Matthew 11:16-19, 28-30
16 “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
17 “‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew begins the story recorded in chapter 11 with John the Baptist in jail. John sends his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the messiah: “Are you the one we’ve been waiting for or will another come?”
John is suffering. He’s been imprisoned for his confrontation with the king. He’s facing the death penalty. No doubt he’s depressed and dismayed, especially about Jesus, who he announced to all as the messiah they had been waiting for who would bring scorching justice to the world and turn the world upside down making things radically right. But Jesus has come with a different sense of justice and of what life means in the New Community of God that doesn’t include the blazing actions of justice that John expected.
What do you do when God doesn’t answer your prayers the way you think God should answer them? Do you despair and give up hope? That’s what’s happened to John, I think.
Jesus says to John’s disciples. Reassure John, God is at work just as you expected. "Go back and tell John what's going on: The blind see, The lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side. If that is what you were expecting? Then count yourselves most blessed!"
Jesus goes on to praise John as the prophet foretold in the scriptures who would blaze a pathway for the messiah. People followed John out into the desert to hear his preaching and to repent of their sins and turn their lives back toward God. John came with a message and a manner that caused many to think of him as simply a wild-man, a joke, someone who was too strict and too limited in his outlook on life. He called people to fast and to give up their wealth and ease and get serious about living life as God’s word ordered. Seemingly there is little joy in John’s outlook.
Then Jesus says that the people are being very childish as opposed to childlike. Yes, we all need to have faith like a child in God, but none of us need to act like a selfish child in carrying out our faithful words and actions. Both Jesus and John are criticized by the people and the religious leaders. John is said to be too restraining, Jesus too liberal.
So Jesus tells the parable of the children. Children in that society, like our own, would make the celebrative situations of their society into play-games, especially make-believe weddings and funerals. Some see here gender differences as well as children’s behavior. The boys would play the flute and dance as men were expected to do at weddings in their society. The girls would play at weeping and screaming in grief like women did at funerals. But when the boys wanted to play wedding the girls wanted to play funeral. When the girls wanted to play funeral, the boys refused and wanted to play wedding. Nobody could agree on what to play. And so there was little joy.
Jesus says that the people couldn’t accept his style of ministry anymore than they could accept John’s. They say that Jesus drank too much wine. He eats too much. He goes to too many parties. He hangs out with the wrong kind of people. He doesn’t break the rules, but he stretches those rules so near to the breaking point they might as well be broken. Such was the criticism of Jesus. John’s interpretation of scripture was too strict. Jesus too liberal. John wanted everyone to weep and repent and give up all the luxuries of life. Jesus wanted people to celebrate God with joy! Both Jesus and John were rejected by society. No one therefore gave either of them or their message the real consideration demanded.
Jesus identifies his ministry and message with John’s, but there are important differences. Where John’s restrictive style belongs to the waiting period before the messiah comes, Jesus’ celebrative style belongs to the time of fulfillment when the messiah has already arrived. The time for the funeral is over. It’s time to celebrate. Let’s have a wedding, a party of joy and hope! Enjoy the life that God has blessed you with! Enjoy God’s presence in your life! Celebrate God’s power and activity in your life! Look for the good. See the blessings! Take a new perspective on life!
Jesus isn’t just fond of dinner parties, he employs the concept of the final dinner party when all the world’s people come to celebrate with God in the great dinner party that will usher in God’s New Community. No one will be left out of that party. So, Jesus says, let’s begin the party now! Why? Because God is here now! Emmanuel. God with us! The Messiah has come to be with all people. Why weep any longer?
Jesus even employs the dinner party of joy and celebration when he institutes what we call the Eucharist, what we usually refer to as communion. The word Eucharist means “Thanksgiving” and needs to retain the grand sense of joy which then makes sense of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Too often we approach communion as if we are at a funeral remembering the life and death of a dear beloved family member who will no longer be with us. We like playing funeral. We think it should be quiet and reflective and we frown at those who make unnecessary noise and talk during communion. But is that what Jesus really wanted us to do? Wasn’t it supposed to be more like a celebration of the resurrection, of the return to life of the beloved child of God? “Remember me” he said to them. But are we to remember him dead and gone, or alive and present with us now? Crucified or resurrected? I submit to you that for far too many years most of us have concentrated on the death and we have forgotten the resurrection. We remember Jesus dead and on the cross instead of alive and living, present with us even today as the living spirit of God among us. It’s time to stop playing funeral and start the celebration! Emmanuel! God is with us!
Jesus is a realist. He understands that it is hard for us to live the life of God’s New Community with the kind of joy we should when we face so much that brings us down in life. He criticizes the Pharisees and religious lawyers for making the law too oppressive and restrictive. They think he is abusing the law because he doesn’t approach it with the same so-called honor and respect that they believe they give it. Instead Jesus is saying the evidence of God’s law is not seen in the keeping of the rules, but is seen in the compassion and mercy that one practices which results in life improvements for all people and not just a few. When he condemns the cities he has visited in his ministry in this passage, Jesus cannot believe that people are missing the significance of the miracles of life that are happening all around them and are instead concentrating on the strict interpretation of the law. Open your eyes and see. Open your ears and hear! You are missing what God is doing!
Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees and religious lawyers have come up with 613 separate rules that everyone has to keep in order to prove that he or she is really a child of God. If you don’t keep all 613 rules exactly as they say you should keep them, then they believe you are not accepted by God. It’s an oppressive viewpoint and totally misses the point of why God instituted such laws to start with. The law was to be a guide to life, not an end unto itself.
Jesus says that they have made the law so oppressive that it has become an unbearable weight dragging people down to death instead of helping them live life with joy. Jesus then tells us that his burden is light and his yoke is easy.
Most of us don’t know what a yoke is. It was a neck piece made of wood hung around the neck of a animal or slave to which cords or rope were strung allowing one to pull a load more easily. It was an instrument of work, that could become oppressive if the load you had to pull was too heavy.
However, Jesus invites us to share his yoke. What does that mean? When you had a new young ox it didn’t know how to pull a load automatically. You had to train it. One of the best ways to train a young ox was to yoke it with a double yoke next to an experienced and older oxen. The yoke would look real funny, one side enormous for the older ox, the other side small for the younger ox. The older ox would do most of the work, the younger ox would help pull the load, and while pulling alongside the older ox would learn when to move and how to move to make the best use of the yoke and their combined strength. Jesus is saying, come alongside of me, wear the training yoke, learn how I move as I move, learn how I talk as I talk, learn how I walk through life as you walk with me. Do it with me. You are not alone. I will share my strength and my wisdom with you and you will find the burden to not be so terrible, but to be one we can share together and celebrate the accomplishments we achieve together.
If you study the scriptures you will realize that this portion of Matthew is actually a discourse on wisdom. Jesus is contrasting the viewpoint that keeping the law is not all demand and restriction, but a lightness of being, like the wise woman in Proverbs 8 and 9 who invites people to come to her free feast, or Isaiah 55 with its call to share free food. It’s a call to learn a new way of relating to God and applying what you learn to living life as it should be. God’s law was seen as peacemaking, as relieving the thirst and feeding hungry souls.
In the following passages from Matthew we see Jesus confronting the issue of how to keep the Sabbath. Can you heal a person on the Sabbath? Can you pick a handful of wheat and eat it on the Sabbath as you walk through a wheat field? Jesus tells us that the Sabbath, like the law, was made for people, and not the other way around. It is the person who is most important, and not the law. The law is to help us live faithfully, not to cause us to stumble and fall.
Jesus always interprets the law by focusing on compassion and mercy. Hosea 6:6 says, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” The promise is not heaven some day, but real joy today, real rest and assurance today, not in the time to come. With such a sense of rest we can turn our attention toward that which really matters: people.
Listen to me. It's summer time! We've had a whirlwind time at PRIDE! Some of us are exhausted and worn out. We've kept ourselves so busy getting ready for PRIDE and doing PRIDE that some of us forgot to have fun at PRIDE! Too many of us are on the verge of 'burn-out.' We've given and given and given until we have little left to give. That makes us critical about others who we think should be more involved than they are and who we believe should be willing to give more time and effort than they do. "Why can't they be more like us," we wonder. But do we really want them to feel the same way that we do? Burned out and negative?
As your pastor, I want you to get some rest, to enjoy some time-off from church responsibilities for the next few weeks. Take a walk in the park, smell the roses. Oh, I still want to see you in worship, of course! I want us to keep up our friendships and community going full-speed with each other. But most importantly, I want you to enjoy just being you and doing the things that give you refreshment and renewal in your life. I want you to get all charged up and energized for the exciting future that God has placed ahead of us as a community of faith.
Remember today’s scripture. Let me read it to you from The Message: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11:28-30)
It's good advice from Jesus. Let's all try to follow it! I suggest you try following it this week.
Showing posts with label Light. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Light. Show all posts
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Reflecting Jesus: Luke 9:28-43
We begin Lent this week, a time of reflection on Jesus’ life as he journeys toward Jerusalem and his death on the cross. Traditionally it has been a season of thoughtful introspection, often sad and depressing, but it needn’t be. Many Christians have traditionally given up something for Lent to remind themselves of the sacrifices that Jesus made in order to fulfill his destiny and bring all men and women into a loving, affirming, life-giving relationship with God. Some have more recently decided that in order to reflect the true light of Christ in their lives that they will instead add something to their lives during Lent by volunteering at a homeless shelter, or a food bank, or going to a nursing home to visit the lonely persons there who have often been abandoned by family and friends.
The story is told at the very end of Herman Wouk’s two book long series the Winds of War and War & Remembrance of a young mother, Natalie, reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. The child has refused to speak while separated from his mother, but when she returns to him cradles him and begins to sing a soft lullaby to him; the child begins to slowly sing along with his mother. The two men watching this scene unfold before them “each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.” They were looking at transcendent beauty that forced them to cover their eyes. That is the kind of light that emanated forth from Jesus that morning up on the mountaintop with his disciples.
We think of Transfiguration as a very supernatural kind of thing that only happened back in Biblical times, not something that could happen to you and I in our modern lives today. Oh, back then, we tell ourselves, God suspended the very laws of nature and physics to make really important statements…but, we also tell ourselves…God doesn’t act that way now.
But is that really true? Or are we misunderstanding and misinterpreting, as we are often prone to do, the very real spiritual experience that did happen to Jesus and the disciples? Do we do the same thing in our own lives today, ignore the truly spiritual moments of transformation and transfiguration that God wants us to experience?
As we begin this Lenten Journey with Jesus let us remember that we do so at the invitation of Jesus just as he invited Peter, James and John to go with him to pray on the mountain Jesus invites us to go with Him on a journey to Jerusalem. Like the disciples we are being called during Lent to go where Jesus goes and to do what Jesus does. And, like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to do this in community with one another, not alone, but together.
Just before they go up the mountain they have had a conversation about who Jesus was. Jesus asks all of the disciples to tell him what the buzz about him is among the people? They answer that some think he must be John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the other prophets come back from God. But that isn’t what Jesus really wants to know. So he asks them again, “Okay, guys, that’s what everyone else may be saying about me, but who do you say that I really am?” Its one thing to tell about what others think and believe about Jesus, about God, but it’s something else when we have to explain what we truly believe about who God is in Jesus Christ. It makes it very personal and very spiritual. Peter, the first one to speak, responds immediately, “You are the Messiah of God.”
You’d think that Jesus would have given Peter an A for his response to the question, but instead Jesus tells the disciples to not share that information with anyone because things are going to get very rough for him and for those who follow him. He says he’s going to suffer and die and on the third day be raised again. Anyone who wants to be his follower must be willing to lay down their own life, too. As we have talked about frequently before, the disciples don’t seem to understand.
And like the disciples we are often going to be less than understanding of what Jesus is telling us and showing us than perhaps we think we do. Jesus has just told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will face troubles and death but they don’t really believe him because they have a different outcome in mind than that which Jesus is trying to tell them about. They want a taste of victory and liberation from the despised Romans. Death and suffering is not what they had in mind; glory sounded so much better to them. How often do you and I ignore the obvious spiritual lessons that God wants to teach to us because those lessons don’t correspond to how we want to live our lives?
Oh, they get a big taste of glory up on the mountain that morning, but it wasn’t what they thought they were going to get, and the truth of the moment exceeds their understanding according to the text. Like Moses up on the mountain seeing and talking with God, Peter, James and John get a real taste of glory. As usual they aren’t able to pray with Jesus and stay awake. Suddenly they are brought out of their sleepiness by the sight of Jesus, whose body and clothing are now glowing with an unnatural brightness, is seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the tradition of the Law and Elijah the traditions of the prophets. Joined together with Jesus, the author of Luke, is telling us that Jesus is the natural successor of these two traditions and in fact unites them into one spiritual wholeness.
Here we are in the middle of this holy moment Peter, like Peter often does, interrupts saying something to which he hasn’t given much thought. “Oh, wow, this is really something, Jesus. Let’s build three houses here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah so we can preserve this moment forever. We can live right up here on the mountain for the rest of our lives.”
All over the world there have been monuments and churches built to preserve such holy miraculous moments for all of rest of history. Frozen moments in time to which we can return and remind ourselves how wonderful it was or might have been for those who were present when it happened. Sure, those moments are important, but I don’t think that God intends for us to freeze those moments in history and stay up on the mountaintop. I believe instead that God wants us to use such moments to be the motivation and the reason for us to accomplish God’s hopes and plans for us and others through us. We have to take the miracle with us back down the mountain to where we live our daily lives.
And so out of the divine cloud that surrounds them God speaks almost as if to tell Peter to shut up. God, who spoke to Jesus at his baptism and told him that he was God’s beloved child, now says to those with Jesus that this is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved and only child, and suggests that they listen to him.” Maybe God was annoyed with Peter for interrupting this holy experience. As one commentator wrote, “If Moses was told up on that mountain that he couldn’t see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn’t see God and talk so much.” Perhaps God was also saying to the mostly Jewish audience that Luke was writing to, “Yes, Moses and Elijah had a lot to say that you need to pay attention to, but you need to pay even more attention to what Jesus has to say because he is my chosen one.”
Peter is just like you and me. We often try to talk our way into understanding. We want to process the experience so we can come to understand it and make our understanding a part of who we are. But more often we want to, like Peter, carve that moment in stone by building a monument or by hardening our own traditions and interpretations of scripture to say, “This is what we believe. We’ve always believed this way. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve always said it this way.” We want to take the experience and make it into something that we can hold on to, something that won’t change, and best of all, something that really won’t change us…or not that much, hopefully.
But Jesus wouldn’t let them preserve the moment. Jesus takes them back down the mountain and back into the world where they meet a man with a sick child. The man had approached the disciples to heal his son, but they couldn’t help, even though they had been up on the mountaintop with Jesus. So he calls upon Jesus to heal his beloved only child, echoing the words of God about Jesus up on the mountain. And Jesus responds with the loving-kindness of God and heals the boy.
My four grandsons love transformer toys. They are always showing me a toy that looks like one thing but with a few twists and turns becomes something else entirely. When I don’t know what else to give them, I can always purchase a transformer toy and know that they will be delighted with it, for at least a moment or two. That’s usually what we want to do with transformational experiences in our own lives. Hold on to them for a moment or two, but not long enough to let them really change us into what God wants us to become.
We are truly afraid of being changed. Because when we allow God to change us, we aren’t in control of the outcome any longer. And that scares us. I don’t understand why, but it does. Because the one thing that we do know is that God loves us and wants the very best for us, so why are we afraid to let God change us to become the best that we can become?
The word transfiguration is different from the word transformation. Transfiguration is about change, but it emphasizes a dramatic change in appearance, and it especially means a change that glorifies or exalts someone, which truly works well for today’s scripture reading about what happened to Jesus. But transformation also means the “changed state that results from this change in appearance.”
And that works well for us as we come to the end of another season of Epiphany. During Epiphany we have turned our hearts and minds and opened our eyes and ears to the ways that God is showing forth God’s self in the world around us. Here at the edge of Lent, as we set out with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those “mountaintop experiences,” one of those thrilling moments when we truly glimpse glory, a bright flash of light, an indescribable moment when everything seems to change not just in appearance, but becomes forever different for us.
Oh, we may not be up on a mountaintop this morning, but the experience this past year of watching this congregation grow in so many different ways, not just in the number of persons, but in heart and soul of each person, as we have deepened our spiritual growth and our relationships with God and with each other, yes, that is a mountaintop experience all by itself.
The stories of your lives are the stories of people who have found their way to God and to us, people who thought that there was no church home for them anywhere, no spiritual community that would welcome them and their faith walk, no place that would be grateful and celebrate their presence. But here you are today. Your personal stories make my heart fill with wonder and awe and I am transfigured by the changes I see in you, changes you never thought you would experience, that I have to put my hands over my eyes because you move me to transcendence with your faith and your hope and your presence here this morning. You are a miracle that I cannot ignore nor explain away.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle is a different church than we were a year ago. Together we have begun a journey toward heaven. Soon we will receive more new members, persons who have already told me that they are committing to joining us on this journey. Their stories will be joined with ours and we must not expect them to do things the way we have always done them or to believe the way we have always believed. We won’t put up pup tents nor will we carve anything in stone. We will instead, stand still for our moment of glory and then we will go back down the mountain and continue the work we have been given as we journey with Jesus everyday of our lives…together.
The true work of discipleship isn’t up on the mountain; it’s out there in the world. We take the church, this church, to the world when we leave here this morning, transfiguring lives as we go.
The story is told by a surgeon about a young couple. The doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on a young woman so that she could live. As a result of the surgery she would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this outcome and watched with a heavy heart as her partner went into her room and saw her for the first time, her mouth drawn permanently downward on one side. Her partner reached out and touched her face and said, “I think it’s kind of cute; your crooked little smile,” and kissed her gently. The doctor said he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light of their love were too bright for him to bear.
Where is God? All of the earth, all of creation, broken and yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don’t have to climb a mountain to find God, although we probably should turn off our cell phones, computers, and television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, “God is in this place, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
God is in the beauty of nature. God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love. God is there, between the lines of our lives, when we share our stories and our, oh, so fragile hopes. God is there in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful, my dearest friends, because the light may be so very bright that you will need to cover your eyes.
You and I don’t need to climb mountains or even look for miracles in order to be transfigured and changed for always. Every time we experience love, forgiveness, healing, God’s grace in our lives, we are changed forever. Every time we have a glimpse of God’s presence in our lives…a presence that is everywhere and with everyone all of the time…we are changed forever. The love that we show to one another and the love that we offer the world, the peace and justice and healing we work for, the forgiveness and reconciliation we seek, the hope we offer to those we meet, no matter who they are, no matter how we may feel about them, this is the kind of love that can change the world, change the way it looks, and feels, and the way it is, not just today, but in all the days ahead, for all of us: all God’s children, beloved and blessed by God.
Lent lies ahead of us, my sisters and brothers in Christ. The road to Jerusalem is waiting for us. Let the light of Christ shine forth from us as we walk that road with together.
The story is told at the very end of Herman Wouk’s two book long series the Winds of War and War & Remembrance of a young mother, Natalie, reunited with her child, Louis, after their terrible ordeal in a concentration camp. The child has refused to speak while separated from his mother, but when she returns to him cradles him and begins to sing a soft lullaby to him; the child begins to slowly sing along with his mother. The two men watching this scene unfold before them “each put a hand over his eyes, as though dazzled by an unbearable sudden light.” They were looking at transcendent beauty that forced them to cover their eyes. That is the kind of light that emanated forth from Jesus that morning up on the mountaintop with his disciples.
We think of Transfiguration as a very supernatural kind of thing that only happened back in Biblical times, not something that could happen to you and I in our modern lives today. Oh, back then, we tell ourselves, God suspended the very laws of nature and physics to make really important statements…but, we also tell ourselves…God doesn’t act that way now.
But is that really true? Or are we misunderstanding and misinterpreting, as we are often prone to do, the very real spiritual experience that did happen to Jesus and the disciples? Do we do the same thing in our own lives today, ignore the truly spiritual moments of transformation and transfiguration that God wants us to experience?
As we begin this Lenten Journey with Jesus let us remember that we do so at the invitation of Jesus just as he invited Peter, James and John to go with him to pray on the mountain Jesus invites us to go with Him on a journey to Jerusalem. Like the disciples we are being called during Lent to go where Jesus goes and to do what Jesus does. And, like Jesus and the disciples, we are called to do this in community with one another, not alone, but together.
Just before they go up the mountain they have had a conversation about who Jesus was. Jesus asks all of the disciples to tell him what the buzz about him is among the people? They answer that some think he must be John the Baptist, others Elijah, or one of the other prophets come back from God. But that isn’t what Jesus really wants to know. So he asks them again, “Okay, guys, that’s what everyone else may be saying about me, but who do you say that I really am?” Its one thing to tell about what others think and believe about Jesus, about God, but it’s something else when we have to explain what we truly believe about who God is in Jesus Christ. It makes it very personal and very spiritual. Peter, the first one to speak, responds immediately, “You are the Messiah of God.”
You’d think that Jesus would have given Peter an A for his response to the question, but instead Jesus tells the disciples to not share that information with anyone because things are going to get very rough for him and for those who follow him. He says he’s going to suffer and die and on the third day be raised again. Anyone who wants to be his follower must be willing to lay down their own life, too. As we have talked about frequently before, the disciples don’t seem to understand.
And like the disciples we are often going to be less than understanding of what Jesus is telling us and showing us than perhaps we think we do. Jesus has just told the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem where he will face troubles and death but they don’t really believe him because they have a different outcome in mind than that which Jesus is trying to tell them about. They want a taste of victory and liberation from the despised Romans. Death and suffering is not what they had in mind; glory sounded so much better to them. How often do you and I ignore the obvious spiritual lessons that God wants to teach to us because those lessons don’t correspond to how we want to live our lives?
Oh, they get a big taste of glory up on the mountain that morning, but it wasn’t what they thought they were going to get, and the truth of the moment exceeds their understanding according to the text. Like Moses up on the mountain seeing and talking with God, Peter, James and John get a real taste of glory. As usual they aren’t able to pray with Jesus and stay awake. Suddenly they are brought out of their sleepiness by the sight of Jesus, whose body and clothing are now glowing with an unnatural brightness, is seen talking with Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the tradition of the Law and Elijah the traditions of the prophets. Joined together with Jesus, the author of Luke, is telling us that Jesus is the natural successor of these two traditions and in fact unites them into one spiritual wholeness.
Here we are in the middle of this holy moment Peter, like Peter often does, interrupts saying something to which he hasn’t given much thought. “Oh, wow, this is really something, Jesus. Let’s build three houses here. One for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah so we can preserve this moment forever. We can live right up here on the mountain for the rest of our lives.”
All over the world there have been monuments and churches built to preserve such holy miraculous moments for all of rest of history. Frozen moments in time to which we can return and remind ourselves how wonderful it was or might have been for those who were present when it happened. Sure, those moments are important, but I don’t think that God intends for us to freeze those moments in history and stay up on the mountaintop. I believe instead that God wants us to use such moments to be the motivation and the reason for us to accomplish God’s hopes and plans for us and others through us. We have to take the miracle with us back down the mountain to where we live our daily lives.
And so out of the divine cloud that surrounds them God speaks almost as if to tell Peter to shut up. God, who spoke to Jesus at his baptism and told him that he was God’s beloved child, now says to those with Jesus that this is God’s chosen one, God’s beloved and only child, and suggests that they listen to him.” Maybe God was annoyed with Peter for interrupting this holy experience. As one commentator wrote, “If Moses was told up on that mountain that he couldn’t see God and live, perhaps Peter should have been told that he couldn’t see God and talk so much.” Perhaps God was also saying to the mostly Jewish audience that Luke was writing to, “Yes, Moses and Elijah had a lot to say that you need to pay attention to, but you need to pay even more attention to what Jesus has to say because he is my chosen one.”
Peter is just like you and me. We often try to talk our way into understanding. We want to process the experience so we can come to understand it and make our understanding a part of who we are. But more often we want to, like Peter, carve that moment in stone by building a monument or by hardening our own traditions and interpretations of scripture to say, “This is what we believe. We’ve always believed this way. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve always said it this way.” We want to take the experience and make it into something that we can hold on to, something that won’t change, and best of all, something that really won’t change us…or not that much, hopefully.
But Jesus wouldn’t let them preserve the moment. Jesus takes them back down the mountain and back into the world where they meet a man with a sick child. The man had approached the disciples to heal his son, but they couldn’t help, even though they had been up on the mountaintop with Jesus. So he calls upon Jesus to heal his beloved only child, echoing the words of God about Jesus up on the mountain. And Jesus responds with the loving-kindness of God and heals the boy.
My four grandsons love transformer toys. They are always showing me a toy that looks like one thing but with a few twists and turns becomes something else entirely. When I don’t know what else to give them, I can always purchase a transformer toy and know that they will be delighted with it, for at least a moment or two. That’s usually what we want to do with transformational experiences in our own lives. Hold on to them for a moment or two, but not long enough to let them really change us into what God wants us to become.
We are truly afraid of being changed. Because when we allow God to change us, we aren’t in control of the outcome any longer. And that scares us. I don’t understand why, but it does. Because the one thing that we do know is that God loves us and wants the very best for us, so why are we afraid to let God change us to become the best that we can become?
The word transfiguration is different from the word transformation. Transfiguration is about change, but it emphasizes a dramatic change in appearance, and it especially means a change that glorifies or exalts someone, which truly works well for today’s scripture reading about what happened to Jesus. But transformation also means the “changed state that results from this change in appearance.”
And that works well for us as we come to the end of another season of Epiphany. During Epiphany we have turned our hearts and minds and opened our eyes and ears to the ways that God is showing forth God’s self in the world around us. Here at the edge of Lent, as we set out with Jesus toward Jerusalem and the mount of Calvary, we pause on another mountain for one of those “mountaintop experiences,” one of those thrilling moments when we truly glimpse glory, a bright flash of light, an indescribable moment when everything seems to change not just in appearance, but becomes forever different for us.
Oh, we may not be up on a mountaintop this morning, but the experience this past year of watching this congregation grow in so many different ways, not just in the number of persons, but in heart and soul of each person, as we have deepened our spiritual growth and our relationships with God and with each other, yes, that is a mountaintop experience all by itself.
The stories of your lives are the stories of people who have found their way to God and to us, people who thought that there was no church home for them anywhere, no spiritual community that would welcome them and their faith walk, no place that would be grateful and celebrate their presence. But here you are today. Your personal stories make my heart fill with wonder and awe and I am transfigured by the changes I see in you, changes you never thought you would experience, that I have to put my hands over my eyes because you move me to transcendence with your faith and your hope and your presence here this morning. You are a miracle that I cannot ignore nor explain away.
Metropolitan Community Church Seattle is a different church than we were a year ago. Together we have begun a journey toward heaven. Soon we will receive more new members, persons who have already told me that they are committing to joining us on this journey. Their stories will be joined with ours and we must not expect them to do things the way we have always done them or to believe the way we have always believed. We won’t put up pup tents nor will we carve anything in stone. We will instead, stand still for our moment of glory and then we will go back down the mountain and continue the work we have been given as we journey with Jesus everyday of our lives…together.
The true work of discipleship isn’t up on the mountain; it’s out there in the world. We take the church, this church, to the world when we leave here this morning, transfiguring lives as we go.
The story is told by a surgeon about a young couple. The doctor had to perform a disfiguring surgery on a young woman so that she could live. As a result of the surgery she would never be able to smile on one side of her face again. The surgeon felt very bad about this outcome and watched with a heavy heart as her partner went into her room and saw her for the first time, her mouth drawn permanently downward on one side. Her partner reached out and touched her face and said, “I think it’s kind of cute; your crooked little smile,” and kissed her gently. The doctor said he had to look away from these two young people, as if the light of their love were too bright for him to bear.
Where is God? All of the earth, all of creation, broken and yet beautiful, is full of the presence of God. We don’t have to climb a mountain to find God, although we probably should turn off our cell phones, computers, and television sets long enough to notice…like our ancestor Jacob, who said, “God is in this place, and I wasn’t aware of it.”
God is in the beauty of nature. God is in those moments of unconditional, tender love. God is there, between the lines of our lives, when we share our stories and our, oh, so fragile hopes. God is there in our suffering and in every moment of rescue, restoration, and resurrection. But be careful, my dearest friends, because the light may be so very bright that you will need to cover your eyes.
You and I don’t need to climb mountains or even look for miracles in order to be transfigured and changed for always. Every time we experience love, forgiveness, healing, God’s grace in our lives, we are changed forever. Every time we have a glimpse of God’s presence in our lives…a presence that is everywhere and with everyone all of the time…we are changed forever. The love that we show to one another and the love that we offer the world, the peace and justice and healing we work for, the forgiveness and reconciliation we seek, the hope we offer to those we meet, no matter who they are, no matter how we may feel about them, this is the kind of love that can change the world, change the way it looks, and feels, and the way it is, not just today, but in all the days ahead, for all of us: all God’s children, beloved and blessed by God.
Lent lies ahead of us, my sisters and brothers in Christ. The road to Jerusalem is waiting for us. Let the light of Christ shine forth from us as we walk that road with together.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Rise and Shine! Epiphany1C
“Rise & Shine” for Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010 (Epiphany 1C)
Scriptures: Matthew 2:1-12, Ephesians 3:1-12, Psalm 72:1+7, 10-11, Isaiah 60
Sing: “Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. Children of the Lord.”
Such went the chorus of a song I used to sing for and with the children of a church camp I directed in Wisconsin in the mid-1980’s as we gathered for breakfast each day. I wanted the children and their leaders to truly give God the credit for everything that God had provided and blessed them with and to also see themselves as gifts from God living to bless each other.
Today we celebrate Epiphany. Oh, yeah, you might say to yourself, that’s the day the Magi came to worship the infant Jesus and to give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yes, that’s right, but it’s so much more than that. Epiphany means the appearance or revelation of something.
In literature, however, an epiphany is usually used to refer to the appearance of a divine being or the revelation of a basic truth about something. It is associated with light, as if a switch were tripped and the flood lights of realization suddenly came on about something or someone so that you immediately came to know the truth about the person or thing. And that truth may not be what we thought it would be. That truth might just twist our expectations.
Think about it. The Magi weren’t Kings, that’s a tradition that got started when someone read the Psalm today and decided that the Kings who would pay tribute to the Annointed One of God had to be the Magi that came to worship the infant Jesus. Matthew doesn’t write the story that way, but it didn’t stop us from creating many versions of the story of the Wise Men also known as the Three Kings.
There probably weren’t three of them, we get that from the number of gifts they bring. Some Christian traditions have as many as 12 coming to worship Christ. In fact Matthew’s word of these persons probably means priests or astrologists from the region of Iraq, most likely Zoriastrian priests or philosophers, if you will, those who study the stars and planets for religious or spiritual interpretations, a career that the Old Testament Law prohibited. Not only were these persons foreigners, they weren’t even believers in God, but they knew what the Jewish scriptures had to say and they realized that something had happened and they wanted to be in on it. They came to Jerusalem to find and pay homage to the new King of the Jews.
When they inquire at the palace in Jerusalem King Herod knows nothing about this new born king. Whoops. In fact, such a birth would be politically threatening to him and he would want to know who was claiming his throne even before he had even died. Herod was known to be a little angry whenever he suspected anyone of trying to take over his throne. He had killed many in his own family who he suspected rightly or wrongly of such behavior including a wife, a mother in law, and his own sons. Do you think he would spare a cute little baby?
Herod asks his religious advisers, the priests of the temple, to tell him where the baby would be born. Why, in Bethlehem of Judea, the city of King David, they tell him, every Jew knows that. So he sends the Magi off to Bethlehem to find this new king and, oh, by the way, bring back the good news to me before you go home, so I can go and worship him. Wink. Wink. Herod has no intention of worshipping this usurper of his throne.
I imagine the Magi have their own version of CSI to play out as they try to find the Christ child. By now Mary and Joe have moved into better living accommodations and Joe is working in the local carpentry trade. The Magi ask around about a baby born under unusual circumstances. Perhaps people think and then remember that a bunch of seemingly drunken shepherds were racing about town one night a couple of years ago crazily going on about angels and a new king being born in a barn. But nobody paid much attention to them then. Perhaps the Magi even went and interviewed the shepherds. Wouldn’t you like to see that on an episode of CSI! Eventually the Magi find Mary and Joe and Matthew tells us that they worship him. What you say? I don’t get it, unbelievers, non-Jews, worshipping God in Christ? Yes, that’s what the prophet predicted would happen. That’s what Matthew wrote down to prove to his Jewish readers that Jesus was the Christ, their expected Messiah.
Today we celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus who comes as the Light of the World and to whom the entire world will come and adore. The Magi were the first of the world’s people to realize this and to come to worship Christ, Immanuel, God with Us.
God wanted Israel, the children of Judah, to know that they were blessed because God had chosen them to be a blessing to the world. Through them, the prophet said, that the world would come to know God. Upon the arrival of God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, the new leader of Judah, upon them would come a great homecoming to which all the peoples of the world would stream into Jerusalem to worship God. This would be a great pouring out of God’s Love for all peoples no matter who they were. None were to be excluded from this great gathering in to God’s self all of God’s human creation.
The Prophet says, “Arise, Shine, for your light has come, and the glory of God rises upon you.” The prophet is describing a picture of a dark and hopeless night that has finally come to an end with the flashing brilliance of the dazzling hope of God’s Presence and Power dawning brightly upon God’s people who had given up all hope of ever being freed from their oppression and slavery in Babylonian exile. Written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ these passages and similar ones were claimed by the infant church in the first century after Christ’s resurrection to represent the realization of the hope of the ages: God has stepped in human form into the world and brought God’s peace, love, and justice to all people, but especially to those who previously had been rejected by society and cast off as unimportant and useless.
With the advent of Jesus Christ God says to each one of us: “The world is wrong about you. You are important because you are loved by me. You are blessed because I love you. You are good and worthy because I care about you. I created you just as you are. I love you exactly the way I created you.”
There is a tension in the Old Testament scriptures that cannot be denied. On one hand the children of God are told that they are to be a blessing to the world, that through them the entire world will come to know the love of God and will experience in to a fabulous party of celebration and joy to which the world has been invited to attend.
However, the Children of God, Israel, came to see themselves as the blessed ones but forgot that they were suppose to be a blessing to others, ushering in a new world order in which all peoples would exist peacefully with each other, a world in which no one would be excluded and no one would suffer injustice or harm. But, instead, they came to see themselves as especially blessed by God above all others and therefore they believed themselves to be better than anyone else and because of that they decided they should keep themselves pure and separate from everyone else, including even their own family members who might be born differently a-bled or injured or ill. Anything that kept you from being perceived as a perfect human specimen was to them evidence that you were not acceptable to God, someone who deserved to be excluded from God’s presence and therefore from their presence, too.
Shannon shared with us a wonderful passage from Isaiah two weeks ago from Isaiah 56:3-5: “Let no foreigner who has bound himself to God say, "God will surely exclude me from God’s people." And let not any eunuch complain, "I am only a dry tree." For this is what God says: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” This passage full of hope for you and me who were created to be differently oriented sexually and differently gendered, is in direct conflict with other passages that told the people of Israel to exclude the eunuch, anyone who was sexually different than they thought everyone should be, those who were outside of the acceptable boundaries of behavior and existence from their midst, and especially from the worship of God.
Some of us have experience the modern day equivalent of this kind of misinterpretation of the scriptures and have found ourselves excluded from the religious communities of our formative faith when we came out as Queer, as differently oriented sexually or differently gendered. We found out that the ancient exclusion of those who were not acceptable to the religious leaders of Israel had become the modern day exclusion of those who were unacceptable to the Fundamentalist Religious Right who claim that they must exclude us and others in order to keep their faith pure and themselves holy.
We often wonder how the Spanish conquistadors in the new world, who were suppose to be Christian, could so brutally murder so many Native Americans. Because their religion told them that the Native Americans weren’t even human and had no souls. Killing a Native American, according to their religious leaders at the time, was of no more concern than killing a bothersome animal or insect.
One conquistador wrote in his diary after shooting a Native American and watching him die these words: “He suffered just like a Christian would suffer.” He realized that the man he had just killed was a person just like himself regardless of what he had been told by his faith leaders.
Those who would exclude you and me and others from their faith and from their God fail to see us as being Christian or even human at times. Mostly they fail to see that it is they themselves who are failing God, God who rejects no one and includes everyone even those who are different from ourselves. Like Martin Luther King, who shaped much of my thought and theology, before and after he died a martyr to our faith in God, I came to see that we cannot exclude anyone in the name of God, because in Christ Jesus God has chosen to include everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, politics, or even religious faith.
Nor was the new Christian church above this kind of exclusionary thinking using such logic to even exclude their own fellow members. Paul writes to the Ephesians, just like he had to do with the Corinthians for the same reason, because they are letting strife and bad attitudes destroy that new congregation as people begin to tell each other: “I’m better than you are. God loves me more than God loves you.”
They were literally fighting over who had the most important spiritual gifts for ministry. Who was God blessing better and bigger than anyone else was being blessed? Who was a real Christian? “I am,” one claims, “because I have the gift of speaking in tongues.” “No,” another would cry, “I am the best Christian because I have the gift of interpreting tongues.” “Not so fast,” another would cry, “it’s me, I’m the best Christian because I can heal with my touch.”
Paul tells them that they are all members of the body of Christ and that God pours out God’s blessings upon the Body of Christ, the Church, because God wants all the members of Christ’s body to work together in harmony. No one is better than anyone else. All are needed, whether Gentile or Jew, male or female, no matter what your economic status or political beliefs, you are all a part of the Body of Christ, so start acting like it, by letting the Spirit of God unite you into a peaceful, harmonious, reconciling community where no one Lords it over anyone else.
We, too, like the ancient Children of Israel, or the Christians of first Century Ephesus, can let ourselves get sidetracked and spend our time arguing about how you believe I’m not being the kind of Christian leader I should be, while I spend my time telling you your faults as a Christian. We won’t accomplish much in the way of building a church or reaching Seattle with the Light and Love of God.
It happens to churches all the time. Good growing churches that are truly connecting to the greater community around them often let themselves get sidetracked by internal issues and personalities. They forget to keep their eye on God and let their focus wander to less important things.
MCC Seattle has come through an exciting year of beginning again, of starting over. I’ve been with you as your residential pastor now for some ten months and we have seen our ministry extend into the community touching lives in ways we are only now beginning to realize. Whenever we make contact with one person we explode the possibilities of making contact with others through them.
I read some interesting posts on the internet this week talking about MCC as a denomination and how, in one person’s opinion, it is our liturgy, how we worship that makes and breaks us as a church. Well, I’ve got some news for that preacher, “Building a church is all about building relationships.” People don’t really come to church to worship God because of the liturgy; so much as they come to church to build meaningful friendships with God’s people. Researchers have known this to be true for many years even though churches and church people want to think otherwise.
Most people come to church because they are lonely and they want to fill the void in their lives with new friends with whom they can share something in common. Hopefully, they think, they will be able to find that kind of friendship much easier in church than anywhere else. I pray they are right about MCC Seattle.
Sometimes, however, we church folk tend to concentrate on the wrong things. I remember the first church I served full-time after completing seminary. On one particular morning I had spent the hour and a half before worship visiting adult and youth and children Bible Study classrooms. I greeted visitors and members building relationships and saying hello to folks I’d only spoken to on the phone or sent invitations to in the mail, or met while visiting them in their home and now they were coming to church.
Over a six month period of time we had added over 100 to the Bible study membership, increased attendance in Bible study and worship significantly, and added more than 50 new members to the church, because we had realized that we needed to build friendships and community with persons in uniquely different ways than that church had been doing. And the changes were producing growth. A twenty year decline in attendance and membership had been reversed in six short months.
But when I walked into the worship service that morning having just welcomed some first time families to worship and helping them take their infant children to the nursery and then ushering them to seats and introducing them to several people, I sat down next to the guest speaker who leaned over to me and said as the organ prelude began, “Just where is your Bible, young man?”
Mind you, there were Bibles available in the pews for anyone to use, but this guest minister decided to make an example of me because I didn’t have a Bible with me that he could see. I had laid my Bible down accidentally in the nursery when I had helped a young mother get her child comfortable before she left for worship. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t accept my explanation and he proceed to get up to speak, pointed directly at me said, “I just can’t believe that a minister of the Word of God would come into a worship service without bringing the Word of God with him. I hope, Ray, this is the last time we see you without the Sword of the Lord in your hands.”
I wasn’t humiliated by the fact that I did not have my Bible with me. I was humiliated by the fact that this man thought that simply by carrying a Bible with me where others could see it that I would somehow be more able to carry out the work God had called me to do. I truly do think it is more important to ‘carry’ the Word in my mind and in my heart than to have a book in my hands. In fact, I usually need my hands to actually do the Word…kind acts of mercy and encouragement to others.
We all come to church with our own ideas of what it means to serve God, to be God’s servant. But let us remember that just because someone does things differently from us does not mean that he or she is not serving God. They are simply serving God differently than we serve God. Let us look to the results that are evident in the other person’s life and in the lives of others to whom that person shares his or her understanding of God by what he or she does and says to truly build the new community of God.
It is so easy for us to criticize others, to fail to see beyond the issue that has captured our attention for the moment, be it the fact that someone isn’t carrying a Bible, or the fact that he or she isn’t acting exactly like we believe a Christian should act and speak. Thank God that God created a world full of variety and diversity. Let’s try to allow God to bless MCC Seattle with as much human variety and diversity as God wants to give us. Then, let’s remember to celebrate God’s presence in ourselves and in others together in joyful praise and worship!
But most importantly on this Epiphany Sunday, let us remember that God blessed us so that we can become a blessing to others by sharing with them the light and love of God in Jesus Christ. Rise and shine this week and turn on the light switch in someone else’s life this week by being Christ to them.
Scriptures: Matthew 2:1-12, Ephesians 3:1-12, Psalm 72:1+7, 10-11, Isaiah 60
Sing: “Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. Children of the Lord.”
Such went the chorus of a song I used to sing for and with the children of a church camp I directed in Wisconsin in the mid-1980’s as we gathered for breakfast each day. I wanted the children and their leaders to truly give God the credit for everything that God had provided and blessed them with and to also see themselves as gifts from God living to bless each other.
Today we celebrate Epiphany. Oh, yeah, you might say to yourself, that’s the day the Magi came to worship the infant Jesus and to give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yes, that’s right, but it’s so much more than that. Epiphany means the appearance or revelation of something.
In literature, however, an epiphany is usually used to refer to the appearance of a divine being or the revelation of a basic truth about something. It is associated with light, as if a switch were tripped and the flood lights of realization suddenly came on about something or someone so that you immediately came to know the truth about the person or thing. And that truth may not be what we thought it would be. That truth might just twist our expectations.
Think about it. The Magi weren’t Kings, that’s a tradition that got started when someone read the Psalm today and decided that the Kings who would pay tribute to the Annointed One of God had to be the Magi that came to worship the infant Jesus. Matthew doesn’t write the story that way, but it didn’t stop us from creating many versions of the story of the Wise Men also known as the Three Kings.
There probably weren’t three of them, we get that from the number of gifts they bring. Some Christian traditions have as many as 12 coming to worship Christ. In fact Matthew’s word of these persons probably means priests or astrologists from the region of Iraq, most likely Zoriastrian priests or philosophers, if you will, those who study the stars and planets for religious or spiritual interpretations, a career that the Old Testament Law prohibited. Not only were these persons foreigners, they weren’t even believers in God, but they knew what the Jewish scriptures had to say and they realized that something had happened and they wanted to be in on it. They came to Jerusalem to find and pay homage to the new King of the Jews.
When they inquire at the palace in Jerusalem King Herod knows nothing about this new born king. Whoops. In fact, such a birth would be politically threatening to him and he would want to know who was claiming his throne even before he had even died. Herod was known to be a little angry whenever he suspected anyone of trying to take over his throne. He had killed many in his own family who he suspected rightly or wrongly of such behavior including a wife, a mother in law, and his own sons. Do you think he would spare a cute little baby?
Herod asks his religious advisers, the priests of the temple, to tell him where the baby would be born. Why, in Bethlehem of Judea, the city of King David, they tell him, every Jew knows that. So he sends the Magi off to Bethlehem to find this new king and, oh, by the way, bring back the good news to me before you go home, so I can go and worship him. Wink. Wink. Herod has no intention of worshipping this usurper of his throne.
I imagine the Magi have their own version of CSI to play out as they try to find the Christ child. By now Mary and Joe have moved into better living accommodations and Joe is working in the local carpentry trade. The Magi ask around about a baby born under unusual circumstances. Perhaps people think and then remember that a bunch of seemingly drunken shepherds were racing about town one night a couple of years ago crazily going on about angels and a new king being born in a barn. But nobody paid much attention to them then. Perhaps the Magi even went and interviewed the shepherds. Wouldn’t you like to see that on an episode of CSI! Eventually the Magi find Mary and Joe and Matthew tells us that they worship him. What you say? I don’t get it, unbelievers, non-Jews, worshipping God in Christ? Yes, that’s what the prophet predicted would happen. That’s what Matthew wrote down to prove to his Jewish readers that Jesus was the Christ, their expected Messiah.
Today we celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus who comes as the Light of the World and to whom the entire world will come and adore. The Magi were the first of the world’s people to realize this and to come to worship Christ, Immanuel, God with Us.
God wanted Israel, the children of Judah, to know that they were blessed because God had chosen them to be a blessing to the world. Through them, the prophet said, that the world would come to know God. Upon the arrival of God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, the new leader of Judah, upon them would come a great homecoming to which all the peoples of the world would stream into Jerusalem to worship God. This would be a great pouring out of God’s Love for all peoples no matter who they were. None were to be excluded from this great gathering in to God’s self all of God’s human creation.
The Prophet says, “Arise, Shine, for your light has come, and the glory of God rises upon you.” The prophet is describing a picture of a dark and hopeless night that has finally come to an end with the flashing brilliance of the dazzling hope of God’s Presence and Power dawning brightly upon God’s people who had given up all hope of ever being freed from their oppression and slavery in Babylonian exile. Written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ these passages and similar ones were claimed by the infant church in the first century after Christ’s resurrection to represent the realization of the hope of the ages: God has stepped in human form into the world and brought God’s peace, love, and justice to all people, but especially to those who previously had been rejected by society and cast off as unimportant and useless.
With the advent of Jesus Christ God says to each one of us: “The world is wrong about you. You are important because you are loved by me. You are blessed because I love you. You are good and worthy because I care about you. I created you just as you are. I love you exactly the way I created you.”
There is a tension in the Old Testament scriptures that cannot be denied. On one hand the children of God are told that they are to be a blessing to the world, that through them the entire world will come to know the love of God and will experience in to a fabulous party of celebration and joy to which the world has been invited to attend.
However, the Children of God, Israel, came to see themselves as the blessed ones but forgot that they were suppose to be a blessing to others, ushering in a new world order in which all peoples would exist peacefully with each other, a world in which no one would be excluded and no one would suffer injustice or harm. But, instead, they came to see themselves as especially blessed by God above all others and therefore they believed themselves to be better than anyone else and because of that they decided they should keep themselves pure and separate from everyone else, including even their own family members who might be born differently a-bled or injured or ill. Anything that kept you from being perceived as a perfect human specimen was to them evidence that you were not acceptable to God, someone who deserved to be excluded from God’s presence and therefore from their presence, too.
Shannon shared with us a wonderful passage from Isaiah two weeks ago from Isaiah 56:3-5: “Let no foreigner who has bound himself to God say, "God will surely exclude me from God’s people." And let not any eunuch complain, "I am only a dry tree." For this is what God says: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” This passage full of hope for you and me who were created to be differently oriented sexually and differently gendered, is in direct conflict with other passages that told the people of Israel to exclude the eunuch, anyone who was sexually different than they thought everyone should be, those who were outside of the acceptable boundaries of behavior and existence from their midst, and especially from the worship of God.
Some of us have experience the modern day equivalent of this kind of misinterpretation of the scriptures and have found ourselves excluded from the religious communities of our formative faith when we came out as Queer, as differently oriented sexually or differently gendered. We found out that the ancient exclusion of those who were not acceptable to the religious leaders of Israel had become the modern day exclusion of those who were unacceptable to the Fundamentalist Religious Right who claim that they must exclude us and others in order to keep their faith pure and themselves holy.
We often wonder how the Spanish conquistadors in the new world, who were suppose to be Christian, could so brutally murder so many Native Americans. Because their religion told them that the Native Americans weren’t even human and had no souls. Killing a Native American, according to their religious leaders at the time, was of no more concern than killing a bothersome animal or insect.
One conquistador wrote in his diary after shooting a Native American and watching him die these words: “He suffered just like a Christian would suffer.” He realized that the man he had just killed was a person just like himself regardless of what he had been told by his faith leaders.
Those who would exclude you and me and others from their faith and from their God fail to see us as being Christian or even human at times. Mostly they fail to see that it is they themselves who are failing God, God who rejects no one and includes everyone even those who are different from ourselves. Like Martin Luther King, who shaped much of my thought and theology, before and after he died a martyr to our faith in God, I came to see that we cannot exclude anyone in the name of God, because in Christ Jesus God has chosen to include everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, politics, or even religious faith.
Nor was the new Christian church above this kind of exclusionary thinking using such logic to even exclude their own fellow members. Paul writes to the Ephesians, just like he had to do with the Corinthians for the same reason, because they are letting strife and bad attitudes destroy that new congregation as people begin to tell each other: “I’m better than you are. God loves me more than God loves you.”
They were literally fighting over who had the most important spiritual gifts for ministry. Who was God blessing better and bigger than anyone else was being blessed? Who was a real Christian? “I am,” one claims, “because I have the gift of speaking in tongues.” “No,” another would cry, “I am the best Christian because I have the gift of interpreting tongues.” “Not so fast,” another would cry, “it’s me, I’m the best Christian because I can heal with my touch.”
Paul tells them that they are all members of the body of Christ and that God pours out God’s blessings upon the Body of Christ, the Church, because God wants all the members of Christ’s body to work together in harmony. No one is better than anyone else. All are needed, whether Gentile or Jew, male or female, no matter what your economic status or political beliefs, you are all a part of the Body of Christ, so start acting like it, by letting the Spirit of God unite you into a peaceful, harmonious, reconciling community where no one Lords it over anyone else.
We, too, like the ancient Children of Israel, or the Christians of first Century Ephesus, can let ourselves get sidetracked and spend our time arguing about how you believe I’m not being the kind of Christian leader I should be, while I spend my time telling you your faults as a Christian. We won’t accomplish much in the way of building a church or reaching Seattle with the Light and Love of God.
It happens to churches all the time. Good growing churches that are truly connecting to the greater community around them often let themselves get sidetracked by internal issues and personalities. They forget to keep their eye on God and let their focus wander to less important things.
MCC Seattle has come through an exciting year of beginning again, of starting over. I’ve been with you as your residential pastor now for some ten months and we have seen our ministry extend into the community touching lives in ways we are only now beginning to realize. Whenever we make contact with one person we explode the possibilities of making contact with others through them.
I read some interesting posts on the internet this week talking about MCC as a denomination and how, in one person’s opinion, it is our liturgy, how we worship that makes and breaks us as a church. Well, I’ve got some news for that preacher, “Building a church is all about building relationships.” People don’t really come to church to worship God because of the liturgy; so much as they come to church to build meaningful friendships with God’s people. Researchers have known this to be true for many years even though churches and church people want to think otherwise.
Most people come to church because they are lonely and they want to fill the void in their lives with new friends with whom they can share something in common. Hopefully, they think, they will be able to find that kind of friendship much easier in church than anywhere else. I pray they are right about MCC Seattle.
Sometimes, however, we church folk tend to concentrate on the wrong things. I remember the first church I served full-time after completing seminary. On one particular morning I had spent the hour and a half before worship visiting adult and youth and children Bible Study classrooms. I greeted visitors and members building relationships and saying hello to folks I’d only spoken to on the phone or sent invitations to in the mail, or met while visiting them in their home and now they were coming to church.
Over a six month period of time we had added over 100 to the Bible study membership, increased attendance in Bible study and worship significantly, and added more than 50 new members to the church, because we had realized that we needed to build friendships and community with persons in uniquely different ways than that church had been doing. And the changes were producing growth. A twenty year decline in attendance and membership had been reversed in six short months.
But when I walked into the worship service that morning having just welcomed some first time families to worship and helping them take their infant children to the nursery and then ushering them to seats and introducing them to several people, I sat down next to the guest speaker who leaned over to me and said as the organ prelude began, “Just where is your Bible, young man?”
Mind you, there were Bibles available in the pews for anyone to use, but this guest minister decided to make an example of me because I didn’t have a Bible with me that he could see. I had laid my Bible down accidentally in the nursery when I had helped a young mother get her child comfortable before she left for worship. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t accept my explanation and he proceed to get up to speak, pointed directly at me said, “I just can’t believe that a minister of the Word of God would come into a worship service without bringing the Word of God with him. I hope, Ray, this is the last time we see you without the Sword of the Lord in your hands.”
I wasn’t humiliated by the fact that I did not have my Bible with me. I was humiliated by the fact that this man thought that simply by carrying a Bible with me where others could see it that I would somehow be more able to carry out the work God had called me to do. I truly do think it is more important to ‘carry’ the Word in my mind and in my heart than to have a book in my hands. In fact, I usually need my hands to actually do the Word…kind acts of mercy and encouragement to others.
We all come to church with our own ideas of what it means to serve God, to be God’s servant. But let us remember that just because someone does things differently from us does not mean that he or she is not serving God. They are simply serving God differently than we serve God. Let us look to the results that are evident in the other person’s life and in the lives of others to whom that person shares his or her understanding of God by what he or she does and says to truly build the new community of God.
It is so easy for us to criticize others, to fail to see beyond the issue that has captured our attention for the moment, be it the fact that someone isn’t carrying a Bible, or the fact that he or she isn’t acting exactly like we believe a Christian should act and speak. Thank God that God created a world full of variety and diversity. Let’s try to allow God to bless MCC Seattle with as much human variety and diversity as God wants to give us. Then, let’s remember to celebrate God’s presence in ourselves and in others together in joyful praise and worship!
But most importantly on this Epiphany Sunday, let us remember that God blessed us so that we can become a blessing to others by sharing with them the light and love of God in Jesus Christ. Rise and shine this week and turn on the light switch in someone else’s life this week by being Christ to them.
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