Christmas Unwrapped

Christmas Unwrapped
Hebrews 2:10-18; Isaiah 63:7-9; Matthew 2:13-23

It’s the fifth day of Christmas. Have you got your five gold rings yet? Christmas isn’t over. The twelve days of Christmas continue right up to the Day of Epiphany, January 6.

We used to leave town on December 26th to go to grandparents. We always saw abandoned Christmas trees shivering at the curbside under powdered snow. All the build-up to Christmas and then it is over and gone, forgotten in a day. When I was growing up, I could usually get a few days play out of a toy after Christmas before it would break. And it was said that the changed Ebenezer Scrooge kept Christmas all year.

Still, I feel odd going into a Christmas shop in the middle of July. And the assault of Christmas music in October is like the early blizzard for which I am not ready. So even if you aren’t interested in a partridge in a pear tree and everything else that is supposed to come with it, I don’t want to pack up Christmas just yet. In fact, I am ready to unwrap it.

The reality of pre-Christmas is that the much too early music acts like a kind of lullaby. The bright lights mesmerize us. The images of the season – non-Christian and Christian alike – are like an opiate dulling the senses. We spend much of the month or two before Christmas in a drug-induced stupor that not even the Thanksgiving turkey tryptophan can rival. We are eager for the midnight sale-a-thons on “black” Friday. We relish the quaintness of small business Saturday. We glow like the computer monitors we stare at on “cyber” Monday. We are inoculated against the traffic on Chillicothe’s Bridge Street or at Easton Town Center. Like the hunters in our far-distant ancestry, we rise to the challenge of last minute shopping.

Then it is all over. It’s the morning after the night before. Reality sets in. Not just the credit card bills, but also the clean-up. Down comes the lights, the tinsel, the tree, the stockings, the wreathes. The Christmas bender is over. We clear it all away in hopes that we can sober up quickly. Like a spurned lover we get rid of all the things that remind us of the times that once were good.

Some of you are thinking that I must have gotten a truck load of coal to go on a Scrooge-like rant. No. I love Christmas. Forgive me for preferring to celebrate it after December 25th rather than before. A lot a good, kind, wonderful, generous things go on in the heady days that lead up to Christmas Day. I just think that lots of people – even faithful Christians – are so caught up in the mechanics of the celebration that they forget the bedrock foundation for Christmas. And whether we dismantle the holiday on December 26th or January 6th, reality, normalcy, true life returns.

The euphoria of Christmas hasn’t completely died away, the novocaine of “Noels” hasn’t completely worn off. Our scripture readings today remind us that the world we live in is not the peaceful kingdom that the Isaiah reading sang about on the First Sunday of Advent. And the reading from Matthew – out of step in our mental chronology of Jesus’ birth – grates like fingernails on a chalkboard.

But this is Christmas unwrapped. The world is like the debris strewn area around the Christmas tree after all the packages and gift bags have been torn into. The bows, discarded gift tags, shredded paper, and boxes litter a scene that once was idyllic and festive. We live in world in the long-lived aftermath of a super storm called Haiyan, or tsunami in Japan, or an earthquake in Haiti; of a Mexican Gulf oil spill, a volcanic eruption, or car bombings in Afghanistan or Iraq; of a factory fire in Bangladesh, a mall assault in Kenya, or a school shooting in Colorado.

Some will say, like Auntie Mame, that we need a little Christmas to get us through the terrors of life. We like the story of the British and German troops pausing to celebrate Christmas together on the battlefield in World War I before resuming the trench warfare the next day. We need joy in the midst of despair, we need levity to counteract the gravity of the 24-hour news feed on our I-Pads, smart phones and televisions.

And that is exactly why we need Christmas unwrapped. The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews gives us not only joy but also reality. It provides a solid reference point in a sea of uncertainty. It offers hope and assurance when the nagging doubts and questions return.

Christmas – the Incarnation, really – is a holy mystery. It can be said in simple words,:
• In Christ, God became one of us.
• In Christ, God is with us in our suffering.
• In Christ, we have been freed from the fear of death.
Simple words, yet complex ideas that need to be unwrapped carefully, slowly, deliberately, like an extravagantly wrapped, delicate Christmas gift. Which it is.

God became one of us. We take that for granted. The only thing we know is us. Which is why we so often picture Jesus by what we see in the mirror or by who we see around us most of the time. In reality, it is only one chromosome that determines our gender, and a very tiny percentage of the genes that determine our height, weight, eye color, skin tone, weakness to allergens of any kind, or precondition for chronic, debilitating, or life-shortening disease.

We should be humbled that God chose humanity as the life-form through which God would relate to us. God honored human beings by becoming one of them. We human beings have a poor history with God. We have second-guessed God’s intentions for us. We have ignored God’s commands to us. We have turned dominion into domination and scarred the earth. We have beaten, subjugated, imprisoned, tortured people like us as well as people different from us. We have fought and killed fellow people for very poor reasons and for no reason at all. We have fabricated stories and illusions and sold them to ourselves to keep us from believing the truth.

There are plenty of good reasons why Jesus would be ashamed to become one of us. Everything he is, we are not. But instead of dwelling on all the things that are different, Jesus chose to celebrate our common spiritual heritage. He will not deny that we are his sisters and brothers. He is one of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah who are as numerous as the stars. Introverts and extroverts, loners and party-ers, we are the “us” whom God is with in Jesus.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews declares quite plainly that God used “experiences of suffering to make perfect [Christ as] the pioneer of salvation.” Because Christ is one of us, the One who suffered on the cross is one with God and one with us in our sufferings. God is in the midst of sorrow, suffering, pain, agony, illness, grief: the sorrow of the man in Columbus who accidentally ran over his infant son; the suffering people in Syria and South Sudan caught between government and rebel forces; the agony of the people of Tacloban and other parts of Philippines after super typhoon Haiyan; the grief of the people of Newtown, Connecticut, and the families of victims of the Sandy Hook School shooting; the inconvenience of the people of Michigan. Maine, and other places in the lingering power outages.

God became incarnate – human flesh and blood – in Jesus not that suffering would be removed, but that suffering would be fully embraced in Christ. Jesus suffers completely. We do not suffer alone. He leads the way in bearing our suffering. Our suffering doesn’t go away. Nor should we look for ways to suffer. Rather in suffering we may find ourselves closer to Jesus and more appreciative of his saving grace.

Part of that saving grace is that we have been liberated from the fear of death. Jesus suffered right up to the cross and on the cross he suffered death. But death didn’t have the last word. Jesus was born that “we no more may die” as the Christmas hymn says. Resurrection and ascension confirm that death has no power. We can cringe at the suffering and agony that goes on in every part of the world. But our cringing is not from fear of death but from empathy with fellow sufferers. We shake off the cringing and stand firm knowing that no matter what pain and suffering may happen, no matter how horrific it might be, God triumphs for us through Christ.

Christmas is more than all the seasonal trappings that buoy us through the last months of the year. Christmas unwrapped is life eternal with the one who has suffered for us, who suffers with us in all the downs of life, and who will bring us with him into the radiant glory of God’s eternal rule. You won’t need a gift receipt for God’s love. One size fits all and it goes with every color imaginable. And the guarantee never runs out.

Thanks be to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Throwing Out the Etiquette Book

Throwing Out the Etiquette Book
Matthew 3:1-12; Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13

I was ten when my father’s parents died. They had been married over 50 years and only moved twice, the last time just across the road to a house they built. Mom thought they had saved every greeting card that they had ever received. Grandpa had lots of old tools, nails, bolts, etc. We spent the summer packing and emptying the station wagon of the stuff we hauled home. Since their only child was Dad, there wasn’t anyone to divide it up with. It all came home.

Mom’s family wasn’t any better. Mom and Dad helped clean out several family homes. In one station wagon load they got a gate-leg dining table, six Windsor chairs (one with arms) and a wing-back chair, not to mention other odds and ends. When Mom’s mother moved out of a large house into a two-bedroom apartment, we got more furniture and a lot of china.

Granny had several sets of fine china. One set had cream soup bowls and saucers. Another had bone plates and finger bowls. Yet another set had the service plates that went under other plates. She had all the flatware to go with the china. She knew where to put the soup spoons, salad forks, dessert spoons, and seafood forks. She could set a table worthy of Amy Vanderbilt, Emily Post, or Downton Abbey.

Etiquette is more than silverware placement. The Wikipedia article on etiquette suggests that it is a topic which has floating cultural and social boundaries. The initial definition is “a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group.” Some contributors to Wikipedia think that the topics “rudeness” and “respect” should be merged into the etiquette article.

After some history of social mores, the article focuses primarily on manners, a “term usually preceded by the word good or bad to indicate whether or not a behavior is socially acceptable.” It goes on to say that manners “are a subset of social norms which are informally enforced through self-regulation and social policing and publically performed. They enable human ‘ultrasociality’ by imposing self-restraint and compromise on regular, everyday actions.”(1)

It would be safe to say that the Bible has no interest in where the forks and spoons go or what order of plates get used. But the Bible, like books on etiquette, is interested in the social economy, the interaction and interrelation of individuals of the same or differing stations. Yet for all that, the Bible might just be anti-etiquette, at least as we usually think of it.

The Mosaic law was a form of etiquette. It laid out avenues of social contact that were acceptable or unacceptable. These had to do with health and hygiene, diet, property rights, and human rights. Yet anytime rules and regulations are laid out, it is so easy for them to become the focus rather than the original purpose for their enactment.

The Pharisees were the chief enforcers of the religious etiquette of the Jewish people in Judea in the decades before and after Jesus’ birth. The focus was on meeting the letter of the ritual code which made certain demands on those under its thrall. The measurement was to be precise, nothing less, nothing more. So when Jesus ate at the same table as people whom the code called sinners – outcasts, tax collectors, men and women of questioned moral status, foreigners, Samaritans – he was breaking the etiquette of the day.

Another etiquette breaker preceded Jesus. A man named John, who lived in the badlands along the Jordan River, dressed in the rough clothes of a wild man, ate a peculiar diet, and who preached the necessity of repentance of sin made visible through a water baptism. He was a curiosity. People flocked to see him and to hear his message. He was a celebrity, even if he didn’t seek the notoriety. He preached repentance and he didn’t soften his message for the people who were recognizably religious. On the contrary, he cranked it up several levels. His message was consistent: “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!”

The command that John thundered, “Repent – change your hearts and lives,” is in the present tense. That means continual or repeated actions: “Keep on repenting!” “Continually be repentant!” It isn’t like a door we pass through once that gets us into the kingdom. Repentance is the ongoing lifestyle of the people in the kingdom.

Notice how John connects repentance, life change, with the arrival of the kingdom of heaven. That sets up an interesting dynamic for us. How are we supposed to respond to the coming of heaven’s rule? Would you believe that it is not worship or praise, but repentance? That’s the hardest part of the coming of the Kingdom, or the biggest problem with remembering the coming of Jesus at Christmas or Palm Sunday. We want to celebrate and praise, rather than repent. We back off from letting the coming one change our lives. We don’t want to admit to ourselves and God, “I am wrong” or “I’ve done wrong.”

The arrival of heaven’s rule messes things up for the world, and for us. We find out later in Matthew’s gospel (10:7-8) that the coming of the kingdom means healing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing those with leprosy, driving out demons; and freely giving as we have received. That’s the message which Jesus gives to John’s messengers when the imprisoned John begins to wonder if Jesus really was the one he was to herald. Perhaps those radical activities are the good fruits worthy of repentance of which John speaks.

Changing our hearts and lives is no simple matter. Richard Jensen offers an understanding for repentance:

Repentance is often understood as an “I can” experience. “I am sorry for my sins. I can do better. I can please you, God.” So often we interpret repentance as our way of turning to God. That cannot be. Christianity is not about an individual turning to God. Christianity is about God turning to us.
In repenting, therefore, we ask the God who has turned towards us, buried us in baptism and raised us to new life, to continue his work of putting us to death. Repentance is an “I can’t” experience. To repent is to volunteer for death. Repentance asks that the “death of self” which God began to work in us in baptism continue to this day. The repentant person comes before God saying, “I can’t do it myself, God. Kill me and give me new life. You buried me in baptism. Bury me again today. Raise me to a new life.” That is the language of repentance. Repentance is a daily experience that renews our baptism.(2)

The Greek word baptizo literally means “to dip,” and secondly, “to wash, (often by dipping into the water)”. If we use the word “wash”  — “I wash you with water for repentance” and “He will wash you with Holy Spirit and fire,” we can sense the difference. Washing with water cleanses only the outside. Being immersed in the Holy Breath also cleanses the inside — or one’s entire life — like oxygen in the air we breathe which rejuvenates our blood and every part of our bodies. In other words, baptism is not a finger bowl experience.

Brian Stoffregen tells of leading a workshop on worship. He drew a crude stick figure of a person walking into a big box. Then he had the figure walking out of the box. He labeled the box, “Worship.” Then he asked, what do we expect to happen to people in this box? After some responses, he suggested, “Cleansed.” Worship is a time where we are cleansed. Cleansing requires going into one’s life to root out the dirt and filth and crud – and the deeper one goes, the more sin one will find – and the more sin that will be rooted out, washed away, and forgiven.(3)

John throws away the etiquette book. Jesus never picks it up. Nor should we. Repentance – changing hearts and lives – is not about nice social graces that ease social interaction. Repentance is not about what we can do. It is about what we can’t do and what God does do for us through Jesus Christ. The kingdom of heaven is arriving and continues to arrive. God is seeking us. God is excited about the changes that can happen to us. “Change your hearts and lives. Here comes the kingdom of heaven.”

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette. Downloaded December 7, 2013, 21:15 EST.
(2) Richard Jensen, Touched by the Spirit (Eugene, OR, Wipf and Stock, 2000), 49.
(3) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday, Matthew 3:1-12.” Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 4:41 PM

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Let the Noise Begin

I am reading Matthew today.

21:14-16: People who were blind and lame came to Jesus in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and legal experts saw the amazing things he was doing and the children shouting in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David!" they were angry. They said to Jesus, "Do you hear what these children are saying?" "Yes," he answered. "Haven't you ever read, From the mouths of babies and infants you've arranged praise for yourself?" (CEB, Common English Bible)

What occurred to me from today's reading was a thought about people who complain about the presence of children in worship. That is, they complain about the noise, the movement, the distraction. They would rather segregate the children in a safe, soundproof area where they can learn to play act church. (And then we wonder why they aren't interested in 'real' church later on.)

But more important than the sociological and development issues, is the bold assertion (in so many words) that children get God better than we adults do. "From the mouths of babies and infants you've arranged praise for yourself." Wow!

Jesus has already called out the disciples on this when they asked him who was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. With a child in their midst he said, "I assure you that if you don't turn your lives around and become like this little child, you will definitely not enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:1-3, CEB)

Every time we have the audacity to think that we have God all figured out, that we know what God wants from us and through us for God's self and God's people, God pulls the rug out from under us. Perhaps we have got it wrong that God only wants soft organ interludes, Bach chorales, five-stanza, four-part hymns, and well-intoned sermons and intellectual prayers. Or that God only wants songs from the American gospel tradition and off-the-cuff prayers where every fifth word is 'Lord.' or that God only listens to praise choruses and watches YouTube clips.

Perhaps what God really wants is a rambunctious spirit, an ebullient praise-speaking mouth, a joy-filled heart. After all, if God wasn't interested in the child in all of us, God's son wouldn't have come to us as a child in a manger.

Cosmic Alertness or Perpetual Apathy?

Cosmic Alertness or Perpetual Apathy?
Matthew 24:33-43; Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14

We go through this every year. People ask, Why do we begin Advent with stories of judgment and of Jesus’ (Son of Man’s, Human One’s) return? Why can’t we just dive into the prophecy and the birth narratives? Why do we have to prepare for what we already know has happened?

Some answers might be:

• It’s been a whole year, and we need to rehearse the details. 
• Advent reminds us that the old order is ending and that the new order – the reign of Christ – is beginning.
• Jesus’ birth is itself a judgment on human beings and their social order.

Let’s face it, most of us are not comfortable with all the talk about judgment. Judgment means that there is something wrong with the present order of things. And for the most part, we are generally happy with the way things are. Judgment might mean change and we don’t think that much needs to be changed. And judgment might just get personal; it might not apply to some faceless “them” somewhere else, it might be directed at us. And that makes us sweat and squirm.

David Bartlett(1) says that Advent produces two very different reactions among Christians. Some Christians think that Christ’s second coming is the heart of the gospel. They read the scriptures for signs of the end times and then read the newspaper, watch the news, follow along on Twitter to see if those signs are happening now. Other Christians react as though the emphasis on Christ’s appearing is much ado about nothing that can be believed. They endure this first Advent Sunday so they can get to next week and John the Baptist, a quirky yet historical figure.

Bartlett concludes that those Christians who are focused on last things are tempted to fall into a perpetual state of anxiety, while those who are agnostic about last things likely fall into a state of perpetual apathy. How easy it is to diverge just a little bit from Christ and wind up missing him by a significant distance. Advent is about faith, not apathy, hope and not anxiety.

The theme of the Matthew passage, indeed of all of Advent, is the necessity of watchfulness. The reason for this is that Christ’s return appearance is not scheduled. You won’t find it on a calendar. You won’t get a 15 minute alert on your smart phone. And yet there have been countless interpreters of scripture who have either somehow missed the point of the opening verse of today’s reading or who think that they are better than our Lord by being gifted with special knowledge. Jesus is very clear: “Nobody knows when that day or hour will come, not the heavenly angels and not the Son. Only the Father knows.” As Paul reminds us in his Philippian hymn of Christ, “Jesus emptied himself by taking the form of a slave and by becoming like human beings” (Phil. 2:7), that is, lacking in divine knowledge, and often unaware of human knowledge.

So while some have tried to correct the apparent shortcoming in scripture and in Jesus himself, others slough off the lack of knowledge as a good reason not to pay much attention at all. What we have to remember is, even though we don’t know the day and hour of the coming of Christ, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. It will. The fact that the coming will be is vitally important for our lives right now.

A lot of people talk about Christ’s second coming, a kind Christian version of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Terminator” promise, “I’ll be back.” Like many other things that we take as scriptural, the Bible never makes reference to a “second” coming. The “Coming One” is one who has come and who continues to come to us in our gatherings around Word and Sacrament. For those whom Jesus is a part of their lives now, the “coming” will not be a surprise. He already comes into their lives now. That’s one way of thinking about the seam between church years that goes from the reign of Christ to his coming – in humanity as well as divinity.

The reference to Noah is all about Christ’s coming unexpectedly. Even though the people in Noah’s day didn’t know about the coming of the judgment, it still came. Even though people don’t know about Christ’s coming, he still comes. He comes as child to an unwed mother in a patriarchal society in a country occupied and oppressed by the until then most powerful human government. He comes as the co-equal with the Father and the Spirit to judge the world and redeem those whom God calls out from among the people, be they direct descendants of Abraham and Sarah or not.

The reference to Noah takes us beyond a boatload of eight human beings, and pairs of animals, reptiles, amphibians, and avians, not to mention seeds and plants (as the Jewish midrash tradition takes pains to point out). To focus only on them is to miss the point that the story is really about those who failed to prepare themselves, who failed to follow God at all. The point is that they took no notice of what God required or of what God warned. They were doing business as usual oblivious to the specter of judgment which hung over their heads. “In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark.” We aren’t talking drunkenness and gluttony, just everyday meals. And the marriage image has to do with their unawareness of their mortality. They assumed that the future would happen, generation after generation. But as the Genesis saga recounts, judgment came flooding into their lives and they were all swept away.

That is the same point that Jesus’ next images reinforce: two men are in a field; one is taken and one is not. Two women are in the shared courtyard grinding grain on the communal wheel; one is taken, one is not. These are readily recognized images from Jesus’ day. They represent ordinary activity, the stuff that people do and did day in and day out. The coming judgment is no respecter of gender or occupation. Ordinary daily activities will not insulate anyone from the coming judgment.

The language sets up an interesting question. Which is better? To be taken or to remain? How the kids in the AT&T cellular phone commercial would respond to that choice? For Matthew, given his overall use of the words “taken” and “left” in his gospel, being taken is better, although we more often than not may think just the opposite. In Matthew’s vocabulary, “taken” seems to refer to being redeemed from danger, while being left behind carries the sense of being forsaken or abandoned. Who of us doesn’t remember the ignominy of being the last one chosen for team play on the playground.

Life goes on. It must. Whether we grow and grind our own grain, or merely pull the ready-sliced bread out of the wrapper, doing it is necessary to our earthy well-being. Yet in the midst of the ordinary we must cultivate the capacity to perceive the coming of the extraordinary. And we are to do it without idle speculation.

If the images of Noah and of the farmers and farmer wives being taken or left behind weren’t difficult enough, then there is the image of the thief in the night. It always grates to apply an apparently negative image to the Son of Man, the Human One. But the image raises a troubling question. To whom might the reign of heaven and the coming of the Son of Man be seen as a threat? And what is the thief in the night coming to steal? Is it our human aloofness from and arrogance about our need for God, for salvation? Or will the coming one steal our guilt, our regret, our self-built defenses of ego and pride, and leave us with nothing to separate us from God, a return to the innocence humanity violated in the Garden following creation? That would indeed be a new advent, a starting over, a saving taking away.

Advent is a time to choose between cosmic alertness and perpetual apathy. And if we don’t choose, the One who is coming will choose for us.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

(1) David L. Bartlett, “Matthew 24:36-44: Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), Year A, vol. 1, p. 20.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

A Non-Camo King

A Non-Camo King
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Colossians 1:9-20; Luke 23:33-43

A recent cartoon posted on Facebook showed the pilgrims driving off Santa Claus. In another, a Thanksgiving turkey was loudly addressing Santa saying, “November is my month. You just get out of here and wait your turn!”

A lot of us probably feel that way – and have for several weeks. A number of stores plan to open up on Thanksgiving. As someone who avoids like the plague stores on Thanksgiving Friday, why would I even want to shop on the holiday itself? I commend those stores whose management has resisted the urge to open up early.

I like Santa well enough. He’s a right jolly old elf with a nose like a cherry, but I’m with the turkey complaining that Santa is invading her month. And I’ll suggest that Santa has done a good job crowding Christ out of Christmas. Public relations attempts to sanitize Santa’s image by having him present at the manger are not enough to soothe my theological spirit.

All that said, Christmas is coming. In five fast-flying weeks we will be singing the words of the English carol, “What Child Is This?” The haunting refrain is appropriate for this last Lord’s Day of the church year as we think about the reign of Christ: “This, this is Christ the King who shepherds guard and angels sing; haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe, the Son of Mary!” We aren’t ready for the babe part, but we need to sing the king part. The English hymn writer William Chatterton Dix, who wrote the words for “What Child Is This?” is also the author of the words we sang at the top of the service, “Alleluia! sing to Jesus, his the scepter, his the throne.”

Most of us believers spend a great deal of our spiritual time being confused by Jesus: God – man; servant – king; prophet – peon; priest – sacrifice. Those of us who devote not only our private lives but also our public lives to Christ, often live a life similar to Nik Wallenda. Only we don’t walk tightropes over the Niagara Falls gorge or the Grand Canyon. We do it over the pit called heresy. We must walk on a thin thread of theological thinking which keeps the mystery/paradox of Jesus in balance lest we tip too far one way or the other and fall into the abyss.

We call Christ “king.” Yet his “kingdom was not of this world,” or so he told Pilate. He was mocked by the soldiers. He was parodied with a royal robe and a crown of thorns. About fifteen years ago Dave Matthews wrote a song entitled “Christmas Song.” A portion of the lyrics talk this way about Jesus:
“. . . So I’m told, so the story goes
The people he knew were
Less than golden hearted
Gamblers and Robbers
Drinkers and Jokers, all soul searchers
Like you and me . . . .” (1)

This Jesus is a radical king who hangs out with the poor and marginalized and then hung on a cross for the sake of God’s love for the world. Whether we read the words of the gospels or listen to a contemporary songwriter, the result is still the same: Jesus is not the kind of king most people expect. He is not a super hero. He is not an armored champion. He is not a military ruler. You won’t find him wearing combat boots and camouflaged fatigues.

There is a haunting and uncomfortable statue, depicting a darkly shrouded figure lying huddled on a long park bench. From a distance, the figure could be anyone, and only on close examination are the tell-tale “stigmata,” or crucifixion wounds, visible on its exposed feet. The statue, by Timothy Schmalz and entitled “Homeless Jesus,” isn’t your typical depiction of Christ. Its arresting imagery was too much some church leaders. The life-size bronze sculpture was rejected by two high-profile cathedrals, St. Michael’s in Toronto and St. Patrick’s in New York. Schmalz was told the piece “was not an appropriate image.” Like the newborn Jesus for whom there was no guestroom, and the Human One who had no place to lay his head, even though foxes had holes and birds had nests, the statue had no home until it was taken in by the Jesuit theological school, Regis College, in Toronto. (2)

In Jeremiah’s day, the term “shepherd” was used to refer to “king.” The Jeremiah passage which was read earlier was not a work of fiction. He, like any good op-ed columnist, directed his words to the kings he experienced in his lifetime. Jeremiah minced no words. The demise of Israel was directly connected to the poor leadership of the nation’s kings, including their blatant evasion of their responsibility to uphold justice for widows, at-risk children, immigrants, and those being pushed out of the middle class by the widening gap between the 1% and the rest of the population. The greed of a whole series of kings – Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Jehoiachin – was the ultimate cause for the destruction of Israel.

Jeremiah looked hopefully for a righteous king. His faith descendants know that king to be Jesus Christ. Instead of a military leader or Machiavellian statesman who stepped away from the people in an ego-filled elitism, Jesus modeled ultimate leadership by being present with all the people. He reached out to rich and poor, although only the poor responded. He prayed with churched and unchurched people, although only the unchurched understood the conversation. He ate with saints and sinners, although only the sinners experienced the meaning of grace.

Christ’s leadership was not from the top down. It was not hierarchical or vertical. It was horizontal and shared. “If I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you too must wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example: just as I have done, you also must do” (John 13:14-15). Jesus called all his followers to be servant-kings.

The servant-king is one of the ways in which we are to look at Christ’s ministry, which he gave to us to be our ministry, our engaged living in the world. As leaders we are not called to blindly follow. We are called to look beyond the headlines of political clashes and calamities to find the underlying issues that erupt into the crises that fuel media frenzy and populist pablum. At times we are even called to speak God’s “Yes” into the whirlwind of the world’s “No” in order to empower and validate the least, the last, and the lost with whom Christ identified. It is not by brute force but by caring for those who are oppressed that we can communicate the leadership Christ practiced, and with it the power and love of God for all people.

Christ was not a military king. He did not wear camouflaged fatigues to show his role. He was a non-camo king. We too are called to shun camos. We are called to wear the ordinary attire of the people of our time and place so that, like Christ, we may share our lives with people who are “Less than golden hearted / Gamblers and Robbers / Drinkers and Jokers, all soul searchers / Like you and me.”

Cincinnati Presbyterian pastor Thom Shuman writes the following about the king who is Christ. He calls it “oxymoron”:

King of kings
Lord of lords
Glory Hallelujah!
really?
are these word just
a neat, peppy praise song,
fun to sing
but empty of meaning?
no kings around here
that I know of,
but a lot of politicians
who act as if folks
are agin’ ‘em
if you are not with them;
no lords around here
except those who
think they can
lord it over everyone else,
but debt and worry and fear
control my life;
glory seems to be
in short supply these days,
and hallelujahs
don’t seem to mean much
to most folks;
but you
you are a mystery solved
in the impossibilities of life;
an enigma wrapped
in wonder;
a majesty born
in humility;
a life blossoming
out of death.
and you
you I could follow
forever. (3)

May it be so. Amen.

(1) Dave Matthews, “Christmas Song,” from the album, Live at Luther College, © 1999. http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Christmas-Song-lyrics-Dave-Matthews-Band-and-Dave-Matthews/B1EE5C1D3DA9630148256BD1000CE73E
(2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/jesus-the-homeless-sculpture-rejected-catholic-churches_n_3085584.html
(3) Thom M. Shuman, © 2013;  http://www.prayersfortoday.blogspot.com/2013/11/oxymoron-reign-of-christchrist-king-c.html

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

There Is Nothing Pedestrian About Being Presbyterian

There Is Nothing Pedestrian About Being Presbyterian
2 Thessalonians 1:1-12; Psalm 119:137-144; Luke 10:1-10

I grew up in another Ohio county seat town, which in those days had twice as many people as all of Pike County. It was founded before 1800. The town was laid out around a square block on which sat the Court House. It dated from just before 1900, having replaced one which had burned down, which was the lot of many early court houses.

Opposite the west side of the court house square was a piece of parkland which ran along the river bank. It was the site of a number of war monuments and other historical items. Across the southwest corner was the Second National Bank building, about 12 storeys high with the local radio station’s studios on the top floor. The south side of Market Street had several shops including a Thrift Drug and an S. S. Kressge store and finished with the Strouss Department store on the corner. Then opposite the southeast corner was the Union Savings and Trust Company bank. The east side of Park Avenue was shops and offices. Then opposite the northeast corner was the Trumbull Savings and Loan Company. On the north, on High Street, across from the Court House main entrance was the Public Library, the then new county administration building, the YMCA and the Elks’ club in an old mansion of a house.

The southwest, southeast and northeast corners of the square were standard cross-street intersections. The northwest corner had only one street going out of it at a 45 degree angle. Three streets met for the intersection. In those days the traffic light was on concrete platform in the middle. Because of the traffic pattern, the crosswalks were  marked with walk lights and signs.

What you need to know is that at this three street corner stood the Presbyterian Church, a handsome brick and stained glass building with a very tall spire. It couldn’t be missed.

I was entering high school when I finally realized that the crosswalk signs said “Pedestrian Crossing” and not “Presbyterian Crossing.”

When we here the word pedestrian, most of the time we think of walking and people who walk – like me, frequently spotted on foot around town. The word comes from Latin, pes, foot, and we have a host of related words: pedestal, podiatry, pedal, paw, pedicure. My Merriam-Webster Dictionary actually lists that definition second. The first definition is: “commonplace, unimaginative.”

The author of the second Thessalonian letter doesn’t use the word pedestrian. Yet it is very clear from the wording that the writer is definitely convinced that faith in God and in God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is anything but commonplace, unimaginative, prosaic, dull, pedestrian.

People don’t brag about the ordinary or the mediocre. The letter writer says that he and his fellow believers are “bragging” about the Thessalonian church people to all the churches they visit. “We tell about your endurance and faithfulness in all the harassments and trouble that you have put up with.” When was the last time someone bragged about you?

We forget that being Christian was an oddity. People and governors were afraid of Christians. They were perceived to be the terrorists of the first century. There is nothing pedestrian about that. What if you had to skulk around to come to church? What if you had to go to an unmarked door on a nondescript street and tap a secret code, and answer with a password? It would be just like going a speakeasy during Prohibition. Christian’s didn’t want to live that way, but they often had to for safety’s sake.

The Christian calling is seldom to a vocation of ease and comfort, but to a unity with Christ in suffering. As Paul wrote the Roman believers,

Don't you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried together with him through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life. If we were united together in a death like his, we will also be united together in a resurrection like his. (Romans 6:3-5)

Many of us may actually be troubled by such a statement. Our culture is one of seems to do everything it can to avoid suffering and deny death. Our sister and brother Christians who live marginally in our own country or in less developed countries of the world find Paul’s words a source of comfort. It is the same as Jesus speaking to Zacchaeus and inviting himself to the tax collector’s house for lunch, an act which totally transforms Zacchaeus by bringing him to repentance and to Jesus’ affirmation: “Today, salvation has come to this household.”

The Thessalonian letter writer says that the people’s faithfulness under duress “shows that God's judgment is right, and that you will be considered worthy of God's kingdom for which you are suffering.”

Suffering is suffering. Except for a few people who seem to groove on dark linings to silver clouds and almost seem to thrive on being put upon, we don’t take easily to suffering. Our general rule is to innoculate ourselves against suffering. And if that doesn’t work, then we over-medicate. Alcohol, shopping, gambling, legal drugs, illegal drugs, pornography, arrogant authoritarian ego power trips, to name just few. People in the world suffer horrible physical, mental, economic trauma as Christians. We cannot pray enough for our Christian brothers and sisters in Middle East, in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Sudan in particular. Suffering for the faith is not isolated to that part of the world. Wherever there are Christians, there will be suffering.

We suffer – not brutally – but we do suffer. We suffer because we want people to join us in knowing Christ, yet few come. We suffer because we feel guilty because we don’t know how to speak of Christ’s love to others. We suffer because we live in ghettos of our own making and we interact less and less with people we don’t know and have little reason to know. We suffer because we feel as if the world is closing in on us and we are developing a pessimism that is like a polarized lens preventing Christ’s light to shine powerfully into our lives. We suffer because we are clinging so desperately to what little we think we have that we cannot open our hands to receive the vast quantities of Spirit gifts that a gracious, inviting, merciful, forgiving, saving God is seeking to heap into our individual lives and the life of our community.

Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters — yes, even one’s own life — cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Psychotherapist Carl Jung said that a lot of unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the “legitimate suffering” that comes from being human. Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, suggests that life is a crucible, a vessel that holds molten metal in one place long enough to be purified and clarified. We work very hard trying to lower the temperatures of our lives so that we never get molten enough, long enough, to let God’s grace purify and clarify us. Jesus said that the truth will set you free. Rohr says that “before the truth ‘sets you free,’ it tends to make you miserable.

Rohr goes on to say that creation itself already believes the gospel and lives the pattern of death and resurrection, even if unknowingly. Necessary suffering is the daily cycle of day and night, the changing seasons, the lives of predators and prey.

The letter writer and his friends pray for the Thessalonian believers. They pray for their endurance. By its very nature, endurance is not something that we can develop in a hurry. It takes a lifetime, and even then we are only partly on the way. Through endurance we can gain a unique relationship with God, see God’s imprint on the world and on our lives, and move on to transcend deadly despair on the one hand or naive optimism on the other as we move in faith to an abundant joy, an enduring hope, a faithfulness in little, with much, with all.

On this All Saints Sunday, we remember not just the friends and family members who died in the last twelve months. We remember all the faithful believers who directly or indirectly have made it possible for us to believe and to act on our belief. Salvation has come to our lives. We are children of faithful Abraham and Sarah. We believe in a loving, sovereign God who rules with grace and with justice. There is nothing pedestrian about being Presbyterian. Christians are out of the ordinary.

Thanks be to God!

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Who Can Find Mercy Before God?

Who Can Find Mercy Before God?
Luke 18:9-14; Psalm 65; Joel 2:23-32

Marjorie Proctor-Smith says that parables are like fishing lures.(1) They are full of attractive features—feathers and bright colors—and then end with a sharp little barb. The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is one of those beautiful lures. Taken at face value, it is very straightforward. It addresses the problems of spiritual pride and puts forward the benefits of self-aware confession.

The problem with an attractive lure is the hook at the end. If you are familiar with fishing hooks, you know that they actually have two barbs. One that readily goes in and a second that prevents an easy removal, that is it prevents the fish from slipping the hook and getting away.

Parables are often like these double-barbed hooks. They grab the listener, but what grabs isn’t the first barb, but the second. Today’s parable contains a trap. The reader/hearer is hooked by the contrast between the two characters – the Pharisee and the tax collector. That’s the hook going in. Then the reader/hearer says to him/herself, ‘Thank God I am not like this Pharisee!’ And the snare is complete. The reader/hearer is trapped by the second barb.

This trap is completely unseen. Who is going to get trapped by prayer of all things? Prayer is good, not bad. In fact, Luke has a greater emphasis on prayer than the other gospel writers. As Luke reports many of the same events as Mark and Matthew, he adds a comment that Jesus is praying: at his baptism (3:21); the night before selecting the twelve (6:12); before he asks the disciples, “Who do the crowds/you say that I am?” (9:18); on the mountain before the transfiguration (9:28, 29); and before the disciples ask him to teach them to pray. In addition, Luke has three parables about prayer not recorded by Mark and Matthew: the friend at midnight (11:5-8, which is followed by the Lord’s Prayer); the widow and the judge (18:1-8); and the Pharisee and the tax collector (18:9-14).

Luke Timothy Johnson writes about Luke’s emphasis on prayer:

The parables together do more than remind us that prayer is a theme in Luke-Acts; they show us why prayer is a theme. For Luke, prayer is faith in action. Prayer is not an optional exercise in piety, carried out to demonstrate one’s relationship with God. It is that relationship with God. The way one prays therefore reveals that relationship. If the disciples do not “cry out day and night” to the Lord, then they in fact do not have faith, for that is what faith does. Similarly, if prayer is self-assertion before God, then it cannot be answered by God’s gift of righteousness; possession and gift cancel each other.(2)

We say to ourselves, ‘Thank God I am not like this Pharisee!’ And we are caught. So who can find mercy before God?

The parable seems to encourage humility and to condemn spiritual pride. But how do those things fit together? The story is told of a fairly bland woman who was involved in many things but was never in the limelight. She did many good things and never sought any recognition for her work. The community wanted to recognize her humble life, so they gave her great party, a large plaque, and a gold medal on a fancy ribbon to hang around her neck. She was at first flustered by all the attention. But she decided to hang her plaque in the front window of her house where everyone could see it. And she wore the medal wherever she went and showed it to everyone she met. The following week the community took back the plaque and medal. Her pride had ruined her humility.

If we arrive at a place of appropriate humility, we are tempted to take pride in our accomplishment.

But the other side is just as precarious. “God, show mercy to me, a sinner” – “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” in the older wording. It seems like a simple formula. Don’t assume that you are spiritually pure. Confess your sins before God, and you, like the tax collector, will go home justified. And the danger is, we want to say, “I thank you, God, that I am not like that Pharisee.” How difficult it is to be truly humble, to confront without flinching, as the tax collector does, our own sin, and to seek God’s mercy without excuse.

We Presbyterians come from a long line of Christians who truly believe that our first parents, there in the garden, freely made a conscious choice to do the very thing that God told them not to do (just like any toddler). They listened to another voice, another viewpoint, another perspective on life. They chose as they did. Everyone ever since has been stuck with the ramifications of their choice.

Twentieth century Reformed theologian Karl Barth looked at this parable and said that there is a clear distinction between the goodness of God the Creator and the sinfulness of the creature, and Jesus wanted his hearers to comprehend this reality. The Pharisee sees his own status before God to be a result of his own actions. His prayer is about what he is doing. The tax collector is ashamed of his actions. His prayer is about what he has done.

Barth says that both men are equally shamed before God. The difference between the two is that the Pharisee is ignorant of his standing with God. The Pharisee is proud of his religious acts and justifies himself, because he doesn’t do certain things and is not like certain people. The tax collector is humiliated before God and others. He recognizes his misdeeds and his brokenness. The Pharisee has no inkling that he is no better than Adam. The tax collector hopes that he can be saved from Adam’s punishment.

The beauty of this parable is that when we recognize and openly admit that we are sons and daughters of Adam and Eve and that we are subject to their original sin, then we can accept and embrace two things: that there is nothing within us that can save us, and that we are totally dependent on God for salvation.

The key word in the conclusion of the parable is “justified.” For you grammar buffs out there, it is a perfect, passive participle. Perfect, because it is something that happened in the past that continues into the present. It is passive because it is a reversal of subject and object in sentence position. The easiest way to understand the construction is to recast the simple sentence, “the tax collector has been justified,” to read “God has justified the tax collector.” In contrast to Luke’s introduction to the parable which Jesus addressed to “certain people who had convinced themselves that they were righteous,” this grammar indicates that it is God who justifies the tax collector. It is not something he did for himself.

Remember the words of Paul to the Romans: “God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And again, Paul wrote the Ephesians: “You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed. It’s not something you did that you can be proud of. Instead, we are God’s accomplishment, created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

The end of October marks the 496th anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing his 99 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. One of the hallmarks of the Protestant Reformation which he began, and which was carried forward by faithful folk like Martin Bucer, Philip Melancthon, William Farel, Huldrich Zwingli, John Calvin, John Knox and a host of others, is the concept of sola gratia, which asserts that we are justified by God’s grace alone—the only means by which we inherit the righteousness of Christ. To suggest any other means is to reject the free grace of God.

In the name of Jesus Christ, we are forgiven. Thanks be to God.

(1) Marjorie Proctor-Smith, “Luke 18:9-14, Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010) Year C, vol. 2, 213.
(2) Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke (Sacra Pagina) (Collegeville MN: Liturgical Press, 2006), 473.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Found Faithful

Found Faithful
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7; Psalm 66:1-12; Luke 17:11-19

I am attracted to the passage from Jeremiah. Maybe its because I’ve always been told that property is worth having but I’ve never owned any. In several public capacities, I have bought and sold property or been involved with the purchase and mortgaging of property. When we sell property, we are generally happy with what we get, although we always think it is worth more. (I have that same feeling whenever I trade cars.) And sometimes we are glad to have the property out of our hands. When we buy property, we often think that we paid more than we should have, but were afraid of not getting it at all. Once in a while we get something at a steal. And once in a while we buy a money pit.

So Jeremiah, with all the clairvoyance of Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board or Jamie Dimond of JPMorgan Chase, sends the quarterly investment advice to the exiles in Babylon. In spite of the numbers, it’s a bull market: buy property, build houses, put in landscaping, plot out gardens, can and freeze the harvest, raise a family, get to know the neighbors, join the PTA, sock away your 401ks and 403bs.

I wonder how Jeremiah’s prognostications were received. Given the reality of the exile of the political, social and artistic elite from Jerusalem to metropolitan Babylon, I can imagine two kinds of responses.

The first is one of total disgust and abandonment:

God has turned his back on the people whom he said were his own. How else can one explain the fact that Jerusalem fell and the people deported. God is two-faced. God sold the nation down the river. God doesn’t care. God has gone on vacation. God is a sham. God is no God at all because the Babylonian god handily bested him. 

Don’t you sense the anger and the disgust which flows out of that viewpoint? The people really felt betrayed.

It’s all God’s fault. If God had paid attention and done what God was supposed to do, this would never have happened. We would not be in this mess.

The second response would be very different, very self-deprecating:

It’s our fault, Lord. If only we had listened to you. If only our parents had listened to you. If only they had taught us right. If we had done what you told us. If only we had paid attention to your prophets instead of going along with the crowd. If only the learned people hadn’t gotten above themselves. If they had spent more time reading and reciting your words than polishing their prayers and straightening their priest’s vests. Lord, we are sinners. We are bad, bad, bad. Lord, we deserved everything you have given us. And even then you have been merciful. But we don’t deserve mercy. We have ground you under our feet, we have ignored you. We don’t deserve anything good from you. It’s all our fault.

Those two responses are very opposite. The one blames everything on God and accepts no personal lame. The other absolves God of all responsibility and takes all the blame on themselves.  Whichever attitude an exile chose to take, it didn’t bode well for them.

The one would be so enmeshed in anger that they would be an overseer’s nightmare slave, no matter how competent they might be. They would be of little use to anyone, because their anger, either pent up or aboil, would prevent them from doing anything that might smack of helping the community celebrate God.

The other would be so self-flagellating that they would be next to useless because they had no get up and go, no oomph to do anything creative. They couldn’t do anything that would get them beyond their total despair about being the cause of the communities exile and hardship.

I don’t think that any of us have ever been in the kind of exile that was experienced in Babylon. But I suspect that most of us have been through harrowing situations that felt to us every bit as bleak and hopeless. And I suspect that our feelings about those situations ran the gamut from blaming any- and everyone else, including God, to so totally blaming ourselves that we were rendered incapable to accomplishing anything of value in our jobs or our family life. Either way, we were of little value to anyone, ourselves, or God.

Psalm 137 comes from the exile period.

Alongside Babylon’s streams,
there we sat down,
crying because we remembered Zion.
We hung our lyres up in the trees there
because that’s where our captors asked us to sing;
our tormentors requested songs of joy:
“Sing us a song about Zion!” they said.
But how could we possibly sing the Lord’s song on foreign soil? (Psalm 137:1-4)

In many ways, we can identify with the anguish of those predecessors in faith. We don’t recognize where we are. It is a foreign land, if not geography, then culture. As someone once quipped, if 1950 ever came back, we would be ready for it. But 1950 isn’t coming back and it never will. We are exiles from the time and place that we once knew. We are exiles from the physical health and mental acuity that once enabled us to burn the candle at both ends. Our bodies as well as the world and all its accessories seem to be at war with us, an ‘us’ we thought we knew and understood. And we are not happy.

Sometimes we want to rail against the world, the economy, the next generation, the government, God. And sometimes we feel like we are an utter failure, that we have messed up everything that we have come into contact with. We can’t sing the old songs, the light airy songs of joy and freedom that lifted us into faith and through the early days of our lives. It’s all so very discouraging. We feel hopeless, useless, wasted.

We are exiles. Our exile is not Babylon, but it is a Babylonian exile — powerless, worthless, hopeless.

Jeremiah’s words to the down and out Judeans and Jerusalemites are given to us, as well as to the
generations that connect us to his time, and to generations yet to come.

Jeremiah tells the people — tells us — to make peace with the here and now. The important thing is that God has not abandoned us in our illnesses and wearing out, in our despair and disappointment, in our ennui and enervation. Make peace with the world and the life that we find ourselves in. Settle down. Step back from the elusive grand vision of life that never really was, and look at the advantages of the present. There are some. And when fully engaged, they will actually benefit us and the community around us. Don’t hole up in our self-pity, but reflect on the needs of the community. As slaves, as prisoners, as exiles in a world which seems foreign to our upbringing and our comfort, we still have gifts to offer individuals and groups around us. We still bear God’s image and still inhale and exhale the power of the Holy Spirit.

Lots of things happen that we can’t explain. Those are good things as well as not so good. But because we are God’s people, called by name, blessed by the baptismal waters, we can recognize God’s handy work. We can pick up the forgotten instruments of joy and praise. We can sing in foreign lands and to unbelieving masters. Jesus calls us to be the single healed person, out-of-step with the world, who suddenly realizes how awesome, how life-affirming, how precious is the grace lavished on him through the redeeming Christ, sanctifying Spirit, and eternally loving God.

And we will be found faithful. “Get up and go. Your faith has healed you.”


Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Great Is Your Faithfulness

Great Is Your Faithfulness
Luke 17:5-10; 2 Timothy 2:1-14; Lamentations 1:1-6, 3:19-26

(A Conversation with Jesus)

“Increase our faith.”

That would be nice, Lord. I desperately want to believe in you. People keep telling me that’s what I need to do, just trust and obey, just believe.

So, Jesus, increase my faith. Give me faith, a lot of faith. Here, fill my wheelbarrow full of faith. Please, Lord. . . .

What’s that, you say? I don’t need a wheelbarrow to be filled with faith. . . .

Oh, yes, I do, Lord. I need a lot of faith. This world’s a mean place. There’s chemical weapons in Syria. There’s car bombings in Baghdad, murders in Chicago, a ferry boat capsizing off Sicily. There are meth labs all over the county. They’ve raised the speed limit between Chillicothe and Columbus. The Indians didn’t make it into the division championship. The leaves are falling, snow’s a-coming. I need a ton of faith. . . .

No wheelbarrow load of faith. . . .

Jesus, what’s a person going to do? No one wants to join the church club any more. No one wants to sing the old songs, no one wants to do Gregorian chant any more. No one wants to wear coats and ties or gloves and floral trimmed hats. No one wants to say what their faith means to them. No one wants to think about community. They just want to think about themselves. If they’re not the center of the world, just forget it. Lord, it takes a lot faith deal with that. Jesus, increase my faith; fill this wheelbarrow with it. . . .

No wheelbarrow. . . .

All right, all right. I’ll ditch the wheelbarrow. . . .

I’ve got this bucket. Will you fill my bucket with faith? If I use it sparingly, it might last me. I know I’m not going to live forever, but I’ve still got some time left. I might be able to make it through with a bucket of faith. Please, Lord, just a bucketful? . . .

No bucket. . . .

Jesus, don’t abandon me like this. I’ve got to have some faith to work with, Lord. Why can’t I have a bucketful?

If I can’t have a bucketful, how about a jarful? I promise I won’t waste it. I’ll use it only in emergencies. You know, like when the sky is falling, or an asteroid is heading for the earth, or when I’ve got no one else to turn to. The problem is — I hate to admit it, Lord — there are lots of those times. It will be hard to decide which one or two to put the faith into. I’ll have to keep saving it for some worse time than there is at the moment. It might go unused. I can keep it safe, Jesus. I could always seal the lid with duct tape.  Make it a computer password. I can never remember them; I’d never get in. . . .

No jar. . . .

What to do you mean, no jar? Lord, I’m helpless here. I’ve got to have some faith. It’s like that extra hundred dollars I keep in the checking account in case I subtract wrong. Please, Jesus, just a little faith.

Here’s a thimble. How about a thimbleful? I don’t think that would be enough for any one occasion. But maybe I could use it like the cross people hold up to ward off vampires. Yes, Lord, how about a thimbleful of faith? I could wear it around my neck right next to my lucky rabbit’s foot. . . .

No thimble. . . .

Lord, don’t you love me? Don’t you care for me. I’m all alone here, Lord. Don’t you care that I’m dying here, Jesus? What happened? Did I get put into a standup comic’s worst nightmare by mistake? Surely you could spare a little faith for me? . . .

Oh, you will. . . .

Thank you. . . .

A mustard seed’s worth. . . .

Faith the size of a lousy mustard seed! “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” Sorry, Lord, I know that’s not funny. But nothing’s making sense to me. I asked you nicely for some faith and all I get is a mustard seed. A mustard seed to combat all the evil in the world and to wage peace; a mustard seed to feed the hungry and cure diseases; a mustard seed to stop stupidity and arrogance; a mustard seed to proclaim your name; a mustard seed to see me through the dark nights of the soul. Just how long do you think that mustard seed is going to last? It wouldn’t last, even if I had a whole pickle jar full of mustard seeds. . . .

No pickle jar. . . .

Not even kosher dills? . . .

Oh, it’s not about the container. . . .

I don’t need a container. . . .

I already have a container. . . .

I do? . . .

How tall am I? . . .

What’s that got to do with anything? 5' 10". . . .

What do I weigh? . . .

Hey, I thought you knew everything there was to know about me? 168 lbs. . . .

Fat. . . .

You’re getting personal now. That’s between me and my doctor. . . .

I’m the container. . . .

You mean, like, “I’m a little teapot, short and stout, here is my handle, here is my spout”? I’m about ready to spout, Jesus. . . .

All right. I’ll listen. This better be simple. My brain is woozy. . . .

Why don’t I need a wheelbarrow or a bucket or a jar or even a thimble for faith? . . .

I asked you first. I don’t know. Why? . . .

Faith can’t be kept in material containers. . . .

The next thing you’re going to tell me is that I can’t get faith. . . .

I’m right. . . .

What do you mean, I’m right? Why can’t I get faith? Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about? . . .

There’s a difference between getting faith and having faith. . . .

Oh Lord, not another grammar teacher. I’m sorry, Jesus, I didn’t mean to take grammar teachers in vain. I’ll pay attention. . . .

Faith doesn’t come off shelf in a church supermarket. . . .

So, I shouldn’t bother going to Cokesbury? Is that what you’re saying? . . .

Okay, if I don’t get it somewhere, how can I have it? . . .

I already have it. . . .

What do you mean, I already have it? . . .

Faith is already in me. It’s part of God’s image implanted in me. It’s activated by the Spirit. It has the potential to fill my being, fill my whole life. . . .

How does that work? . . .

Faith is not what we see, but how we see. Faith is how we respond to what we see around us. A life empty of faith looks at the world and sees a hopeless, unredeemable mess. Little faith doesn’t see any God activity. On the other hand, a life filled with faith sees the same mess, but instead of hopelessness, it sees potential, opportunity, God at work. . . .

Oh, just like in the bulbs I need to plant this month. There will be a flower next spring.

So, you are telling me, Lord, that I already have faith in me. Okay. But you are also telling me that I have to let it grow, that I have to stop bottling it up. How so?  . . .

If I repress the faith that is in me, I am like a clog in the pipeline of faith that spans generations past and future. . . .

It’s true. I have learned a lot about you, Lord, from people who had a lot more life experience than I did at the time. I can think of quite a few church mothers and grandmothers, church fathers and grandfathers, church aunts and uncles. You are right. They didn’t have containers of faith, but they did look at the world faithfully. . . .

So you want me to recognize the faith that I have, and to let it flow forward like the faith of people who came before me. . . .

Even in this messy, devastated world which is being eroded by floods, storms, and other natural disasters? Even when a more devastating erosion is caused by politicians who don't have a clue as to the sorts of lives so many of their constituents live? Even when this world is anything but pretty? . . .

Oh. Not “even when” but “because.” . . .

Sorry. Why “because”? . . .

Because God’s faithfulness to us is great, renewed every morning, strengthened every evening. God has put faith in each of us to let this faith flow through each of us. . . .

Lord, forgive me about the wheelbarrow and the bucket and the jar and the thimble. And the crack about the Grey Poupon.

All I need is right here, this table of set before me. This bread, this cup. This life-giving, life-affirming table of Christ. This remembering.

Thank you, Lord.

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

What or Who's Your Idol?

What or Who’s Your Idol?
1 Timothy 6:6-19; Jeremiah 31:1-3, 6-15; Luke 16:19-31

My story is a lot like yours. When Paula and I got married, we had a few things of our own. We got a used bed frame from a friend and bought a mattress set and a sofa with wedding money. We furnished the rest of our apartment with pieces from our parents’ homes. When we moved to the first church manse, all we needed was the car, and half of a 20 ft. U-Haul truck. Eleven years later, when we moved to Waverly, we had acquired two children, a cat, and enough belongings to fill a full-size van twice, the car once, and the biggest trailer the mover had. The disassembled swing set was strapped to the back of the trailer. I would hate to think how much space would be required today, even after moving two children into their own homes.

In the  closing remarks of his first letter to Timothy, Paul tells the up and coming presbyter, “We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it” (v. 7). That may be, but between birth and death, we grasp everything we can, like sailors clinging to the flotsam of a shipwreck. It’s as if our lives depended on how much we can hold onto. That’s why we don’t easily identify with the parable that Jesus told about the pearl merchant selling his entire stock in order to purchase the pearl of great price. We want all the pearls we have and the other one too.

As the bumper sticker says, whoever dies with the most toys wins. Its an economic world. Everything has to be latest and newest, bigger and better. The housing bubble and the recession we are still trying to get beyond, the military budget, the race for super-encryption that the NSA can’t yet decipher, even the massive outlays made for medical care – as wonderful as it is – are all symptoms of our unwritten, unconscious desire to cling to everything that we can get our hands on and our arms around.

The grocery store my mother shopped at would have occasional shopping sprees. The drawing winner would get ten minutes to go through the store and get as much in the shopping cart as was possible. Mom never won that drawing, but we would sometimes try to decide whether it was better to grab high-priced but perishable items or lots of lesser priced shelf stable items. We had a freezer, so we would probably have gone after meat rather than canned goods.

“We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it.” So what are we doing with everything in between?

Paul wants us to grab onto something other than our checkbooks and retirement portfolios. I suspect that he would argue that people who seek to maximize their worldly worth, so as to not get underwater with overextended or sub-prime mortgages, are probably deeply submerged in the spiritual accounts mortgaged beyond all possibility in matters of spirituality.

That was probably the case with the rich man in Jesus’ parable (Luke 16:19-31). He may have had sumptuous Michelin five-star feasts and designer label purple linen clothes, but he was bankrupt in his spiritual portfolio. He wound up in the spiritual debtor’s prison with no way out.

“We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it.”

Too often both the Timothy excerpt and the parable recorded by Luke have been used as cheap shots to condemn people with wealth or as sop for the poor urging upon them a pale future hope of eternal life.

Paul, in his words to Timothy, wanted to provide the basis for believers to shape the way they relate to others and to world. Paul wants Christ’s followers to cling to Christ first and foremost. He tells his readers to take hold of eternal life. This isn’t a futuristic goal, something we get for having behaved in our time on earth. Recent scholarship suggests that Paul was less future oriented and more concerned with the present than has been assumed.

When Paul wants believers to grab eternal life, he means now, in the ways that they live out their faith in Christ. We have no say in what happened before we were born (“we didn’t bring anything into the world”) and we won’t have any say about what happens after we are gone (“we can’t take anything out of it”). So the only effect we can have on the world, the only prospect we have making a difference, the only opportunity of being faithful, is while we are in the world. Eternity is now. “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” (Mark 1:15).

Eternity happened when the “Word became flesh” (John 1:14). Christ’s coming not only interrupts present time with the eternal, but also converts it and creates new life. That changes how we look at life. As Jesus said so often, “You have heard that it was said, .... But I say to you.” The blind see, the lame walk, the deaf hear: sometimes literally, always spiritually.

Paul again gives the commandment to seize,  to grab, to lay hold of, as he concludes his admonition to Timothy. “Tell people who are rich . . . to do good, to be rich in the good things they do, to be generous, and to share with others. When they do these things, they will save a treasure for themselves that is a good foundation for the future. That way they can take hold of what is truly life” (vv. 17-19). By this statement Paul sets up a contrast between real life and destructive life. Paul sees that the pursuit of riches – for riches’ sake – is the destructive life.

As he said earlier, “People who are trying to get rich fall into temptation. They are trapped by many stupid and harmful passions that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (v. 9). Paul’s grammar suggests that the damage he speaks of is not just the self-inflicted damage of the people who pursue riches, but also the damage they do to the people who are destroyed in the pursuit of those riches.

That is a very subtle distinction. And it is one that brings us all up short. Even those of us who perceive ourselves to be relatively poor are caught in the complicity of it. We want cheap electricity, for example, and we are willing to let miners get black lung disease to feed our electric meters. We want the freedom to drive anywhere at 60 or 70 mph, and we are willing to risk destroying coast lands for off-shore drilling, risk contaminating ground water through hydraulic fracturing, or make enemies of Islamic people, all because of our greed for petroleum. We want inexpensive clothing made for slave’s wages in fire-trap factories. We want low priced food laced with pesticides that cause chronic diseases in underpaid and uninsured migrant workers. We want. We want. We want.

The real life which Paul affirms is “richly provided” by God. It is not about us and our cravings for latest and newest, bigger and better, winners and losers. It is about a fullness of life that is to be shared, to be given and not taken. When we orient our lives around God, when we understand that we are but a single atom in the whole molecule of God-created life, then we can begin to scent out real life, true life, eternal life – all in the here and now. Focusing on God allows us to see what is temporary as well as what destroys ourselves and others.

Orienting around God is but a start. Unless we are careful, we will develop practices and rituals which will take the place of God, and start a new cycle of destructive life. Only as we keep giving away does the fountain of living faith, the well of living water, keep flowing.

“We didn’t bring anything into the world and so we can’t take anything out of it.”

We are not called to worship the sign of the dollar or even the sign of the church. We are called to worship the one whose sign is the cross.

Functional Atheism

Psalm 14; Luke 15:1-10; Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

I always find the opening to Psalm 14 abrupt. It certainly is to the point: “Fools say in their hearts, There is no God.” It has a near twin, Psalm 53 which may have come through a remembered source originating in Northern Kingdom, while Psalm 14 may have been edited in Judah.

Although this psalm is rooted in a particular time, attributed to David, it is a timeless psalm. So many psalms are personal, about the one who sang or prayed them, about situations in the singer’s life. This psalm speaks corporately, about the nation. That adds to its timeless quality.

The first part of Psalm 14 is a deep-sighed lament for the total corruption of human beings.: “Fools say in their hearts, there is no God.” This verse has been used often to define atheism. Don McKim writes that in the Old Testament, the fool is not only one with no sense, but also the one who resolutely rejects the highest “wisdom” of all, which is the fear and obedience of God. The fool is the one who disregards God, convinced that God does not matter in life. Fools have closed their minds to God and all of God’s instructions.(1) They do not define God as nonexistent. They shut God out from their life. The fool, nabal in Hebrew, is not the simpleton or a gullible fool. Rather, the fool may be too smart for his or her own good. The fool’s mind is hardened to God and not open to instruction.

Isaiah contrasts righteous rulers with fools in chapter 32. “See here: A king rules to promote righteousness; rulers govern to promote justice, each like a shelter from the wind and a refuge from a storm. ... Fools speak folly; their minds devise wickedness, acting irreverently, speaking falsely of the Lord” (Isaiah 32:1-2, 6).

The fool is the one who says “there is no God” in order to justify their own existence and their own hand in it. If they could figure out how to be self-generated, without benefit of parents or parental rearing, they would be inwardly delighted. Because fools are self-made and responsible to no one other than themselves, they always have the answers, always know how to fix what is wrong in everyone else. They are full of negatives for everyone else, because the only positive is themselves.

The negative is used twice in the opening verse of the psalm: “There is no God,” and “not one of them does anything good.”  In verse 2, “No one does good — not even one person!” the psalmist puts the exclamation point on his assertion. Fools don’t waste time debating whether God exists. They dismiss the possibility that God might have any relevance to the present or future. If God did exist, then God is the watchmaker God who started everything off and then left creation to its own devices.

Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, in their book, America’s Four Gods, note that nearly 40 percent of all American’s believe in a disengaged God.(2) Two-fifths of those believe that while God may not be actively involved with the world, God will still zap people for not getting life right. The remaining three-fifths believe that God is not only not involved, but also doesn’t care.

There appear to be two options for the people who believe in a disengaged God. People may live with impunity – it doesn’t matter what they do, they can get away with anything because God won’t judge them. Or people may be so sensitive to the lack of what they perceive as a caring God, that they attempt, not in so many words, to become the missing God and do everything that is needful and right for the world. This is perhaps because they think that God will judge them or perhaps because of some innate, non-divinely planted, sense of right and wrong. Both approaches are utter foolishness because both approaches dismiss God’s relevance.

For the last two decades physicist Richard Dawkins has been the champion of intellectual atheism. The psalmist is not decrying a cognitive approach to atheism. The psalmist is addressing the soul. The comments about fools and their behavior is a moral assessment, not an intellectual one. Psalm 14 addresses “practical atheism” rather than “philosophical atheism.”(3)

The psalmist rails against the behaviors of the fools. “They are corrupt and do evil things; ... all these evildoers, devouring my people like they are eating bread but never calling on the Lord. ... [They] humiliate the plans of those who suffer” (vv. 1, 4, 6).

The folly of fools, according to the psalmist is that they deny God’s concern for those whom they exploit. They believe and act with impunity because “there is no God” to hold them accountable for their corruption or to defend the interests of the oppressed. There is no place for intellectual debates about the existence of God. The psalmist’s concern is real-life questions of oppression and resistance. The chief theological question in the psalmist’s poem is “justice, not belief, the chief error is oppression not secularism.” The folly which the psalm attacks is “the folly of the social injustice that cuts the oppressor off from God.”(4)

This folly denies the God-image in the person who is the fool. This folly denies any God-given worth in the other person. Think about the way the pompous rich man ignored poor Lazarus at his gate until death exchanged the circumstances of each (Luke 16:19-31). Folly is thinking that no one has any responsibility for anyone except him- or herself.

Think about the rich man who grew so many crops that he had to tear down his too-small barns and build bigger ones. Only he didn’t live to see the benefit (Luke 12:16-21). Perhaps some of his storage problem could have been solved by sharing the grain with those not as fortunate as he was.

Think about all the well-to-do people strutting by the Temple collection box dropping in huge amounts of spare change while a poor woman quietly puts in two of the smallest coins of the realm (Luke 21:1-4). The rich expect to be thanked and lauded. The poor woman just gratefully wants to do her part.

All this folly is often cloaked in the garb of religion. These people worship the rites and rituals but not the righteous God. They claim God for themselves and only do lip service to God for others, unless it is on their own terms. This is functional atheism. It passes for faith but is a hollow shell.

Fools did not pass out of existence after the psalmist’s scathing rebuke of them. Like the proverbial poor, fools are always with us. They are the people who would deny supplement nutrition assistance to one group of neighbors while subsidizing agribusiness. Fools are the people who jack up the price of health care so that only the insured can afford to be healthy.

Dwight Eisenhower was a man of very quiet, personal faith. He spoke against foolishness nearly 60 years ago when he said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Yet in the midst of “corrupt” men and women who disregard God, the “righteous” pray for deliverance and restoration. “God is with the righteous generation.” Salvation will “come out of Zion,” from God. Hope is fixed on God. The relentless, recurring theme of scripture is that salvation comes from God, comes as a gift to the people and causes the people to rejoice. Even in the midst of fools who disavow God in action if not in words, God will deliver the righteous. God delivered Christ from the foolishness of Pharisees, Sadducees, Romans, and others. God delivered him along with sinners and tax collectors, Samaritans and Gentiles, those who were lost or left out, and those who were dismissed by the fools as unworthy of God’s love and grace.

Our hope is grounded in God’s work, so that the pervasive presence of God will cause all foolishness to cease and divine and human joy to unite to the glory of God.

(1) Donald K. McKim, “Psalm 14 - Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, ed. David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 56.
(2) Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, America’s Four Gods: What We Say about God  — and What That Says about Us (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), Kindle Locations 462-468, 476-479.
(3) J. Clinton McCann Jr., “The Book of Psalms” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 4, ed. Leander Keck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 729.
(4) J. David Pleins, The Psalms: Songs of Tragedy, Hope, and Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 173.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 

Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Silly Putty or Vitreous China

Jeremiah 18:1-17; Philemon 4-16; Luke 14:25-33

Do any of you know what “vitreous china” is? That’s a technical description of a material which is made into products we used every day. The dictionary defines vitreous this way: “of the nature of or resembling glass, as in transparency, brittleness, hardness, glossiness, etc.” Perhaps you will better know it if I use the word porcelain. I am referring particularly to toilet fixtures. The main part of a toilet is actually more complex than it appears. A variety of parts are molded into shape and put together like a puzzle. Then the completed unit is fired in a large kiln until the material turns into a single unit. An enamel coating is applied and the piece is fired again to create the glassy-finished product we all take for granted until it stops up. The end product is strong and durable under normal use. The ceramic finish makes vitreous china the perfect material for use in bathroom fixtures, as it is impervious to water or harsh chemicals and is easily cleansed of germs.

I suspect that nearly everyone is familiar with Silly Putty. It was originally created by accident during research into potential rubber substitutes for use by the United States in World War II. Silly Putty is a toy based on silicone polymers which display unusual physical properties. It bounces, but breaks when given a sharp blow and can also flow like a liquid. It will act as an elastic solid over a short time period but as a viscous liquid over a long time period. You can shape it into something, but if left alone, it will eventually conform to the shape of the container it is in. Hence the egg-shaped packaging.

These two substances, vitreous china and Silly Putty, are very different in their nature and in their uses. The image that God gives to the prophet Jeremiah is a whole lot closer to Silly Putty than it is to vitreous china.

Clay is not the easiest medium to work in. There are many different kinds of clay based on the minerals in the compound. Depending on the intended use and the potter’s desired technique, one clay will perform better than another. Clays of different kinds are found in specific places.

The potter that Jeremiah visited evidently was having some difficulty with the clay he was working. “The piece he was making was flawed while still in his hands, so the potter started on another, as seemed best to him.” What God tells Jeremiah is, it is my prerogative to do the same thing with the House of Israel. If the clay, the people, won’t form right, probably because of impurities in it, then God will reform it, perhaps even use a different lump of clay. That’s what God says, “I am a potter preparing a disaster for you.” The inadequate, unworkable lump of clay which Israel has been, will be tossed aside in favor of a lump of clay which can be formed into a useful vessel.

God says, “Turn from your evil ways; reform your ways and your actions.” But the reaction that God got was, “What’s the use! We will follow our own plans and act according to our own willful, evil hearts.”

The House of Israel, like people in general, resented being formed, or worse, re-formed. People don’t want to be molded, pushed or prodded into a particular shape or purpose. We are very happy, thank you very much, being just the way we are. In other words, we want to be vitreous china rather than Silly Putty. We want to be in a fixed shape. We don’t want to be elastic, we don’t want to shaped, crushed, reshaped. We want to choose our form, our shape, our purpose.

And where does that get us? Consider God’s accusations against Israel:
The LORD proclaims: 
Ask among the nations: 
Have you ever heard anything like this? 
Virgin Israel has done the most horrible thing. 
Does the snow on the mountains of Lebanon ever melt entirely off their rocky cliffs? 
Do the cool mountain streams ever dry up?
(Those are rhetorical questions with the expected answer, “Of course not. We would remember if the snow ever melted or the streams dried up. The prophet continues:)
Yet my people have forgotten me; 
they have offered sacrifices to a lie. 
And so they have stumbled along the way, 
even along the ancient paths. 
They have taken side roads, 
not the main roads.
They have ruined their country 
and brought utter shame on it.
Even though God created them, the people of Israel refused to be the clay that God could form into a reverently worshiping, compassionately serving, justice rendering people.

It was role reversal. The people were trying form God into what they wanted God to be. They wanted a God who would let them do whatever they wanted to do. They wanted a God who would allow them to put their thumbs on the scale, to short the change, to bait and switch the goods, so that they could get ahead of everyone else, even their own kinfolk.

Plain and simple, they wanted to be the potter, not the clay. And it wasn’t just God that they wanted to form and reform, but everyone else as well.

Isn’t that the usual human attitude. “There is nothing wrong with me, but you are all messed up. And I can fix you. I know what is right for you. I can tell you what you need.”

And conversely, “Don’t you tell me what to do. Keep you hands off of me. You don’t know a thing about me. Just leave me alone.”

We are forever attempting to usurp God’s potter role. We are going to remold everyone else. It would be bad enough if there were only a few people who were trying to reshape, reform the rest of us. But we are all guilty of it some extent. So it is like a chain reaction pile up on an Interstate highway. One big mess.

Through the experience of being with the Apostle Paul the runaway slave Onesimus was reformed by the working of the Holy Spirit. He was now a brother in Christ, to Paul, to the other believers in Paul’s traveling group, and to Philemon, who also had come to know Christ through Paul’s ministry. Paul is very clear to Philemon that he shouldn’t undo what God had done in Onesimus’ coming into a relationship with Christ. Philemon was not Onesimus’ potter, God was.

Jesus said to the crowd, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters — yes, even one’s own life — cannot be my disciple.” A relationship with Christ reshapes each of us. We can no longer be in the fixed vitreous china relationships with others that we once were. God remolds us into a disciple shape. God reforms us into new attitudes and understandings about God, others, and ourselves. “Whoever doesn’t carry their own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

God desires to reshape us into a cross-carrying disciple. And God is willing to do it however many times it takes. God would rather reform us as if we were Silly Putty rather than have to take us in the form of vitreous china, smash us to smithereens, and cast the useless pieces aside. Will you be formable in God’s hands?

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2013 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.