Advice for Living From God: Part 3 "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going" John 6:25-69

Though many people followed Jesus,
as he moved closer to the end of his time on earth his teachings became more intense
and harder for people to accept.

The people who followed him
into the wilderness in chapter 15
know that there is something unusual about him, but they opt
to believe that he is just a normal human being.
This will become clear later.
For example when he heals the sick
and then feeds them in the wilderness
they want to proclaim him as their earthly King,
but he disappears
for he does not yet want
to confront the political and religious powers.
The disciples leave by boat to cross the lake
and the people walk around the shore
to get to where they are going,
they are aware that Jesus
was not with the disciples in the boat.
When they do find Jesus on the other side
they ask him not “How did you get here”
but instead “When did you arrive?”
which implies no understanding
that he is more than human.

Jesus doesn’t answer their question.
Instead he tells them that they are looking for him
not because of the signs he performed, demonstrating God’s life-giving power,
but because they got free food
that they didn’t have to work for.

Sure these people worked hard
to provide daily bread for themselves.
However, finding a miraculous source of food
that doesn’t require hard work is certainly amazing and they don’t want to turn loose
of the opportunity that presents:
Give us more of the same!

Jesus, though,
wants to redirect their attention to God.
He reminds them that the manna
that the Children of Israel
received in the wilderness
came not from the human Moses
but from the Divine God.
He reminds them that the manna spoiled quickly. So will this physical food that I have given to you. Instead you should desire something more lasting. Seek the Bread of Life,
food that will endure into the eternal life,
food that nourishes your spirit.

The people then ask him a question
that modern people like you and I often ask:
What must we do to do the work of God?
In other words, how can I make sure
by what I do that I will
inherit eternal life?

Jesus tells them that it isn’t about works,
It’s about belief. They need to believe
In the One that God has sent.
In other words, believe in Jesus!



You and I can be pretty stubborn
when we want to be, especially when it concerns our relationship with God.
How often have you pleaded with God
to show you a sign that what you want to do
is the right thing to do?
We’ve all done it.

Those following Jesus were no different
and they ask him to show them a sign
to prove that he is from God.
That in itself is pretty amazing,
given the fact that they have recently witnessed Jesus heal the sick and feed thousands of people
in the wilderness
but those miracles weren’t good enough for them. They want even more sensational miracles,
not to prove who Jesus is,
but because, they, like us enjoyed fireworks
and awe-inspiring acrobatic performances
for the sheer entertainment
that such things provide.
They are really saying: Entertain us, Jesus!
We want a supernatural performance!
Make sure it involves a miracle or two
and please don’t forget the snacks!

They demand more manna telling Jesus
that Moses gave the people bread from heaven.
They haven’t gotten the message yet,
so Jesus reminds them that it wasn’t Moses
who gave their ancestors bread in the wilderness,
but it was God.
He keeps trying to direct their attention
to the divine, but like you and me,
they insist on sticking to the concrete things of life.

He tells them that the Bread of Life from Heaven
will give them eternal life.
They ask for the bread to be given to them,
showing again that they are totally missing
what he is trying to tell them.

Jesus explains his relationship with God:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
Their reaction is basically to ask,
“Who does this guy think that he is?
We know his father and mother.
We know where he comes from.
He isn’t anything special.
And since they know his family
they can’t believe he actually came from heaven.

Let me ask you a question this morning:
Who do you know that could be God in disguise?
Several movies and TV shows over the years
have cast normal human beings
in the role of God. I
t’s always interesting
to see who they give the role to:
an eight year old girl,
a 90 year old man with a cigar.
Let me ask you another question,
Who do you know that you believe
couldn’t possibly ever represent God?
Who would you have trouble accepting
if he or she was God in human form?
A Transperson? A gay guy? A lesbian?
A straight person? A child? A physically challenged person? Who would you reject? Who would you accept?

Jesus explains that he is the Bread of Life from God and that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to have eternal life with God.
You have to understand that ancient people
often talked this way, especially politicians,
by saying such things as
‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’
meaning to agree with me
and join me in my effort.
However, what Jesus says is an affront to those
who eat Kosher food.
You don’t mix bread and blood.
This was extremely offensive talk.
Centuries of eucharistic theology
give us a way to understand these words,
but at the time they were more than puzzling -- they probably were downright offensive.
Rightly reading the mood,
Jesus says, "Does this offend you?"
The idea of eating human flesh
or drinking human blood
still offends us today.

Like us, they probably missed his real meaning
with their perceived offense
of his breaking dietary laws.
It was too much to take and
many walk away from Jesus.
Left alone with his most intimate disciples
and friends he asks them,
“Do you, too, want to leave me?”

Jesus’ question echoes down the ages,
“What about you, do you, too want to leave me?” Are the teachings of Jesus too tough for us
to understand and follow in our personal lives?
Is it out of the question
for us to become the New Community of God?

Jesus was asking his followers
to make some very foundational changes
in their lives.
They wanted their lives to remain the same,
with just a few miracles included
every now and then to keep things exciting.
They wanted to experience the sensational things God could do for them
without experiencing the sensational changes
God wanted to make inside of them,
in their thinking and in their behaviors.
Basically they were saying,
“Jesus, as long as you make us feel good
and perform more miracles,
hey, we’re there with you.
But when you start meddling in our lives
and asking us to change how we relate to God
and others, that’s just too much to take.”

Where are you with Jesus today?
Are you praying for a miracle
to be worked in your life:
a job, winning the lottery,
physical healing, or something else?
What if God does work the miracle
and proves to your personal satisfaction
that God does care about you…
which is really something
that you don’t have to worry about…
because God has loved you
and cared for you from long before the moment that God created you inside your mother’s womb. If you do get your miracle
will you then try to really follow Christ?
What if Jesus asks you to do something
that is really tough?
Will you hang in there with Jesus
and do what it takes
to become the kind of person
that God wants you to be
or will you bail out on Jesus?
Or what if there is no miracle?
Will you follow God anyway?

Doing what God wants takes guts.
My family used to say,
“When the going gets tough,
the tough get going.”
It takes courage to become the person
or the church God desires us to become
especially in our relationships with others.
We seem to forget that Jesus’ ministry
was based on something
that is really very difficult
for most of us to do
…relationship building.
Jesus wants to connect us with God
and with others.
Most importantly Jesus wanted his followers
to expand their definition
of what community meant
and to include within their New Community
all the different varieties of humanity
that then existed.

Living up to the expectations of God
means that even when the going gets tough
and the rest of the world
doesn’t understand what we are doing
and chooses to not come along with us
that we have to keep on working
toward achieving Christ’s vision of the future,
of the full inclusion of all humanity.

We need to concentrate on who Jesus Christ is, what Jesus Christ did,
apply the lessons that he taught.
Jesus is our best textbook
for becoming the New Community of God.
When I don’t know what to do as a pastor
I ask myself, “What would Jesus do?”
And I often get a very different answer
than the one I had thought about
before I asked myself that question.
How can I break down the walls
that separate people from each other?
How can I cross the barriers
that society has erected to keep people apart?
How can I, through what I do and say,
build up hope for others,
for myself, for my church?

Emerald City MCC Seattle is on a journey
to tear down walls and build up hope.
We are searching for what we believe
God wants us to become.
Some have decided to abandon the journey
and have left us,
others, however, have renewed themselves
and joined in the effort with us.
God has blessed uswith a vision
of the future of our church that is incredible!
We can become the New Community of God
built upon faith and hope and caring
…a community that Jesus will be proud of
and says represents exactly
what he was talking about.
Yes, it will be tough.
Yes, it will not happen overnight,
but if we keep our eyes on that vision
of the future God has planted within us,
we will get there, together with God.

Stanley Jones tells of a missionary
who got lost in an African jungle,
nothing around him but bush
and a few cleared places.
He found a native hut and asked the native
if he could get him out.
The native said he could.

"All right," said the missionary,
"show me the way."

The native said, "Walk,"
so they walked and hacked their way
through unmarked jungle
for more than an hour.

The missionary got worried.
"Are you quite sure this is the way?
Where is the path?"

The native said, "Bwana, in this place
there is no path.
I am the path."

I think that it is here that Peter
has one of his more honest and real moments.
His guard was down
because so many people were leaving Jesus.
They were leaving because, quite frankly,
things were getting a little too tough.
So, Jesus asks the twelve,
are you going to leave me as well?
"Lord, to whom shall we go?" Peter replied,
"You have the words of eternal life.
You are the Holy One of God."
Peter speaks for us all.
Because in this world there is no path.
Peter, you are right.
Jesus is the Path!

What about you, will you desert Christ, too,
now that the going is tough?
Like Peter I pray and hope your answer is:
“Christ, to whom shall we go?
You have the words of eternal life. 69
We have come to believe
and to know that you
are the Holy One of God.”

"Coming Out to God" Exodus 3:1-12

This is the first in four PRIDE sermons for the month of June:

LGBT people are making a difference in our nation and in our world as we actively strive for acceptance, for justice and social changes that mean we are included in all of the privileges society has to offer any other person regardless of sexuality, race, color, ethnicity, creed or religion. We are truly coming out.
Have you ever stopped, though, to notice that the Bible is a book about coming out? The Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3 is a story about coming out of innocence and shame to enjoy our bodies and sexual pleasure which is a radically different way of looking at the story than focusing on sin and punishment.
Joseph and his coat of many colors is the coming out of a dreamer, a person with a special gift. We who are gay or queer have special gifts to share with our communities. Joseph’s very special coat of many colors, a rainbow robe, if you will, is a promise that our differences are not wrong.

Coming out to love is reflected in the biblical story of David and Jonathan’s passionate devotion to each other, and in the story of Ruth and Naomi’s loyalty and devotion to each other. Their relationships may not have been sexual, but what justifies any relationship isn’t the sex but the love that is involved.
Coming out of privilege is the story of Esther, a beautiful queen who is secretly Jewish in a Persian culture. Esther comes out of her privilege to identify with her people in order to save them from a decree of death. She asks her people to fast in solidarity with her as she risks her life before the king, mirroring queer people who can pass as heterosexuals and yet give up their privilege in society and come out boldly.

Jonah, the reluctant preacher, who comes out of anger and learns the hard way what God intends for him to do after running away the first time. Jonah is called to preach repentance to the Ninevites—the very people oppressing Jonah’s people. When the Ninevites repent, Jonah becomes angry because they received the same mercy and grace as the Israelites however Jonah didn’t want to share this with his oppressors. It will do us all good to remember that God is even the God of our oppressors The same God in whose image we are created as LGBT people is the same God of the Christian Coalition, of Focus on the Family, who actively persecute us today. We must not forget to offer our oppressors opportunities to turn from their shameful ways and receive God’s mercy and grace.

Coming out of “traditional family values,” at the age of 12 Jesus ignored his family’s departure from Jerusalem to go and sit in the temple, his “Father’s House;” He left his family, he never married, and as far as we know he never had any children; he called his disciples away from their families and told them he had no home, claiming his message would set family members against one another. Jesus was hardly the supporter of so-called traditional family values—meaning one man, one woman and some children. Instead Jesus extended the meaning of family by calling anyone who does the will of God his brothers, sisters and mother. Jesus defended the eunuchs—traditionally outcasts—by drawing a circle of love and acceptance that included them.

The story of the Samaritan Woman is a story about coming out as ourselves. Jesus’ conversation with her at the well is just one example of the way Jesus did not follow traditional society’s norms for religion, race, gender, or morality—he spoke to a Samaritan woman who had five husbands and who wasn’t married to her current partner. He offered her living water—acceptance and hope for a new way of living—and she was transformed. Jesus’ encounter with this woman illustrates the call to a right relationship with God. When we seek transformation of ourselves we find Jesus calling out to us, repeating: “God loves you, God loves you, God loves you.”

The biggest coming out in all of history is the exodus from Egypt. Their experience parallels our own coming out experience, our own joyous release from the captivity of heterosexism. But then we are faced with possible death in the wilderness, no real home, no road map to follow. We may even want to go back to our former life of captivity, the closet, where at least we felt safely hidden and had food to eat.
Leaving the wilderness Moses and the Israelites got close to the promised land but they did not think that they could conquer those who were living there, so they stayed by an oasis in the desert, deciding to settle for far less. As LGBT Christians we are often told to wait and be patient for full inclusion, but waiting will not prompt the changes that need to take place. It is agitation and discomfort, not complacency that brings about the necessary changes. It is hard being out of the closet and working for change.

Exodus is a story about transformation. God tells Moses in Exodus 19: 3-6
3-6 As Moses went up to meet God, GOD called down to him from the mountain: "Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: 'You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles' wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you'll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you're special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.'

MCC’s Rev. Dr. Mona West says that the haibru in the ancient East were known as the aliens, the strangers, the marginalized. She points out that word is related etymologically and sociologically by Walter Bruggemann to the biblical term Hebrew, coming from the root word abar, meaning ‘to cross over.” The Hebrews were those who crossed over boundaries, who had no respect for imperial boundaries, someone who is not confined by boundaries of others but crosses over them in a desperate search for the necessities of life. It is these people who were transformed into the nation of Israel.

Bernhard Anderson says that Exodus is the crucial event by which Israel became a historically self-aware community. It is a coming out story of a people.
That identity did not happen the moment that they came out of their closets in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. It was through their wilderness journey and their conquest of the Promised Land, as they faced trials and rebelled against God that they were able to discover more fully what it meant to be a holy nation. Even once they attained the Promised Land they found that this journey to self-discovery had not ended. They faced new oppression and enslavement and were challenged to live fully as God’s people who embraced a new identity.

In today’s scripture passage from Exodus, Moses is out tending his flock. He believes he has covered up his previous life and would not be bothered by memories of his privileged existence in Pharaoh’s court, nor the suffering of his own people in their slavery. He has escaped a potential death penalty put upon him when in a fit of anger he kills one of the oppressors of his people. While trying to find grazing space for his flock, he encounters God in the form of a bush that burns but is not consumed by the fire and is introduced to God who calls Godself “I am the I am,” or I am who I am. God came out to Moses and in so doing God calls Moses to accept himself. God encourages Moses to be all that God had created Moses to be.
The Bible teaches us that we are made in the very image of God. Just like Moses, we sometimes try to argue with God: Surely, you wouldn’t pick me? Why, God, I’m not worthy. We make excuses about why God couldn’t or wouldn’t choose us and why we can’t be or do what God is calling us to be and do. But God keeps right on calling us, refusing to accept our excuses or our reluctance, moving us forward toward the promised future God wants us to inhabit.

When I was much younger I didn’t understand this urging by God to move me out of my former life and into a new existence that God had waiting for me. I didn’t know other possibilities existed for me than what society and family told me that they expected of me. Knowing I was different and not understanding that difference I believed what my church told me was about its so-called traditional beliefs about same sex love and what it believed was the only acceptable relationship between two people: marriage between a man and woman. I forced myself into the mold of complacency and tradition when I married my former wife.

Don’t misunderstand. I did love my wife. She was my best friend for many years. We formed a loving family that was blessed with four children of whom I am very proud and who I love more than life itself. But throughout those four years of dating and 32 years of married life I couldn’t help but think that there was something I was missing, something that my heart and soul longed for. For many of those years I was miserable and depressed as I tried to put down the real, true me and live a closeted life of acceptance by society.

Seven and a half years ago my life changed. My wife, for her own reasons, decided to end the marriage. I have to tell you that though I was upset and angry with her decision, I was also relieved. Throughout the years I had the God-given privilege of dealing with the question of whether or not God loved me just as I was, just as God had created me. I had prayed for God to change me, to make me straight, to take away my desire to be with another man, but the same answer kept coming back to me, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

In other words, God kept telling me that God loved me just the way God had created me and that God wasn’t going to change me.

So forced out of an unhappy marriage, I had to deal with the question of what did God want me to do now? It was late in 1993 and we had moved back to Knoxville, I tried going back to the same church that had ordained me to the Gospel ministry more than twenty years earlier. I was accepted, even asked to preach, to join a committee whose purpose was to plant another Southern Baptist Church in the area. Because I had previously founded a church that grew rapidly into a major congregation, I was even asked to pastor the new church. They could accept my being divorced, after all it was a fairly liberal church, but I knew that if I revealed my true self to them that their invitations to be involved would evaporate, or at least raise some significant questions about my suitability in those new roles.

So I left that church and began attending the Gay Men’s Discussion group. I found a group of men who shared my feelings and who supported one another in the questions life was handing us to answer. I found Christian men who were gay and who invited me to attend MCC Knoxville where I found a community that accepted me and loved me just as God had created me. There were many ups and downs I had to face as the marriage was dissolved and I built a new life for myself, but I found a supportive community that helped me to negotiate all the hurdles I had to overcome.
God had called me to be a Christian minister. My sexuality and major conflict with others over what our stance as a church should be concerning ministry to the marginalized persons of society, had caused me to leave the active ministry several years before. But at MCC Knoxville, a place of restitution I found grace and mercy and came to realize that God had not changed God’s desire for me to be in Christian ministry. That church acknowledged my history and my calling and eventually made a place for me to renew my vows as a minister and serve them and God. I will always thank God for the wonderful people at MCC Knoxville, for Pastor Bob Galloway and for all who gave me the love and care, mercy and grace that I needed to move forward with God into a new future of possibilities.

God changed Moses. Moses learned to accept himself as God had created him and gifted him. Moses discovered that God didn’t care about the same things that other people cared about.

Listen carefully, God is not calling you or me to become someone different than we are. God is calling you and me to become all that God created us to be…to be ourselves.

People often thank me for my gifts of ministry, for my ministry to them and to this church. That seems strange to me, because all I have done while I have been with you is to be myself. When I try to be different than the person God created me to be I don’t seem to be able to do much of anything. It is only when I allow myself to be my self that real ministry seems to get done.

Previously, during all of my life I was told that I wasn’t good enough for God, that I had to change myself and change my life to make myself acceptable to God. Boy, oh, boy, was that a great big ole lie. God didn’t ever want me to change myself; God wanted me to accept myself, to love myself exactly as God had created me.
God, the I am who I am God, the I will be who I will be God, wanted me to finally stand up and say to the world Hey, I am who I am. I will be who I will be. I am exactly the way God wants me to be. God loves me just the way I am. I do not have to change to be loved by God. By the way, world, I am a gay Christian minister.
Like Moses or Esther, there are people in our world who have lived the great “I Am”—the assurance that who they are matters and that their self worth is not built on definitions others provide.

Born in 1924, black feminist poet Audre Lorde grew up in Harlem and spent her life teaching and writing; her honest free verse gave a powerful witness about a black woman who loved women. When faced with breast cancer, Lorde reevaluated her life and become even more determined to have her words and speeches match her life. Writing of her mortality in her essay, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, “she says she regretted her silences most, “My silence had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.” She believed that culture had silenced women, blacks and lesbians specifically, but that all people could be silenced for one reason or another. Being silent about your truth in life will not protect you, even though it may feel safer. Coming out and being true to one’s self—who one was created to be—energizes one’s work and brings more life to all those around you.
Speaking the truth about her life, Lorde’s words and life inspired many women, lesbians and straight alike, to honor the truth of their lives and name themselves rather than letting society use derogatory labels. Rather than choosing to live an invisible life in the closet, Lorde claimed her God-given identity.

In his inaugural speech as the first black president of South Africa in May 1994, Nelson Mandela, who had spent 27 years in prison resisting apartheid in his country, said “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. You were born to manifest the Glory of God within.”
The Rev. Jay E. Johnson, Programming and Development Director, for the Pacific School of Religion’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, says the following:
“There is a price to pay for telling the truth, just as there is a price for remaining silent. Of course, there’s more to human thriving than truthful speech—but there can’t be less. Speaking the truth won’t guarantee we’ll live authentically—but there’s no hope of doing so if we lie or keep silent. Nearly twenty years ago, AIDS activists reminded us that silence equals death. Not long after that they flipped the coin over and reminded us that action equals life.
“Breaking silence by speaking the truth is a form of action for the sake of life. Speech is action insofar as speaking the truth changes people—it changes both those who speak and those who listen. The words conversations and conversion come from the same root. The truth about the ways things are and about who we are tends to do that—it changes quite a lot.”

Won't You Be My Neighbor? Luke 10:25-37 Proper 10C

Scripture: Luke 10:25-37

As we shared with you last week that we are beginning a journey with Jesus who has now determined to go to Jerusalem to confront the religious, political, and economic oligarchs of his day with his message of peace, hope, mercy, generosity, and love. Jesus is going to Jerusalem to face his destiny, whatever that might be and on the way he uses the journey to teach his followers what it means to be his disciple.

The journey began with Jesus going through Samaria, a region inhabited by half-breed Jews who worship on Mountain in Samaria instead of Jerusalem where they once had a temple of their own until the Jews destroyed it, and who hold holy the same books of Moses as their neighbors the Jews, but who interpret them differently. Over centuries of hateful and violent actions the Samaritans don’t trust the Jews and the Jews don’t trust the Samaritans. Jews passing through Samaria are seen as troublemakers who are up to no good. Jews think of the Samaritans as unholy abominations and they refuse any real community with them.

Last week we read that Jesus sent the 12 ahead of him to prepare the way for his journey through Samaria and that when John and James are met with opposition they want to demand that God rain fire upon the troublesome village that rejected them, but Jesus tells them that hatred for hatred and violence for violence is not his way.

We are not reading it this year, but in the next passage from Luke, Jesus next sends out 70 of his followers to the surrounding Samaritan villages and cities and tells them that their mission is one of peace. They are to offer the blessing of peace to all of the villages and accept the peaceful responses they hopefully will receive. If they are met with opposition they are to leave that village and go on without confrontation or negative actions or words. If they are received peacefully then they are not to take advantage of their hosts but accept whatever gifts of hospitality and food are extended to them. When the 70 return to Jesus they celebrate the great peaceful reception that they have been given and they praise God. There is no question about it, Jesus’ way of peace works.

Then we come to today’s reading in which a scribe, that is a lawyer, an expert of the Jewish scriptures and an interpreter of the law asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. We are not given the location of this story, but we can assume that Jesus has now entered Jewish territory and he may be at someone’s home or even in a synagogue. Karl Allen Kuhn says that the lawyer is engaging Jesus in a common form of public debate known as the ‘challenge-response’ the intent of which I suspect was to show Jesus to be just an unlearned country bumpkin whose knowledge of the scriptures was inadequate and thus he may have hoped to embarrass Jesus in front of those gathered together. From the subtext of the words used we can probably assume that the lawyer already thinks he knows the correct answer to his questions. It was not a test to see if Jesus knew the right answer, but to see if Jesus could match the skills of the lawyer who was trained and proficient in this debating style.

Jesus doesn’t answer the lawyer but instead asks the lawyer what the scripture says. The lawyer answers Jesus’ question and appears to have the upper hand since Jesus chose not to quote the law himself. His answer repeats the Levitical Code found in Deut. 6:4-5 spelled out that our supreme commandments are to Love of God and to love of our neighbor as ourselves. Whereupon Jesus, adding nothing to the debate, simply affirms the man’s response and tells him to “do this and you will live.”

But lawyer is not satisfied so he presses Jesus with another question: “And, pray tell me, just who is my neighbor?” You see the Law also addressed who a neighbor is and how a neighbor should be treated. But this man wants to know what the limits are to who a neighbor might be that is consistent to the teaching of the law.

Simply asking such a question is setting up the answer to be one that will be full of boundaries and limitations. Within the Levitical code reasons are given which allow one to ignore and even demean others who are unclean according to the law because of something they have done or simply because of whom they are. Sick or injured people are unclean and they can safely be ignored because the literal interpretation of scriptures seems to assume that they must have deliberately done something wrong which has resulted in their punishment, or, their parents have done something wrong and they are being punished for their parent’s sins.

Simply put, some folk are your neighbors and some folk are not your neighbors. If loving God and loving my neighbor are evidence of my being in a good relationship with God and thus promised eternal life, then I must make sure that I take care of those who the Scriptures define as a neighbor, therefore I must know who my neighbor is and surely I also need to know who isn’t my neighbor. In other words, who do I need to love and who can I reasonably ignore without losing eternal life; that is losing my relationship with God? There must be limits to who I must love. Surely God doesn’t expect me to love everyone in the entire world? The Law clearly lays out who is clean and who is unclean. I know I must love those who are clean, but surely I don’t have to love the unclean in the world, do I? These are the hidden questions within the question the lawyer is asking.

But Jesus doesn’t engage the lawyer in debating the finer points of the law contained in the scriptures, instead, as was often his way, he simply tells a story and leaves us to figure out the answer for ourselves.

Jesus begins the story by telling about a man, we can reasonably assume he is Jewish so that his audience can identify with the man, who is on a journey to Jerusalem and he must go down through Samaria. Going through Samaria is bad enough all on its own with the animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews that have raged for centuries about the proper place to worship God and the correct scriptures to use and how to interpret those scriptures. We often argue the most with those who share our fundamental faith, but who differ from us in minor ways. The audacity of anyone who agrees with us only partially but not totally galls us to the point that we consider them to be our very worst enemies. We tend to think that our fundamentalist Christian friends are hypocrites who can’t see how hateful they are being toward us while at the same time they are preaching love and acceptance of others on behalf of Christ; and at the same time they think that we are horrible sinners because we don’t agree with their interpretations of the very same scriptures we both use. Guess you could say that things haven’t changed much over thousands of years.

But the trip through Samaria is much worse because of the geographical situation. The road rises some 3,000 feet over 20 miles making it extremely steep and very physically challenging. The road went through a rocky landscape filled with many caves where bandits could wait and pounce upon unsuspecting travelers. It rightly earned it’s name in ancient times as the “Bloody Pass.” No one in his or her right mind would travel this road alone, but that is the story Jesus tells us.

The man is attacked and stripped and beaten and left half dead lying in the road. Understand that because his clothing has been taken away from him there are no longer any identifying marks to tell you who he is or where he might be from. To anyone looking he’s just a bloody body lying in the ditch.

Along the road comes one who is thought of as one of the most righteous persons in all of Israel, a priest on his way to Jerusalem to take part in his assigned duties at the Temple which are rotated among the Priests. The Law tells us that to touch a dead body that doesn’t belong to a relative would make you ceremonially unclean and therefore the Priest would not be able to perform his expected functions in the Temple until he had gone through an elaborate process of becoming clean again, and he would therefore miss his assigned duties in the Temple and have to possibly wait another year for the privilege of serving again. Actually, just touching blood would have made him unclean even if the man were still alive. But, hey, why take the chance of missing my assigned duties in the Temple. This is my time to shine in front of family and friends and all of Israel! But then, if the man has been attacked by robbers, maybe they are still nearby and will attack me, too, if I stop and help him, so the Priest passes by without helping the man.

The next person to come along the road is also from a group renowned throughout Israel as righteous, one who follows the Law of God to the letter, a Levite, also an officer of the Temple. The Levites served the priests, led the singing of the psalms and did all of the construction work within the Temple, while performing many other tasks. They, too, had rotations of service in the Temple and this man was also most likely on his way to the Temple to serve in his assigned tasks. Jesus’ listeners would have known these things, so Jesus didn’t have to delineate their responsibilities as I am doing for you. Rather than risking becoming unclean by the blood or a dead body, or attacked by the robbers, the Levite also passes by the injured man without offering help.

Both the priest and the Levite seem to be asking the question of themselves: What will happen to me if I stop to help this man? How often do we walk by persons in obvious need and indifferently go on our way without even thinking about how we could help them? Take a walk through the University District, Capitol Hill, or downtown, early in the morning and you can see many who have spent the night sleeping on the street. But do you really see them and if you could would you ever help them? Or do you avoid looking them in the eye for fear they will talk to you or ask you for something as you scurry on your way to your place of service and duty?

Just as we have our expected characters in certain story situations like the Joke I told earlier, so, too did the stories told by people at this time. Everyone is expecting Jesus to fill the formula for the story by telling them that the next person to pass by is a simple Israelite, a humble person like themselves who ends up doing the right thing that the Priest and Levite wouldn’t do.

But not so in Jesus’ story. Instead of a humble Israelite, Jesus says that the next person to come along the road is a hated and despised Samaritan. After centuries of retelling this story in more modern contexts you and I think of the man as the Good Samaritan, the one who does the right thing, but that is not how those who heard the story from Jesus would have thought of the man.

In the original setting, when this story was first told by Jesus, to a Jewish scribe and Jewish listeners, a Samaritan would have been the exact opposite of a hero, he would have been the infamous "bad boy". That is an important emotion-laden element for us to remember as we proceed through this parable. The hero is a bad guy. In the lore of our own Western cowboy tales, the Samaritan was the one wearing a black hat. Ethnically and culturally speaking the Samaritan is the very last person Jesus’ audience would have expected Jesus to hail as an commendable neighbor.

This would have been not only extremely shocking but also greatly offensive to everyone hearing the story that day. How dare Jesus tell the story this way! How could he take a hated person like a Samaritan and make him out to be the hero in the story? Impossible! Ridiculous! Absurd!

But that’s exactly what Jesus does and he portrays the hated and assumed hate-filled Samaritan as taking extensive care and giving immense mercy and all-embracing kindness to the poor traveler even going out of his way by promising to pay extra for his care when he returns from his travels to check on him. It is the Samaritan who asks a different question of himself: What will become of the man left for dead if I walk on by and don’t stop to help him?

The Samaritan didn’t worry about the robbers coming back when he stopped to help the man. He gave up worry about his own safety and about completing his own responsibilities elsewhere. He had mercy and compassion upon the man and he did more than could have ever been expected of him in such a situation. He not only helped the man by cleaning him up and helping him to get to a helpful, hopeful place, he goes beyond the expectations and gives out of his own wealth and promises to give even more if needed.

Remember, throughout this journey with Jesus to Jerusalem we will be taking over the next few months, I will be reminding you that the New Community of God that Jesus keeps talking about is not something that will come upon us some day in the far distant future, but it is a reality that already exists in the here and now. The Samaritan knows this truth already in his life and lives it out by what he chooses to do for the man he discovers lying in the road. Instead of passing by, the Samaritan brings the man into his own neighborhood, into the New Community of God. The Samaritan does what a good neighbor should do for others: he cared and he took action that reflected his caring.

The priest and the Levite felt that to touch the hurt and bleeding man would somehow make them unclean and therefore unholy. The priest would not have been able to go into the Holy of Holies. The Samaritan’s actions tell us that touching those who are wounded by the world is an act of holiness. To touch the brokenness of another person is to enter the Holy of Holies.

As members of the Queer community we cannot let the issues of HIV & AIDS fall off the scale of importance in our communities just because there is an economic problem. Reducing the funding for HIV & AIDS, especially for insurance and medication, is to cause untold agony for thousands upon thousands whose lives might have been saved and extended. The same is true for the health issues of women and children as well as men. Cut other programs, but do not cut programs that give and sustain holy lives.

Let’s make it personal: Jesus' reply not only challenges the premise (of who is my neighbor) but brings a shocking surprise: each of us is to be a neighbor whenever we are needed and (we must) realize that neighbors can come from surprising places.

When Jesus finishes the story he asks the lawyer, “Who was a neighbor to the man?” Finding it impossible to say “the Samaritan” the lawyer simply answers “the one who showed him mercy,” that is the one who put his compassion into action.”

His reply is correct, and Jesus simply says, "Go and do likewise." Put your compassion into action! Jesus' point is: Simply be a neighbor. Do not rule out anyone as your neighbor. Jesus makes the point by emphatically providing a model from a group of people that the lawyer would have excluded from his own description of neighborhood. Samaritans were unclean according to the lawyers interpretation of scriptures.

Jesus’ parable has turned the whole question around. The lawyer asks who is his neighbor, in the hope that there will be some appropriate restrictions on whom he should include in his neighborhood. Jesus, however, replies that in order to determine who your neighbor is; you must become a neighbor to everyone, even to those who you would rather not include in your neighborhood.

To love God means to show mercy to those in need, to put your compassion into action. An authentic follower of Christ is one who loves God and who cares for others. This is a central tenet of discipleship. Men and women fulfill their created role--to love God supremely means being a neighbor to others by meeting their needs.

Neighbors are not determined by race, ethnicity, religious creed, political persuasion, economic or social position, sexual orientation, or gender identity; neighbors consist of anyone made in the image of God who has a need. The world cries out to us: Would you be my neighbor! And we answer them by our words and by our actions on their behalf. Will you be a neighbor today? Will you become holy by touching someone’s brokenness?

Counting the Costs of Following Jesus, Proper 8C

Scripture: Luke 9:51-62

When we begin to talk about discipleship, about following the way of Jesus Christ, we tend to fall back upon what we have learned in our religious training as youngsters and youth. That may be good, or that may be bad. We have this system of belief that tells us what a disciple of Christ is and what a disciple is suppose to be and do. The problem is that what we have been told and what we have come to believe might not be very consistent with what Christ was trying to explain to us through his teaching and his example about what a follower of Christ really is.

We tend to believe what we have been told by others even when the evidence of the scripture is otherwise. Perhaps we should begin our discussion today of what it means to be a follower of Jesus by looking at what Jesus said to his followers.

One of the mistakes we make in looking at Jesus and his followers is trying to separate historically false teachings and misunderstandings from what Christ appears to have actually said that is recorded in the four Gospels. Again, we think we know what it says, but when we in fact go back and read the text as it has been handed down to us, we may often find that there are differences between the words reported and the understandings we have developed.

In today’s passage Jesus has determined that he will go to Jerusalem and confront the political and religious and social injustices of his day. From now through October we focus our attention on a very unique collection of stories about the life of Jesus which include some of the most familiar parables and teachings he gives to his disciples as recorded by Luke. All of these teachings and stories focus on what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In this section of Luke, Jesus is preparing his followers for what they will face and what they will have to do after he is no longer with them. He is teaching them what it means to be his follower, his disciple, and he is also teaching them that there are attitudes and actions that they cannot take when they represent him to the world. As we move through these stories and parables you and I ourselves will be on a journey with Jesus to Jerusalem.

Jesus will leave Galilee and the surrounding territory which have up to now been the primary focus of his ministry and go to Judea and the capital city of Jerusalem. It is in Jerusalem that he will confront the political, social, and religious authorities of his day and attempt to further his revolutionary teachings. We understand this kind of thinking. The only way to truly change our society is through the political process. When elected officials agree upon something, things change, things get done. Jesus wants to take his movement to the next level and that means going to Jerusalem.

There is only one problem. To get to Jerusalem you have to go through Samaria. Samaria is part of the region that originally belonged to what Bible historians call the Northern Kingdom. This area was overwhelmed by the Assyrians and the people were forced to intermarry with their conquerors. Their offspring are half-breeds and therefore considered to be aliens, outsiders, not part of the promise God has given to Israel. The Samaritans do honor the Law, the five books of Moses called the Pentateuch. They believe that Moses was given the law and they had their own temple on a mountain in Samaria until the Jews destroyed it as a sacrilege against the God that they worshipped. God couldn’t possibly be the God of both Samaria and Israel. That kind of thinking was as impossible for them to wrap their minds around as it is for fundamentalist Christians to accept that you and I can be gay and Christian. Things haven’t changed so much in 2,000 years. You could tell this story and replace Samaritan and Jew with Palestinian and Jew, Indian and Pakistani, or American and Taliban. Both sides in the conflict were so suspicious of the other that peaceful existence wasn’t likely.

Jesus sends his disciples ahead of him to prepare the way. There weren’t hotels, motels, or bed and breakfast inns, restaurants, or convenience stores along the way. So Jesus sends some of his followers ahead of him to arrange for their accommodations along the way. I think he may have also wanted them to prepare the Samaritans to hear what he wanted to teach them.

Jesus knows that the job will be difficult for them, given the fact that they are hated Jews traveling through Samaria. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the disciples encounter some problems and are rejected. James and John, referring to and incident in which the ancient prophet Elijah’s encounters with the soldiers of the King of this same area, want to call down fire from heaven and destroy the offending villagers, just like Elijah called down fire from heaven to destroy the soldiers sent to confront him. But Jesus says that such violence is not his way.

Jesus is likened to Elijah the prophet throughout the book of Luke and we will see that comparison again in a few moments. That Jesus does things differently than Elijah did in similar situations is not to say that Jesus is superior to Elijah, just that the way Jesus works is vastly different from what his followers have come to understand about their faith and how their faith works according to their interpretation of their scriptures and the stories of how their ancestors encountered God.

On at least one occasion Jesus says, “You have heard it said, but now I say to you…” Jesus is saying to his followers, “I don’t care what you think is the right way to believe or act in this situation, I’ve got a different way of doing things. My way honors God and honors our relationships with others at the same time.”

That’s a lesson you and I need to take to heart. We need to think about it before we take actions or before we speak to others, especially when we are trying to be followers of Jesus, representatives of God to the people around us, the persons we are in relationship with. We need to do and say what Jesus would do and say and not what we have come to believe is the right thing to do because of what we have been taught or seen others do. We’ve got to do some thinking and reflecting on what it truly means to be a follower of Jesus and not act out of some rote memory routine.

The Samaritans wouldn’t share hospitality with Jesus and his followers because of what their history and their belief system told them about the Jews. They were wrong. The disciples wanted to return hostility for hostility because of what their own history and belief system told them about Samaritans. Hate for hate, hostility for hostility, violence for violence. That’s the way they had been taught and that’s the only way they knew to act. But that wasn’t the way Jesus would act. When you and I want to return hate for hate, hostility for hostility, and violence for violence we are wrong, too. There is a better way. There is the way of Jesus.

How do you feel about Fundamentalist Christians who tell you that your beliefs are wrong or that you are an abomination, that you are sinful because of who you love, or that God as they understand God rejects you and I for whatever reason they state? What should we do when we come into contact with such persons?

As I walked down the street last Sunday morning I noticed a woman standing close to the parade route. A pleasant looking woman in her forties standing there with a sign that said, “I love you, but I hate your sin.” I didn’t have to ask her what sin she was talking about. I knew. She was trying to tell me that she thought that she loved me, the person I was, but that she hated the fact that I was a gay man who loved another man. I have to tell you that you can’t separate the parts of me and accept some of me and reject the rest of me. I am a whole person. I am gay but I am also a proud Christian man. However, this woman couldn’t or wouldn’t accept me as a whole person and had to divide me into parts she could accept and parts she had to reject. But if you reject any part of me, then you are rejecting all of me.. To her being gay and Christian are an oxymoron, impossible words and concepts to put together in the same sentence.

I was surprised at my reaction. Years ago I would have wanted to take her statements and impaired logic to task; I would have wanted to confront her to explain to her how abhorrent to the Christ I know her thinking and behavior were. But I simply looked at her with compassion and love, yes, love, recognizing that she is trapped in teachings and thinking that she can’t escape from without some love and prayer. I waved at her and I held up one finger…not the one you are thinking…but this one, the sign of Christ, meaning Jesus is one way to a relationship with God. I was trying to indicate to her that I believe that I am a beloved child of God and not a sinner because of who I love. Oh, I know I am a sinner, that I fail God in many ways, and every one of those failures is a sin, meaning it is something that separates me from God’s love, but my loving Mark is not one of those failures. My loving Mark is one of God’s gifts to me, just like anyone else’s relationship with their spouse is, and I will celebrate my love for Mark boldly by walking in Pride parades no matter who wants to stand in judgment of me. And I will return their hatred with love and their rejection with acceptance. It is the Christ-like way. It is the only way for me to be a follower of Jesus.

In the journey to Jerusalem Jesus next encounters several persons who want to become his followers. Here, too, I believe we have often been wrong in our interpretation of these passages. In the first one Jesus responds to the request by saying that life on the road with him won’t be easy because there will not be a safe place to stay along the way, perhaps not even a permanent home to return to from time to time.

I can relate to this passage. Several times in my life I have given up house and home to journey to a distant place of to become the pastor of a congregation or to go to seminary where I wasn’t sure I’d have any place to house myself or my family, where I wasn’t sure that the I was going to have enough income to live on much less get a house to live in. My decisions to follow Jesus in those circumstances were not what I would call logical or based on any economic assurance that the rest of the world would call appropriate before deciding to move across the country. But those decisions were always exactly what I felt God wanted me to do at that moment and I could not delay my following Christ.

Mark and I had to give a lot of thought to coming to Seattle from Tennessee in early 2009. Much of that thought and prayer time was given over to thinking about accommodations. Miraculously God worked on our behalf and directed us to townhouse we now live in. However, I must say that the places I have ended up on such previous journeys weren’t always as nice or as comfortable as our current home, but they were always warm and dry and my family and I were glad to have those places to call home. Just so you know, there have also been times in my life when following Jesus left me homeless.

The journey with Jesus isn’t always easy and we aren’t promised that all of our problems will miraculously be solved if we put Jesus first. In fact, putting Jesus first in our lives may in fact create bigger problems for us than we would have had had we not followed Christ. There is only one thing sure about following Jesus; wherever we end up there we will be with Jesus. Jesus promises to always be with us and to never leave us alone. We have God’s power and presence in our lives if we will follow Jesus. And that gives me a lot of comfort and hope.

Jesus then calls another person to follow him, but the person gives a unique request: Let me first go home and bury my parents, then I will follow you.” Sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it. Why wouldn’t Jesus agree to such a request? Doesn’t Jesus teach us about family values and respecting our parents? As strange as it may sound to you, no, Jesus doesn’t teach about family values as we have come to think about them in our society, nor does he teach about respecting our parents like we might think he would.

Jesus bent the rules of his society and he bent them in favor of God and right relationships with others. He bent them when it was clear that keeping society’s expectations would result in something less than God being honored. Jesus always put God in first place in his life and he expected others to do the same. When his mother and brothers became concerned because he was acting and talking so strangely and came to take him home, he refused to see them and said, “My mother and brothers are those who obey my commands.” Now that wasn’t very family friendly. Sometimes to be true to Christ may mean that we have to do that which seems like dishonoring our own families. It’s difficult, but sometimes it must be done.

We don’t know the situation in this verse. But we do know much about the expectations of the society Jesus lived in. People were expected to care for their elderly parents and to provide for them until they died. The assumption in this verse, according to some scholars, is that this man’s parents are still alive and he is telling Jesus that he must go back and out of obligation to his parents provide a home for them until the day they die and he can bury them. Then he will be free to follow Jesus.

But Jesus rejects this obligation as a rejection of his call to follow him in the here and now. When Jesus calls us we don’t get to say when it will be a good time for us to respond. Jesus calls us in the here and now. Jesus expects us to answer him in the here and now. No matter what our social obligations might be, Jesus wants an answer today. There is urgency in his call to us. Jesus puts obligations to God and following him above any obligations to one’s family or society.

Let me queer this passage for you. Many in our Queer Community put off coming out of the closet with family and friends and co-workers for one reason or another. It isn’t uncommon for me to hear that someone plans to come out about his or her sexuality after his or her parents have died, or when his or her children are grown, or when he or she finally retires from their job. I fully understand what it means to put off doing something important for reasons of family or society. Such decisions can cause us a great deal of agony and distress, especially when our secrets get told before we want them to be told.

Living a life of honesty and integrity is, I believe, a part of being a follower of Christ. I can’t live my life completely if I have to live part of it in secrecy. I tried to come out slowly. I tried to tell just one person at a time in the way I wanted them to be told. It was a good plan, or so it seemed to me at the time, but the first person I told decided to not keep my secret and instead told several other family members, so my story was out there before I knew who had been told or what they had been told. Same thing happened at work. With that history I gave up trying to keep a secret and just came out all at once to family, friends, church, and work. When I meet someone new I get my sexual orientation out in the open as soon as possible. And my life has been a lot better for that kind of honesty with myself and with others. Not having to keep a secret is a so much easier way to live my life.

Jesus isn’t saying disregard your family or society entirely. But he is saying that following him takes precedence over family and friends and church and work and any other obligations we might have.

That said, I must say that if the man had said yes to following Jesus he may have found Jesus telling him to go back home and take care of his parents and fulfill his obligations to them. Or not! I can only imagine. But what I do know from the teachings of Jesus is that when we become followers of Christ we become responsible for building right relationships with other persons in our lives, including our families, friends, and co-workers, and supervisors at work.

Jesus says to the next person, “Follow me,” and the man asks for leave to go home and tell his family goodbye. Reasonable. Sure. But not to Jesus. In fact this calls up the story of the prophet Elijah calling his successor Elisha. Elisha asked to go and tell his family goodbye and Elijah told him, “Yes.” Luke is telling us again, that Jesus is like the great prophet Elijah, but different. Where Elijah said Elisha could go home and tell his family goodbye, Jesus says that following him in the here and now is more important than even telling family and friends goodbye. Nothing is more important than following Jesus.

What is most important in your life? Is it following Jesus and doing those things that Jesus is asking of you or will something else take greater importance in your life and delay your decision to follow Christ? Following Christ means total commitment of everything that you are and will become and that may mean that other obligations and relationships will have to diminish in order for you to fulfill your obligation to Jesus.

When I was studying this passage this week. I thought of the song entitled, “Torn between two lovers.” Following Jesus is a lot like being torn between two loves, the love of God and the love for everything else in our lives. It’s hard to live up to both loves at the same time, as hard as it is to please two human lovers at the same time…though some of you have certain fantasies about that kind of a situation. The fact is that Jesus is saying God must come first. As a follower of Jesus are you willing to put God first in your life above everything and everyone else?

I love to procrastinate. I love to put off until tomorrow what I don’t want to do today. But Jesus is telling us that to be his followers we have to give up procrastination, we have to give up obligations to society and family if those obligations interfere with following him. Why is this so important to him?

Neil Elliot's comment on this text in the People's Bible (Fortress Press, 2008) is instructive: "All that Jesus teaches about justice, about the right use of wealth, about prayer and steadfastness in his cause, he teaches as he leads his followers toward a final confrontation in Jerusalem."

Jesus did not believe that God’s New Community would come into existence someday in the future, or after we die and go to heaven, whatever heaven might be. Jesus wasn’t talking about pie in the sky by and by as my southern family would put it. If the promised New Community of God is only in the future then it makes no difference if we follow Jesus today or tomorrow or next year. No, Jesus makes it very clear that the New Community of God exists today, in the here and now. It has already begun. It is not something we can only look forward to someday because it is something that already exists in the here and now.

You and I can become productive citizens of the New Community of God today, in the here and now, or we can reject Christ’s invitation and thus reject becoming citizens of that New Community of God.

Things will be different in God’s New Community. Society, family and work obligations will change and in fact will become even more important and even more radical than they were before we became followers of Jesus.

Being a follower of Jesus will change the way you think, the way you act, the way you speak. Becoming a follower of Jesus means that you will never ever be the same again. Are you ready to answer Jesus’ invitation to follow him? If you are, then get ready for a radical and outrageous journey with Jesus as citizens of the New Community of God. Better put those seat belts on because it might be a bumpy ride!

Gender Bending with Jesus, Luke 7:36 to 8:3, Proper 6C

Jesus’ ministry was all about building the New Community of God usually referred to by him as the reign of God or the kingdom of God. A community where everyone was welcome and loved, respected and appreciated, wanted and included. His attempts to bring all of the people living on the edges of society into the Community he was building was one of the major sources of his conflict with the religious authorities of his day, and through them with the Roman officials who ruled over the known world at that time.

Jesus went about bending the accepted religious rules and expectations almost to the breaking point. His demonstration of acceptance of the lame, the widow, the orphans, the rejects of society, those cast out due to illness or injury, and those cast out due to their being perceived as unclean and sinful was more than the religious leaders of his day could stomach. The way that Jesus bent their carefully structured society which had been developed to keep out those who didn’t live up to the expectations of those religious leaders caused them to reject Jesus and eventually demand his death.

Today’s story may sound familiar to you. During Lent we read about how the sister of Lazarus, Mary, did exactly the same thing as the woman in this story does for Jesus. In fact, there are four very different versions in the gospels of women washing Jesus’ feet with their tears, drying his feet with their hair, and anointing him with expensive oil or perfume. Did these kinds of things happen to Jesus all the time, or is there something going on here that we need to think about? I have told you several times that these stories of Jesus are collections of remembrances that were finally written down a very long time after Jesus lived, some of them more than 60 years later, two or three or more generations after Jesus walked the earth. Each author of the gospels wrote his remembrances for a different community and for different reasons and therefore took the collections of stories and wrote them with a creative purpose to explain the meaning of Jesus’ life and teachings. These are not factual blow by blow descriptions of exactly what happened to Jesus as he traveled around the country from Nazareth to Galilee to Capernaum to Jerusalem. Three of the books cover less than a year in the life of Jesus sometimes as short as six months, the fourth gospel talks about three years of his ministry. That’s one of the reasons you can’t read these stories as literally true, even though they are very spiritually true. The stories were written to help us understand the truth about Christ and his teachings without being factually true themselves. That wasn’t a problem for those who first heard these stories, and it shouldn’t be a problem for us today.

In the case of the story of a woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and anoints him with precious oils we have four versions of what may have been only one event, but the event was so significant that it is told four different ways all of them emphasizing some aspect of the story that the other three do not.

Today’s reading is a very special case in point as we are introduced to a woman of the city, a phrase used to often refer to a prostitute, but could have been used to refer to any woman that was being forced by economics and social status into an undesirable kind of work, or work that others believed made her ritually unclean. It could have been being a midwife, especially a midwife that took care of Gentile women. That would have made her unclean because she would have come into contact with blood. It could have been that this woman has a job in a tanning firm handling dead animals or even as simple as dyeing clothing, also a job looked upon as somehow unclean. Whatever her situation, the fact is that she probably had no choice about what she was forced into doing. Perhaps she was a widow raising children who was forced into prostitution because it offered her the only way to economically take care of her children. Being crippled or having a disease or illness could also have been among the reasons for her being thought of as unclean. Whatever her situation the author of today’s passage tells us that the reasons for her being thought of as unclean were very numerous.

Last week we saw how Jesus restored economically and socially a widow whose only son had died. By bringing her son back to life Jesus gave her back her own life, too. Do you remember that the passage said that Jesus saw the woman and had compassion upon her? Throughout the gospel of Luke we observe Jesus often seeing persons that others overlook, and telling others to really look at each other with compassion and love, to really see the other as he or she is and stop looking at just their circumstances or their perceived sinfulness. Behind every circumstance is a reason or a story that needs to be told and understood in order to truthfully give the kind of help and hope that another needs in his or her life.

I’m privy to lots of information about other people that many of you will never know. People tell me about their lives and I have to keep that information private unless they allow me to share it with you in the form of a prayer request. Often you ask me what’s going on in another person’s life usually by asking me why that person hasn’t been in church. I usually respond by telling you to call them or email them and ask them yourself in the hopes that you will begin to build a caring, hopeful relationship with them. But the fact remains that many people aren’t in church today because of problems and circumstances in their own lives that prevent them from coming to church: illness, work, broken relationships, depression, lack of funds for gasoline for their car or a bus ticket, and many more reasons. We often fail to ‘really see’ those who are not in church because we haven’t gone out of our way to relate to them like Jesus wants us to relate to each other within this New Community of God we call Emerald City Metropolitan Community Church.

Don’t misunderstand me. Sometimes you and I do get it right. Sometimes we do see the other person just as God sees him or her and we give them our love and our help, our encouragement and hope and we change their lives for the better and they are thankful to us for that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will come back and worship with us. We don’t give love and care to others so that we will get something out of it. And that’s part of the main understanding we should get from today’s gospel story. We give love and care to others because that is who we are and what we do because of our relationship with God. Loving and caring for others is a natural outcome of our having received love and care from God.

On this particular day Jesus has accepted a dinner invitation to Simon’s home. They are reclining at the table with their feet pointed away from the table as was the custom of that day. Jesus is probably reclining next to Simon. Somehow, it isn’t explained, a woman of street comes into the dinner and stands or sits at Jesus’ feet whereupon she begins to cry profusely, uses her tears to wash his feet, then lets down her hair, something a married woman would never do in public, dries his feet with her hair perhaps because it was the only thing she had to do it with, and then taking the expensive perfume she has brought in an equally expensive bottle and begins to sensuously massage his feet. And all this time she is constantly kissing his feet. This is a very sexually charged picture even though no sex happens.

Simon, and probably all the male religious leaders present, are appalled and shocked at the inappropriateness of this woman’s actions. If Jesus were truly a prophet he would know that this woman is a sinner and he would not let her touch him and make him unclean with her un-cleanliness. Or that’s what they are thinking. Jesus knows this. Jesus is very tuned into his society and how people think. That’s what makes him such a good teacher, because he uses their own thoughts and feelings to teach them new lessons they might not learn any other way except by having their expectations and their rules and regulations called into question.

Jesus turns to Simon and tells him a parable about two debtors. One man owes almost two years worth of salary to the moneylender. The other owes about two months of his salary to the moneylender. Neither can pay the debt. The money lender has a choice. He can send the men to prison until their families pay off the debt for them or he can forgive them their debt. Unbelievably the money lender in the parable forgives their debts completely. They owe him nothing. They are no longer indebted to him. Then Jesus asks his host Simon which of the men would love the moneylender the most?

I was struck by the question when I first read it. What’s love got to do with it? I had to think about that for awhile. What is love? Appreciation of another that makes my life better than it would be without them. Thanksgiving for what the blessings the other brings to the relationship. Joy at how the other person relates to you and you to them. Appreciation, thanksgiving, and joy. Yeah, which of the two men loves the moneylender the most?

Can’t you just hear Simon reluctantly answering the question, sort of knowing where Jesus is going with this parable but not wanting to admit it, “Well, I suppose the one who was forgiven the most.”

Right you are, Simon! But tell me Simon, do you really see this woman, do you know and understand who she is, what her life is like, why she has been forced into the life she has accepted which you find so objectionable?

Listen, dear friends, it makes all the difference in the world when you understand another person’s situation, how they got there, why they are still there, what they are trying to do to change that situation for the better. We’re too quick to condemn other people. We blame the victim instead of asking why society can’t change so that there are fewer victims. Jesus calls into question his society and how it treats such persons as this woman. Jesus is asking Simon to truly see this woman and her situation; especially why she is extravagantly pouring out an expression of love toward Jesus. Why is she doing what she is doing? Think about it Simon.

I’d like to think, that Jesus, lovingly and tenderly, begins to explain things to Simon. When he came into Simon’s home Simon refused to take upon himself the expected role of the male host and have Jesus’ feet washed, a customary gift of host to guest in their society. Simon could have had a servant do this, but he didn’t. Why? For the same reason we often refuse to shake another person’s hand when because we want them to know we don’t accept them. Have you ever avoided someone during our passing of the peace? You know, run around the other way so you didn’t have to shake their hand or heaven forbid hug them.

But that’s not all that Simon refused to do. Simon also refused to give Jesus the customary kiss of greeting that men in that society gave to each other. Much like you or I would refuse to give a kiss of greeting to someone at a family reunion because of a long held hostility toward them.

Not only that, but if an honored guest came to your home in that day you might have had a prayer said for them while their head was anointed with oil, much like we do for those who want anointing and a prayer for healing in our communion. Such was an extreme honor and told how very much you honored the other person.

But Simon refused to do all of those things for Jesus. Simon refused to take the role of a male host and give to Jesus what was due Jesus. Simon failed to live up to his gender role expectations.

But, there was someone who did do for Jesus that day what Simon refused to do. It was the woman from the city, the street lady, who did for Jesus what Simon refused to do, she washed his feet with her copious tears, dried them with her long hair thus transforming a sign of public inappropriateness into a sign of respect and love and care. But she didn’t stop there. She kissed his feet and according to the scripture didn’t stop kissing them. Simon refused to give Jesus an ordinary kiss of greeting, but this woman is profusely kissing him, greeting him, welcoming him into her life.

Simon refused to bless Jesus by anointing him with oil on his head, but this woman pours out an outrageously expensive bottle of perfume and deep massages it into Jesus’ feet, caring for him, blessing him, loving him, sacrificing for him.

This woman takes upon herself the role of a male host and transforms the evening for everyone into something unexpected and glorious if they would only just see it, really see her and what she was doing. Jesus sees it. The author of this gospel sees it. The people who first heard this story read to them saw it. The question is do we see it. More importantly do we understand it. Do we get the lesson that is being taught?

Jesus’ parable and his statements tell us that this woman’s outpouring of love toward Jesus is the result of her having already been forgiven of her many sins. Whatever those sins where, they no longer exist. Her life has been changed by God. She is not the same person that Simon thinks she still is. She is beloved by God and because of God’s love for her she is now abundantly pouring out love for Jesus.

We are often faced with situations in which we are called upon to demonstrate the kind of person we are, the kind of disciple to Christ that we are, the kind of lover of God that we are. What should we do in situations where there is a need, especially when there is something that we can do to help the other person.

Someone gave me a bag of muffins a couple of weeks ago. As I drove home thinking about the muffins and how good they would taste with a cup of coffee I stopped at a corner and there was a man who said, “Can you help me. Anything would help. Whatever you can do. I’m homeless. I have no money. I can’t find work even though I’m looking.” Suddenly I didn’t want the muffins anymore and I gave the man the muffins and the half of a sub sandwich I had just bought. I’ll never forget the smile on that man’s face as he walked away.

I never understood it as a youngster, but my father had a favorite saying in such situations, “If you have to stop and think about what you are going to do, then perhaps you aren’t really a Christian.” I now understand. God’s love and forgiveness to me, should overflow from my life with love and forgiveness, acceptance and welcome, inclusion and hope for others.

Jesus’ followers bent the gender rules of their day almost to the breaking point. Women left their expected gender roles in the home, caring for children, taking care of the family and went on the road with Jesus and the boys. Women were disciples of Christ. Women ministered to others in his name just like the boys did. Women supported the ministry of Jesus out of their own wealth. Women were often the only ones present at critical moments in Christ’s life: at the foot of the cross when the men ran away in fear for their own lives, and in lonely graveyard on a cold dark Easter morning. Jesus made a special resurrection appearance to a woman named Mary. Women were in the upper room when Christ appeared to all of them after his resurrection. Women were at Pentecost when thousands came to faith in a single day and believe me when I tell you that they also preached about their experience with Jesus just like the men did. They couldn’t have done anything else because the spirit of God had filled them to overflowing. Women preached and taught and cared and shared the love of Jesus with the world around them in amazing ways then and now. No matter what our fundamentalist religious friends tell us, women can do it all. In Christ there is no male nor female.

But, the boys bent the gender rules, too. Don’t forget that Christ washed the feet of his own disciples, often cooked for them and may have performed other so-called feminine role expectations in his relationship with them. Jesus and the boys didn’t live up to the gender expectations of their day. They didn’t marry, they didn’t have regular jobs, they took off on a journey of faith following an itinerant preacher around from village to village. Jesus and his followers were gender benders to the extreme in order to achieve the dream of a creating a New Community of Love and Hope of Welcome and Inclusion, of healing and recovery, of social and economic justice for all. In more ways than had ever occurred previously their little band was a society of equals and a place where gender didn’t matter so much as loving others because God first loved them.

The unnamed woman in today’s story demonstrated by her extravagant actions, by her sacrificial love, by her pouring out of an expensive perfume, the very same things that Jesus would do when he faced the threat of violence and refused to return violence but instead demonstrated by his peaceful, extravagant actions a sacrificial love by pouring out of his own life and love for all of us so that you and I might know that God loves us supremely and wants to fill us with God’s kind of love that freely overflows from our lives outward into the lives of everyone else we are in relationship with, no matter who they are. And to achieve that might mean that you and I have to bend the gender rules of our society, too, just like Jesus and his followers did so very long ago.

Ash Wednesday: Put Down the Ducky!

(Read Isaiah 58:1-12)

Lent is often thought of as a time to give up certain things from chocolate to a favorite TV show, to even more important things, in an effort to free ourselves to focus on God and our relationship with God. The truth is that for many LGBT persons we’ve been giving up a lot about who we are and who we love in order to fit into other people’s ideas of what it means to be Christian that we often haven’t realized how much their demands upon us have kept us from being and becoming what God wants us to be, in fact, what God created us to be. Perhaps there ought to be more to Lent for us than just giving up something. Perhaps we ought to begin to focus on what we need to do to become authentic believers of God and give up all the entrapments with which others want to tie us down.

In this week’s commentary from “Out in Scripture” from the HRC website, Rev. Kharma Amos, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church of Northern Virginia in Fairfax suggests, "If lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their allies want to give up something for Lent, perhaps we should consider relinquishing shame about our sexual orientation or gender identity, or letting go of guilt about the loving relationships that bring us joy, or emerging from the closets that keep us from living our lives openly, authentically and abundantly."

Perhaps we should think of Lent as the time to prepare for Holy week and let our imaginations take us on a journey with Jesus and the disciples as they travel to Jerusalem going where Jesus goes and doing what Jesus does. We may want to look at what repentance really means, turning away from habits and activities that lead us toward death and depression and instead turn toward the life-giving uplifting ways of Jesus Christ. Instead of emphasizing things we should give up, as I said last Sunday morning, perhaps we should look for new ways to practice discipleship.

I raised four children on Sesame Street, both the TV show and its songs. I have seven grandchildren who watch and listen to the same shows and songs now. So what’s that got to do with Lent and Ash Wednesday? Well, perhaps more than you’d like to think. In one episode Ernie wants to learn how to play the saxophone, but to do so he will have to put down his beloved rubber ducky. He must let the ducky wait while he learns something new. The ducky will still be there when he finishes. We too, must find ways to free ourselves and allow ourselves to learn new ways to be Queer Christians. We might find that when we free ourselves from life as we know it that we will find entirely new ways to be what God is calling us to become.

Isaiah 58:1-12 gives many suggestions for how we might add some new practices to our lives of discipleship this Lenten Season from feeding the hungry, finding homes for the homeless, giving clothing to those who have none. If we do these things then the Prophet says “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom become like the noonday.” The Prophet encourages us to repair the brokenness in the world and become restorers of life. This is the kind of “fasting” that God truly desires of us during Lent.

Perhaps we all need to rethink what Lent means to us, what it is suppose to accomplish in us. It’s at least something to think about.

Leaving It All Behind

Scriptures: Luke 5:1-11 and Isaiah 6:1-8

You are on the beach cleaning your nets and hanging them up to dry. You’ve fished all night long with no results. You’ve been at this occupation for many long years and you know what you are doing. But, still no fish last night. While you are cleaning your gear and hanging out your nets to dry, a popular teacher draws a crowd of people to the beach nearby. The excited people have now almost pushed him out right out into the water. He asks if you can’t let him use your boat as his pulpit and speak to the crowds on the beach that have come to hear him. His voice will carry better over the water to them from your boat. You agree and you launch your boat back into the shallow water.

You listen to his teaching. This isn’t the first time you have met Jesus. You have heard him speak before and you have been impressed by what he says. When he’s finished teaching he challenges you to go fishing one more time. You protest, “We’ve done this all night long with no good results.” He encourages you anyway with his laughing eyes and his gentle, but firm suggestion, “Launch out into the deep water this time.” You sigh and you and your men collect your nets from shore and following his request you launch out in the direction of the deepest part of the waters.

You guide the boat to the location he has pointed out, just to humor him, knowing the results will be no different this time as they had been during the night. You know this water, you know the way the fish live in these waters, and there isn’t anything about this situation that is new to you. Nothing will change, you tell yourself, why it isn’t even the right time of day to be doing this kind of fishing, but you follow his directions anyway, mostly so you can later point out how little he knows about fishing, and how much you do know.

You glance over at him sitting there so relaxed and comfortable, and he winks back at you waving you on toward the deepest part of the waters. You nod your head at him, but you do not smile back. You don’t want to encourage him any further with his ludicrous ideas. Just what does a teacher like him know about fishing? You are the professional. He’s just an amateur. Soon he will understand. You’ll all laugh and then you can go home and get some much needed sleep.

Then something twists within your heart and you think to yourself, “But what if he is right? What if he knows something I don’t know? What if there were fish to catch here? Maybe this won’t be a wasted effort after all. Maybe we won’t go home empty handed. Maybe we’ll have something to sell at the Fish Market today anyway.” For a moment a glimmer of hope captures you, but then long years of experience, and reason and knowledge return and you tell yourself, “No, nothing will change today. Nothing will be different.”

“This is the place,” he finally says to you and so you drop your anchor. “Throw your nets out one more time,” he says smiling and then sits back to watch you work. You go through the same tasks you’ve gone through so many times before, thinking how ridiculous this is and you ask yourself, “Why are we throwing out the nets we just cleaned. It will take us hours to clean them up again and for what? Just to humor the Teacher?” And finally, for no other reason than the fact that the Teacher asked you to do it, you cast your nets into the water one more time.

Surprise! Something’s different this time. Something has changed! Immediately your nets are filled to capacity and beyond, to the point of bursting with teeming schools of fish. You and your workers cannot bring in the haul. Your boat is in imminent danger of capsizing from the overabundance of fish weighing down the net and your boat. You call for another boat nearby to help. The catch is too large even for two boats and both of your boats begin to take on water with the enormous weight of the catch that is far, far greater than you ever thought possible or could have ever dreamed about in your wildest imagination. This will be a fisherman’s story that no one will believe.

You look over at the smiling Teacher. Who is this man, you ask yourself? Exactly how has he caused all of this to happen? There is no question about it. This Jesus must be more than just a Teacher, he must be a holy messenger from God. That is the only explanation your mind can come up with. You may even be in the presence of God. Now you feel so unworthy, so sinful, so out of place with this kind of miracle working power calling into question everything you thought you knew and believed. “Leave me alone, Teacher,” you cry as you fall down before him, “I am not worthy to even be near to you.” Truly a miracle has just happened.

“Don’t be afraid,” the teacher says to you and your two best friends who were in the other boat, “You think two boatloads of fish was a miracle? Why that is nothing compared to what is going to happen! From now on, if you follow me, you’ll be bringing in boatloads of people to the New Community of God.”

Then, comes the second miracle of the day, you and your two friends leave your expensive fishing boats behind, and all of your costly gear and nets, everything that defines you as a professional fisherman, and you go off with the Teacher to become Fishers of Men and Women, growing the New Community of God.

What, you all are asking yourselves? How could they leave behind everything they’ve worked for, everything they’ve accumulated, everything they’ve sacrificed to attain and hold on to all these years. What’s the point of working so hard to provide for yourself if God come into your life one day and ask you to give it all up and begin a new life?

Many of you aren’t any different than Simon Peter. You know what to expect from your life. You have been living life the same way for far too many years. We tend to just keep on doing things the same old way, feeling the same old feelings, complaining about the same old disappointments, arguing the same arguments, missing out on the same opportunities to change, over and over again. We often do very little to change those things about our lives that we don’t like and could change if we wanted to. We become complacent and hopeless that anything about our existence will ever change. To put it bluntly, we end up living in a rut And you know what a rut is don’t you? It’s a grave that’s open on both ends.

And then along comes Jesus. Jesus who smiles and laughs and who wants to stir things up in your life, to get you moving again, to get you thinking and hoping and believing that perhaps your life could be better, or at least different.

We don’t know what Jesus preached about to the people that morning on the beach. But we can surmise something of the lesson by what he did that day. Jesus often taught a principle and then demonstrated that same teaching by what he did. Here we have a demonstration of the abundant blessings that God will and can pour out on God’s people, a boat-sinking abundance of fish where there had been no fish earlier. Perhaps Jesus had been teaching the people about God’s abundant love and grace and how God will have mercy upon everyone, even those that they don’t feel deserve God’s love. But the miracle of fish demonstrates to Peter and James and John that even if you feel unworthy of God’s blessings, God will still pour out those blessings upon you.

Peter is struck by his own unworthiness to receive such a blessing. Peter feels that God has made a mistake by giving this miracle to him, not unlike many of you who don’t believe you deserve God’s blessings in your life for whatever reason you have selected to believe makes you unworthy. But Jesus says to Peter, “Don’t be afraid.” Jesus gives Peter the reassurance that God hasn’t made a mistake, that God has deliberately selected Peter for this honor and this work. It is the kind of reassurance that makes Peter and hopefully you and I willing to listen to what Jesus has to say next. Jesus tells Peter, “That? You think that was a miracle? Just wait until you see what God can do with you if you will walk with God in your life. You won’t believe the miracles that you and God can work together.”

The truth is that you and I often concentrate on the past, on what has been, on what we have done wrong…usually failing to see all the right things we have done right…it’s as if one wrong thing, one sinful decision in our lives, outweighs everything else in our lives and therefore makes us unworthy and unable to follow God or do God’s will.
Let me give you some advice. Get over it! Leave all those feelings behind. Move on. God isn’t concerned about the mistakes you have made in the past. God has already forgiven you for those mistakes. God wants to put God’s power and God’s presence to work in your life today, but you have to be a willing partner in this. You have to decide that you are going to allow God to let you and God make a difference in your life and in the lives of others that you will come into contact with.

The prophet Isaiah had a vision of God when he went to worship in the Temple on the death of his relative the king. Everything seemed hopeless to him. The threat of war, the nasty internal politics of the palace and Temple, the failing economics of the day weighed him down and made him give up hope for the future of himself and his country. But the power and presence of God awed him, much like Jesus awed Peter that day in the boat with a miracle. Isaiah felt inadequate and powerless, sinful and unable to be the kind of servant that God wanted. But God was still there powerful and mighty, holy and present just as God had always been. The facts of human tragedy all around Isaiah made absolutely no difference to the power and presence of God. God demonstrated to Isaiah that the prophet was the exactly the very one God wanted to use and when God said, “Who shall I send and who will go for me?” Isaiah got over himself and forgot about his problems and Isaiah answered God in the affirmative, “Here am I, send me.”

It does you no good to hang on to the past, especially if it negative. God is all about the future. God knows all about your past. God has used it to make you who you are today. Stop dwelling on those things that you’ve done wrong or simply think you’ve done wrong. Quit psychologically kicking yourself in your proverbial ass. God forgives your past. God wants you to claim the miracles that God has waiting for you.

Sure there will still be disappointments from time to time. Sure things won’t always go your way. We live in a world where other people can and do mess things up for us by their own decisions against what God wants, even when we are choosing to go with God. It’s just the kind of world we live in. Jesus had to deal with that, so did Peter, so did Isaiah, so do you and I.

But when you decide to move forward in your life claiming the power and presence that God wants to give to you, you have a resource that others don’t have, that others usually fail to rely upon. Go with God and wait and watch for the miracles to happen, for the open doors of possibilities, for the answers to your questions, for the hope and help that you need to accomplish God’s will and way in your life.

The truth is that when Jesus comes into our lives we need to open ourselves up to the possibility of life-changing, life-shaking miracles, awe-inspiring miracles! When Jesus calls us to become Fishers of Men and Women we may be truly amazed at what God does to cause our small faith community to grow beyond what we ever imagined possible.


When I was a child, people kept telling me that one day I would be a great missionary. Even then, I think they saw something different about me, and not being able to exactly name it…That boy is certainly different…they decided that being different, being QUEER, meant I must be special to God. Well, I’ve got news for them! They were right! I was special to God because I was QUEER! They kept telling that they believed that God had called me and if I would respond that God would send me to some foreign land to preach the good news about Jesus Christ to people who had never heard about Jesus or God.

Isn’t that just like us American Christians? If anyone is to do a great work, then they must do that great work someplace else, as if no great works of God can ever be done where we already live, where we already are. Mother Teresa sent her life serving the poor in India. She once spoke to an American audience saying that Americans are always saying that they wanted to leave their lives here and go to work in India with her. “Stay here, right where you are,” she told them that night, “Love the people God has given you to love. Care for people right where you are.”

Jesus is calling MCC Seattle to throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy to those who live and work around us. We are called to share God’s love in all its overflowing, boat-sinking abundance with the QUEER people all around us. There is more than enough forgiveness, more than enough healing, more than enough grace to go around for everyone.

When we partner with God, you and I aren’t responsible for the results, but we are responsible for finding ways to throw out the nets of Love that will bring in those that God has desires to be a part of our growing community. We may have to work in ways that we have never even considered before, unconventional ways of being the church and doing the work of God. We may have to change. We may have to think very differently about what it means to be a church to our Queer Community. It might not end up looking like anything we’ve ever been a part of previously. It might be something new, something miraculous.

We have to strike out into the deep waters, even when we’re tired, even when we’re sure it won’t work. We have to find ways to share God’s love by making the right kinds of choices in our votes, in the giving of our money to causes and organizations that support the creation of God’s new community. We have to r build coalitions of hope and compassion with others to consider the needs of the poor, the homeless, the emotionally disturbed, the elderly, those living with HIv/AIDS. We can’t take care of everyone, but we can take care of someone. And by joining forces with other congregations and groups we can make a real difference in our city and beyond.

Maybe the deep waters also speak of the places we would rather not go, places of discomfort and unfamiliarity where we might get in over our heads. What if you and I were to actually forgive those who has hurt us in the past. What if we were to give up those feelings of being put down and rejected and actually offer to those persons the same kind of forgiveness that God has given to us? What if you and I actually took a clear-headed view of our own personal talents and abilities and stepped forward with excitement and eagerly volunteered to begin to use our skills to help others and to build this New Community of God into the miracle working place that I believe God wants us to become? There is much that needs to be done, but those things won’t happen until more of us decide we are the ones through whom God will make it happen.

This is the season of Epiphany; when we are suppose to be especially aware of the many different ways that God is at work in the world. Hopefully, we will be like Peter and decide that we can’t just go back to our ordinary nets and our ordinary lives trying to deny that this story is about us, and this calling from Christ to be fishers of men and women isn’t our calling. Renita Weems says that the last thing those tired fisherman were expecting was a showing of God’s awesome power right there, at the end of their workday. When Jesus shows up and surprises us with miracles, the next thing you know, our lives will be changed forever. Hopefully, like Peter, we will allow God to transform our lives right where we are. Hopefully, we will begin to make a difference to the lives of those we know and love and live with.

All of us have had life changing experiences with God at one point or another in our lives, some kind of spiritual experience that caused us to realize that God was there and God was with us. What would happen if we let God give us that kind of life-changing experience as a community of faith today? What if we started sharing this life-changing power and presence of God in our lives with our co-workers during coffee breaks this week, over lunch or dinner with friends, or speaking a kind word to a stranger in need on the street? That’s exactly what we should be doing, telling others the good news about what God has done in our lives in such a way that they might find some hope to hold onto that God could do the same thing in their lives for them.

Wait, you say, we already did that. Why we’ve worked at it for almost 38 years with no good results. But the Teacher is calling us to go out into the deep waters of this community one more time and throw out the nets of God’s Love and Mercy one more time. You know I can’t help but I wonder what will happen this time?