Where Are You Going?

Where are You Going?
Luke 9:51-62;
2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14; Galatians 5:1, 13-25

In Luke’s reporting, today’s encounters at the Samaritan town and with possible disciples follow on Jesus’ transfiguration. Either side of that he declared that the Son of Man must undergo suffering, rejection, death and resurrection, noting that “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

Jesus knew where he is going. He set his face to go to Jerusalem. Ten chapters and nearly 50 episodes later Jesus arrives in Jerusalem. These two passages set the stage for what will follow.

Jesus is rejected by the Samaritan town because he has decided to go to Jerusalem. The Samaritan/ Jew divide went back to the time of Elijah. The Elijah stories take place in relation to the Northern Kingdom. Ahab was the fifth king of the Northern Kingdom, based in Samaria. Ahab’s fecklessness and his wife’s idolatry and overbearingness furthered the divide between Jews and Samaritans.

Yet, according to Luke, Jesus had some cordial encounters with Samaritans. The ‘Sermon on the Plain’ was attended by people from Tyre and Sidon as well as Judea and Jerusalem. Jesus featured a Samaritan in a parable. He was later impressed with the faith of one of the ten lepers he healed. That one was a Samaritan.

Rejection was not new to Jesus. He had been rejected by Nazareth, at the beginning of his ministry. These two rejections came soon after similar events – Nazareth after Jesus’ baptism (3:21-22) and the Samaritan town after his transfiguration (9:28-36). Neither community could accept his understanding and embodiment of the purpose which God had laid on him. He was heading towards Jerusalem. We know (and so did Luke’s readers) what will happen to him there.

Lest we be too hard on the Samaritans, this episode is at a point when Jesus had to make a choice. Jesus won’t let being liked or disliked determine his actions. His call from God is to journey to Jerusalem. Neither rejection (nor acceptance) by the Samaritans will change his resolve to go to Jerusalem and face what will happen to him there. It is more important to follow the call of God than to seek to please other people. The disciples want to protect Jesus and he refuses. He turns the other cheek and does not lose sight of his primary purpose.

Jesus does not ask anyone who wants to follow him to do anything more Jesus himself is willing to do. If Jesus is willing to set his face for Jerusalem, he is willing to ask followers to join him on that journey and to deal with the rejection (or acceptance) that will given out. Jesus is not a cloistered, protected, spoiled rotten Son of God. As human flesh and blood he is intimately acquainted with all the good, the bad, and the ugly that human beings dish out to each other. Jesus is not an MBA running a company without the slightest idea of how the product is manufactured from raw material to finished product. Jesus started in the mail room and worked his way up. He knows life.

Sometimes people see me up a ladder or taking out the trash or doing some other non-ministerial chore. They are often right that I shouldn’t be doing those things. It’s either an emergency, or there is no one able to do it, or, frankly, it’s easier to do a ten minute task than to take thirty minutes trying to find someone else to do it.

We are in this thing called ministry together. You and I. Those of us in leadership functions have expectations placed on us as well as having the responsibility of placing expectations on others. We cannot expect others to do what we are not willing to do ourselves.

If the leadership team members aren’t attending worship every week, why should they expect members to be regular attenders? If the leaders aren’t generous in their stewardship, why should they expect members to be generous? If the pastor and leaders are not willing to live disciplined lives, why should they expect the members to live such lives? Christ redefines the discipline and obedience systems with which the temple leaders had oppressed the people. The renewal of a religious community begins with those set apart for leadership being renewed in their faith and lives.

Jesus says that “foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head.” We have holes and nests and pillows. Have we become too used to personal comforts that we might find it difficult to follow Jesus? Is it too difficult to pray frequently, study scriptures diligently, worship regularly, invite others often, pass on the faith, serve for the sake of others, and give freely of time, talents, and resources? Only as we grow into being disciples can we disciple others. The great commission at the end of Matthew’s gospel doesn’t send us out to make members. We are commissioned to make disciples.

We disrespect God, we sell Christ short, we belittle the power of the Spirit, we thumb our noses at the Gospel when we tell people that it’s easy to be a church member. Yes, it is easy to be a member. It is difficult to be a disciple. There are no privileges, no room for empty spirituality, no time for entanglements. Today’s texts indicate that neither family nor religious nor social nor business obligations, no matter how good or mandatory they are, not even patriotism on a Fourth of July weekend, can stand in the way of following Jesus.

Think about testimonies you have heard. How often does the convert talk about all the evil things that were left behind in order to follow Jesus? Jesus also demands that we give up the very best things in our lives to follow him. Fred Craddock says it this way:

The radicality of Jesus’ words lies in his claim to priority over the best, not the worst, of human relationships. Jesus never said to choose him over the devil but to choose him over the family. And the remarkable thing is that those who have done so have been freed from possession and worship of family and have found the distance necessary to love them.(1)

Today’s readings are filled with call choices:

• Jesus: the call of God to go to Jerusalem vs. the call of the Samaritans to stay and take care of them.
• James and John: the call for revenge against the Samaritans vs. Jesus’ call to leave the unreceptive people and move on.
• There is the call of self-pleasures vs. the call to follow Jesus. 
• There is the call of family obligations vs. the call to follow Jesus. 
• There is the call of socially accepted actions vs. the call to follow Jesus. 
• There is the call of being good citizens which may conflict with the call to follow Jesus. 
• If burying one’s parents was considered obeying the commandment to honor them, then we also have the call of the Law vs. the call to follow Jesus.

None of us are going to make the cut to follow Jesus. Our desires for soft pillows and comfortable beds, our fulfilling family and social obligations, our patriotism will frequently have higher priorities than following Jesus – especially following Jesus all the way to Jerusalem and the cross. We might be willing to give up some evils in our lives to follow Jesus, but not be willing to give up all these good things – to put them as a lower priority than Jesus. That is radical discipleship.

Jesus does not ask us to look back at the good things and the left behind sins of our lives. We can’t wallow in our past sins or boast of our past successes if we are to be fit for God’s kingdom.

The opposite of looking back is to look ahead. It is exceedingly difficult for congregations to “look ahead.” We are locked into looking at where we are (the bills that have arrived this month, the unplanned repairs that have to be made) or where we used to be (“the good old days”). Jesus calls us to look ahead to where we might be, to grasp a vision of where God would have us go and then head towards that goal.

When any of us come into a congregation and exercise discipleship through it, we can never be part of the past. We can listen to the stories the members tell about the past, but those stories are not our stories. We weren’t part of those stories and we can never be part of those past events. They no longer exist. We can only join what is and what will be. Jesus has gone on ahead. To follow after him means to look forward.

The greatest threat to the gospel is “the good” not “the evil.” When we recognize “the evil” in our lives, we usually want to get rid of it. When things don’t work, we stop doing them. But when we become content with “the good”—the good in our lives and in our congregations—we may fail to follow Jesus and seek what is “the best.” Are you on the discipleship journey with Jesus? Are you looking forward? Do you know where you are going?

(1) Fred Craddock, Luke, Interpretation Commentaries, (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), p. 144.
General Resource: Brian Stoffregen, Gospel Notes for Next Sunday, “Gospel Notes - Luke 9:51-62,” Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 2:55 PM

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

Leaves of Grass

Leaves of Grass
Amos 8:1-12;
Luke 10:38-42
(Bristol Village Vespers)

A minister once told his congregation, “There is a sermon in every blade of grass.” Later that week the minister was out mowing her lawn when a church member rode by, stopped and rolled down the window and yelled out to her, “That’s right, Preacher. Cut those sermons short!”

I have plenty of grass to mow, not counting the weeds. The ways God comes to us and seeks to speak to us are a numerous as the blades of grass. God is not just out there somewhere – the transcendent, distant, Holy Other. God is also here – immanent! God is around us. God is in us. I like what Acts says about God being the one in which “we live, and move and have our being.”

But we like to put our lives into neat, labeled compartments. We divide them up into times and places for certain things. Sunday for many of us, is that time we give some attention to the Divine in our lives. This is well and good, but what this time really should do is help us realized and know that God is related to our lives every day. We tend to see other times and places as ordinary. All ground is holy ground, ll time is holy time, filled with the presence and voice of God.

The incarnation itself teaches us this. God chose to come to us in flesh and blood, in a child born to a peasant man and woman. God comes to us in the ordinary. Jesus taught us to look for God in the ordinary. Just read his teachings. He saw and heard God everywhere – in a coin, a fish net, a lamp, fruit trees, children, salt, a cup, a loaf of bread – in all things he saw some lesson God would teach us.

The fingerprints of God are all around us, if we know how to look.

The voice of God constantly fills the air, if we know how to listen.

Maltbie Babcock, the hymn writer, knew this well and expressed it in a hymn many of us know and love:

“This is my Father’s world,
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere” (verse 2). 

Malcolm Muggeridge, a British Christian journalist, said it this way: “Every happening great or small is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.”

Every moment we are bombarded with thousands of sound waves of all kinds. We don’t recognize it until we get out a radio. You turn it on, adjust the antenna, tune it, and you open yourself to a world of information, music, news. All that enriching information and enjoyment, but only if you turn the radio on and listen for it. We exist by our cell phones and bluetooth devices. No wires, just radio waves.

The voice of God, like radio waves, surrounds us and permeates our world. And each of us has a radio, a kind of spiritual receiver inside us that we can pick up those messages, that enables us to hear God. This spiritual radio inside of us is a kind of sixth sense. We have five senses: taste, smell, sight, hearing, touch. This sixth sense uses all of those other senses in seeking to open ourselves to the presence of God which is as close to us as our breath.

The people who were in these parts before European Americans arrived could follow the trail of animals and find their ways through wilderness by “reading signs.” They could see things all around them that I’m sure I don’t see because I don’t know how to look.

This sixth sense is the one we develop to help us look for God-signs, those events, great and small, in our daily lives that reveal the presence of God. I’m talking about being able to read the world spiritually, of expecting to hear God. We watch and listen, expecting to catch God doing something in our lives and in our world. So we are constantly wide-eyed with anticipation.

The problem is that this sixth sense is often underused. We need to hone, sharpen, and develop it.  We need to learn how to turn on our inner radio and adjust the spiritual tuner so that we begin to hear the ever-present voice of God. Our scripture lessons speak to this tonight. They tell us about Amos and Mary, two persons who knew something about this sixth sense, who knew how to listen to the rustling grass and hear God pass.

Wherever Amos turned, he saw God and heard God speaking to him. On one occasion he saw God in a plumb line, on other occasions, in a swarm of locusts and in a fire. In tonight’s lesson he even gets a message from God in a basket of ripening fruit.

Mary, in the Gospel lesson, became a model for us all in her desire to sit, to be quiet and listen for God’s voice at the feet of Jesus. Martha was into to activity, and she chides Mary for not helping her. Jesus gently chides Martha back, saying that she’s too distracted and is missing something that Mary has found, that one needful, essential thing.  The dishes will wait a few moments.

A lot of people think that Jesus is saying that Martha needed to stop doing unimportant stuff and sit down like her sister at his feet. Maybe what he was really saying is that Martha needed to take a deep breath and make some quiet time. I don’t think Jesus feels what she is doing is unimportant. Hospitality, cooking, taking care of the basic needs of family and guests is significant, and Jesus celebrated that. Jesus’ concern is that Martha seemed obsessed, distracted by all the things she had to do (we can identify with that). Martha was driven to distraction.

We live such hectic, distracted lives that we are not able to be fully present and to listen for God wherever we are, whatever we are doing. God is present in baking bread, washing dishes, setting a table, sweeping the floor. In Martha’s kitchen; in our kitchen. If Mary had complained to Jesus about Martha, “Lord do you not care that Martha has left me to sit here by myself? Tell her to sit here with me,” what would Jesus have said to Mary?  “Mary, you are distracted, you had chosen the better part, but now you are worried. You are not paying attention.” There are times and places for focused activity and focused reflection. Both are necessary. Some people major in one or the other. Few can evenly balance both. But both are required in the total working of God’s kingdom.

When Paula and I hike on park trails, I often get wrapped up in moving along the trails that I forget to pause and see what is around me. On the other hand, she likes to look at everything and forgets about moving along. My body is surrounded by the trees, the wonder of God’s creation everywhere, but my mind is distracted, filled with what I’ve got to do when I get back, and I have to force myself to slow down, to listen, to be present where I am. Only then can the distractions begin to fade and I can be where I am and hear God pass in the rustling grass.

Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon warns, “We spend a long time wishing we were elsewhere and otherwise.”

The main character in the book, Postcards from the Edge, by Carrie Fisher, sends a postcard home from vacation in which she writes, “Having a wonderful time. Wish I were here.”

The key to hearing and experiencing God in our daily lives is to be fully present in all we do. To give our whole selves to whatever duties or responsibilities each moment brings, knowing that in them and through them God is present and speaking. It is being attentive to the present, not obsessed with the past or the future, not driven from one distraction to another. Sometimes the present brings a moment to sit quietly at the feet of Jesus and other moments to mop the floor; one moment we walk in the forest, another we sit at a desk piled high with work. Yet, whatever the present brings, God is there, God is speaking, if we give ourselves to each moment, if we look and listen with that sixth sense that enables us to find that one needful thing – that wondrous sense of God’s pass even in leaves of grass.

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

We Are Manumitted

We Are Manumitted
Galatians 3:23-29;
1 Kings 19:1-18; Luke 8:26-39

January 1st of this year marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln. The 1863 executive order was issued to all segments of the Executive branch (including the Army and Navy) and proclaimed that all those enslaved in the ten states in rebellion – the Confederate States – were to be forever free. The order applied to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S.

The stroke of a pen had a mighty effect on history, on the lives of millions of people alive at the time, and future generations through our own and beyond.

A few slaves had been freed prior to that near-universal decree. Some had bought their freedom. Some were freed from slavery through the last testaments of their owners. The act of freeing a slave is called manumission. The owner would write – manually, by hand, in those day – a legal document declaring that the named bearer was freed. Manumission has historical roots in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Judaism legislated manumission. In Exodus 21, just after the first reading of the tablets of the Law, the “Holiness Code” says,

“When you buy a male Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him.” (Exodus 21:2-3)

Manumission of a Canaanite slave was seen as a religious conversion, and involved an immersion in a ritual bath. The Talmud made many rulings which made manumission easier. The price to buy freedom was reduced from the value of a hired servant over the entire period of service to the original price for which the servant was purchased, pro-rated for the amount of service already worked. If the servant had become weak or sickly, and worth less in the market, the price of freedom was to be reduced further. Increase in strength or skills by a servant was not an adequate reason for raising the manumission fee.

Paul says that before Christ, we were slaves. We were “imprisoned and guarded under the law.” That cuts two ways. The religious laws of the Hebrew scriptures did restrain and protect the people from hurting themselves and others. But the religious law also imprisoned people, preventing them from thinking and assessing their lives on their own.

Paul uses the image of a pedagogue to describe the law’s application. A pedagogue is a school teacher or a disciplinarian. In Paul’s time it was a slave who was like a nanny, having supervision of the children. Part of the pedagogue’s job was to see that the children got safely to and from their tutors. The protective custody of the pedagogue was temporary, until the children came of age and no longer needed to be supervised.

In terms of the history of faith, Paul says that we were guarded under the law which served as our nanny “until faith was revealed.” For Paul, that revealed faith was Jesus Christ.

Paul probably understood very well what it meant to be a slave, to be owned, to be oppressed, to be under the thumb of someone or something superior. Paul came from Tarsus. By whatever cause, he was a Roman citizen. But he was also a Jew who lived in a Gentile setting. The Tarsus Paul lived in had three millennia of Greek history. It was a Hellenistic city appropriated by the Romans to be the capital of the province of Cilicia. It was a prosperous seaport and was known for industries such linen weaving and sail and tent-making. It also achieved fame as a center of learning. It was as Paul observed, “no mean city” (Acts 21:39). However, the size of the Jewish population is unknown and was likely to have been only a small minority.(1)

Minority groups find many means to survive. Jews adopted their religious traditions as their way of confirming their identity. We do not know whether Paul became an ardent Pharisee in Tarsus or later in Jerusalem. In either case, however, he would have been considered an outsider, first in Tarsus as an ardent Jew meticulous about keeping the law of Moses, and then as a Hellenist in Jerusalem with an accent and an attitude. Whenever he met a Christian community in his missionary travels, he found at a safe haven. This reality shines through this high point in his letter to the Greek-speaking Christians of Galatia.

The passage contains Paul's most decisive statement that faith in Jesus Christ has removed all barriers to a relationship with God and with one another for all who believe. We are manumitted. We are set free. As he writes later in the Galatian letter, “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1).

We are not set free on a whim. We are set free for a purpose. We are manumitted to be free from the oppression of ourselves. The gospel does not begin with us. Nor does it end with us. Unfortunately, we are happiest in churches that are just like us, so that no one disagrees with us. And if no one disagrees with us, then we don’t have to think about our faith. We just put our dollar in the plate and go merrily on our way, convinced that all is right with the world and with God.

We shun diversity and difference and disagreement. We forget that the Spirit thrives in diversity. Remember the Day of Pentecost’s United Nations list in the second chapter of Acts? People from all over the then known world were present when the Spirit struck. And the Gospel was understood not in a common language but in all the languages that were present. The most profound differences between people known to Paul, like the differences between people known to us, are nothing compared to the power of Christ to reconcile all things. God in Christ was reconciling the world to God’s self. Christ has made one body out of an infinitely varied tapestry of believers.(2)

What we need to be set free from is our stubborn tendency toward self-centeredness. Paul had written several sentences before today’s reading: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (2;19b-20a).  We nod in agreement with Paul’s words, and then lustily sing “We shall overcome someday,” with the emphasis on “we.”

Yet the kingdom has already come in Christ. It was not our doing. It was not according to our timetable or our design. Eugene Peterson puts Paul’s similar words to the Ephesians this way: “We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! . . . God does both the making and the saving” (Ephesians 2:8-9, The Message).

The core of the gospel for Paul is this: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” We are set free from our Jewishness or our Greekness, our slaveness or our freeness, our maleness or our femaleness. Carol Holtz-Martin extends the analogy this way:

“In the midst of complex immigration controversies, ‘There is neither native born nor illegal immigrant.’ In a society dramatically divided by income, ‘There is neither monied nor working class nor poor.’ In a society polarized by race, ‘There are neither people of color nor people of no color.’ In the season of elections, ‘There is neither Republican nor Democrat nor Independent...’ And to repeat Paul’s own words: ‘There is neither male nor female.’ For you all are one in Christ!”(3)

We all are one Christ because Christ has set us free from all the divisions and categories you and I and everyone else love to imprison ourselves in. We are manumitted, set free to be together as one, to be heirs of the promise, to be Christ’s own. We didn’t do it. We didn’t earn it. We are graced with it. Take your freedom seriously and allow Christ to dwell in you, making you one with him and with all whom he shares his grace.

(1) John Shearman, “Opening Comments for Sunday June 23 2013 which is the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 7. Year C,” midrash@joinhands.com, Sun, Jun 16, 2013 at 10:34 PM.
(2) Carol E. Holtz-Martin, “Galatians 2:23-29–Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 163.
(3) Ibid., p. 165.

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

Mending, Bending, Rending Walls

Mending, Bending, Rending Walls
Luke 7:36-50; 1 Kings 21:1-10, 15-21; Galatians 2:15-21

One of Robert Frost’s more famous poems begins this way:
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.(1)

Frost goes on to talk about working with his neighbor to mend the fence:
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”

The two are not dealing with livestock. The neighbor has pine and Frost has apples, which “will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines.” He wonders what the phrase means: “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Although Paul doesn’t use the word wall in his writing to the Galatian believers, that is certainly what he is speaking about. Something that separates, divides off, keeps apart. Certain people were attempting to build a spiritual, theological, ethical wall between the converts to the Way of Christ which Paul had preached and the grace of Christ. These wall builders were called Judaizers because they wanted to reimpose the Mosaic purity code on the Christians who were former Jews and to make the Gentile converts to Christ follow its precepts. That purity code included circumcision, the dietary restrictions, and the various laws regulating personal bodily contamination that prevented participation in sacrifices and worship.

In Paul's estimation, his fellow Jews were wrong in assuming that they put themselves in good standing with God – justified, to use Paul’s term – by keeping the laws designed to create ritual purity worthy of admission to God’s covenant. Gentiles could not easily accept the rigorous purification practices of diet and circumcision as practical expressions of their relationship with God. The Judaizers were using the ritual law as a wall between the free grace of Christ and being able to live in that grace. Paul worried that if his Galatian friends were forced to submit to the Jewish Law, they would desert the Christian community altogether. In situations of conflict and crisis it does not take much to create doubt and disaffection in the minds and hearts of believers who are still trying to learn the vast riches of their relationship with Christ.

Like the up-heaving winter frost and rabbit-chasing hunters of Frost’s poem, Christ breaks down the wall which the Judaizers keep trying to build. With the sharp scalpel of rhetoric, Paul cuts out the distinctions between Jews and Christians.

“We have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.  But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not.”

The he continues,

“But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor.”

Christ does tear down the wall. Paul said so to the Ephesian believers:

“So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth . . . were . . . without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace.” (Ephesians 2:11-15; emphases added)

We can see Christ breaking down walls and making peace as he dines with a Pharisee. While he is there a local woman, described as a sinner – probably a euphemism for ‘prostitute’ – crashed the party, bathed Jesus’ feet, and anointed them with an ointment from an alabaster jar.

It is important for Luke to indicate that Jesus not only ate with the “tax collectors and sinners,” but also with the Pharisees! It may be that by the time of Luke, the believers had begun to look at the Pharisees as the “outcasts,” as the Pharisees had done to the “tax collectors and sinners” during Jesus’ day. Whether it is a sin of self-righteousness or of sinful living, Jesus welcomes both kinds of sinners. He accepts the Pharisee’s invitation to a meal as well as the sinful woman’s (scandalous) acts of love.

People generally washed and anointed their own feet. Foot washing was a routine matter of cleanliness, and the use of oil or ointment on one’s feet was soothing for those shod in sandals. When guests arrived at someone’s home, especially after a journey, the host usually provided a basin and water for the guests to wash their own feet before sharing the meal. A slave was virtually the only one who could be expected to wash and anoint the feet of another person. Because of these connotations, those who voluntarily washed someone else’s feet showed that they were devoted enough to act as that person’s slave.(2)

The Pharisee seeks to rebuild the wall between the woman and Jesus as well as between him and Jesus. The Pharisee in a stage whisper says, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him–that she is a sinner.” The Pharisee made two assumptions: (1) If Jesus were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman she is who is touching him, namely a sinner and he wouldn’t allow such a woman to touch him; and (2) since Jesus did not stop the woman, he must not be a prophet.

That’s when Jesus offers what seems to be a simple riddle. Addressing the Pharisee by name, Simon, he says, “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty.  When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” The word “canceled” that Jesus uses means more than a simple release from an obligation. Jesus’ word is based on the word that means grace, kindness, mercy. A release from the debt obligation simply puts the wall back together after it had fallen down. The notion of grace, kindness, mercy removes the wall, completely takes away the distinction of on one side having a need and on the other side, being able to supply the need.

Brian Stoffregen says that many folks in our society who are in financial bondage because of credit card debt or underwater mortgages would understand Jesus’ riddle. He goes on to say,

“Part of my growth in faith is to become more aware of the depth of my sinfulness. In younger days, sin was bad things one did. Forgiveness implied not being punished as I deserved for doing those bad things. Since the bad things I might do weren’t all that bad nor that often, I didn’t think I needed much forgiving—not like those other sinners in the world. However, I’ve come to realize that my sinfulness is much deeper than my bad deeds—it involves inner attitudes, desires, motivations, etc., and thus, I also am in need of forgiveness and grace that reaches those depths.”(3)

We are not fifty denarii debtors. We need a great deal more forgiven through grace, kindness, and mercy.

Forgiveness is the breaking down of the wall which separates us from our neighbors, whether they are sinners of the streets or sinners of snobbery. Christ’s forgiveness breaks down the wall that separates us from God and from the fulfillment of all that God has called us to be in our unique creation.

Christ helps us to tear down the walls that are around us. Yet we too often fall into the practice of rebuilding what we have torn down. We tear it down to get to the other side. Then once there we build it back up again. Do we do that to keep us from getting out? To feel safe? To not let anyone else in?

Life is a constant effort of reinventing ourselves through the grace of Christ. He enables us to break down outdated notions and to create new ones, many of which will have to be broken down at some future point in time. But it is his grace that makes it possible to mend, to bend, and to rend the walls that deny God, that deny the image of God in others, and deny the image of God in ourselves.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. And that something is Christ.

Thanks be to God.


(1) Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” North of Boston (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1983), p. 1. (first published, 1914)
(2) Craig R. Koester,  Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2003), pp. 112f.
(3) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday – Luke 8:36-8:3,” Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 9:47 PM

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

Otherwise Dead

Otherwise Dead
Luke 7:11-17;
1 Kings 17:8-24; Galatians 1:11-24


Preaching is a balancing act. We preachers are constantly dealing with smidgens of scripture cast against the whole backdrop of God’s great activity vis a vis human creation. It is like squinting with one eye to see close up while squinting with the other eye to see far away. All at the same time.

Take today’s reading from Luke. The simple passage is that Jesus goes into the town of Nain and happens on a funeral procession. The deceased man was the only son of a widowed woman. Jesus approaches the bier and tells the woman not to weep. He touches the bier and addresses the corpse, “Young man, I say to you, rise!” And he sat up and began talking. The crowd was seized with fear and awe and gave glory to God.

If we take step back, this story follows immediately on the heels of the story we read last week of the healing (at a distance) of the centurion’s slave. The centurion, although a Gentile, understood the nature of God’s authority.

The two adjacent stories have a number of contrasts:
• male vs. female
• centurion vs. widow
• wealthy vs. (probably) poor
• position of status vs. position of little or no status
• Gentile vs. Jew
• honored slave vs. only son
• deathly sick vs. dead
• requested the healing vs. Jesus intercedes uninvited
• faith is praised vs. no faith mentioned
• healed from a distance vs. speaking directly to the corpse(1)

Together these two stories illustrate one of Luke’s primary gospel themes: the all-inclusive nature of Jesus’ ministry. Where does all this lead? The episode that immediately following the raising of the dead man is the one where the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus and ask if he is the one who is to come, or are they to wait for another. Part of Jesus’ answer to them is that “the dead are raised” (Luke 7:18-23) — something he had just done. These two miracles begin a section of revealing Jesus as a great prophet (Luke 7:16) and even more than a prophet — the Messiah of God (Luke 9:20).

John Shearman says that the emphasis in the story here was on Jesus' compassion for the widow, not on his power to raise the dead. It exhibited Jesus' gracious concern for the most vulnerable and helpless. When Jesus touched the bier, the Jewish holiness code said he was contaminated. Jesus’ act, however, said that the higher law of mercy trumps liturgical purity. Then Jesus gave the son back to the mother, just as Elijah gave the Zarephath widow’s son back to her.

Prof. George Caird asserted that there is no doubt that the early church had a strong conviction that Jesus did return to life those whom others had declared dead.(3) In this pair of events Luke forcefully asserted that Jesus is the source of life. That is the church’s task today — to make the same assertion to the world.

Who are the dead today? Brian Stoffregen says that the church needs to continually challenge those who claim to be Christ’s disciples: “If you aren’t experiencing God’s presence in your life and telling others about Jesus, why not?”(4)  The truth is that God has been doing remarkable, miraculous things in us, with us, and even through us — probably every day, at least weekly, most certainly once in while. What are those stories? If we don’t recognize them, then maybe we are the dead. If we do recognize them and don’t tell them, how are we bringing any other of God’s people back to life?

To bring God’s human creatures back to life – out of non-relationship with God to relationship with God – or to use centuries-old theological language, from sin to salvation – to bring God’s human creatures back to life is the mission which God has entrusted the Church. It is the mission which God allowed Jesus to live out in full human flesh.

The currently popular term for doing God’s work through the community of Christ is “missional.” It has gone viral. Congregations have seized upon the word and claim that anything they do in the spirit of missional is part of the work and ministry of Christ. Alan Roxburgh says that “The word ‘missional’ seems to have traveled the remarkable path of going from obscurity to banality in only one decade.”(5)

George Bullard explains it this way:

“If everything the Church does that hints of the Missio Dei [mission of God] is labeled missional, and if every congregation has to figure out how to be called missional, the word and concept loses its meaning. It moves from high expectation to low expectation. It moves from excellence in serving the Missio Dei to mediocre service. It moves from the exceptional to the ordinary. It moves from cutting-edge ministry to commonplace ministry. It moves from fresh, new, and original to banal.”(6)

As Roxburgh suggests, it moves from obscurity to banality. Or more bluntly, it moves from life to death.

George Bullard goes on to say that in order for there to be high expectations for missional service to happen, it has to happen where there is a congregational-wide movement that characterizes everything that is done. That is, it is second nature for the congregation to live in the spirit expressed in the third great parable of Matthew 25: “Just as you did it to the one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Bullard gives a simple definition: “A missional congregation is captivated by the [mission of God], and seeks to make the world more loving and just through spiritually transforming the lives of neighbors.”(7)

Neighbors are defined here in a full global and local context. It is not a geographical neighbor but a theological neighbor. It is not neighbors to be attracted, but neighbors with whom we can represent the incarnational presence of the Triune God.

Missional congregations, while deeply caring for the needs of one another in their own congregation, are externally focused and seek to mobilize their congregations to be received, accepted, caught, embraced, and trusted by their neighbors. Missional congregations do not send missionaries and volunteers into their immediate or world context. Rather they invite people to be received by the neighbors for whom God has given them great passion. To be missional is
• to be received by the people to whom you feel sent
• to be genuine
• to be internal agents within their culture
• to present the gospel in contextually relevant ways
• to share the gospel with people who are becoming our friends.

Jesus was willing to touch the bier of the dead man in order to make or remake a friend for God. Elijah was willing to stake everything on the ongoing generosity of God which had not failed the widow or her son or him. Paul put himself in the presence of the people to whom he was sent. He did not come of his own accord. He did not present a teaching that he had commandeered, he received the teaching directly from Christ.

God calls us to join Christ in raising the dead and in befriending those whom others decree as dead. The church is not funeral home. The church is a birthing room and each of us is called to be a midwife for Christ. Yet most of the births are not going to happen within these sterile walls. They are going to happen in classrooms and barrooms, in back rooms and back alleys, over coffee and cola, bottled water and organic yogurt.

Paul reminded the Roman believers of the quote from the prophet Joel, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” But then he goes on to ask, “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written [in Isaiah 52:7], “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:13-15).

If we are not those feet, if we are not the bringers of good news, if we are not the birthers of new life, then we are more dead than those whom Christ calls us to raise for him. Are we not the people who realize that wherever we are is a place of holy mystery and that God is at work? Are we not the ones who move from quietly worshipful to noisily grateful, telling one and all, “God is here, looking to the needs of his people!” That’s how the news of Jesus spread all through the country. That’s how we got it. That’s how we hand it on.

Thanks be to God.


(1) Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Wed, May 29, 2013 at 1:29 AM
(2) John Shearman, midrash@joinhands.com, Opening Comments for June 6, 2010 which is the Second Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 5. Year C., Sun, May 30, 2010 at 7:03 PM.
(3) George B. Caird, St. Luke. Pelican New Testament Commentaries, (London: Pelican Press, 1963), 110.
(4) Brian Stoffregen, op. cit.
(5) Quoted in Craig Van Gelder and Dwight J. Zscheile, The Missional Church in Perspective: Mapping Trends and Shaping the Conversation, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), p. 1.
(6) George Bullard, “Missional Banality Revisited
Is Being Missional Too Commonplace?” George Bullard’s Journey, May 16, 2013, http://bullardjournal.blogs.com/bullardjournal/2013/05/missional-banality-revisited.html.
(7) Ibid.

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

Introverted Faith

Introverted Faith
1 Kings 18:20-21, 30-39;
Galatians 1:1-12; Luke 7:1-10

More years ago than I can count there was a commercial on television (it may have been in black and white) that featured a boy and his dog. The boy was stroking the dog and singing, “My dog’s better than your dog, my dog’s better than yours; my dog’s better than your dog, he eats Ken-L-Ration. My dog’s better than yours.”

We live in a competitive world and it has been that way for some time. It has to do with the rugged individualism which has been force-fed in our pablum since the days when our ancestors had to survive the wilderness of this continent or the rigors of voyages in steerage or worse and the hardship of immigrant communities. The competitive spirit comes with birth.
Who of us hasn’t overheard a conversation, “My daughter walked at 12 months.” “Well, mine did it at 11 months.” Or “My son got an 800 on his math SAT.” “That’s nice. Mine got perfect scores on the ACT. We won’t go into athletics where the competition is even more intense.

Competition even happens in religion. That’s part of the story read earlier about the contest between the prophets of Baal (450 of them, backed by Jezebel and Ahab), and Elijah, God’s chosen representative against the chief fertility god of the indigenous community. It’s a great story. It has always stirred me. We cheer for Elijah. We love the way Elijah mocks the Baal prophets as they vainly try to get Baal to roast the sacrifice. They chant and sing and gyrate and flagellate themselves in their futile attempt to get their god to ignite the sacrifice.

When they give up and it is Elijah’s turn, he builds an altar with twelve symbolic stones. Then he orders the sacrifice to be flooded with water, not once but three times. If you have ever tried to light a campfire after a downpour, you know how well wet wood burns, let alone gets lit.

Elijah invokes God, who sends such a fire that the drowned offering is consumed – as well as the stones of the altar, the trench full of water and the drought earth dust.

Can’t you hear the chorus in the background singing: “My God’s better than your god, My God’s better than yours....”

The competition doesn’t end there. The story concludes with Elijah ordering that the prophets of Baal be slaughtered. That made Jezebel fiercely angry. She was a princess of Sidon, one of the Phoenician cities that worshiped Baal. She issued a vendetta on Elijah and he fled to the wilderness thinking that he was the only one who worshiped God. But that’s an Elijah story for another time.

At first blush we want to cheer Elijah on with the defeat of the prophets of Baal and their subsequent demise. Good defeats evil. The followers of false idols get what they deserve. The competitive spirit is that great. The history of our faith is replete with the crusade mentality of “We are better than you; our God is better than your idol.” Much of the history of the occupation of Canaan by the Israelites, much of the history of David and his descendants, much of the history of the Israelites in subjugation to neighboring political powers, is as much religious braggadocio as it is political machinations.
When Jesus came along, those in positions of religious power perceived Jesus as a threat because they believed that he put himself in the place of God, a stance they understood as a slap against their understanding of God. The Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, terrorized the followers of Christ until he was confronted by the Lord himself. The Way, as it was called until it became Christianity, was viewed as a threat to the worship of all the various political and domestic gods and goddesses that were popular throughout the regions and cities of the Roman empire where Paul and other evangelists delivered the Gospel in the decades after Christ’s resurrection.

With one vision Constantine gave Christianity the imperial blessing. That led to a spate of bloodshed. The crusades of 11th and 12th centuries were strongly religion based, Christianity against Islam. The rise of the 16th century Protestant Reformation under Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and Cromwell and the resultant Counter Reformation saw a lot of religious conflict based on pride and bragging rights. The Church waged the Inquisition against both Islam and Judaism.

The American Revolution had its religious side. The expansion west and the conflict with the indigenous Native Americans was sometimes as religious as it was territorial. The American Civil War had religious adherents on both sides. Some aspects of European colonization of South America, Africa, and Asia were religion driven. And the 19th century world mission initiative often had Christians going against religions perceived as pagan. Much of the conflict of the world today pits religious world views against each other.

So we Christians are not really sure what to do with brash triumphalism we see in Elijah’s rout of the prophets of Baal. It is one thing to be sure of the faith that we hold. It is another to brandish that faith as a weapon. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church’s attempted protests at funerals for military personnel, natural disaster victims and victims of human inflicted evil are a case in point. Some share their views and many more are appalled and ashamed of them. Add to that the increasing bent towards individualistic and private faith, and what we have is an introverted faith. We keep it to ourselves.

Even within communities of faith we may not feel safe to raise the questions we have, share our doubts and wonderings, offer the views we currently hold, confess that we have changed our minds about some application of faith, or admit that we don’t know something about the faith. We keep it all to ourselves.

If everyone would just believe like we do. If we would all agree on what we believe. We no longer have many of the details of faith in common, even within the church. We find that frustrating, vexing, threatening.

Yet our faith that keeps to itself, our introverted faith, is no longer attractive. On the one hand people don’t want conflict. On the other, people like to have something to believe in, some system of belief on which to hang the strands of their life, some system that makes sense. If we sheepishly, defensively, protectively keep it to ourselves, how will someone else ever find out.

I’ve been reading Gordon McDonald’s book, Who Stole My Church, which is about a pastor working with a group of church leaders to envision how to be faithful to God, and to the details of the faith they love deeply, and yet be open to ways to make the faith accessible and inviting to new generations of potential believers. The pastor talks about the era when everything was rational and orderly. All you had to do was walk a person through the Four Spiritual Laws and they would see their existence as sinners, know their need for the saving grace of Christ, and could then pray the prayer of confession and commitment that would signify their conversion to Christ. The great revivals of Billy Sunday, Dwight L. Moody, and Billy Graham capitalized on this process. People came and people believed. Then they found a place to belong.

The last half century has seen a sea change in the way people react to matters of faith. It is less mind and more heart, less rationality and more emotionality. The rapid and extensive change in the way the world perceives itself and operates has shifted the axis of human reality in the direction of relationships. Curiously that is a lot like the way Jesus did faith. He related to people. He didn’t demand, “Believe this way,” before ministering to them. He met them where they were and he celebrated the occasions when they understood God apart from all the institutional language and tradition. The centurion in the gospel reading understood how God worked and he wasn’t part of the chosen people. He was further ahead in faith than many who were steeped in it.

Our understanding of faith has to grow beyond the unabashed bragging about how great God is, to looking for the ways that people who don’t yet know God or who are estranged from God already know something about the love and grace and peace of God.  We also need to move out of an introverted faith to a strength of faith like Paul’s which enabled him to know what he knew about God and not be threatened by the fact that some people watered down their faith with false doctrines and worldly ways or that they could not be bullied into belief. God doesn’t want a bragging faith or a shy faith. God wants strong faith that stands up to the ways of the world and at the same time sees in the ways of the world points of intersection where God is active in the lives of not-yet-believers.

Christ has set the pattern for the church’s mission. And the good news is alive outside the church. Thanks be to God.

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