jesus came!  It’s not God who is binding us in disease.  It’s is God’s desire to free us of disease.

So we might call perfect health God’s intentional will—what God desired for us from the very beginning, and God’s ultimate will—what God will fulfill in time.  But perfect health is not God’s circumstantial will for us.  Our bodies are prone to illness, some of which we can cure. Sometimes the cure is almost as bad as the disease.  And sometimes there is no cure.  Recently I heard about a woman my age, whose kids went to school with mine, who has been diagnosed with Creutzfeld-Jakob disease.  It is a degenerative brain disorder with no cure.  She has been given six months to live.  Right away, we lament how unfair it is to see a good woman’s life cut short, and we are concerned for her young adult children, and we wonder why, why, why this could all be happening.

In Jesus’ day, there was great conflict over the why question.  For many years, the prevailing view in Judaism was that if you were good, God blessed you, and if you were bad, God cursed you.  Long life, material wealth, and many children were a sign that you were living right and God was on your side.  Illness, financial hardship, and barrenness were a sign that you, or someone before you in your family, had sinned.  Over time, people looked around and saw a lot of evidence to the contrary and began to question this understanding.  About six hundred years before Jesus, the book of Job was written and officially put down on paper the angst many were feeling about these old assumptions.  Maybe life didn’t follow that simple system after all.

But old habits die hard, and by the time of Jesus, the presumption that, if there was illness or hardship, someone must have sinned, was still influencing people.  Jesus points out, though, that it is not God who has bound this invalid woman. It was evil, the other team on the field that will ultimately be defeated, but is part of life on earth for now.  But we don’t want to wait for that victory, and it seems to me today that, in our day and age, in cases of illness or hardship, we assume God has sinned.  We get angry at God for not fixing what is broken in our world.

My first year as a pastor, I remember having a conversation with my lay leader about suffering and telling him how inadequate my seminary training seemed to be in the face of so much brokenness and pain. People seem angry at God, and by extension, angry at me!  He said, I know what you mean.  But I always tell people, God has designed the universe to support life.  The weather, the seasons, our bodies—all intricately and amazingly designed to support life.  Even when we abuse the earth, it still manages to support us.  People get upset about disease, but to me the miracle is that we aren’t more diseased!  I want to empathize with people who are suffering, but I challenge them too.  If you’re angry at God for not making life perfect, see if you can design a better system!

What do you think of that perspective?  Honestly, I found it helpful.  Our world is teeming with life.  It is amazing how complex our living systems are, and how often they work so well without us paying any attention.  Life is precious, and God has designed the world to support and sustain life in amazing ways.  But because life is precious, when things don’t work right, it is devastating to us.  That’s where our faith can either help or hurt. If we believe God is good all the time, we can find support from our faith.  But if we believe God is causing this, or punishing us, or simply doesn’t care, our faith will hurt us.

Our faith requires us to make peace with the fact that things are not perfect.  God does not give us a perfect world—but God does love is with a PERFECT love.  God’s intentional and ultimate will are to have a perfect, eternal relationship with us.  Our faith also requires us to partner with God to make things better.  God’s circumstantial will is that humans would cooperate with God in unbinding the captives and setting free those who are oppressed. People of faith have been pioneers in the fields like education, medicine, social work, and law.  We see those advances as God’s will, and celebrate them.  

But when it’s our disease that is not yet cured, our suffering that is not yet alleviated, we blame God.  Why is that?  Perhaps the reason we don’t have more advances in society is that we have not always prioritized them.  General Omar Bradley, first chairperson of our Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.  Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.  We know more about war than we do about peace, more about killing than we do about living.”  While God’s circumstantial will may include spending money on having a military, we have to wonder if we were passionately following God’s will, if we would have witnesses advances in medicine and agriculture, and maybe know a little less about the most efficient ways to kill people.

But there’s something else we need to wrestle with. We know that disease, suffering, hardship…these are not God’s ultimate will for us.  We have discerned that God’s circumstantial will is for us to invest our energies and efforts into unbinding and healing people as Jesus did.  But, what about Paul’s famous “thorn in the flesh”?  Three times he prayed and asked God to heal him.  But instead of healing, he got a message.  He received word that God was intentionally not healing him FOR NOW—we can trust that God will ultimately heal him—because healing him would thwart God’s greater purpose for his life. But God purposefully allowed the suffering to continue for now.

In my opinion, this passage of scripture should come as a warning label.  Warning:  do not apply this scripture to other people!  If someone has a “thorn in their flesh”—a source of suffering that just won’t go away, that does NOT mean this is God’s will for them.  The poor woman in our gospel lesson was infirm for 18 years, but Jesus said, it wasn’t God that bound her.  It was God who freed her!

But in Paul’s case, it was God who bound him. He prayed, and the answer was “Not yet. I can use this.  I want to demonstrate my power through your weakness.”  I don’t think it is ever accurate to say that God is willing suffering on someone else to teach them a lesson.  I think God’s desire is that all be healed and saved. But you may have experienced this in your own life, like Paul did, that there are some situations where you get a sense that, although God will work complete healing in time, for now, God is holding you close during difficulty so that some greater purpose can be accomplished. This is a very poignant situation, one we have to respect as sacred.  Only God has the power and the finesse to orchestrate this, and it is up to each individual person to discern.  We must use great sensitivity when talking to people who are suffering, and assume that God’s will is for us to help alleviate their long-term pain.  This truth, that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness, should never be used to judge others or encourage them to remain in hurtful situations.

Let me close with a story.  An erudite professor of philosophy read in his local newspaper that a new five-star restaurant had opened up in town.  He quickly called to make a reservation.  The restaurant, however, was already so popular that he had to wait for two months for the next available booking.  

Eight weeks later, the professor appeared at the five-star establishment wearing a fine suit and immaculately groomed.  The maître d’ asked to see his personal identification to confirm that he did indeed have a reservation that night.  Seeing that he did, the maître d’ led him to his table.

The professor was in awe at the interior decoration and fittings of the exclusive restaurant.  The soft light from the unobtrusive standing lamp bathed his table in a warm, understated glow, reminding him of the calming light of twilight, secretive but just enough to see.  A waiter in a white bow tie and elegant jacket presented him with the menu.

Even the menu matched the plush, rich surroundings of the five-star restaurant. It was made of thick, golden parchment with a border of deep crimson.  The 108 items on the menu were written in exquisite calligraphy, the sort that is seen in museums of art more than restaurants.

The professor gazed in admiration at the menu, reading it many times.  Then he proceeded to eat the menu.  After which, he paid his bill, thanked the maître d’, and left.

The unfortunate professor, learned as he was, did not know the difference between the menu and the food.

Our memory verse this month reminds us to “Taste and see that the Lord is good.  Happy are those who take refuge in him.” (Psalm 34:8)  When it comes to understanding God’s will, I think there are some people who have swallowed the menu and completely missed out on God’s goodness!  They have swallowed the letter of the law and completely missed out on the meal that nourishes and celebrates and sustains.  Frankly I think we have swallowed a lot of theological garbage.  May this season of Lent draw us closer to the cross, and closer to a true understanding of God’s goodness.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

It’s Wilderness Time!

Lent Week 1

Luke 4:1-13

March 10, 2019

           There’s a call to worship popular in some churches where the worship leader says, “God is Good”, and then the congregation replies, “All the time!”  The worship leader will then say, “And all the time”, so the people can say, “God is good!”  God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.  I can’t argue with that as a call to worship—after all, it’s because of God’s goodness that we come to worship!  But let’s dig down into this a little bit.  Do we really believe that God is good all the time?

Lent is a perfect time to ask this question.  If God is so loving, why would God impose this often-supposed dreary liturgical season on us just when we are already drearied-out?  If God is so good, why would we be encouraged to “take up our crosses and follow Jesus?”  And what about Good Friday?  Can we really call that violent, dark day, “good”?  There is something about the season of Lent that seems to call special attention to a question that plagues many of us in every season of the year:  If God is good all the time, why is life so hard so much of the time?  

Back before Christmas, I was talking to Pastor Karen about what we might focus on in worship for this year.  I told her that I felt led to explore the subject of God’s Will for Lent.  We just spent the last several weeks talking about how the Lord’s Prayer is an invitation to participate in the life of the divine.  We pray every week, “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  If we are PRAYING for God’s will, and hopefully answering the invitation to DO God’s will, I think it makes sense for us to give some thought as to what exactly IS God’s will!

To help us talk about God’s will, I am going to use three descriptors that I got from an author named Leslie Weatherhead. Back in the 1940’s, he wrote a little book called The Will of God.  It is a compilation of five sermons he preached to his congregation at City Temple in London during World War II.  Almost daily he was confronted with questions about God’s will, as his parishioners experienced the hardship of war.  Just imagine:  One woman’s son went off to fight in the Army and came back two years later, tired and worn, but otherwise okay.  The whole congregation had been praying all along for his well-being, and when he got home safe, everyone assumed that was “God’s will.”  But when her next-door neighbor’s son went off to fight in the Army and was killed in action, was that God’s will, too?  They had been praying for him, too!  How could the family find peace with God if God willed this to happen?

It was questions like this that prompted Weatherhead to preach five sermons on the will of God, which were first published in 1944.  He based his book on the premise that God is good all the time, and All the time, God is good.  I doubt he would have used that little cheer back in 1944.  But understanding God’s will, according to Weatherhead, hinges on knowing God to be abounding in steadfast love, as our memory verse from the last two months reminds us.  God is good.  Need proof? Exhibit A:  the key verse on the front of our bulletin something Jesus said in the parable of the lost sheep.  God does not desire that any of his precious children be lost, but that all be saved. God’s intentions toward humankind are all good, all the time.  

With that in mind, Weatherhead says we need to be more careful about how we use the term “God’s will”.  We need to be more precise, because, first of all, not everything that happens is God’s will.  Much of what happens in the world is the will of people influenced by evil.  So don’t call it God’s will if it isn’t good.  

And secondly, there are actually three different forms of God’s will.  The first is God’s intentional will, which is God’s intentions for humanity from the very start.  God created the world and called it good.  God created humankind and called us “very good”.  God’s intentional will was that we would live in creation in perfect fellowship with each other and with God.  Thinking about our two mothers with their sons off to war, we would say that God’s intentional will is that there would be no war, no military, no need for anything like that ever.  

But we know that sin entered the world just about as soon as people did.  Having an inclination toward sin is an undeniable facet to every person’s existence. Sometimes we refer to the cumulative effect of all this sin as evil.  God’s good creation and God’s “very good” people have been corrupted.  Things have changed, and so God’s will adapts. Weatherhead calls this the “circumstantial will of God.”  

We have said that God’s intentional will is that no person ever need to serve in the military, because everyone would live in perfect harmony with each other.  But given the circumstances of evil, what then?  During World War II, when Weatherhead was writing, many ordinarily peaceful Christians felt it was God’s circumstantial will that they take up arms and fight.  This was not God’s first choice for God’s people. But given the circumstances that evil set up, God’s circumstantial will included the use of violence against other members of the human race.

World War II is long over, but the general situation of our world has not changed.  We too must do our best to try to discern and do God’s circumstantial will in our day and age.  Given the reality of evil, generations of evil structures and habits and decay, what would God have us do today?  

This is the realm in which Jesus lived as well. It takes us by surprise every year when we read about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, as if the Son of God should somehow be protected and exempted from all of that.  But Luke tells us that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit led him to the wilderness to be tempted.  This was God’s circumstantial will for Jesus.  If God’s intentional will had not been frustrated by evil, Jesus would not have had to come to earth in human form in the first place! And then, when Jesus got here, perhaps it was God’s intentional will that people would listen to him, not oppose him.  But that did not happen.  Given the reality of the evil in his midst, Jesus followed God’s circumstantial will into the wilderness to be tempted.  God’s intentional will is not that people would ever have to fast for forty days and forty nights.  But given the circumstances, God willed for Jesus to become depleted so he could experience who and what exactly fills and fuels him.  God sent him in to the wilderness so he could experience God’s ultimate will for him, which is victory.

Over the next several weeks, we will spend more time talking about these three terms: intentional will, circumstantial will, and ultimate will.  The ultimate will of God is life.  Abundant and everlasting life.  The ultimate will of God is that which God intended from the start if it had not been frustrated by evil.  God’s ultimate will gets accomplished in spite of evil, and we will see as we move through Lent toward Good Friday, God’s ultimate will gets accomplished even THROUGH evil.  That is why we can say, “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good”.  It’s not that every single thing that happens in life is good.  But in Christ, we have seen God turn even the worst day into a good day. What man meant for evil, God can use for good.

Let me say that again:  what man means for evil, God can use for good.  Not everything that happens is God’s will.  Much of what happens is the will of people, some of whom are acting benevolently, and some of whom are not—or more accurately, all of whom are acting in a way that is mixed!  We are “going on to perfection”, as John Wesley would say—but we are not there yet.  There is a mix of light and dark in all of us.  God has given us free will.  Because of that free will, much of what happens in the world is not in line with God’s intentions for humanity.  God desires that not a single person be lost, that not a single person suffer.  The idea that, when something bad happens “it must be God’s will”, is in and of itself so spiritually harmful it is blasphemous. The witness of Scripture is that God is abounding in steadfast love and desires good for God’s children.  Not everything that happens is God’s will.  

But Christians are people of hope because we know, nothing can happen that will defeat God’s ultimate will for us.  Those two mothers who sent their sons to war, we can say with confidence that it was not God’s will that any of them would perish. God’s intentional will was frustrated by evil.  But we know that nothing, not even death can separate us from God’s love.  Nothing will keep God from accomplishing God’s ultimate will in that young man’s life, or in any of our lives.

Phil and I used to have a neighbor, Hester, who was in her late 80’s when our children were little.  She was Black and had spent most of her life working as a nanny to a wealthy Main Line family.  She had seen, and endured, quite a lot of injustice in her life, which she was quick to point out, was not God’s will.  It was evil. But she would always say, “But we know who holds the reigns!” The horse of humanity is stubborn. But we know God is holding the reigns and is always steering things toward the good.  And ultimately, good will prevail.  God’s ultimate will, which includes no more tears, no more wars, no more injustice, no more suffering of any kind, will be done on earth as it is already done in heaven.

With this in mind, we can have greater courage and boldness to address the evil in our midst.  We know how the story ends!  We know who holds the reigns!  During the 1930’s, as Hitler rose to power in Germany, how many Europeans prayed in church every week, “God’s will be done”, while doing nothing to oppose the evil that was taking center stage in their midst?  Just because it is happening does not mean it is God’s will.  We have been given the Lord’s prayer to help us participate in the life of the divine, and that includes, as our baptismal vows state, “opposing evil in whatever form it presents itself.”

I know many in our congregation, and in our denomination, are deeply hurt by the decisions, and the attitudes, from General Conference. I think it is safe to say we are “bewildered”.  Did you ever notice how the word bewildered has “wilder” in the middle?   As in, wilderness.  Thrown off course.  Navigating unfamiliar, hostile territory.  Not sure what resources and support are available, and if they will be enough.  Jesus goes to the wilderness, too.  In his bewilderment, he does not give in.  He does not forget who he is, and whose he is. He trusts that God is good all the time. And he does not confuse what comes from evil with what comes from God.  Testing, wilderness, refining fires—these can and do often come from God.  If God leads us to it, we can trust God to lead us through it.  We know who holds the reigns.  And we know that God is good, all the time.  Sin can frustrate God’s desires for a time.  But we know that nothing will keep God from accomplishing God’s ultimate will.

May this Lenten season be a time when we learn to discern and follow God’s will, even in the wilderness.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Gritty

Ash Wednesday

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10

March 6, 2019

           Back in September, the Philadelphia Flyers introduced their new mascot to the city. Gritty is a fuzzy orange, seven foot tall creature who wears size 33 ½ ice skates.  At first, most fans found him off-putting and awkward.  He has googly eyes and a long orange beard.   He’s shaped a lot like the Phillies Phanatic, but he’s not nearly as classy.  Or as coordinated.  At his first home game appearance, he fell down on the ice.  One twitter comment said Gritty is the Phanatic’s cousin from Delco.  I thought that was hilarious.

But for all his quirks, Gritty seems to have won over the people of Philadelphia. Guess how many followers Gritty has on Instagram? 170,000! Gritty has his own page on the Flyers website, and he is available for public appearances. Should we see if he wants to come to Vacation Bible School?  Believe it or not, he is also available to come to weddings.  I think he has captured a place in our hearts, because Philadelphians have long valued “grit”—which we loosely define as determination, scrappiness, perseverance, willingness to sacrifice and get injured, and the ability to tolerate being booed on occasion—in our athletes.

I don’t think the word “grit” appears anywhere in the Bible, but it is closely related to the “great endurance” Paul refers to in verse 4.  It is this great endurance—the Greek word here is hupomone—that allows him to persevere through thick and thin.  We know Paul endured beatings, riots, sleepless nights, hunger—without grit, Paul would have thrown in the towel very early on!  Paul calls hupomone, grit,  the “queen of all virtues”, because without this great endurance, faith fizzles out.

University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth has researched grit and concludes that, more than talent, more than intelligence, grit is a determining factor in a person’s ability to succeed.  You can be very smart and talented, but without this intangible quality, you will have trouble making your greatest contribution because, sooner or later, hardships come to us all.  Without grit we give up.  With grit, we find ways to overcome.  

I mention this to you tonight because, in my experience, the ashes we impart on Ash Wednesday are gritty.  On Ash Wednesday we have it literally rubbed in to our faces that life is hard and then you die!  But these are no ordinary ashes.  These are hupomone ashes, ashes of the Great Endurance.  Our faces are marked by ashes made by burning last year’s Palm Sunday palms.  Palms of victory.  Not of superficial victory over temporary circumstances, like overthrowing the Romans, which was the hope of the first people who waved the palms.  We know that Jesus came for so much more than that.  These ashes are made from palms that symbolize Jesus’ own hupomone, his willingness to suffer and persevere and turn all of that into eternal life for us.  We are marked by ashes of alchemy, ashes that turn tribulation into strength and glory.

The first time I imparted ashes as a pastor, I made the sign of the cross on each person with the ashes and said the words my clergy mentor told me to say, “From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return.”  But that felt incomplete to me.  That felt almost blasphemous, because we know that even though our bodies will return to dust, our souls are transported to glory.  So without even thinking, I added a second line.  “From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return; but in Jesus Christ you will live forever.”

A few days later I was talking to some clergy colleagues about our experiences, leading Ash Wednesday worship for the first time.  Everyone said, “From dust you have come, and to dust you shall return”, but some people used a different second line, “therefore repent and believe the gospel.”  I told them how I added that second line, “in Jesus Christ you will live forever.”  People smiled and said, I like that, that’s nice.  But one man disagreed and said, “No, Dorry! You have got to make them feel the death!”

I have been thinking about that every year during Lent ever since.  The season of Lent is a period of 40 days, not including Sundays, set aside for us to focus in on spiritual life.  It’s like a tithe of the church year.  Roughly 10% of our money we give to God; roughly 10% of our days we give to God.  Maybe what we most need to do during that time is to focus on our death so we can figure out how to really live.  But I prefer a more positive approach.  God does not ask us to give up our money in order for us to feel deprived.  God asks us to give our money in order to help us be fulfilled.  I think that same thing is true with the season of Lent. It is not a time set aside to make us feel deprived.  Lent is a time, a gift from the church year to us, to help us feel more fulfilled, to help us become stronger and braver and experience now the abundant and forever life Christ came to bring.  It is a time to develop grit.

         We have just finished the season of Epiphany.  We had our white paraments (lliturgical cloths at the front of the sanctuary) up for much of that time.  Now we have the purple ones up.  In about six and a half weeks, we will change over to white again, as we celebrate Easter.  The white seasons are when the church is supposed to shine the light of Christ in to the world.  They are punctuated by dark seasons, a time when we turn inward and look at our own souls. The poet Rumi said, “Yesterday I was so clever I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise so I am changing  myself.”  That is what Lent is all about.  It’s like spring training for our souls.  We intentionally close the world in on ourselves a little bit—by fasting, or giving something up, or committing more time to prayer and study, or some other act of self-denial—so that we can practice breathing the spaciousness of heaven even when we’ve closed ourselves in.  That way, when the world for real challenges us, when it starts to constrict us and hurt us, we will be able to rely on our training, and breathe the oxygen of the Kingdom of God even if we are stuck in a noxious dump.  

If it’s hard to imagine being able to do that, we don’t have to look any further than Good Friday for an example of the great endurance we are trying to cultivate.  We know from the cross Jesus asked God to forgive those who put him there. Even though he was struggling to breathe physically, his soul was still saturated with the oxgen of God’s kingdom. He could still breathe out mercy and grace.  This is the kind of grit we are trying to develop.

         Hupomone.  The great endurance.  It’s what allowed Paul to persevere, not gritting his teeth, but as he wrote, in “purity, understanding, patience, and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report.”  We don’t have to worry about grittiness turning us into a seven foot tall orange fuzzy creature with size 33 ½ ice skates!  No, grit turns us in to the likeness of Christ.  Will you receive this season of Lent as a gift, given to help us develop grit, to develop the endurance that transforms every obstacle, even death, into strength and glory?  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Amen!

Lord’s Prayer Week 8

Luke 9:22-35, 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:1

March 3, 2019

           A preacher in a very traditional church, where proper decorum was always observed, was halfway through his Sunday sermon when someone in the congregation yelled out, “Amen!”  The preacher nearly fainted.  Once he regained his composure, he cleared his throat and continued.  A second time the man yelled, “Amen!”  This time the preacher glared at him.  By now the entire congregation was awake, wondering what would happen next.  The preacher paused, then plowed into his sermon once more.  When the man yelled, “Amen!” even louder than the first two times, the preacher said to him from the pulpit, “Sir, we don’t do that in our church.”  “But I’ve got religion!” said the man with enthusiasm.  “Well,” replied the preacher, “you obviously didn’t get it here!”

         What does it mean when we say “amen” at the end of a prayer, or in the middle of a sermon?  Perhaps it means, “It’s time to stop talking now.”!  Which is clearly not the case, or people in just about every church would be yelling it out during the sermon!  For most of my life, I assumed it meant something along those lines.  Turns out, amen does not mean good-bye!  Amen does not mean, “Ta ta for now, God, thanks for listening. Now I’m going to get on with real life.”  

         What amen really means is “so be it”, or “I agree”.  Or, maybe the best translation of all, “Let’s do it!”  The word amen implies a kind of partnership. Us and God working together to bring about God’s kingdom here on earth.  When we say Amen, it is a sign that our prayer has ended.  But it is also a signal that “real life”—as in, life in Christ—is just beginning.

         There is a nun who lives in Erie, PA named Joan Chittister whose writing has really blessed me over the years. She tells the story of a man who would occasionally stop by their soup kitchen with a donation.  Sometimes he brought leftovers from an office luncheon; sometimes he brought $50.  If they asked him, he would reach tall shelves for the nuns, or move something heavy for them.  But he wasn’t a regular volunteer, and they didn’t even know his name.  

One day, well, have you ever heard of “lake effect snow”?  Even though Erie isn’t all that much further north than us, their winters are much harsher than ours.  On many winter days the nuns’ soup kitchen is overflowing with people, just because they needed someplace to get out of the cold.  It was on a day like that when the gentleman stopped by the soup kitchen again with several hams to donate.  He saw how crowded they were, though, so he stayed to help serve.  After several hours, as he was ready to leave, he noticed a guest sitting at the end of the table with his legs pressed against the heating element.  He went over to investigate and saw that the guest only had on summer sandals—open toes, sling backs, perfect for summer but obviously not very helpful in the cold Erie winter.  In a heartbeat, the well-dressed man bent down, took off his shoes and socks, and handed them to the homeless man. Then he left.

Seeing this, one of the nuns ran after him.  “Wait!” she called. “You can’t go without your shoes. It’s freezing out!”  “I know,” he called back.  “That’s why I left them there.”  The nun stood in the doorway as she watched the man walk away.  She stared at the prints his bare feet made on the snowy walk and felt she was witnessed the kingdom of God.

That, to me, is an Amen story.  It’s a story of how a group of nuns prayed the Lord’s prayer and heard in their prayer a call to give daily bread to people who are hungry. It’s a story of how a man who only wanted to be known by the name “Christian”, a man who prayed the Lord’s prayer and heard in that prayer a call to do God’s will on earth like it is in heaven.  It is a story of Amen.  Fellow Pennsylvanians who ended their prayers, not by saying, “Over and out”, or “ta ta for now, thanks for listening”, but by saying, “Amen! Let’s do this!”

I am so happy to be able to stand before you and say, Joan Chittister is not the only person who can tell stories like that in our state.  We can tell them, too.  Last week, a stranger stopped by our church because he had run low on gas and had no money to fill his tank.  One of our church members said, no problem, I’ll go with you to the gas station and fill your tank.  I offered to reimburse him from the discretionary account, but he said no, this is just something I wanted to do.  

Lima Church is filled with people like that. People who, quietly, behind the scenes, see a need and meet it.  Now obviously you don’t have to be a church member to “random acts of kindness”.  And we know that no church is perfect.  But turns out, churches have a way or organizing people to do good.  “Let’s do this” accomplishes way more than “I will do this on my own” ever could.  Lima Church is doing a lot of good!  And we wanted everyone in the congregation to be proud and excited.

So we have set aside today to get to know the ministries of Lima UMC a little better, because we are a “Let’s Do This” church!  We are partnering with God, trying to allow the stream of God’s grace to move us, so we can help earth become more like heaven.  And not just in our congregation, but we have a long tradition of partnering with other congregations to live out our faith.  For example, have any of you ever heard of Cokesbury UMC in Marcus Hook?  Their slogan is, “The little church that does.” They provide lunch every day in the summer for any school age kid in the community.  Marcus Hook is only 7 ½ miles from here, but socio-economic situation is much different.  I am so proud that money from our Lima UMC endowment is being used to help God’s precious children in that community be fed in body and mind.

Closer to home is First UMC in Media. They are only 3 miles from us, and their food bank is always busy.  Thank you for supporting this ministry!  I don’t know who does it, but someone, or lots of someones, brings enough food donations to our church to fill the grocery cart in the narthex every two weeks.  We support them financially as well, giving them over $10,000 in 2018.  We are an Amen church, connected in our denomination to Amen congregations right around the corner—and all the way across the globe.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, and finish it by saying “Amen”, it’s not unlike standing at the front of the church and saying our wedding vows.  The word Amen means, “I agree.  I assent. So be it.  Let’s do this.”  It means, “This is my solemn vow.”  Your will, Lord, not mine.  Your kingdom, not my fiefdom.  Your will, not my demands.  Your glory, not my boasting.  Your grace, not my grudges.  Your daily spiritual bread, not my cultural junk food.  Your eternal life, not my mortal life…Are you ready to say, “So be it” to all of this?  We think it takes courage to get married, to pledge your troth to one person for the rest of your life.  But when we pray the Lord’s prayer, we are pledging ourselves to God for all of eternity! Not just this lifetime, but for all time!  

It takes courage to pray the Lord’s Prayer. It takes courage to be a member of a congregation.  If you call yourself a Christian but never join a church, who’s going to hold you accountable? Who is going to challenge you to learn and grow?  When you join the church, you get a community of faith to support you during hard times, and congratulate you in good times.  But you also get a built-in group of people saying, “Come on, let’s do this!”  It takes courage to join a local church, because the local church is always calling its members to take responsibility for following God’s lead toward righteous living.

But I think it takes even more courage to be a member of a congregation that is part of a global denomination.  At times being in a denomination can seem like an inconvenience.  The diversity of perspectives, beliefs, and values can frustrate, sadden, and even anger us.  But being part of a global denomination is also a blessing, a chance to experience on earth a little foretaste of the glory divine, of the heavenly banquet where people of all nations, races, genders, political views, sexual orientations, native languages, social standing, you name it, people of every kind of difference will be seated together in true communion.  That is the glory that awaits us, and that is the glory Paul was referring to in his letter to the Corinthians.  “Therefore, since we have such a hope, we are very bold.”  Because we know how things will turn out, we can have confidence, to put ourselves out there in ministry and compassion to a hurting world.  As we have been saying for the last few weeks, our struggle is not with flesh and blood.  It is not with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Our struggle is with evil, and love is our only weapon.

         We opened our worship service by reading Luke’s account of the Transfiguration.  Talk about a glorious, mountaintop experience!!!  But Jesus did not stay up on the mountain top.  He did not bask in the glow of the glory due his name.  Instead, he left the mountain top, and descended into the valley—and began his journey toward Calvary.  He came off the mountaintop and got to work.  We have work to do as well. Our work is to turn toward the Lord, and allow God’s love to transform us.  Paul writes, “Whenever anyone turns toward the Lord, the veil is taken away.  Now the Lord is Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect God’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness.”   Transformed into the likeness of Christ.  Can I get an Amen to that?  Can I get a “let’s do this?”  Will you take that vow, to offer yourself to Christ and be born again in his likeness? If so, please answer with me, “Amen!”

[pastordorry-blog]

Temptation and Deliverance

Lord’s Prayer Week 6

Ephesians 6:10-20

February 17, 2019

           We have been working our way through the Lord’s Prayer this winter, and now we have come to the line, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”, or in some translations, “deliver us from the evil one.”  You’ve probably heard the parody of this part of the prayer, “Lord, lead me not into temptation—I can find it myself!”  That is so true!  Just in the course of writing this sermon, I had to battle temptation.  I write my sermons on a laptop computer, and it’s always tempting to open up the internet browser and catch up on Facebook instead of concentrating on writing.  Even if I manage to focus on my writing, I always get stuck at some point and am not sure what to say next—at which point, it’s very easy to get up and go to the kitchen for a snack.  I heard a writer say once that she taped a sign to her computer that says, “The next sentence is NOT in the refrigerator!”  This week, I started writing my sermon on Friday afternoon, and it was actually sunny for a change.  But you know what sunshine does—it makes it easy to see the dust, and for a few seconds, I considered getting out the furniture polish.  It’s a rare day when I think of dusting as a pleasant diversion!

No matter what worthy thing we are trying to accomplish, we have no problem finding temptation.  We are always getting in our own way.  But this seems to be especially true if the worthy thing we are trying to accomplish is doing something for God.  And anyone who is praying the Lord’s prayer, by definition, is trying to do something good for God.  Evil always ramps up when goodness tries to take a stand.  Most people I know, they assume that being a Christian will make their lives easier.  But that was certainly not Jesus’ assumption.  He warned his disciples that by following Christ, they were setting themselves up for eternal glory—but earthly hardship.  That was Paul’s experience as well.  It seems he spent as much time in jail as he did on mission trips!  He knew firsthand how easy it is to be tempted to give up the faith, or at least tone it down, in order to avoid backlash.

But thank God, Paul was not one to give up, or tone things down, to avoid backlash.  He writes to his brothers and sisters in Christ and asks them to pray for him that he may preach even more boldly!  Instead of watering down your faith so you don’t offend anyone, Paul urges us to “be strong in the Lord.”  Paul knows our struggle is not really with wasting time with Facebook, or foraging for a snack, or even with dusting.  Our biggest temptations are things we cannot set, like the temptation to become complacent, or the temptation to give in to despair, or the temptation to settle for good enough when God is calling us to be great.  Paul says, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend an awful lot of time thinking about the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  I tend to experience enough hardship coming from earthly realms, I don’t give much thought to evil coming from the heavenly realms.  We don’t talk much about Satan in our church.  But we know that evil exists, and it does not come from God.  Which makes tat line, “lead us not into temptation” is a little confusing.  Many scholars think “lead us into temptation” is an inaccurate translation.  This week I read Pope Francis’ book on the Lord’s Prayer, and he points out that the Italian version of the Lord’s prayer now reads, “do not abandon us to temptation”, and the French have changed the text to read, “Do not let me fall into temptation.”  I like these wordings so much more.  We are the ones capable of finding temptation on our own. We don’t need God to lead us there. What we do need is to ask God to be with us and guide us and protect us.  We need God to deliver us from evil.

Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer so we could participate in the life of the divine.  Jesus gave us this prayer so we could be part of what God is doing on earth. And we know that, when God acts for good, evil ramps us.  If we begin to pray this prayer, and live this prayer, and find ourselves connected with God, we will no longer be able to fly under the radar. The spiritual forces of evil’s ears will prick, and they will be on to us.  And once again we will find ourselves praying this prayer as if our lives depended on it.  Deliver us from evil.  That is really just another way of saying, “Save us!”

It makes me think of that time the disciples were in the boat with Jesus, and he had fallen asleep, and a storm suddenly turned the calm waters of the Sea of Galilee into a torrential nightmare.  The disciples were afraid for their lives. And what did they do?  They cried out, “Save us, Jesus!”

That is where Paul found himself as he wrote his letter to the Ephesians.  He was convinced that Jesus Christ is Lord and could not quiet the fire in his bones. He HAD to preach the gospel. There was no way he could live and not be a witness for Christ.  But every time he was successful in converting people to Christianity, someone got mad.  Mad enough to have him beaten and jailed multiple times.  What else could he do but call on the name of Jesus for protection? He knew his real battle wasn’t with the Jewish religious elite, or with the Roman authorities.  His real battle was against something much bigger.  And so is ours.

So Paul gives us some advice.  “Put on the whole armor of God.”  He is no doubt picturing the armor worn by the Roman soldiers who occupied Israel.  But instead of physical armor and weapons, Paul is urging us to gear up spiritually. The first item Paul mentions is “the belt of truth.” For a Roman soldier their “belt” wasn’t a narrow strip of leather to hold up their pants like we think of a belt.  It was more like a leather apron worn under the armor, protecting the torso and thighs. The next piece of equipment Paul identifies is “the breastplate of righteousness.” The Roman breastplate protected the wearer’s chest from sword blows and arrow strikes.  Paul goes on to say we need to fit ourselves with special shoes, shoes that ready us to share the gospel of peace.  I thought about wearing my Birkenstock sandals to church today—those seem to me to be my most peace loving shoes.  But it’s a little cold for that.  Paul says, whatever shoes will make you most able to spread the gospel, put those on!

Of course, what is a Roman soldier without a shield, so Paul tells us we need a shield of faith.  If it is compared to the large Roman shield, our shields will cover our entire bodies, completely protecting us from the assaults that came our way. When was the last time you thought about putting on a shield of faith?  I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that.  When I walk to work, I make sure I have my keys and my phone, but I’ve never checked to be sure I have my shield of faith with me! But I think it would be useful!  Paul’s career is a witness, that the shield of faith makes God’s presence and power available even in the midst of attacks from evil forces.

We’re almost completely covered.  But we still need “the helmet of salvation”, which reminds us that, through Jesus Christ our head, we have already attained the victory over sin and death.  And last, we need to carry the “sword of the Spirit.”  This is not like a Jedi light saber or Harry Potter wand.   Rather it means that the Spirit makes this “sword”—the gospel--a powerful and effective force for good in this world. The “sword of the Spirit” gives disciples a cutting edge to help us clear away the confusion and darkness, so we can see more clearly the path of righteousness God has for us.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  What do you think:  with all that armor, with all those spiritual resources, are we more ready to face temptation?  Are we more prepared to do battle with the spiritual forces of evil from the heavenly realms? You know, I have a jack and a spare tire in the trunk of my car.  My dad wouldn’t let me take my driver’s test until I could change a tire.  I am technically ready for a flat tire, but I sure hope that situation never comes up!  I think that is how most of us feel about the armor of God.  We know it’s there, but we sure hope we never have to use it!  

The day will come when we no longer need to put on the whole armor of God, but the reality is, we are dealing with evil every single day in this life.  We are all under the influence of it.  We are all susceptible to it.  Our struggle to love our neighbor as ourselves is not a struggle against our neighbors—it is a struggle with the evil forces that oppose love.  Our struggle to love God with our whole hearts and minds and strength is not a struggle against dancing or playing cards or television or any other earthly thing we might blame for getting in the way. Our struggle is with the unseen evil forces that want to keep us from fully experiencing God’s love and goodness. Jesus includes this line in the prayer to help us remember what is really going on when we decide to pray! We get to join in with the work of the divine, and the divine’s primary job responsibility is to bring about good and defeat evil.

With that in mind, let’s talk about the special session of General Conference begins next Saturday.  The United Methodist Church has been struggling with questions around human sexuality for fifty years.  But we know all that struggle is not against our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our struggle is not with Scripture or the Book of Discipline.  Our struggle is with the spiritual forces of evil from the heavenly realms.  Evil forces that want to see the Christian family divided, discouraged, demoralized and defeated.  But there is another power in the heavenly realms.  There is another team on the field.  And that team is Love.  That team is God.  And every week we gather to worship in front of an empty cross as proof that God’s team holds the power over sin and death, and holds the power to New and Eternal Life.

The United Methodist Church is the second largest protestant denomination in the United States (second only to the Southern Baptist Convention) and one of the largest in the world.  Through the United Methodist Church, the good news of God’s love is being proclaimed in more than 60 countries! Through the United Methodist Church, the world is being blessed by a witness to the truth—that we don’t all have to think alike in order to love alike.  I think God is calling us to “sober up”.  I think God wants us to be aware of what is really going on.  We are not fighting with each other about doctrine.  Our true adversary is evil, that force in the world that opposes goodness.  We need to put on the whole armor of God.

To help us do that, we will be having a prayer vigil in our sanctuary on Thursday night from 6:30 to 8.  In addition to making a special effort to be in prayer this week, you might also consider fasting, from food or television or social media or something else.  Intentionally deprive yourself of something so you can better serve God.  Or you might consider intentionally adding something to your week.  Add a conversation with someone you don’t know well.  Add reading on the United Methodist Church website about the Way Forward. Add silence.  Add hope.  Do all you can to put on the full armor of God.  While it is true that only General Conference delegates have a vote, it is not true that only the delegates have a voice.  We all have the power to add to the fight against evil.

One other option that just came to my attention on Friday is up on the screen.  Grove UMC is located on Boot Road in West Chester, less than 30 minutes from here. They are having an all-day prayer vigil next Saturday, and we are invited.  They will be live-streaming the proceedings from General Conference.  Did you know the whole first day of General Conference is devoted to prayer?  When I found that out, I was really encouraged.  They get it, that our struggle is not with each other, it is not with scripture, it is not with our doctrine and polity.  The struggle is with powers we cannot see, but yet we know can easily influence us.

I heard about a preaching technique, where the sermon is based on an easy to remember action item.  I tried it last week.  Do you remember what I said we needed to learn to do?  “Say Grace”.  This week I think the action item is “Sober Up”.  We are under the influence of evil.  We cannot always see it or articulate it, we might only rarely think about it.  But we know it’s there.  Paul says it’s not flesh and blood, it’s the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Jesus included this line in the Lord’s Prayer so we would remember exactly what it is we are up against—evil—and exactly who it is that saves us—God!  There’s an old spiritual song that goes something like this, “The Lord God Almighty’s never failed me yet! O victory is mine, victory is mine, victory this day is mine. I told ole Satan, get thee behind, victory today is mine.”  For as Paul wrote on 2 Corinthians 4 (verses 8 & 9):  We may be hard pressed, but we will not be crushed; we may be perplexed, but we don’t have to be driven to despair; we may be persecuted but we will never be forsaken; we may be struck down, but we will not be destroyed.  So let’s put on the full armor of God, and pray:  Do not let us fall into temptation, Lord, and deliver us from evil.  Amen.

[pastordorry-blog]

Forgiveness

Lord’s Prayer Week 5

Matthew 18:21-35

February 10, 2019

           Some of the parables Jesus tells are hard to understand, but I think we’ve got a no-brainer on our hands today.  Even without his words of warning at the end, we have no trouble getting the point:  Since God has forgiven us of our debts, debts we could never repay on our own, we should forgive the debts of others.  Easy, right?  Ha!  Forgiveness may be simple in theory, but it can be pretty complicated in practice.

Phil and I bought our first house back in the early 90’s in a little town called North Wales.  It’s in Montgomery County, just off Route 202, about 8 miles north of Norristown.  It was a cute little rancher with a cute little yard on a cute, quiet street.  But even though the street was quiet, it could get crowded.  Most of the houses either didn’t have a driveway or had a driveway that only fit one car.  So there were a lot of cars parked on the street.  We were only there a year or so when one morning when I was running late for work, I backed out the driveway and—you guessed it, bam!  I backed right in to the car of the man who lived across the street and one house over from us.

I knocked on his door, apologized, gave him my insurance information, etc.  Everything was fine…until about a year later, I backed out of the driveway with a different car and hit his car again!  This time, I felt so much shame, for a few seconds I toyed with the idea of just driving away and pretending as if nothing had happened.  But of course, something did happen.  And this time it was worse.  He had started working second shift, so when I knocked on his door at 7:30 in the morning, he had still been asleep.  Again, I apologized and gave him my insurance information, and thankfully, he was pretty calm.  But honestly, as I tell you this story, I can feel the shame rising up inside me once again—and this happened 25 years ago!

I don’t know why I feel so much shame about these backing up accidents, because I am in good company.  About a year later, a different neighbor—the person who lived next door to the man whose car I hit twice—was leaving for work and backed in to our car, which was parked on the street.  A few years after that, that house had changed hands, and the new person who bought it backed in to our car.  Keep in mind, we tried most of the time to just put both of our cars in the narrow driveway, and if we had to park on the street, we tried not to park where it seemed someone would easily hit us!  But despite all our strategery, the residents of Washington Avenue did their part to keep North Wales Auto Body in business!

I tell you this story because, no matter how old we are, we are people who still need to learn to say grace.  I don’t mean we need to memorize a prayer to say before we eat our meals.  Some people call that a blessing, the prayer you say before a meal, but we always called it “Saying Grace”.  And in my house, both growing up myself and when our kids were growing up, we always said the same prayer:  God is great, God is good, let us thank God for our food.  By his hands we all are fed; grant us, Lord, our daily bread.

Do you know that prayer?  That is how I said grace for most of my life. There’s nothing wrong with that.  But we need to learn to “say grace” in situations besides meals.  Last week Pastor Brad pointed out that most of us don’t rely on prayer for our daily bread.  We have the resources to buy all the food we need and then some.  So he rightly encouraged us to think about daily bread as not just physical food, but spiritual food.  There is a whole menu of spiritual practices we could engage in to help us get to know God better and feast on God’s love.

I thought that was a great sermon.  But I think Jesus knew that, no matter how good the sermon is, we might not seek spiritual daily bread unless something makes us realize how hungry we are.  And so Jesus followed up the line, “Give us this day our daily bread” with, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”  The practice of forgiveness is so important to Jesus that he goes on to say that we will not be forgiven our sins if we don’t forgive others (Matthew 6:14-15).  For some people, getting enough food to eat is a matter of life and death.  Few people in our neck of the woods have to worry about literally starving to death.  But when it comes to spiritual bread, our ability—or inability—to forgive, that shows us just how hungry we really are. Learning to say grace is a matter of life and death for us!

And yet, even though learning to forgive is a matter of spiritual life and death, forgiveness is one of the most difficult subjects we ever have to talk about in church.  Ask any pastor, they will tell you that they have sat with many hurt people who are struggling to forgive because they have been sinned against.  It seems insensitive to tell people they have to forgive when, quite possibly, I cannot even begin to imagine the hell they have experienced.  But I also think we have a hard time talking about forgiveness because we ourselves are sinners.  Even though we are very happy to sing, “Amazing Grace” and name it as one of our all-time favorite hymns, there is a part to each of us that it still very reluctant to admit that we need grace.

At least, I know I am.  When I first wrote this sermon, earlier this week, I had a different story at the beginning.  A story about someone else’s mistake and their struggle to forgive themselves.  I told myself I was using that story because no one wants to come to church and hear the pastor talk about herself or himself every week!  But that wasn’t sitting right with me, and I felt God nudging me to tell you about my bad driving.  I would like to point out, though, in my defense, and knock on wood, I haven’t hit anything with my car since 2011, so I’ve gotten better.  Just don’t want you to be afraid to ride with me.  Pastor Brad told me my driving is a lot better than Pastor Bob’s…

Okay, I need to get back on track.  The point is, forgiving other people is not the only demanding aspect to forgiveness.  Forgiving ourselves isn’t easy, either!  Those car accidents were not sins—they were simply mistakes.  I had intended no ill-will toward my neighbor.  But afterwards, I struggled with ill-will toward myself.  I was having trouble saying grace to myself. Instead of enjoying God’s grace, and feeling good about doing the right thing and knocking on his door and making things right with my neighbor, I have been feeling shame.  Instead of God’s voice telling me I am a beloved child even if I dent the car, the voice that stuck inside my head was the man at the auto body shop.  “Geez lady, when are you going to learn to use your mirrors?”  

As I look back on it now, I think he needed to learn to say grace, too.  And I have a feeling there’s not a single person in this room who isn’t hungry.  We all need to learn to say grace to ourselves so we can then say it to others.

In our gospel lesson today, the servant who owed much to the king never learned to say grace.  He was forgiven his debt and set free to start a new.  We would think he would be so thankful for this second chance that he would have gladly forgiven the servant who owed him a little.  But even though the debt of money was wiped clean, but his soul was still hurting.  He was ashamed that he had amassed that much debt in the first place.  He was sorry he had embarrassed himself.  I think he felt like a failure for putting his family at risk. He was still a man in need of a savior.

And we are people in need of a savior, too.  It would be so nice if the world were populated by perfect people.  But that is not just wishful thinking, it’s actually a very harmful fantasy.  Jesus said it is the truth, not fantasy, that will set us free. When we pray The Lord’s Prayer, we can accept the truth of our individual and collective brokenness.  We all owe debts we could never begin to repay on our own, which is one of the reasons we call it the “good news” of the gospel.  God’s love for us is so great, we don’t need to earn it, or buy it, or negotiate for it. It’s just grace, freely given. Thanks be to God!

But it seems to me there is a shadow side at work in us, too.  If we are uncomfortable being regular human beings with foibles and limitations and bad driving records and at times a pretty lame batting average against the temptations pitched at us, the grace that is meant to free us instead makes us feel ashamed.  It makes us angry and defensive.  It can make us demanding and self-righteous.  The king granted grace to the servant, but instead of making him happy, it made him mean. He could not accept his own sinfulness for having gotten so far in debt in the first place, so he projected his judgment on to his colleague who owned him something.

People are made in God’s image, and therefore, we are all able to love.  But our ability to love ourselves and others is always limited by our unmet needs, by our brokenness, by our immaturity.  God loves us with a perfect love.  Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen calls this our “first love”.  But people can only love with a “second” love.  Even the people we love the most—our parents, our spouses, our children—they deserve our perfect love, but we do not have perfect love to give them. We don’t even have perfect love to give to ourselves.

That is why God sent Jesus to us:  to hand deliver God’s first love to the human race. Jesus said, “I no longer call you servants, now I call you friends.”  When is the last time you did something to deepen your friendship with God?  It is friendship with God that helps us become more forgiving.  It is receiving God’s unconditional love for ourselves allows us to offer it to others. This is why forgiveness has nothing to do with whether or not the offending person ever apologizes or changes. Forgiveness comes from having an encounter with God in our heart.

However, I must make this clear:  being required to forgive does NOT mean it is holy to tolerate abuse.  Forgiveness is like grease for our relationships—it lubricates things so we can live and work together productively and peacefully, in life-giving ways.  It is never meant to keep a person bound in a structure or relationship that is intent on snuffing out or diminishing life.  Forgive yes; allow yourself to be a victim, No! God does not want us to be separated from experiencing full and abundant life by our own sin—or someone else’s.  

At my first appointment, there were two sisters in the congregation who hadn’t spoken to each other in years.  Yet, even though the supposedly never spoke to each other, they had arranged a system so that they would never be in church together on the any given Sunday.  One or the other of them was usually present, but not both.  Even weirder was how, when I talked to a couple of the previous pastors, they noticed the same thing I did:  that every time the sermon was about forgiveness, neither of the sisters were in church!  

Can you imagine what a blessing it would have been to that family, and that congregation, if those sisters would have learned to say grace?  I imagine if you could interview those sisters, each one would say, “Well if my sister would apologize, I would forgive her.”  But forgiveness is a spiritual transaction that takes place in a person’s heart because they have encountered God’s grace.  It is not dependent upon the circumstances or attitude or contrition of the other person.  To be a Christian is to be a person who wears the name of Christ in the world.  That means we do in the world the things Jesus did—and Jesus’ very last act on earth was to forgive the people who crucified him. God’s forgiveness is so passionately offered to the world that we might sum up Christianity in one word:  grace.

So let’s learn to say grace.  All we have to do is go back to the very first words of the Lord’s Prayer:  Our Father. As we pray, we can take the entire weight of the world’s collective sin, “Our” sin, our brokenness, our poignant humanity—even my brokenness, my poignant humanity--and place it side by side with our Father.  A Father so merciful and loving, He sent us his Son.  Our Father.  That is how we learn to say grace.  Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.  Amen.  

 Benediction:  Many of us grew up hearing that if we put our trust in Jesus and confess our sins and repent, God will forgive us.  But the reality is, we are not forgiven because we repent.  We are forgiven because we forgive.  Go in peace, and serve your Lord.  Amen.