I sit here at my computer thinking about Advent, the season of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love, when we remember to welcome Jesus the Messiah into our world and our lives again. Only I'm not feeling as hopeful, peaceful, joyful, and full of love as I would like to be experiencing. I'm having some trouble treating others like I should be...as if they were Jesus Christ himself. I keep bumping into my own selfish feelings and desires when I try to help others.
I get my feelings hurt by what people say and do just like anyone else. I'm not immune to anger at the actions and words of others anymore than you are. However, given my role as your pastor, I have to carefully think about my reactions to others, my words to them, my actions toward them, and ask myself that not so easy question: "Am I being Christ to them? Am I treating them as if they were Christ?" Sometimes the answer is a refreshing, "Yes!", and sometimes I have to admit to myself that it is a disappointing, "No!"
There is another dimension to the answer though and that is: does the other person perceive my words and deeds as helpful to them? Sometimes the answer is "Yes" and sometimes it is "No." But when the answer is "No" does that mean that I have failed that person, or not done the Christ-like thing? I have a feeling that doing the Christ-like thing isn't always taken as being kind and helpful to others. Sometimes doing the right thing for someone else is very difficult for me to do and difficult for them to receive.
I believe that it was very difficult for Jesus to always do the Christ-like thing in his ministry to others. I think of his interactions with the Pharisees and religious lawyers and the Sanhedrin and priests and I know he must have felt great frustration at their inability to comprehend the truth about their lives and the scripture. They were so immersed in their own history, society, and reasoning that they couldn't see the truth Jesus was giving to them, or they refused to take the truth to heart even when they could see it. Even his closest friends misunderstood him and his mission. But he kept himself focused on the goal of bringing God's Love to all in order to create God's community on earth.
So despite the fact that I don't always feel hope, peace, love and joy during Advent I have decided that I am going to follow Christ's lead and keep myself focused on communicating God's Love to everyone by trying to create God's Community of Hope-Peace-Love-and-Joy on earth right here in Seattle. I may be an imperfect servant, but I am a servant who is determined to succeed with God's help. I pray that you are, too.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Hope for the Hopeless! World AIDS Day 2010
Today's Scripture: John chapter 11
This is the first week in Advent, a season prior to Christmas that we set aside to focus on the coming of God into the world: God in Christ, God with us. Advent is a season of hope, a time when we focus on God giving hope to the hopeless. I had not previously seen the Advent qualities of John chapter 11 prior to my decision to move this passage from All Saints Day to the first Sunday in Advent when we also focus in our church on World AIDS Day in worship.
Normally in a passage like this I’d take you through it verse by verse to help you understand the social context, the history, the geography, the theology, and come up with a spiritual teaching that will help you to understand the scripture and how to apply it to your life. But this is a very long chapter and we don’t have that kind of time today.
Suffice it to say that Lazarus, whom some believe was the “beloved disciple” that John and others refer to in the gospels has fallen ill. We know that this family was very special to Jesus, who spent much time with them when he was in the area of Jerusalem. This is a very non-traditional family: an unmarried male and two unmarried sisters. However, these three persons were part of Jesus’ chosen family.
So, when Lazarus falls ill, the sisters, who will be left destitute when he dies, for they could not own property and would not have any income, call for Jesus to come immediately. They send for Jesus, their only hope. Without Jesus’ help and without Lazarus they are hopeless.
Probably by the time word gets to Jesus Lazarus has already died. Jesus stays where he is a couple of more days before departing. Why? Perhaps because he knows what he is going to do and he also knows the tradition that says that the spirit stays hovering over the body for three days. When he arrives it has been four days. The spirit of Lazarus has gone. The body is rotting. It is absolutely too late for a miraculous resurrection to happen. Lazarus is beyond hope. The sisters are indeed hopeless. However, just like when he healed the blind man, Jesus says that this situation will result in God being given glory. Indeed, when we are hopeless, when we have exhausted all other possibilities, there is only One to whom we can turn, only One who can restore our hope and help us to live with joy again.
We are too often like the sisters. We ask God to be present with us but we can’t understand why God doesn’t show up exactly at the moment we want, doing exactly what we want. When we are in trouble or turmoil, or illness or disaster hit us we want God and we want God right now doing exactly what we have already decided that God should do to solve our problems for us. When God doesn’t answer our prayer exactly that way, solving our problem immediately, we question whether God loves us at all, maybe even whether there is a God.
I’m often asked, “What did I do that God hates me so much that God would let this happen to me?” I understand the question and the very human feelings behind it, but I also understand that God is present even if we don’t think God is there. God is always present with us working with us even when we can’t see the what God is doing in us and for us.
This week we will turn our attention toward World AIDS Day on Tuesday. People with HIV and AIDS are often left depressed and defeated when they are given the diagnosis. They feel their lives are over. They might as well already be dead. It is very much like the sisters feel when Jesus arrives four days too late to do anything for Lazarus. Why try now? Surely the body stinks from rot. What could you do now?
The tragedy of our modern lives is that most of the rest of us act the same way toward those diagnosed with this virus, thinking that HIV is a death sentence. We avoid and exclude those with HIV and AIDS. They have become the modern day Lepers who aren’t welcomed in society. There have even been attempts in our own nation to legally isolate and exclude anyone with such a diagnosis. It is only this year that men and women from other nations who have been diagnosed with AIDS are now allowed to visit our country. Probably the most terrible tragedy is that many in our society blame the victims for having the disease, or see it as punishment from God for a variety of ridiculous reasons I shall not even credit with mentioning them.
This week we set aside Tuesday as World AIDS day in an attempt to educate our city, our state, our nation, the world in what HIV and AIDS really are, and how we can reduce the infection rate, treat those with the virus and help those who are dying from AIDS. Many groups in our own city provide care and support to persons with HIV and AIDS. Several of you are volunteers in those programs. Thank you. You are bringing hope to the hopeless.
Very often in life we reject the very idea of God working a miracle in our lives. We are hopeless and we even explain to ourselves and to others exactly why a miracle is impossible in our lives. We even, almost, begin to feel sorry for God in the situation. Like the sisters said to Jesus we say to God, “It’s too late, God. Don’t do anything now, God, the stink will be unbearable.” And we tell God that there isn’t anything that God can do about it now.
Aren’t we so kind to God. “Hey, God, we’re not going to get our hopes up and be disappointed when you don’t work it all out for us, God. After all, it’s just too late for even You to change things. So just leave us alone in our stinking situation. We forgive you God for not being able to help us.”
But God won’t leave us alone. In fact, God never leaves us alone. God is always present with us. We may not think or believe that God is there in the most difficult moments of our lives, but God is right there with us, giving us reassurance if we will accept it, giving us the strength that we need, encouraging us to have faith and hold on.
Jesus stood at the entrance to Lazarus’ grave after they removed the rock from the entrance and he called out: “Lazarus come out!” That’s what God is doing for us in the most horrible moments of our lives. God is saying to us, “Come out! Come out into the light of my love. Come out into the power of my creativity. Come out of your misery? Come out and live again.”
I had a conversation with a friend who has HIV. He was depressed and defeated. He had lived for several years with the diagnosis and was taking his medications with good results. But he had decided that he was condemned to death by the disease and wouldn’t be able to have a complete and happy life. I said to him: “You know what your problem is? You are going to live and you don’t know what to do about that fact.” I’m glad to report to you that this same friend did come out of his depression and has been the one to give me great help over the years by encouraging me come out of my own self-imposed grave and live again.
We get these ideas in our heads about what life is going to be like for the good or the bad and it is very hard to give up those ideas when we are faced with the realities of life when things are very different from what we imagined.
It’s as if we have to die to the old life we were living and be resurrected to a new life where there are new possibilities and new opportunities that we hadn’t even imagined or ever dreamed we would need. I know, I’ve been through several of those moments in my own life including facing traumatic disease, the death of a child, the end of a marriage, and more. But in the depth of my depression in each of those situations there was someone that God sent into my life to tell me, “Ray, come out of your tomb. Come out and live again.”
Where are you today? Are you lingering in the tomb with the stink and the rot of your life? Or are you willing to come out into the light and live the resurrected life that God has waiting for you? Are you willing to let God give you new life for the old life that needs to die? Do you need to let go of the old and embrace the new that God wants to give you?
Only you can answer that question. Nobody can go into the grave you have created and bring you out. You have to come out yourself. No matter how difficult it was, when Jesus called him, Lazarus had to get up from his grave and come out into the light. So do you. So do I.
It is important to note that the community, the family and friends of Lazarus had to do their own part of help him live life again to the fullest. They had to unbind him, to take the grave wrappings off of him so he could live again without any limitations. He couldn’t unwrap himself. He had to have help to fully return to life. Lazarus needed a little help from his friends.
Friends are critically important to us. Friends bring us the real presence of God. Friends lend us the help we need to begin again, they fill us with hope and expectation that life will get better and we will be able to do what we want, what we need to do, what we hope to become. I cannot tell you how very important my friends have been to me in life, especially my Christian friends who have held the Christ-light for me so I can see my way out of the darkness of my depression.
I had not been out of my marriage for very long when I lost an adult daughter in a car accident. I went back to our former hometown for her funeral. Having just come out to my family and friends I felt alienated standing alone in that reception line at the funeral home on one side of her casket while my ex-wife and children stood together on the other side.
My daughter was dead. However, my family and so-called friends treated me like I was the one who had died. I looked up from that reception line and saw the faces of two friends from MCC Knoxville who had traveled over two hours by car to do nothing but give me a hug and a kiss and tell me that my church family loved me and wanted me to know that they were praying for me and loving me from afar. I cannot express to you the importance of their presence in my life at that moment. They were helping me to remove the grave cloths from my life.
We need to be the ones who are helping others unwrap the bindings that keep them from experiencing the abundant life that God wants to give to each one of us. We have to help others overcome the difficulties they are facing by being present with them when we can, by encouraging them however we can, by letting them know that we are loving and caring for them in whatever way is appropriate. Yes, I believe you can experience a relationship with God all by yourself. But I doubt you can ever experience a relationship with God fully the way God intended for us to experience it apart from the company of other Christians. Jesus didn’t try to go it alone. The first thing Jesus did when he began his ministry was to find others to share the work with him. We were created to be in community with each other.
I’m glad you are here this morning to worship God and to be in community with us. This is a very important part of my week and I hope it is a very important part of your week whenever you can be here. But you and I must extend our need for community with other Christians by finding ways to be with others during the week. Sundays aren’t enough. It will take more than Sunday for us to truly experience the strength and power of Christian community.
Let me leave you with an observation this morning: If you want to experience the resurrected life God wants to give to each one of us, you must realize one important thing: There has to first be a death. Death comes before resurrection. There can be no resurrection without a death. Death isn’t something we like to think about whether it is the death of a loved one, or the death of a life situation. We don’t like change, even when we expect things to be better. No matter how good change is, we miss what we had because that was what we were used to experiencing. However, change is inevitable. How will we deal with change when it comes, as it always does, to our lives, to our church?
Mostly we like to hang on to what we had. We like living in the grave clothes and bindings of our old life. We even enjoy the stink after awhile. We learn how to ignore the rot. But unless we have the courage and hope to begin again, to change, to start to experience the new resurrected life that God wants to give to us, we will never give up the old grave clothes, nor will we let others begin to unwrap us and help us experience the abundant life that Jesus promised to those who would willingly follow him.
Christ came to give hope to the hopeless. You and I can begin again. We can live the resurrected life no matter how dreadful our lives have previously become. All we have to do is come out of our tombs and begin to unwind the bindings from each other that prevent us from experiencing the joy-filled life of God’s new community. We can begin living heaven on earth. Sometimes it’s just a matter of attitude.
There is told the story of a woman who is allowed to visit heaven and hell on the same day. When she arrives in hell she sees a room full of starving people. Though there is plenty of fabulous food piled high on tables all around they are starving because they have had enormous wooden spoons strapped to their arms so that they can’t pick up any food and feed themselves. They are weeping and cursing their condition and each other.
Later she is let into heaven. The scene is incredibly similar. Large tables of scrumptious food piled high on the tables. Long spoons strapped to everyone’s arms preventing them from feeding themselves. But here there was much happiness and conversation going on and everyone was well fed and healthy. What was the difference? In heaven everyone was feeding each other. And that made all the difference.
Where do you choose to live today? In the tomb with the stink and the rot of death? Or are you willing to come out and let others unbind you and help you begin to live the resurrected, abundant life that Christ promises to all of us?
Come out of your grave. Come out of your troubled situation. Come out and live the abundant life. Let your Christian family help you unwrap and unbind those things that keep you from living the abundant, joyful life God wants to give you.
Will you help us all create the new community of God, a renewed and joy-filled Metropolitan Community Church Seattle, by bringing about a little bit of heaven on earth? Will you be a part of bringing hope to the hopeless?
This is the first week in Advent, a season prior to Christmas that we set aside to focus on the coming of God into the world: God in Christ, God with us. Advent is a season of hope, a time when we focus on God giving hope to the hopeless. I had not previously seen the Advent qualities of John chapter 11 prior to my decision to move this passage from All Saints Day to the first Sunday in Advent when we also focus in our church on World AIDS Day in worship.
Normally in a passage like this I’d take you through it verse by verse to help you understand the social context, the history, the geography, the theology, and come up with a spiritual teaching that will help you to understand the scripture and how to apply it to your life. But this is a very long chapter and we don’t have that kind of time today.
Suffice it to say that Lazarus, whom some believe was the “beloved disciple” that John and others refer to in the gospels has fallen ill. We know that this family was very special to Jesus, who spent much time with them when he was in the area of Jerusalem. This is a very non-traditional family: an unmarried male and two unmarried sisters. However, these three persons were part of Jesus’ chosen family.
So, when Lazarus falls ill, the sisters, who will be left destitute when he dies, for they could not own property and would not have any income, call for Jesus to come immediately. They send for Jesus, their only hope. Without Jesus’ help and without Lazarus they are hopeless.
Probably by the time word gets to Jesus Lazarus has already died. Jesus stays where he is a couple of more days before departing. Why? Perhaps because he knows what he is going to do and he also knows the tradition that says that the spirit stays hovering over the body for three days. When he arrives it has been four days. The spirit of Lazarus has gone. The body is rotting. It is absolutely too late for a miraculous resurrection to happen. Lazarus is beyond hope. The sisters are indeed hopeless. However, just like when he healed the blind man, Jesus says that this situation will result in God being given glory. Indeed, when we are hopeless, when we have exhausted all other possibilities, there is only One to whom we can turn, only One who can restore our hope and help us to live with joy again.
We are too often like the sisters. We ask God to be present with us but we can’t understand why God doesn’t show up exactly at the moment we want, doing exactly what we want. When we are in trouble or turmoil, or illness or disaster hit us we want God and we want God right now doing exactly what we have already decided that God should do to solve our problems for us. When God doesn’t answer our prayer exactly that way, solving our problem immediately, we question whether God loves us at all, maybe even whether there is a God.
I’m often asked, “What did I do that God hates me so much that God would let this happen to me?” I understand the question and the very human feelings behind it, but I also understand that God is present even if we don’t think God is there. God is always present with us working with us even when we can’t see the what God is doing in us and for us.
This week we will turn our attention toward World AIDS Day on Tuesday. People with HIV and AIDS are often left depressed and defeated when they are given the diagnosis. They feel their lives are over. They might as well already be dead. It is very much like the sisters feel when Jesus arrives four days too late to do anything for Lazarus. Why try now? Surely the body stinks from rot. What could you do now?
The tragedy of our modern lives is that most of the rest of us act the same way toward those diagnosed with this virus, thinking that HIV is a death sentence. We avoid and exclude those with HIV and AIDS. They have become the modern day Lepers who aren’t welcomed in society. There have even been attempts in our own nation to legally isolate and exclude anyone with such a diagnosis. It is only this year that men and women from other nations who have been diagnosed with AIDS are now allowed to visit our country. Probably the most terrible tragedy is that many in our society blame the victims for having the disease, or see it as punishment from God for a variety of ridiculous reasons I shall not even credit with mentioning them.
This week we set aside Tuesday as World AIDS day in an attempt to educate our city, our state, our nation, the world in what HIV and AIDS really are, and how we can reduce the infection rate, treat those with the virus and help those who are dying from AIDS. Many groups in our own city provide care and support to persons with HIV and AIDS. Several of you are volunteers in those programs. Thank you. You are bringing hope to the hopeless.
Very often in life we reject the very idea of God working a miracle in our lives. We are hopeless and we even explain to ourselves and to others exactly why a miracle is impossible in our lives. We even, almost, begin to feel sorry for God in the situation. Like the sisters said to Jesus we say to God, “It’s too late, God. Don’t do anything now, God, the stink will be unbearable.” And we tell God that there isn’t anything that God can do about it now.
Aren’t we so kind to God. “Hey, God, we’re not going to get our hopes up and be disappointed when you don’t work it all out for us, God. After all, it’s just too late for even You to change things. So just leave us alone in our stinking situation. We forgive you God for not being able to help us.”
But God won’t leave us alone. In fact, God never leaves us alone. God is always present with us. We may not think or believe that God is there in the most difficult moments of our lives, but God is right there with us, giving us reassurance if we will accept it, giving us the strength that we need, encouraging us to have faith and hold on.
Jesus stood at the entrance to Lazarus’ grave after they removed the rock from the entrance and he called out: “Lazarus come out!” That’s what God is doing for us in the most horrible moments of our lives. God is saying to us, “Come out! Come out into the light of my love. Come out into the power of my creativity. Come out of your misery? Come out and live again.”
I had a conversation with a friend who has HIV. He was depressed and defeated. He had lived for several years with the diagnosis and was taking his medications with good results. But he had decided that he was condemned to death by the disease and wouldn’t be able to have a complete and happy life. I said to him: “You know what your problem is? You are going to live and you don’t know what to do about that fact.” I’m glad to report to you that this same friend did come out of his depression and has been the one to give me great help over the years by encouraging me come out of my own self-imposed grave and live again.
We get these ideas in our heads about what life is going to be like for the good or the bad and it is very hard to give up those ideas when we are faced with the realities of life when things are very different from what we imagined.
It’s as if we have to die to the old life we were living and be resurrected to a new life where there are new possibilities and new opportunities that we hadn’t even imagined or ever dreamed we would need. I know, I’ve been through several of those moments in my own life including facing traumatic disease, the death of a child, the end of a marriage, and more. But in the depth of my depression in each of those situations there was someone that God sent into my life to tell me, “Ray, come out of your tomb. Come out and live again.”
Where are you today? Are you lingering in the tomb with the stink and the rot of your life? Or are you willing to come out into the light and live the resurrected life that God has waiting for you? Are you willing to let God give you new life for the old life that needs to die? Do you need to let go of the old and embrace the new that God wants to give you?
Only you can answer that question. Nobody can go into the grave you have created and bring you out. You have to come out yourself. No matter how difficult it was, when Jesus called him, Lazarus had to get up from his grave and come out into the light. So do you. So do I.
It is important to note that the community, the family and friends of Lazarus had to do their own part of help him live life again to the fullest. They had to unbind him, to take the grave wrappings off of him so he could live again without any limitations. He couldn’t unwrap himself. He had to have help to fully return to life. Lazarus needed a little help from his friends.
Friends are critically important to us. Friends bring us the real presence of God. Friends lend us the help we need to begin again, they fill us with hope and expectation that life will get better and we will be able to do what we want, what we need to do, what we hope to become. I cannot tell you how very important my friends have been to me in life, especially my Christian friends who have held the Christ-light for me so I can see my way out of the darkness of my depression.
I had not been out of my marriage for very long when I lost an adult daughter in a car accident. I went back to our former hometown for her funeral. Having just come out to my family and friends I felt alienated standing alone in that reception line at the funeral home on one side of her casket while my ex-wife and children stood together on the other side.
My daughter was dead. However, my family and so-called friends treated me like I was the one who had died. I looked up from that reception line and saw the faces of two friends from MCC Knoxville who had traveled over two hours by car to do nothing but give me a hug and a kiss and tell me that my church family loved me and wanted me to know that they were praying for me and loving me from afar. I cannot express to you the importance of their presence in my life at that moment. They were helping me to remove the grave cloths from my life.
We need to be the ones who are helping others unwrap the bindings that keep them from experiencing the abundant life that God wants to give to each one of us. We have to help others overcome the difficulties they are facing by being present with them when we can, by encouraging them however we can, by letting them know that we are loving and caring for them in whatever way is appropriate. Yes, I believe you can experience a relationship with God all by yourself. But I doubt you can ever experience a relationship with God fully the way God intended for us to experience it apart from the company of other Christians. Jesus didn’t try to go it alone. The first thing Jesus did when he began his ministry was to find others to share the work with him. We were created to be in community with each other.
I’m glad you are here this morning to worship God and to be in community with us. This is a very important part of my week and I hope it is a very important part of your week whenever you can be here. But you and I must extend our need for community with other Christians by finding ways to be with others during the week. Sundays aren’t enough. It will take more than Sunday for us to truly experience the strength and power of Christian community.
Let me leave you with an observation this morning: If you want to experience the resurrected life God wants to give to each one of us, you must realize one important thing: There has to first be a death. Death comes before resurrection. There can be no resurrection without a death. Death isn’t something we like to think about whether it is the death of a loved one, or the death of a life situation. We don’t like change, even when we expect things to be better. No matter how good change is, we miss what we had because that was what we were used to experiencing. However, change is inevitable. How will we deal with change when it comes, as it always does, to our lives, to our church?
Mostly we like to hang on to what we had. We like living in the grave clothes and bindings of our old life. We even enjoy the stink after awhile. We learn how to ignore the rot. But unless we have the courage and hope to begin again, to change, to start to experience the new resurrected life that God wants to give to us, we will never give up the old grave clothes, nor will we let others begin to unwrap us and help us experience the abundant life that Jesus promised to those who would willingly follow him.
Christ came to give hope to the hopeless. You and I can begin again. We can live the resurrected life no matter how dreadful our lives have previously become. All we have to do is come out of our tombs and begin to unwind the bindings from each other that prevent us from experiencing the joy-filled life of God’s new community. We can begin living heaven on earth. Sometimes it’s just a matter of attitude.
There is told the story of a woman who is allowed to visit heaven and hell on the same day. When she arrives in hell she sees a room full of starving people. Though there is plenty of fabulous food piled high on tables all around they are starving because they have had enormous wooden spoons strapped to their arms so that they can’t pick up any food and feed themselves. They are weeping and cursing their condition and each other.
Later she is let into heaven. The scene is incredibly similar. Large tables of scrumptious food piled high on the tables. Long spoons strapped to everyone’s arms preventing them from feeding themselves. But here there was much happiness and conversation going on and everyone was well fed and healthy. What was the difference? In heaven everyone was feeding each other. And that made all the difference.
Where do you choose to live today? In the tomb with the stink and the rot of death? Or are you willing to come out and let others unbind you and help you begin to live the resurrected, abundant life that Christ promises to all of us?
Come out of your grave. Come out of your troubled situation. Come out and live the abundant life. Let your Christian family help you unwrap and unbind those things that keep you from living the abundant, joyful life God wants to give you.
Will you help us all create the new community of God, a renewed and joy-filled Metropolitan Community Church Seattle, by bringing about a little bit of heaven on earth? Will you be a part of bringing hope to the hopeless?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)