Prayer Meeting: Celebrating the Diversity of God's Creation & Ending Systemic Evil

As stated in the last post, "Evil Church," tomorrow there will be a gathering in New Albany, MS of an infamous group that seeks to divide and "purify" God's wonderful creation. Tomorrow's gathering will be an act that the Church needs to stand up against. I will be standing up against it in thoughtful prayer and conversation with others who wish to join me.

Here's your invitation: Tomorrow from 11:54 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. you are welcome to come to my house and gather for a time of prayer and conversation that will both seek to end systemic evil in all of its forms while, at the same time, thankfully celebrating God for the diverse creation that we have been blessed with. If you need directions or information just give me a call or Facebook me.

It is time, Church, that we stand up and join the saints who have faithfully walked the path of The Way, and have sought to follow in the footsteps of Jesus the Christ.

Evil Church

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the church (the body of believers, not the buildings) actually functions, or rather lives, in our local communities.

When I think about it, we're pretty good at being present in Sunday School classes (although we're never on time...unless there's free food), filling the pews for Sunday morning worship (just in time to miss the offering and out before "the church across the street" gets to the local eateries). We're pretty good at being present in Sunday evening's worship serivce (especially if we have a child of ours involved), Wednesday evening Bible Study (even if it does only last for 30 minutes), offering an opportunity for our children to play and learn together, and providing a home-cooked, faith community-based meal once a week for a few dollars. And then there's the property - we love our property. We're really good at making sure that we've got some of the best looking buildings with the brightest stained glass windows, freshest black-topped parking lots, plushest furniture to rest ourselves on, and the latest state-of-the-art kitchen(s) - all with plaques to show who gave the gifts and whom the gifts memorialize.

While this laundry list of things might (and probably was) read with a tone of frustration, or at the very least sarcasm, in all honesty we really do do these things - and we do them well. And in some manner, it should be celebrated. It is a good thing that we have people participating in spiritually formative experiences. It is a good thing that we take pride in the things that we have worked hard for and the things that we have been gifted. It is a good thing that we are willing to gather around a table to share a meal.

But when it all boils down to it, what differences do all of these things make? I mean, am I a better Christian because I have a video screen and projection system in the sanctuary? Or because my church has multiple buildings? Or because there's a coffee shop right outside of the santuary doors? Or because we have a big screen tv with an Xbox 360 in our youth room?

There's one thing that each item on the laundry list has in common with every other thing on that laundry list: they all exist to serve the members of the local community of faith.

And at first some might think, "Well of course it does! It should! They (we) deserve nice things. Those things help us remember our past. They help us focus on God. They make us feel good about who we are." While that's all well and good, is it what the Christian faith is really made of? Is being a Christian all about having nice things?

I started the post by stating that I've been thinking a lot about how the church functions and lives in our local communities. I've been thinking of this because I've (re)arrived at the realization that apathy has gripped its cold fingers around our collective hearts and minds as a people of faith. We're quite content with our quaint Sundays and brunches and being able to proclaim our faith - as long as its with people that we know and people that we want to be around.

In other words, we're okay being Christians as long as we don't have to put ourselves at risk.

This coming weekend is such an example. I found out Sunday evening that many junior high and high school students in the town in which I live (and where my wife serves as a clergy person) were being handed fyers and invitations to a "gathering" sponsored by an infamous hate group. The purpose of the gathering is to discuss, "immigration reform and crime rates...specifically, black-on-white crime" (as per the flyer). I became sick to my stomach when I heard about it. And the longer I sat at home in my chair, the more angry I became. But when I brought up the suggestion to form a community response in the form of a worship service to celebrate the diversity of God's creation - NOT A PROTEST - it was met with a (already discussed) plan to not do anything because, "any action would be exactly what 'they' want - more attention."

My interpretation: "While I feel bad for 'those people' who are victimized, I really don't want to put myself at risk. It'll get too messy. And besides, this doesn't effect me anyway."

My heart aches because systemic evil has lurched its way into the church, and we've done next to nothing to stop it because we're afraid that it might get too messy. The church does not exist to serve, maintain, and pamper itself. The church exists to serve others, and work for the transformation of the world by providing opportunities for the inbreaking of God's Reign on earth. Participation in Sunday activities shouldn't be structured as to give us our weekly "God credits." Rather, when the community of faith gathers it should be for the equipping and encouragement of the people of faith so that they might live lives of transformative discipleship.

Being a follower of Christ means living out God's limitless love for the world to the world by being in relationship with other people - Christian or otherwise. In his latest book, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, Leonard Sweet writes that, "Every Christian is a colonizer: We are colonizing earth with heaven. We are creating 'colonies' of heaven not Christian-coated mirror cities. Just as a pastor can falsify Christ to a congregation, so can a church falsify Christ to the world." (19) By recognizing the evils in the world while failing to stand against them in love, the church becomes a partner in those evils. By partnering with evil, the church itself becomes evil - thus breaking away from the intended life that God has created and made real to us through the life and teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

The Christian faith is a messy thing. It can't be broken down and compartmentalized into neat, little check-off boxes. The life of the One whom we choose to follow didn't happen in clean, plush-carpeted rooms with brass candle holders and leather couches. It happened out in the world - in the community, with the community - surrounded by like-minded people for support and strength, and by other-minded people who sought to squelch his vision: that God's world and rule of love might come to be in our world of separation and disunity.

My hope is that I am able to remain in this vision - the vision of God's world coming to engulf our world - that I might continue to seek to be an agent of Godly change in the towns in which I live and serve - and that I might not become the kind of Christian that makes rocks cry out.

(post script: We are still hoping to have some kind of worshipful celebration this weekend - so keep coming back - I'll post something as soon as I find out the plans.)

That's Life (1 John 3:16-24)

The American Heritage Dictionary says that privilege is “a special advantage, immunity, permission or right…granted to or enjoyed by an individual” or individuals; while a benefit is “something that promotes or enhances well-being” of the whole.

In other words, a privilege is something special….and a benefit promotes the well-being of everyone.

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, knew this distinction well and noticed that many Christians were getting confused between the two. While being the grace that God offers is the potential benefit for everyone, Wesley noticed that people were resting only in that benefit and not moving forward into the privilege – the special right of that grace-filled offer – which is Christian discipleship.For Wesley, the offer of grace - what we call justification - provided a comparative change, while the life-long relationship found in being a disciple of Christ – the privilege – offers real change. In coming to Christ, we accept what God does for us - In living out our discipleship, we experience what God does in us.

Christians that were members of the church in its infancy, almost 1900 years ago, were struggling with a problem that was eerily similar to the problem that John Wesley addressed with members of the Christian church only a few hundred years ago. There was a struggle to realize the complexity between connecting the personally experienced grace-filled love of God and the need to live out that love in Christian discipleship.

The Christian community of First John struggled to live out its faith and call to Christian discipleship over and against the world that surrounded them. It is largely thought that this community was directly influenced by John’s gospel so heavily that it relied on those particular writings as the guide to its faith and actions – realizing that Jesus Christ was the self-identified revealer of God’s love, and that in his own teachings, Jesus commanded those who followed him to believe in him and that they were to reveal God’s love by loving others.

The times for these new Christians were difficult ones. They lived in an era of political upheaval and revolt. Dealing with multiple changes in leadership and a constant flow of outsiders from non-Roman empire areas settling in and creating new and hybrid life-customs, these Christians struggled with remembering which direction was up – there was a lot of change with many new voices offering their own interpretations on how to live life.

As we read from First John, we can see that there apparently was confusion about how one should live out their faith – there was a struggle to manage both the spiritual life and the secular life. This Christian community was finding it very hard to do the two things that it should have known how to do very well: (1) believe in Jesus Christ as God’s son and (2) love one another.

Recalling the Gospel of John rendition of Christ’s sacrifice, First John 3:16 reminds the Christian community of the importance of Jesus’ command to love one another. First John emphasizes that the communal love for one another is placed in relationship to God’s redemptive love that is shown through Christ’s act of sacrifice on the cross for all of humanity. First John also helps the Christian community to recognize the relationship – the connection – between Christ’s love for humanity and the Christian’s responsibility to love one another – where Christ loved humanity to the very point of death, the writer of First John is reminding the Christian community that the unconditional love for one another would also suggest love to the point of death.

This love is hard. It’s hard to understand. It’s hard to envision. It’s hard to actually do. But there is a concreteness – an earthiness – to this love – this love that First John urges the Christian community to embrace – this love that Jesus Christ unveils as God’s love for humanity. This love suggests more than the laying-down of one’s life for another. This love pushes us, the disciple – the follower – of Jesus Christ to focus on the ultimate generosity of giving to others what they might need in order to survive. This love of self-sacrifice – of laying one’s life down – must include, First John writes, the consideration and well-being and the needs of others. We know this because we saw it modeled by Jesus Christ on the cross.

And, you know, it shouldn’t be necessary to argue that this engagement of loving one another in the way the God loves humanity includes engagement with a world in need – in a world with all its complexities – political, social or otherwise. But strangely enough the writer of First John feels the need to actually say it – because there are Christians who didn’t make the connection – there were Christians who didn’t get it.

John Wesley saw Christians who didn’t get it, too. And if we looked around – maybe at ourselves or even in our churches today, if not the world – we would still see Christians who don’t make the connection – Christians who still don’t get it.

“We should love one another.” It seems obvious. That is the right Christian thing to do. But we live in a world where resentments, anger, grudges, and violence dominates. Look around – listen to the news - daily we hear stories of people not being loved – people are killed, raped, divorced, bullied, terrorized, and abused. And it happens to everyone regardless if you are at home, or in your office, or at school – regardless if you’re Christian or not. People are not getting along with each other. People are living with hatred, which the Bible equates as murder in their hearts. It seems like our world is overrun with this disconnection of what it means to love God with everything that we have and are and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

In his book, The New Being (1955), Paul Tillich writes about the kind of love that the Christian community is to embody and live out to the rest of the world. Tillich writes that,

Love overcomes separation…Love is the infinite which is given to the finite. Therefore…we love the love that is in them…which is far more than their love or our love. Death is given no power over love. Love is stronger.

We must come to a recognition that the love that we are to have for one another – the love that is displayed by Christ on the cross – is more powerful than anything that would try and stand against it. More than any other concept, love expresses the abiding nature of the God we worship.

I was talking with one of my former students from a past ministry setting the other day who describes herself as spiritual but not religious – the hallmark tagline of today’s post-modern, mainline church-goer. And as we were talking we discussed the “problems” that she was having with the church – that is was full of hypocrites, that people talked a big story but never followed up on their words, that people said that they valued certain things but did the opposite when it came to supporting their “cause,” that people only seemed to care when it directly involved them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised to hear these things. I wasn’t surprised because she was, in part, right. I say “in part” because there are those of us in the church that have lost our sense of faith-filled direction.

This doesn’t mean that we are less Christian or that we don’t love God any less – it just means that we have reached a moment – an opportunity - where we can begin to focus on what our lives as Christian people really looks like.

To live as Christian people means that our spiritual lives are not separate from the lives that we live outside of Sundays or Wednesday nights – they are lives that are joined together, with other Christians, to show the love of God to the world. The Christian life is one that realizes that the power – the ability – to love is not a self-generated one; rather, the Christian’s life of love is empowered and made possible by God’s Spirit that goes before us into each new day so that we might find the opportunities to not only hear of God’s love, but that we might truthfully enact that love to a world that so desperately needs to understand and experience what God’s love is like.

The Chrisitan life – your life – doesn’t end here at the conclusion of worship to be wrapped up and kept all neat and clean until we meet again next Sunday morning at 10:50. Your life of loving as God loves must continue past these pews and go into the places that you work, and into the places where you learn, and into the places that you teach, and into the places where your families are.

As we continue to grow and be formed as disciples of Jesus the Christ, may it be done in such a way that we are inspired to live out God’s mission of love and healing to a broken world – to all of those in whom we enter into a relationship with – realizing that all that we say and do and are was not left here this morning, but will be taken with us - as Christ’s Body - into the world that God so desperately loves.

Amen.

Jesus' Gardening Ain't Easy Gardening

Being a newlywed has been such a great experience. There’s the family traditions, my new nieces, new connections with people in the family’s neighborhoods, and probably the best part is all – the stories. Over the last year (Amanda and I were married on April 5, 2008), I have been learning so much about all of these new people that are a part of my life now. And one of the most interesting people that is a part of this family is Amanda’s grandmother – a Godly woman who we affectionately call, Granny.

Now Granny was born and raised a Methodist, but – according to her, f or the sake of convenience - she attends the Baptist church down the street…for the last two or three decades. She’s an active Sunday School teacher, babysitter of two very energetic great-granddaughters – Mackenzie and Brooklyn, who are 5 and almost-4 respectively – she’s a great neighbor who has her door open any time that she’s at home so people can come and go as they please, she’s a cancer patient, she’s a widow, she’s a mother of three, grandmother of five (six if you count me) – there are so many things that Granny is, but one of my most favorite things that Granny is – Granny’s a gardener.

Granny’s backyard contains one of the largest and diverse backyard, neighborhood gardens that I’ve ever seen. She grows anything from tomatoes and sweet corn to a huge variety of butter beans and peas, to broccoli and cucumbers. The woman knows how to grow things – and grow them good.

And she grows things because she loves it – she loves the reward of a good, hard work. For Granny, gardening is the most therapeutic work that she can do. When things in the neighborhood just aren’t right – she gardens. When things in the world aren’t just right – she gardens. When she gets troubling news – she gardens.

I’ve heard stories of Amanda’s family where the rest of them might try and lend a hand onceinawhile, but the work overcomes them – and for the most part, they try to avoid it because it’s such hard work. Some of you know what I’m talking about – that hard work that comes with tending a garden and cultivating the food that comes from that garden: all of the tilling of the soil, the planting of fresh seeds every season, the different methods and times to water the plants, the waiting and waiting and waiting to see how things are growing, the constant bending over and picking, the spraying – all of it is so hard. And for someone who’s not used to the work, gardening will eat them up and spit them out.

Verse 35 of Matthew’s ninth chapter does a great job of summarizing all of the things that Jesus had been doing up until this point in the gospel. We read that Jesus has been going from town to town, teaching and preaching and healing all who would come to him – expressing God’s power and love for the people that Jesus comes into relationship with. And the disciples obviously recognize this as Jesus tells them that there is a full harvest that can be gathered, but there aren’t very many people who are willing to bring themselves out to the garden and do the work. He follows this up in 10:16 reminding the disciples how hard the work will be as they begin doing the work of harvesting “like sheep among wolves.” This gardening that Jesus speaks of sure doesn’t sound anywhere near as easy as it might be to be out in Granny’s backyard.

But we know that Jesus isn’t really talking about gardening. Jesus is using imagery that his disciples understand – Jesus doesn’t really mean that there aren’t enough workers for the garden. But through Jesus’ short side conversation with his disciples, we can get a glimpse of something that is true for all of Jesus followers – being a disciple is hard work.

Jesus is preparing his disciples as they are approaching the time where they will be doing the preaching and teaching and healing for Jesus. Up to this point, Jesus has been the central focus of the work of God being done on earth. However, shortly after this little conversation that Jesus has with his disciples – in 10:1 – we find that the focus shifts - from Jesus to the disciples – as Jesus gathers them up, empowers them to do ministry by giving them the tools that they will need, and gives them the authority to go out in his name to show the world God’s grace-filled love.

As we read Matthew’s gospel, we find that the disciples do go out as Jesus instructed them to do, and their numbers increased. And besides reading what Matthew says, we know that the disciples were successful because we are all here tonight. The message of God’s love, realized through the life and teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus, through the power of God’s Spirit has been passed down from century to century, from disciple to disciple.

And so, now, in this day and age it is our responsibility to share that message of God’s love for the entire world – as we are disciples of the risen Christ – not only through the words that we speak or the people that we know, but through the lives that we live and the way we interact with the rest of God’s creation.

And, we would be good to remember Jesus’ words to his disciples – you will be like sheep amongst wolves – this is not going to be an easy task. We live in such a “can’t wait” and “next big thing” world that we find it easy to tell God, “I can work in the garden later.” And it frustrates me because while we can tell God that God will have to wait, we don’t tell our bosses or our teachers or our co-workers or our friends or even our family that they will have to wait.

Think about that garden. What happens if the food – the corn, the beans, the tomatoes, the peas – what happens if they have to wait to be picked? They spoil. They rot. They die.

I typically have CNN on in the background while I’m preparing for my Sunday mornings. And a few weeks ago, CNN reported that the Christian population in the United States was declining – not to the gain of other religious traditions; but rather, Christianity is losing out to those who chose the “no preference” column of society. It hurt my heart to hear that report. But, if I was to be honest, I couldn’t act surprised.

Being a follower of Jesus is a hard thing to do – it requires an entire lifestyle change. It requires people who are willing to work – hard.

While we could easily be overwhelmed with the task – the hard work – of following Jesus, we can find a comfortable relevance with this little window into the life of Jesus and his disciples. Where we are jarred into a realization that there is much work to be done, we find that Jesus guided his disciples to center themselves in a life of prayer.

“…therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

God’s qualifications for workers are pretty few – there’s no requirement other than you love God. This morning on Facebook, Leonard Sweet – author, preacher, ordained United Methodist elder, and the E. Stanley Jones professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School in Madison, New Jersey – wrote as his status: “Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" Not, "Will you be a successful leader?" or "Ready to lead my church?" The Jesus Test has only 1 question”

God sees the potential in each and every one of us to be followers of Jesus and do the hard work of loving God’s creation.

There’s a story that I’ve heard used before in a sermon that I think has a great handle on all of this gardening stuff. There was a farmer who planted a garden, and because of the mass amounts of produce that came from this garden the farmer became famous in his little town. As the years went by, the folks around town realized that there were more and more plant labels placed along the rows of seeds. One afternoon, as on he was on his way home from work, a neighbor stopped by the field that the farmer was watching. The man said jokingly to the farmer, “What’s this? Are you getting so old now that you can’t remember what you’ve planted where? You’ve got labels all over the place!” And the farmer said, while continuing to look out onto his field, “No, that’s not it. I put pictures of the fully grown plants out so that the little seeds can see what they might become some day.”

God sees what you could become, knowing full well that there are other things – other people – other causes – that will also pull at you and demand your full attention. And this isn’t a new thing – there have always been things that have pulled at the people who follow God – that there have always been people who act like workers in the garden but step off to the side and sit in the shade.

Jesus’ call to work in the garden is not one that should instill a sense of fear or despair; rather, Jesus’ call to work in the garden should be met with faithful anticipation of God’s presence with those who answer Jesus’ call.

We are each being called to do the hard work of being a follower – a disciple – of Jesus. God sees the potential that each of has as a creation – a child – of God to love the world in such a way that it might be transformed into a true reflection of God’s image. As Christians we are to answer that call and do the gathering – not in the near future, risking the death and the spoiling of the crops – but in the here and now, that the harvest might live the life that the Gardener intended.

What's So Amazing About Grace?

A few weeks ago, at the beginning of February, I was blessed to be invited to lead a workshop on grace for the Mississippi Conference’s confirmation retreat at Camp Lake Stephens in Oxford, MS. The weekend went really well. About 200 sixth, seventh, and eighth graders from across Mississippi came up to Oxford and learned more about what it means to be a Christian in the United Methodist Church. However, I found myself struggling.

While I really do enjoy all of the areas and opportunities that come out of being in parish ministry, my passion for ministry lies with youth. I love spending time with them, learning about how they understand the world, and being a part of how their faith is formed. But I’ve got be honest with you – youth ministry is tough – especially, for me, when it comes to junior high students. I love our junior highers – all of them. And you know, all young people ask good, tough questions, but there’s something about a seventh grader’s questions that can cut straight to your heart. There’s a brutal honesty that leaves you feeling exposed and stammering for an answer that might pacify this curious mind. There’s an element of curiosity that doesn’t want any flowery language, or any well-woven, nuanced sentences – they just want the truth and they want you to be real with them. And I’m telling you that if you’ve never experienced one of these questions before, then consider yourself lucky because they’re scary.

During this recent confirmation retreat, I had an encounter with a young man who posed such a question to me upon the conclusion of my workshop. After telling a room of roughly 30 students about how God’s Prevenient Grace is the kind of grace that exists before we even know that God loves us, that it’s the kind of love that chases after us and pursues us at ever chance – that God’s Justifying Grace is the grace that we experience when we make a decision to mold our lives after, and follow the example of Jesus’ life found in the Christian Scriptures; that it’s the grace that places us in a right relationship with God where we can begin to grow in faith and in knowledge of Jesus – that God’s Sanctifying Grace was the grace that all Christians experience once we experience in that God sends the Spirit to guide and encourage us to love as Jesus loves and to see others as God sees them: as family. And that all of these kinds of grace are just God’s way of showing us how much God wants us to be in, and moves us towards, a free, undeserved, unmerited love-relationship with God - this student, this kid, this seventh-grader says to me in front of the room, “This is all great stuff, but why can’t pastors ever tell us something different about God’s love for us? How come we always hear the same thing over and over again? I mean, when you think about it, I only have to go to church for three years and I’ll hear all there is to hear about the Bible, God, Jesus, and me.” And here’s where it cut straight to my heart – he then asked, “What’s so amazing about grace if all you can tell me is that I don’t deserve it, and that God’s in control of it all anyway and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I stood there. I remember that I blinked quite a few times. I remember that I could feel my face getting red and hot. I remember that I could feel little beads of sweat forming on my forehead and my nose. And I remember all of the looks that this room full of sixth, seventh, and eighth-graders, and pastors were giving me as I stood in the front of the room with a power point slide reflecting off of my face. And I remember, too, what I said to him. I said, “You’re right.”

“What do you mean ‘I’m right’?” he said.

I said, “I mean that you’re right. You don’t deserve grace and God is in control of it and there is nothing you can do about it. You’re right.”

I could have said a number of things.

I could have gone into the way that Paul uses the Greek language to help readers understand that the work that God does through grace is called poiēma, and that it means the same thing in Ephesians and in Romans that is does when the Scriptures refer to God’s perfecting work found in the creation stories of Genesis – that we, as grace-filled people, are “holy and blameless,” meaning that Jesus Christ has borne the burden of sin that would keep us away from being in a true relationship with God.

I could have noted that there are reversals found in the Ephesians text that shows us what life is like as a Christian – that while we are dead where we stand, through grace we are made alive in Christ Jesus – that even though we have done things to satisfy our needs to accommodate the demands of our culture, demands that leads us away from the life that God intended for us to live; that because of the resurrection of Jesus, we are able to rise to a new life in God’s love – and that while the forces of evil, forces that would reject all the love that God has for us, would rather pull us down; God’s sacrificial love that we know through Jesus seats us in exalted places where God raises us up above anything that is contrary to that love.

I could have showed him that by Paul’s use of the phrase “with Jesus Christ” instead of “in Jesus Christ,” we realize that grace is historical, in that the people of Israel have a history and that Jesus has a history and that the church has a history – and that by receiving God’s saving grace we can say that we are part of the history of Israel, God’s people; that we are part of Jesus’ history through his life, death, AND resurrection; and that we are a part of the church’s history, that all that we are and all that we are created to be matters in the grand scheme of God’s gift of grace.

But I didn’t say that.

What I said was that he was right – that he didn’t deserve God’s grace and that there was nothing for him to do about because God was going to give it to him anyway because God loved him. But I didn’t stop with that.

I continued and said to him, “By accepting God’s gift of grace you tell everyone in the world two things: (1) That God can do great things through Jesus Christ, and (2) that you have realized that you can make a difference in this world for the good of humanity because that’s what God calls us to do once we accept the gift of grace. Because of grace, you become God’s beacon of love in a world that can’t see because of the darkness. Because of grace, you become a part of God’s family, entitling you to a life of responsibility to love others as much as God has loved you. And because of grace, you are able to experience the way in which God loves you regardless of who you are, where you’ve come from, or what you’ve done.”

Even though this conversation that I had was with a seventh-grader, I have a feeling that many of us might be asking the same questions that he had: “What’s so amazing about God’s grace?” And my answer to you would be the same answer that I gave to that seventh-grader. God’s grace is amazing because it sets us in a safe place above all of the stress and troubles of life, where our spirits unite with God’s through God’s act of love found in Jesus Christ. God’s grace is amazing because it connects us with all Christians in all times and in all places. God’s grace is amazing because it relentlessly chases after us, putting us in a love-relationship with God, and helps to mold us into who God intended us to be: a people of love that change worldviews, which change lives that reach beyond the trappings of this world to show others what life is like WITH Jesus.

May you, this Lent, continue to remember the all-consuming love of God that drove the disciples to remember the reality of life with Jesus, that caused Nicodemus to scurry around in the night to ask Jesus questions about what it means to be born-again, and that causes us to follow the One in whom we live and move and have our being; so, that when Easter comes, we might be able to look back into depths of our lives and see that God does love us - realizing that there’s nothing that we can do about it.

Reflections on a Holy Friendship

While trying to get ideas about what to write for this month’s newsletter, I decided to peruse the March-April edition of The Upper Room devotional to see what was written about for April 5, Palm Sunday. The devotion, written by Pamela Hawkins of TN, focuses on Luke 19:35, and is entitled “Holy Friendship.” It’s a great piece of writing that really evokes some great questions about the community of faith and its relationship with one another.

Jesus serves as a great model for us this Lenten and, fast-approaching, Easter season. He shows to us that the community of faith is to rely upon one another for all things. Hawkins writes that, “As a young colt stamps the dust, cloaks are quickly thrown onto its back. And then the strong arms of the disciples lift Jesus. He does not climb up alone; he depends on his friends as he faces the road ahead.” (Upper Room, 46) Jesus relies on his friends, his followers, to help him get up on a donkey – a medial task that really did not require assistance. Jesus humbles himself, thus setting yet another great example of how we are to live as faithful Christian disciples.

And, as we are so familiar with the events of Holy Week, we know that getting up onto the colt was not the only time that the disciples helped Jesus. Upon explaining some of Jesus’ experiences with the disciples this last week of his life, Hawkins writes, “…once again a few will put their hands under his arms and lower him from the cross. Intimate moments, all.” (Upper Room, 46) Jesus’ last journey in Jerusalem not only begins with help from his friends, but it also ends with help from his friends. Even in his death, Jesus shows the community of faith how life is to be lived. Holy friendship is crucial to the life of the Christian community.

Even though not all of the disciples got along with one another, they still followed the example that Jesus, their Teacher, set before them – loving God as much as they could by loving each other as much as they could. This is what Lent and Easter are all about: LOVE. Not the mushy, box-of-chocolate-love that we ogle over in February; rather, it’s the kind of love that drives someone to go out of their way to honor the image of God that is reflected in each and every person. This is the love that we experience in Jesus. This is the love that should be modeled by the Christian community.

As we come to the middle of this Holy Lent and come ever closer to entering into the even holier season of Easter, I pray that we remember that as followers of Jesus the Christ we are a resurrection people. And as a resurrection people, we are to live as the One whom we follow – the resurrected Christ – the One who shows us how to live and how to love through the power of God’s Spirit – the One who leaned and relied on his friends when he could have done it all himself. Lean and love on others during these holy seasons. And let others lean and love on you. It’s what we as a Christian community were made to do.

The Cost of Cleansing: A Sermon on John 2:13-22

So, it’s no secret – our country has fallen on hard economic times. Day after day, whether we listen to the news on the radio or see it on the television, we hear of more and more people who have lost their jobs – from the high power, white collared executives to the dirt-under-the-fingernails, 70-hour-work-week blue collared folks – nobody has proven themselves to be immune from the effects our country’s economic instability.

However, did you know that in the midst of all of this hardship, we’ve been given advice from our government officials and chief financial officers on how to improve our current situation and recover our economy? The answer, they say, is not to do what we might think would be the smart thing – to save as much money as we can. Rather, the advice that has been imparted to us as faithful citizens of these United States is to go out and spend, spend, spend. This advice comes from the idea that the more money we spend on our economy, the better our retail stores, car dealers, and banks will be able to return profits to the communities, bettering the lives of all who live in our country – it’s a cyclical and reciprocal relationship that has been created and established for the purposes of mutual improvement for all members of the community.

All the while, this suggestion of mass spending sprees causes an almost knee-jerk reaction to us shoppers as we flood our malls and car dealerships and continue our business with our banks. That reaction is has happened so much that it, now, comes almost naturally – as we drive down the highway with our gas lights blinking in our faces, or as we walk down the aisles of our grocery stores finding the best deals on our eggs, cheese, and milk, or as we look for that bargain on a dress or new pair of shoes – how much do all of these things cost?

Like us, the readers of John’s gospel were very familiar with this question of “how much” – especially when it came to practicing their faith in the act of worship. And we can see why in this text.

As we read, we see that Jesus has arrived in Jerusalem for the Jewish celebration of Passover. Passover, as you’ll recall, is one of the biggest and most important celebrations in the Jewish faith because of what it celebrates. The celebration of The Passover is an act of worshipful remembrance of God’s delivery of the Israelites from the tyrannical enslavement of the Egyptians. Under the leadership of Moses, who experienced God’s promise of liberation and freedom from a burning bush, the Israelite people were led out of Egypt and out of the oppression of the Egyptian king into the land that God had promised to Abraham and Sarah hundreds of years before.

Which would bring us to today as Jesus walks into the Temple courtyard with his disciples. For Jews around this time, the participation in Passover included many things. But two of the main elements of participating in Passover involved a long pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the sacrificing of animals as a symbol of thanksgiving in the remembrance of God’s deliverance from oppression.

So here we have Jesus just at the beginning of his ministry, having arrived at Jerusalem so that he might practice his faith as a devout Jew, and experiencing all of the sights and sounds of Passover – the shouting of vendors about deals on their clean sacrificial animals, the hustle and bustle conversations of people trying to figure out where they need to be for worship, the clinking of change as money-lenders help the pilgrims to make the correct change so the pilgrims might be able to participate in worship, the bargaining conversations of people and vendors trying to settle on a price appropriate for a sale, the smells of the small barnyard animals as they meander around the Temple, the looming gazes of skeptical Roman guards who would rather be somewhere else than in the midst of this controlled chaos…

But then something happens. Jesus, whom the disciples had witnessed only days before doing things that would encourage the party to go on – things that would bring joy and happiness to the lives of others, has suddenly fashioned a whip and is chasing out the animals and their self-employed owners, flipping over makeshift bank tables, and spouting off something like, “Get this stuff out of here! Stop using my Father’s house as a shopping center!”

In this moment, the disciples have a moment that many of have experienced. In the midst of all the action of life, they remember something very important. You know that feeling – you’ve been working hard all day, getting tasks completed and reaching towards a day’s worth of goals, and then out of the blue something completely different than what you’re focusing on pops into your heard. This happens as the disciples are witnessing Jesus’ actions in the Temple. The disciples remember the words of the psalmist from Psalm 69:9, “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me…” These remembered words are a mystery for the disciples for now.

And as the sellers and their livestock are feverishly making their way out of the Temple courtyard, Jesus is confronted by a group of Jewish leaders who question Jesus about his authority to come in to the Temple and do all of these destructive things. Jesus responds with a statement that incites both confusion and a bit of comical relief, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

What does this mean? Everyone knows that the Temple – which wasn’t even finished at the time of Jesus’ little outburst – had been under construction for almost the last fifty years. Really. I mean, think about it. Fifty years versus three days? How ridiculous does that sound? How is one man going to build and complete a temple in three days that has taken almost fifty years, and countless working hours, to build?

But we, the readers of John’s gospel, are given a little narrative insight – Jesus wasn’t talking about the physical building of the Temple; rather, Jesus was referring to his own body. And we find that the disciples, too, realize this but only after much contemplation and the resurrection of Jesus.

During this season of Lent, I would suggest to you that we focus on this practice that the disciples model for us – remembering – remembering how the things that Jesus said carried the authority of Scripture – remembering that the way that Jesus lived showed all who encountered him that all are children of God and worthy of experiencing God’s gift of grace – remembering that in Jesus’ death there was forgiveness for all, even those who killed him, his enemies – and remembering that in his resurrection, Jesus’ life, teachings, and death are the hallmarks of the One who is God and loves God’s creation to the point of self-sacrifice. These are things that the disciples remembered.

Remembering is such an important part of discipleship.

Because of remembering we are able to have a holy encounter with God through God’s Spirit.

Because of remembering our faith can be deepened – creating an even better understanding of this Jesus, who’s crucifixion and resurrection will be remembered and celebrated in a few short weeks.

Because of remembering we are able to look back and embrace the pain and loss and suffering in each of our lives as individuals and as a Christian community.

And because of remembering we can look on that pain and suffering that is embodied in the season of Lent, and recall the direction to which Lent points – Easter – the resurrection – God’s universal gift of grace found through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

However, before we arrive at Easter, it is good for us to linger in this season of Lent – this season of remembering – especially in the way that the disciples remembered. In the midst of Jesus’ acts of a mini-rebellion, we find the disciples remembering how Scripture answers an important question that is on the minds of disciples of all times and places: How much does it cost?

How much does it cost? It’s a question that doesn’t just pop into our minds when we think about our groceries and gasoline. The question is on our minds, too, when we wonder about what might happen when we decide to participate in God’s offer of grace as followers of Jesus.

One of my favorite historical figures in church history is pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonheoffer. Dietrich Bonheoffer was a German Lutheran pastor that participated in the German Resistance against the powerful Nazi Empire of the early Twentieth Century. Due to his unswerving allegiance to his faith and his God, Bonheoffer helped in founding the Confessing Church, an underground, Protestant organization that recognized that the Christian church was not an "organ of the State" for the purpose of strengthening the Nazi agenda, but only subject to Christ and Christ’s mission (The Barmen Declaration, 1934).

In 1939, Bonheoffer joined a secret group of high-ranking military officers in the military intelligence office, who planned to end the National Socialist regime by killing Hitler. Bonheoffer was arrested in April of 1943 after money used to help Jews escape to

Switzerland was traced to him. He was charged with conspiracy and imprisoned in Berlin for a year and a half. Again, Bonheoffer was imprisoned, following the failure of a plot to end Hitler’s life in 1944, and Bonheoffer’s connections with the conspirators were discovered. He was again arrested and was imprisoned in a procession of prisons and concentration camps, ending at Flossenbürg,

where Hitler demanded that the conspirators be destroyed. At dawn on April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonheoffer was stripped of his clothes, beaten and ridiculed by the German guards, walked out to the Flossenbürg Camp’s yard, and was executed by hanging.

Like Jesus’ disciples in the Temple, we would be good to remember the words of Psalm 69:9, “It is zeal for your house that has consumed me…” Bonheoffer, in his passion and zeal for Christ’s church and out of fear of the perversion of the church by the Nazi agenda, dedicated his life for the survival and sustained existence of the church – acts that would eventually consume his life to the point of losing it to the hands of the ones he sought to keep it from. This, too, is the zeal that the disciples experienced in that Temple courtyard – a realization that if Jesus would continue in this manner, it would eventually cost him his life – which we know, and the disciples realize – eventually does.

This is what real discipleship looks like – zeal and total consumption our lives for the Gospel of Christ and Christ’s church. As disciples of Jesus Christ we are called to a life that offers to all of the world God’s life-giving, grace-filled relationship of love.

I encourage you to live out the rest of this holy season of Lent remembering how much it costs to be a disciple of Jesus the Christ. It can’t be boiled down to giving up bars of chocolate or cans of soda for a few weeks. Rather, the call of Christian discipleship is to live into the fullness of Jesus Christ, and it will cost us our lives if we are so willing to give it.

Amen.