Cataracted Christians

Cataracted Christians
1 Samuel 16:1-13; John 9:1-7, 15-17, 25-41

The word from God to Samuel is direct: “God doesn’t look at things like humans do.” How do human beings look on things?

• If the human being is a loan officer at the bank, she’s looking at your bank balance and your FIFO score – are you credit worthy?
• If the human being is the professor, he’s looking at the term paper that is two weeks late and looks a lot like something copied from Wikipedia – Is this work original and did you really try?
• If the human being is a doctor, she’s looking at your MRI, CT scan, ultrasound, and blood tests – What is this patient’s diagnosis and what is the prognosis of wellness?
• If the human being is a human resources director, he’s looking at your employment application and checking primary and secondary references – Does this person have the skills necessary for the position and can she grow with the position?

In all these situations, and countless more, the human being – perhaps you and me – is looking at specific sets of metrics for particular requirements. But if these are examples of how human beings look at people, how then does God see?

Samuel is cast as the human resources director in today’s reading. He’s done this before. He had been in on the anointing of Saul. The donkeys of Saul’s father had wandered off and Saul had no luck in finding them. The servant boy searching with him finally suggested that they find the seer – Samuel – who knew everything. Samuel had been alerted by God that a man from the tribe of Benjamin would be seeking him and Samuel was to anoint him leader of God’s people Israel. Saul was the most handsome young man in all Israel and he stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Saul found Samuel, who relieved his mind about the donkeys, gave him a feast, anointed him as Israel’s leader, and told him how his commission would be confirmed (1 Samuel 9).

Unfortunately Saul's ruling became problematic. He broke the commands which God had given him. Samuel was forced to revoke Saul’s commission, declaring, “The Lord will commission [another] as leader over God’s people, because you didn’t keep the Lord’s command” (1 Samuel 13:14). At a later time, Samuel announced to Saul, “The Lord has ripped the kingdom of Israel from you today. He will give it to a friend of yours, someone who is more worthy than you” (1 Samuel 15:28).

So God sent Samuel to Bethlehem and Jesse’s family to anoint a new king. That was a politically risky move. It could have been seen by Saul to be an act of rebellion. But Samuel went in peace to perform a ritual.

Samuel was all set to find another Saul  – hand-some, strong, massive. Jesse’s eldest son fit that description. Samuel was ready to pounce, but God reined him in. I don’t “look at things like humans do.”  The divine perception of reality differs significantly from our limited human view. When Samuel stopped using just his eyes and relied instead on the spirit of God, he immediately “saw” that the “ruddy,” harp-playing, dancing shepherd-son of Jesse offered the spiritual strength and leadership that Israel would need from its next king.

How many of us, if we were in Samuel’s place as God’s human resources director, would have jumped at the chance to pick Eliab? All right, we might have looked at Abinadab and then chosen between the two. But as God told Samuel, “Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart.” God sees what people are made of. Remember the psalmist said “You have examined me. You know me. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. Even from far away, you comprehend my plans” (Psalm 139:1-2). God sees very differently than we do. A comment made by Sherlock Holmes comes to mind: “My dear Watson, you see, but you do not observe.” How many of us are “seeing” but not really “observing” because we aren’t seeing from a spiritual perspective?

Samuel was invited to see spiritually, to see as God sees, when it came to anointing David as the next king of Israel. Seeing spiritually amounts to believing before seeing. Samuel had to align his faith with God’s will in order to see a king in the ruddy-faced, gangly teen, runt of the Jesse litter, which is how everyone – Jesse included – saw David. The fundamental principle of quantum physics is this: First you believe it, then you see it. If you want examples of this, just watch the new “Cosmos” television series hosted by Neal deGrasse Tyson. Believe then see. In the Christian tradition it was Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century, who said, “I believe, in order that I might understand.”

The man blind from birth to whom Jesus gave sight not only came to see physically, he came to see spiritually, see as God sees. Following his healing he encountered Pharisees who could not see as God sees. The man’s spiritual sight allowed him to see how the Pharisees couldn’t see. The once blind man knew that Jesus was at the very least a prophet. And at a second interrogation by the Pharisees, the man observed,

“This is incredible! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he healed my eyes! We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners. God listens to anyone who is devout and does God’s will. No one has ever heard of a healing of the eyes of someone born blind. If this man wasn’t from God, he couldn’t do this.”

Then when the man met Jesus again, Jesus asked him, “Do you believe in the Human One – the Son of Man?” The man said that he wanted to believe. “You have seen him. In fact, he is the one speaking with you.”

Jesus continued, saying he came into the world to exercise judgment so that those who don’t see can see and those who see will become blind and that failure to see is the consequence of sin.

There are many reasons we can’t physically see. Just look around and see how many of us wear glasses. Then there are some who wear contacts. And many of us have had issues with cataracts that impair our vision. Those can be fixed in several ways: removal, implants, laser surgery. And we are glad for that when any of those are appropriate for our situation.

It is harder to deal with spiritual cataracts. What are those things in us that God can see but we cannot see which prevent us from seeing spiritually? What makes us cataracted Christians? When we are looking for Sauls and Eliabs and Abinadabs, God is looking for people of faith.

Paul told the Corinthian faithful that the first Christians included those who by ordinary standards were not wise, powerful, or from the upper classes. God chose those the world considered foolish to shame the wise, those considered weak to shame the strong, and those considered low-class and low-life – considered by the world as nothing – to reduce what the world considered something to nothing (1 Corinthians 1:26-28).

But look how God used unacceptable people to do wondrous and mighty things. Ordinary people like Moses, who couldn’t talk before people; ordinary people like the twelve disciples, none of them rich, or famous, or studied – just twelve common men with uncommon faith. And if you read the Bible with an eye toward whom God chooses, you will see over and over again that God has let the gospel hang by a thread, committing the future to insignificant people, unnamed and unknown in many cases, but ordinary, not outlandish, in their talents. Look at the young David, a scrawny adolescent chosen to replace the hand-some and charismatic Saul. But David’s obedience to God's word, his faith in God’s presence in his life, and his humility before God when he failed, established him as Israel’s greatest ruler.

So we have two kinds of cataracts: the one which can’t imagine that God can use us for anything to advance the Gospel; and the one which can’t see how God can use someone around us to further Christ’s presence in the world. There is a larger cataract. The cataract that prevents us from seeing that God is still active in the world, that the crucifixion and resurrection still have meaning for the world – not just for me personally, but for every human being other than me, regardless of their worldly status.

Whatever our cataract may be, Christ can remove it. A little spiritual spittle and mud, some confession and repentance, some believing to bring seeing. God sees us as followers, believers, servants, redeemed children of the kingdom.

Once I was blind, but now I see.

Thanks be to God.

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

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Massah and Meribah

Massah and Meribah
Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; John 5:5-26, 28-30, 39-42

Is there anything as miraculous as water? Search the cosmos for other signs of life. So far, planet Earth is the only truly blue planet. Buried ice crystals don’t count. The vast oceans of our world have made it possible for all the life forms we know to develop on our planet. The first creation story in Genesis begins with its feet wet. Before any other creating could occur, God contained the waters. We cannot perceive the primordial beginnings of life without water. And like the earth, we are three-fourths water.

The word “water” comes from an Arabic word for luster and splendor. Often it is used about the luster and transparency of the finest jewels. Water is nature’s jewelry, the very elixir of life.

The readings from Exodus and John deal with the human need for water. In the Exodus reading, the people are so thirsty they threaten Moses’ life and wish themselves back in Egypt. What the people don’t realize, however, is that the water they most desperately need is the living water of faith that God provides. Despite Moses’ warnings, the people seem oblivious to anything but the dust in their throats.

The gospel reading tells of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. In response to Jesus’ words about “living water,” this woman shows great enthusiasm for such a drink. Yet her first response seems to indicate that she looks at this living water as a labor-saving device freeing her from the wearying walk to the well to draw up water for herself and her household. The living water Jesus offers will make her free, but not in the way she imagines.

The two passages of scripture play off each other for a discussion of insecurity and freedom. The woman is greatly insecure because she apparently is not an accepted part of the community. The gift of living water, her acceptance of it, her telling her neighbors, and their welcoming of Jesus, brought the Samaritan woman from insecurity to freedom.

The Israelites were suddenly free from the oppression of the Egyptians. They were also lost because the routine of their lives had suddenly been torn away. Like someone newly retired after forty years in the same assembly line job, they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Being slaves and making bricks for building palaces and temples was hell, but it was their hell, a familiar framework that moved them through their days. And now, after the hurried celebration and the mad dash to the sea, the miraculous crossing through it, and the foundering of the pursuing Egyptian troops, the routine of the people was now pack, tramp, unpack, pack, tramp, unpack, pack, tramp, etc. There was no shelter, no change of scenery, no rest. There was no longer any security in knowing that as hard as it was, there were bricks to make and walls to build. At least there was an end product, however difficult the process was.

It’s not as if the people hadn’t seen any miracles. They knew of the plagues that God had sent. They had seen the results of the lamb’s blood on the lintels and doorposts over which the power of death passed. They had safely crossed the sea which became an avenue of safety for them rather than a barrier of destruction. They had seen the demise of the Egyptian army. They had danced the celebration with Moses and Miriam: “Sing to the Lord, for an overflowing victory! Horse and rider he threw into the sea!”

In the aftermath of victory, there was the realization arising from the security vacuum: “What do we do now? We don’t know what to do. We’ve never had to think for ourselves before.” That insecurity came out and got focused into the need for water. They are no longer in the lush valley of the Nile. They are in the middle of nowhere, in the wilderness. Mob psychology takes over. The chant goes up: “Give us water! Give us water! Give us water!”

The Israelites’ thirst completely wiped out their collective memories of all that God had done for them in the past. They now believed that God had, in a cruel twist of cosmic devilry, brought them into the wilderness to let them perish. So they fling up their nervous prayers to God, asking, “Don’t you love us anymore?”

How quickly they forgot the gracious kindness which God had shown them. How quickly they became ready to snatch defeat from the throes of victory. It was a pattern that would recur throughout the years in the wilderness, the years of settling in the promised land, and the years of the kings. God was constantly faithful, the people were repeatedly ungrateful, right up to the destruction of Israel and Judah by foreign powers.

There very few pastors who haven’t had their Moses moments. The same is true for anyone who has chaired a church committee or task force at the local, regional, or national level. And putting on my presbytery hat, I can say that mid-council staff experience Moses moments as well. “What should I do with this people? They are getting ready to stone me.” We usually think of church work as leading the sheep. Sometimes sheep hear the shepherd’s voice, and sometimes they are too busy looking for choice morsels of grass to listen for the voice of the master. It’s little wonder that leadership is sometimes compared with herding cats or pushing rope or swimming with piranhas.

At the same time, it is not hard to comically imagine God wondering about Moses, “What am I doing to do with you?” After all, Moses frequently ran to God with complaints about the people. His father-in-law, Jethro, had to show him how to delegate the small problems so that he could competently deal with the difficult ones.

It’s a social reality that trivialities do kidnap our attention. Sometimes that is how we cope. We can’t deal with the big problems, the elephant-in-the-middle-of-the-room issues, so we throw up smoke screens and diversions to keep us, so we think, from the unmentionable.

While the Israelites’ craving and need for water was real — water is essential for life — the water is also a metaphor for something more, something deeper. It is about relationship, connection with God. The Israelites had only experienced God indirectly through the plagues, through the Passover, through the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. Moses had spoken with God, and would later be engulfed by God in the cloud of Mt. Sinai. In their insecurity the Israelites wanted the same level of intimacy with God. They were torn between the comforts they knew in a life of slavery and the promise of comforts yet to come in a life of freedom.

The church today lives at Massah and Meribah, arguing with and testing the Lord, wondering, asking, “Is the Lord really with us or not?” And the answer we give ourselves frequently is, “I don’t know.” That’s one reason that people don’t bother to seek out a church. It’s also a reason that there are so many “spiritual, but not religious” folk registering in surveys.

We are in the wilderness after having grown up in fertile but enslaving times of buildings full of people, classrooms overflowing with youth, organizations teeming with people locked into the routines of doing everything imaginable in the name of Christ. Now, in the wilderness, the thundering herds of youth and adults are no longer around. But the routines have to go on. Do this, do that, do this, do that, the same way we have done it for fifty, sixty, seventy years. Why isn’t it working? Isn’t God with us? Is there no water?

Do you remember the first time you ran into a faucet without any hot and cold water handles. We take them for granted now. But when they first came out with an electric eye to turn the water on and off, we were baffled. Is there no water? Moses isn’t whacking rocks any more. The water laden rocks now come in some other form. And we have to find them. It is an ongoing process.

Nearly three years ago we entered into a time of reflection on ministry, a time of appreciative inquiry led by Tim Jones. That process got us through a significant transition which is beginning to yield some wonderful blessings of the Spirit in our midst. Now is the time to take the next steps, to build on what we have learned and experienced, and to move forward with more focused study of the wilderness which is our home.

Two months ago session agreed to join seven other churches in the presbytery in an effort to answer the question, “What is God calling this congregation to do and to be in this time and place?” We could be affirmed in what we are currently doing or we could be challenged by hitherto unthought-of new possibilities. Where is God’s water going to flow for us in 2014 and the next few years?

We know it will flow. And that God’s water will change us in unexpected ways. Just ask the woman at Jacob’s well who met Jesus and learned of his living water. That meeting, that water changed her life and changed the life of her community. What would it be like for us to be changed by Christ’s living water? What would it be like for Waverly?

Massah and Meribah aren’t remembered fondly in the lore of the church. Yet they were a turning point, a pivotal expression of faithful living as the belief that God is indeed with us. Massah and Meribah offer us the opportunity to obey the ever-present God, whom we have come to know in Christ. Faithful living is not finding plentiful resources and comfortable surroundings, but knowing that God is our resource, that God is the basis of our surroundings, that God is indeed with us.

Thanks be to God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Surrogate Father

Romans 4:1-5, 13-22; Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; John 3:1-17

Have you ever try standing on one leg for any length of time? For us this should come with the warning, “Don’t try this at home.” It’s not easy. All our weight is resting on a fairly small area. From a physics standpoint, our weight is not situated close to the foot, but at a distance from it. That means there is a torque force involved that wants to bring our torso weight to a point where it is more stable, that is, the floor. On one foot we wobble and sway until the only way we can have stability is by putting our other foot down. Think of it as self-induced vertigo. As I said, don’t try this at home.

This one-legged instability helps us understand how Paul describes the relationship of his Jewish brothers and sisters to God. They were forever wobbling on the one leg of works. Righteousness – being in a right relationship with God – is the torso weight that is so precariously balanced on the leg of works – obedience to the Law. And they wobble all over the place because of the impossibility of fulfilling all of the Law, not to mention the often competing interpretations of the Law offered by different rabbis.

Paul suggests is that there is another way of diagraming this relationship. His Jewish friends need to put their second foot on solid ground. This second leg is faith. Then what they have in their torsos – righteousness – is now stabilized on two legs, on faith as well as works. “Abraham had faith in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Abraham believed God. Eugene Peterson’s The Message puts it this way: “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”

The Jewish concept of being right with God included only works. Even Abraham was “justified by works,” according to their view. Paul had a different interpretation of scripture: “Abraham had faith in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Righteousness happens only as faith stabilizes works. This became for Paul “the righteousness of faith.” In other words, for Christians, regardless of their background (Jewish or Gentile heritage) righteousness and the works that follow from it proceed only because of faith.

One of the things we have to realize is we use a pretty watered-down understanding of belief. We use it for everything from deeply spiritual matters to “I believe it’s going to rain.” The Greek word which Paul used conveyed the sense of trust in, loyalty to, or commitment to a person. That’s how the our English word “believe” was used in medieval and Elizabethan times. That’s how the King James translators used the word as they were putting their editorial mark of the Bible we came to have. Abraham trusted God, stuck by God.

Today’s understanding of “believe” derives from the influence of the Enlightenment, the intellectual era that rose in the second half of the 17th century, continued into the 19th century, and still holds a significant sway over our thinking in the 21st century. Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill described human thinking in terms of a proposition: if A, then B. So that having faith in God, trusting in God, believing God became subjective: “I believe that God....” The object of trust, loyalty, commitment isn’t a person but a fact or an assertion. The stress of the belief is on the believer, the subject of the “I believe...” statement, rather than on the object, the one who is believed in, trusted in, and who is the recipient of loyalty, namely God. When I say that I believe that God did this or that, it is all about me. I choose to accept the proposition that God does something. It has nothing to do with God’s overwhelming grace which offers me no other choice than to believe and commit myself to God.

We don’t just snap to one day and believe. Paul notes that Abraham “didn’t hesitate with a lack of faith in God’s promise [of a permanent home and of multitudinous heirs], but he grew strong in faith and gave glory to God.” Before he was Abraham, he was Abram and his faith started out only the size of a mustard seed and it faltered more than once. So did Sarah’s faith. They both laughed when they first heard the promise that they would have an heir. Twice Abram gave Sarai away or at least pretended she was his sister, putting the promise of an heir in jeopardy. He adopted a son as his heir (Eliezer of Damascus) lest he die without one. Sarai used Hagar to give Abram a blood heir. Hagar had Ishmael. But Abraham and Sarah both grew in faith and the climax of it all came when Abraham took Isaac and was about to sacrifice him. That’s when Abraham truly and finally came to trust God. He was willing to give up his own offspring — the tangible evidence of God’s grace, presence, and promise — and not trust in his own actions. Could he lose Isaac and still somehow believe God would still fulfill those promises? Abraham was willing to stake his life and that of his son that God could be so trusted.

We live in a results oriented world. There has to be productivity. We are our work. Doing something and getting something for it is the chief end of the economic human being. It’s not new. Jesus tussled with that mind set. He told a parable about workers who were hired at different times during the day and, when they collected their pay at the end of the day, all had received the wage allotted for a full day’s work. The laborers who worked the full shift thought the others should have gotten their wages pro-rated. That’s who we are. We want what’s coming to us and we don’t want anyone getting more than they deserve.

The only problem with that is what we have coming to us, is not something that we really want. We have earned condemnation, not acclamation.

In our church life we think that there ought to be discipleship before doxology (works before faith). Our emphasis too often is on what we are to do for God, what we need to accomplish for God, what we need to provide for God, for God’s church, and for God’s kingdom. We hem and haw around and never really admit to it, but our underlying thought is that if we don’t do all that stuff, we aren’t going to get any of God’s love.

All this colors our thinking about how the world is supposed to work, how people are to perform in a highly individualistic and competitive world. Obviously someone who has a corner office with windows is worth hundreds or thousands of times more than someone in a cubicle in shipping with no windows.

Every time that Abraham tried to work his way into God’s promised future, things fell apart. When he let go of the need to cling to the things of his own making and the things that fell into his life, his faith soared. We don’t work to hoard. Jesus told the story of the landowner who needed bigger barns and lost everything by trying to have everything.

As Paul tells the Romans, “Faith is credited as righteousness to those who don’t work, because they have faith in God who makes the ungodly righteous.” Paul is not talking about idlers. He is talking about those who know that no amount of work that they can do can gain them the eternal blessing. Paul goes on to say, “The promise to Abraham and to his descendants, that he would inherit the world, didn’t come through the Law but through the righteousness that comes from faith.” That doesn’t mean that wishing will make it so. That doesn’t mean that whatever we think the eternal reward might be will be what it is. It doesn’t mean that we believe that if God, then everything will be hunky-dory between now and the kingdom and in the kingdom, too. It means that we put our unreserved trust in God for whatever God’s grand plan for us is. And that plan is our salvation.

We learn a lot from our parents, whether they are biological or not. What we learn from Sarah and Abraham is faith. Abraham “didn’t hesitate with a lack of faith in God’s promise, but he grew strong in faith and gave glory to God,” just as “Jesus matured in wisdom and years, and in favor with God and with people” (Luke 2:52). We can grow in maturity of faith and life as we put every last ounce of our trust in the one whose promise is sure and whose word is not just truth, but life as well. Let us give thanks that we have Abraham as our surrogate father. May our faith be formed as his was.


Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

Fiber Optic Communication

Fiber Optic Communication
2 Peter 1:16-21; Exodus 24:12-18; Matthew 17:1-9

When you ask a person why they climb a mountain, often the answer will be. “Because it is there.” A follow-up question might be, “What did you see when you got to the top?” “More mountains.”

That might be the biblical answer. Think about who many mountains are mentioned in the Bible. There is Mt. Ararat, where the ark bearing Noah, his family and all of life came to rest following the great flood. There is mountain in the land of Moriah where God provided a ram caught in a thicket to be the sacrifice, not Isaac. Then there is Sinai where Moses encountered God first in a burning bush and later, to the amazement of the Israelites, in the cloud and lightning. Of course, there is Mt. Carmel where God through Elijah bested the prophets of Baal, an event which caused a scared Elijah to flee to another mountain only to find God in the sound of silence telling him not worry and to get back to work.

We have spent the last four weeks on another mountain, working our way through the first third of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ opening declaration of what God’s rule was all about. Now we find ourselves on another mountain with Jesus, a mountain where he is transfigured before the eyes of three of his disciples. From this mountain we can theologically see the Mount of Olives from which he initiated his final visit to Jerusalem, often referred to as Mt. Zion. And if we look off into the distance, we can see Mt. Calvary where Jesus will be crucified, and beyond that an unidentified mountain where the risen Jesus blessed his disciples, commissioned them for ministry, and took his physical leave from them.

No wonder the psalmist says that he raises his eyes to the mountains, the likely source of God’s help. It is not that God doesn’t act everywhere – God does – but God seems to do some of God’s most memorable work on mountains.

One of the metaphorical mountains of show business – the movie business in particular – is tonight’s annual presentation of the Academy Awards, the Oscars. There are perennial nominees, some of whom have won multiple times and others who have never won. There are some new nominees who will go on to be favorites, and there are some who may have one great film and will become lost in obscurity. It is a mountaintop experience for everyone. Who wouldn’t like some red carpet to strut down? We know that Jesus never got a red carpet. He did get palm branches and cloaks.

At the Oscar ceremony, we never know what will happen, who will win, and how they will respond. Many will babble on trying to thank everyone from Adam onward. Others will acquit  themselves smartly with few words. One actor many years ago reportedly strode to the microphone, said, “Thank you,” and walked off the stage. After the show is over, few will remember what was said; even Ellen Degeneres’ jokes won’t last long. And the whole mountain will disappear into the clouds of memory until it rises Brigadoon-like a year from now.

Jesus’ words are not so short-lived. That’s one thrust that the author of the Second Peter letter wished to give the readers. The number of years was growing from the time of Jesus’ transfiguration to the writer’s time. The first-hand memory of the event was getting worn with age. More or less was remembered. The accuracy of memory wasn’t as sharp as it once was. And for those who only knew the event second-, third-, or fourth-hand, the impact of the mountaintop experience was growing less.

Christians were beginning to wonder if the risen Jesus on whom they had pinned all their hope really was special. Perhaps he wasn’t who everyone said he was after all. Perhaps his fifteen minutes of limelight had run its course. Perhaps his light was fading. People had banked their lives on the message which people like Peter, James, John, Paul and others had passionately and courageously spoken. Had the gospel had its day? The blessings didn’t seem to be there. The persecution was mounting. That was a strange way of confirming the hope of peace and life. The people were feeling anything but blessed.

Blessing has nothing to do with choosing God. Jesus didn’t choose God. God chose him: “This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him.” God chose the believers to whom the Peter letter was written. God chose us. Our blessing is being chosen by God, not how many cars are in the garage or shoes in the closet or books on the shelf. The blessed life is not a “cosmic lottery where every sincere prayer buys another scratch-off ticket.”(1)

The view from the mountain of the transfiguration didn’t face heavenly bliss. It faced a world laced with oppression, a world filled with indignities done by human beings to human beings, a dynamic world where rocks quakes, wind blows, fires rage, floods sweep, and pestilence spreads. Life is weird as well as wonderful. Life is stupid as well as smart. Living can be two-faced. A pundit has quipped that if a politician knew there were cannibals in the audience, he would promise a missionary in every pot.

The world is filled with wannabe messiahs and over-achieving purveyors of religious pablum of all kinds. Jesus pulls no punches about the world. He does not hide his head in the sand. When the mother of James and John sought the seats of honor in the kingdom for them, he asked with irony if they are able to drink the cup that he was about to drink. In ignorance, delusion, and naivete they quickly said they could. To which Jesus replied that they would indeed get to drink that cup.

Going back to the Oscar image, the mountaintop experience of Jesus is not like getting the award for best supporting actor. It is more akin to the lifetime achievement award. After all, Jesus didn’t give it to himself. Some starlet or hunk didn’t mangle his name into the microphone. This recognition was given by God – the biggest actor, director, producer, script writer, lyricist, casting director, set-designer, cinematographer, film editor, etc., etc., etc.

And if it were a lifetime achievement award, it would be based on a body of work. Look who Jesus was standing with: Moses and Elijah. These were the heart of the Hebrew scripture. The scene is set in such a way as to subtly say that their work was really Christ’s work in disguise. “This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him,” is a recognition that Christ’s divinity and his emerging kingdom has been an ongoing work since the beginning of time.

For Peter the implications are clear. If the transfiguration really took place, which Peter as an eyewitness is staking his life on, then despite persecution, despite false teachers, and despite a kingdom that’s seen only in part but still longed for in full, this Christ is worth hitching our hope to. He cannot fail us. Likewise, his truth — both captured in what would be known as the Old Testament, and proclaimed among his first-century hearers in what would become the New Testament — is absolutely trustworthy. After all, when someone rises from the dead, you believe what he tells you. You trust him. And when the most respected religious figures in history come back from the dead to say the same the thing, you really, really trust Jesus and what he has to say.

But Peter goes even further. He refers to this truth of Christ, this “prophetic word,” as more than a revelation in the past that we can trust today. He speaks of it in the present tense, as an active reality in our lives: a lamp currently, actively “shining in a dark place.” We tend to think of light being a beam or emanating glow from a source. What makes are telecommunication so cheap today is fiber optics. Signals are transmitted along wires translucent material. One of the great attributes of fiber optics is that light will travel along the transmitting fiber and go around corners and into places that a beam of light can’t reach. More than that, a single strand of fiber optic material can transmit hundreds, if not thousands, of signals, all at different wavelengths of light.

We, like Peter, are at the end of one of those optical fibers and the prophetic, gospel word of Jesus is reaching us across the centuries and seas, across geography and language. Jesus needs no Oscar acceptance speech. All we need is the light-communicated word, “Listen to him!” That message is still meaningful. Sure, he's long since left the mountain, but, like a good movie that never, ever gets old, his words are still echoing, still reaching, still relevant and still cutting a streak of light into our world of darkness.(2)

May it indeed be so. Amen.

(1) Scott Dannemiller, “The One Thing Christians Should Stop Saying,” The Huffington Post, Posted: 02/27/2014 3:43 pm EST;  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-dannemiller/christians-should-stop-saying_b_4868963.html
(2) General source: Homiletics, March 2014, pp. 8-10.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

God's People Surprise the World

God’s People Surprise the World
Matthew 5:38-48; Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-19; Psalm 119:33-40

Our four-week study of the first third of the Sermon on the Mount comes to an end today. The sermon is Jesus’ affirmation of his grand policy speach about what the realm of God’s rule looks like and what may be expected of those who are part of that realm – God’s people. They are generations of people like you and me. The language has changed, the geographical location has varied, and the clothing and culture has changed. If you don’t think so, just think about all the different clothing and hair styles that we have lived through in our lifetimes.

The core of Jesus’ manifesto of kingdom life has not changed over all the generations. In every age the people who best exemplified kingdom living have surprised, indeed shocked, the world. That’s what God’s people do. Building on a lifestyle that stands with the least, the last, and the lost — those who receive no honor and are often dishonored — God’s people have character. They are engaged with the world, and they play fair by being in a right relationship with God, with other people, with people of the other gender, in intimate relationships, and in fulfilling solemn promises. Often this deeper, fuller understanding of relationship — what Jesus labels as greater righteousness — runs counter to the ways of the world. Hence, God’s people continuously surprise the world with behaviors which are unexpected, and, admittedly, unwelcomed by the reigning powers of the world which either hide behind God-language or outwardly flout God.

In the preceding seventeen verses Jesus talked about murder, adultery, and taking oaths. As he wraps up this section of his sermon, he’ll talk about not resisting and about love, in other words, how we with our “greater righteousness” are to deal with enemies. If the world was surprised by the previous behaviors, it will be astounded by the response God’s people give to enemies and oppressors.

The “law of retaliation” (given three times in the Torah(1)) gave an injured party the right to inflict the same kind of pain or injury on the person who caused the original pain or injury. On one hand, this law sets limits on the amount of retaliation one can seek. If someone broke your finger, you couldn’t chop of his hand – or his head. On the other hand, the law turns the victim into the same kind of bully as the one who caused the injury. When we hit back at the person who hit us, we become like them. When we shout back at the one shouting at us, we become like them. When we shoot back at those shooting at us, we become like them.

Unfortunately, too often you and I don’t want to get even, we want to hit back harder or more times. We want to do worse to them than they did to us. Then we become worse than them – and we try to justify our actions. Even more than that, we have let “them” determine how we will act. When we let “them” control our feelings and actions, we are not living under heaven’s rule – letting “heaven” control our lives. Mahatma Gandhi pointed out the ultimate extension of this kind of behavior: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” At some point someone has to stop getting even and poking out eyes.

The slap on the right cheek was not a Muhammad Ali left hook. The slap was most likely done by a right-handed person which means that the slap was with the back of the hand. That’s a sign of insult. Rather than insult back, turn the left cheek to the individual. And it can’t be slapped with the right hand. Their power has been removed from them. We don’t have to lower ourselves to their level.

The same approach seems to be the sense of the other images. If a person is willing to give up a coat – in essence, go naked – when someone sues to take a shirt, then the individual hasn’t let “them” – the suer – determine what they are going to do. By being willing to give even more than they want, their power is removed.

Warren Carter suggests that the coat is a metaphor for responding to a larger systemic oppression. He writes:

“Why strip oneself naked in court? This gesture represents the stripping away of land and property which the creditor is enacting. By standing naked before one’s creditor who has both garments in his hand, one shames and dishonors the creditor. Nakedness exposes, among other things, the greed and cruel effect of the creditor’s action and the unjust system the creditor represents. Removing clothing, along with all that it represents (status, social relations, power, gender, etc.), reveals the basic humanity which should unite the indebted and creditor. The act enables the poor to take some initiative against power that seems ultimate. The act protests by unmasking the powerful one’s heartless demands as inhuman, and the act offers the possibility of a different relationship, even reconciliation. A changed system is not guaranteed, but God’s reign has exposed the nature of the present system and pointed to an alternative.”(2)

God’s people surprise the world by responding not as the world responds but by responding in such a way as the sin, the evil, the greed, the heartlessness of living without God is exposed, brought to the light of God’s judgment to be seen for what it is by one and all. It is the perpetrator of evil who is ultimately stripped naked.

We can put this into a different perspective. What kind of predicament would each of us be in if God decided to “get even” with us? We repeatedly turn away from God. We deny God daily with our words and our lives and our thoughts. We disobey God. We ignore God. For all we’ve done and haven’t done, God would have the right to “get even” and destroy us. That isn’t what God does. That isn’t what we are to do.

Thus we are to love our enemies, not get even with them. Nowhere in scripture does it say to hate the enemy. Nowhere. It probably became pseudo-scripture, because it seemed appropriate. If you can’t love someone, then you hate them. And hating someone means that it is easier to love the neighbor. Those who seek to become righteous by obedience to the law will find a way to make the law obeyable. Thus the law gets interpreted as loving some people and allowing hatred for others. That’s not what God intended, that’s not what Jesus now commands us.

We are to love our enemies. This love is not just an inner feeling. It means doing something for the benefit of the other person, doing something that helps the other person, regardless of one’s feelings for that person or what one has to do. We are not to demonize those we disagree whether it is politics or religion or child-rearing. When we make them into demons we permit ourselves to believe that it is all right to hate them. That is not Jesus’ way. As Christians, we should always be conscious of the fact that every person has been created by God. All of us are children of the same heavenly Father, who sends sun and rain, snow and drought on the righteous and unrighteous alike.

Thus Jesus says that God’s people are to be “complete” – perfect – as God is complete/perfect. This can be paraphrased: “You are to be all-embracing in your love, in imitation of God, whose love embraces all.”(3) Eugene Peterson in The Message puts the verse this way: “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

To be “complete” or “perfect” means not dividing our love — extending it to some people and keeping it from others. It means whole-hearted love for all people — just as God has shown his whole-hearted love for all people — including us — by not getting revenge, but giving everything for us that makes for peace between God and us.

If that doesn’t surprise the world, nothing will.


(1) Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:19-20; Deuteronomy 19:21.
(2) Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins: Sociopolitical and Religious Reading (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000), p 152.
(3) Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew (Interpretation Commentary Series) (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), p. 62.

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

Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

God's People Play Fair

God’s People Play Fair
Matthew 5:21-37; Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 119:1-8

We are taking the month of February to look at the first of the three chapters which make up the section of Matthew’s gospel traditionally called “The Sermon on the Mount.” The opening chapter is essentially Jesus’ vision for the faithful community, the church.

Two weeks ago we looked at the opening verses, the “Beatitudes,” which define the character of the faithful of community. The first four beatitudes focused the nature of God’s rule as it happens for people who experience no honor. The second four beatitudes promise ultimate rewards for the people who live their lives in such ways as to benefit the those mentioned in the first four. Jesus changed the focus of the final beatitude from others to his hearers when they commit themselves to the righteousness and justice of those who lack them.

Last week we talked about Christ’s followers being particularly salt, and how the subtle ways of the world will rob believers of their saltiness, as desalination processes remove salt from sea water. Jesus called his hearers to a greater righteousness which we defined as fulfilling the Law and not just obeying it. Fulfilling the Law requires a relationship with the Law-giver, to know God’s intentions through the Law and what actions are right for each situation. That is the way in which God’s people in relationship with Christ, engage the world to flavor, challenge, and preserve so that God’s Law may be fulfilled.

So, God’s people have the character of righteousness and justice, and they are engaged with the world to flavor and challenge it. The way that they do that is that they play fair. You perhaps have heard it said about someone that they “play well with others.” That’s a great definition for Christians, for playing well with others is what showing mercy, having pure hearts, and making peace is all about.

The greater righteousness of Jesus centers on relationships. It is more than outward acts. Inner attitudes are also involved. When there is inner anger at another person, even if there are no outward actions, the relationship is destroyed. When there is inner lust in the heart, even if there are no outward actions, the relationship is cheapened. When there are acts of revenge or even feelings of wanting to get even, nothing is done to help build or re-establish the relationship. Playing fair is not a white-washed facade. Playing fair is more than skin deep. It goes to the very core of a believer’s being.

Righteousness can be defined in several ways. One way is to say that righteousness is doing everything rightly. Perhaps it’s having a clear job description and doing everything on the list, or having 10 commandments or 300 commandments and obeying every one of them, or never driving over the speed limit, or having a personal code of ethics and living one’s life within those rules. This way of defining righteousness means doing what is right, obeying the law, acting according to the rules.

Righteousness can be defined also as a right relationship – a relationship not based on what you do, but who you are. It is loving and caring for others. It is being loved and cared for by others. It is trusting that the other will be faithful to the relationship. In biblical terms, this is righteousness by faith – or righteousness by trust. It has little relationship to the righteousness by law.

One way of describing righteousness by relationship is to look at the bond between parents and children. There is a promise and a commitment given. In the beginning, it is a promise only expressed by the parents to the children. “We will be your parents and you will be our child. We will love and care and sacrifice for you throughout your life.” An infant doesn’t know what’s going on, but without these promises from the parents and the parents carrying through on those promises, children would not survive. Parents care for children. Children grow up to love their parents. Children learn to get along with each other. These are models for the right relationship that God earnestly desires to have with us and that God in Christ invites believers to participate in.

Unrighteousness is all those acts, words, thoughts, and feelings that cheapen the relationship between people. Righteousness is all those acts, words, thoughts and feelings that maintain, establish, or re-establish good relationships between people.
The remainder of chapter five, the first third of the Sermon, is driven by Jesus saying, “You have heard that it was said..., but I say to you....” If we aren’t paying close attention, we will likely say that the original quotation must be from God. The original kernel of the thought might have come from God, but it has gone through interpretation between the original thought and the current understanding.

• “Don’t commit murder” is part of the law (Ex. 20:13; Deut. 5:17), but “all who commit murder will be in danger of judgment” is not scriptural.
• “Don’t commit adultery” is part of the law (Ex. 20:14; Deut. 5:18).
• “Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord” has similarities to commands found in the Hebrew scriptures: “You shall not swear falsely by my name, desecrating your God’s name in doing so” (Lev. 19:12); “When a man makes a solemn promise to the Lord... he cannot break his word” (Num. 30:2); “When you make a promise to the Lord your God, don’t put off making good on it” (Deut. 23:21).

Jesus does not seem to be presenting a new law which opposes that Law that God had given to Moses. It seems more likely that Jesus is interpreting the Law in opposition to popular interpretations in his day. Jesus is filling up or fulfilling the law with his interpretation.

Fulfilling the law with true interpretation is a heavy task. Any preacher who seeks to be truly salt and light for the Christ community and the world is exceedingly conscious of the gravity of the work to which she or he is called. Preachers stand in a position of authority. We are on a raised dais high above. That’s for sight and hearing. But people raise us even higher. If a preacher says it, it must be true. I pray that I do correctly interpret Christ to you, and I pray just as earnestly that the Spirit enables you to hear what Christ says, even if I get it wrong.

We cannot manufacture righteousness. It is a gifts we receive through being in relationship with our Lord. Jesus simply rejects the question of how one can become righteous in God’s eyes. It all depends  on the human heart. The heart can be totally devoted to God and to righteousness only when it is genuinely devoted to others.

Jesus changes the location of authority. It is no longer in the written text or with those who interpret it. It is now located in Jesus. Remember, Jesus’ post-resurrection parting words, “I have received all authority in heaven and on earth.” If in the evangelist John’s terms, Jesus is the “Word” made flesh, then Jesus is his own interpreter.

God’s people are to play fair in the ways we relate to each other in public and private, in relationships with individuals of the other gender, with intimate relationships, and with the fulfilling of solemn promises. While God’s people occasionally get caught with the first three, often very visible, forms of fracturing of relationships, the last is often unnoticed and expected. The lack of keeping one’s word slowly eats up a congregation’s vitality. The first three kinds of breaking relationships are not related to the “evil one” (v. 37). This one destroys the trust and community relationship that should be the visible witness of God’s people. If one can’t trust the word of God’s people, can the lack of trust in God’s word be far behind? Failure to keep our word conflicts with the certainty of God’s Word.

Jesus offers these as examples of the greater righteousness and of living under God’s rule. They are models to help us discover the ways we are to act under God’s rule, not hard and fast rules written in stone. The power of the Law can be so intense that it burrows deep into our lives to expose our sin and lead us to repentance and the forgiveness that Jesus came to bring us. Forgiven and freed from rote obedience, we can fulfill the law – live as Christ calls us to live – in relationship played fairly through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com 
Copyright 2014 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.

God's People Are Engaged

God’s People Are Engaged
Matthew 5:13-20; Isaiah 58:1-12; Psalm 112; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16

Northern California is delighted to be getting significant rain fall this weekend, and snow in the higher elevations. Sure that makes the skiers happy, but it also makes the natural resource agencies and water agencies happy as well. Much of California has been experiencing prolonged drought. And the reservoirs are drying up. In other parts of the country, underground aquifers are being tapped out and wells are having to be drilled deeper. In our region people are concerned about the chemical spill into the water source for a major part of the population of West Virginia. Other folks are concerned about what fracking will do to ground water supplies.

When three-fourths of the earth’s surface is covered with water, it seems ironic that we have problems with water supplies. Of course the problem is that the bulk of the water that covers the planet is salt water. We will occasionally gargle with salt water for a sore throat. And nearly every IV drip in the hospital is a saline solution (also currently in shortened supply). We can’t drink salt water. After dips in the ocean we rinse the salt brine off of our bodies. So other than specialized uses, all that water is of no use.

Technology is advancing to make it easier to make fresh water out of salt water. A few years ago Singapore opened a desalination plant that can produce 36 million gallons of fresh water a day, a tenth of their need. That much water may help Singapore’s 5.4 million people, but would only be a drop in the bucket for California’s population that is more than seven times Singapore’s.

While salt can be removed from water, adding or removing salt from other things is not so easy. Who of us hasn’t had some food that was too salty? I suspect that there are not very many anchovy lovers here. A grain or two of salt can open a great flavor, a whole lot of salt will ruin a bowl of food. Since none of you ever met my mother, you needn’t take offense at one of her pet peeves, if it applies to you. My mother was a good cook who carefully seasoned food, but she was always upset by people who grabbed the salt shaker and applied it liberally before ever tasting the food presented.

There is a fine line between too little and too much salt.

We are used to pure salt. I once bought a box of store brand of salt and when I got home I was told that the only acceptable brand was Morton’s with the girl and the umbrella. We can’t imagine salt not being salty. Yet not everyone has access to pure salt. This was probably the case with people of Jesus’ time and place. When sodium chloride is found mixed with impurities, particularly in humid weather, the salt will leach out leaving behind the impurities. Then the stuff that was supposed to be salt won’t be salty. And there is no way of getting the saltiness back. The impure stuff has to be thrown away and replaced.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth....You are the light of the world.” It is important to note that these are not imperatives: “Be salt!” “Be light!” They are indicatives, affirmations: “You (plural) are salt!” “You (plural) are light!” Jesus doesn’t ask us to be something we are not. He asks us to be what we are. His words are a warning against failing to be what we are.

If we are salt, how do we lose our taste? When the purity of our faith is adulterated, the pure “salt” may slowly slip away leaving us with a “tasteless” faith which may be impossible to restore to its pure form.

In a chemical desalination process, the sodium chloride molecules are induced to attach themselves to certain other compounds and leave the water behind. The same thing happens to some of Christ’s people. Ideas and attitudes are constantly floating around believers which can cause Christians to attach to other ideologies and saviors. That’s not to say that the world or culture is universally evil and that we should run for the hills or dig a subterranean bomb shelter. We do have to keep alert and distinguish foolishness from wisdom, and worldly acclaimed wisdom from God’s truth.

Another desalination process is osmosis. The salt water is run through a series of membranes and filters that strip off the salt molecules. Christians can lose their saltiness in a similar way. We linger too long at the water cooler. The idle talk, the off-color jokes, and a subtle shift in attitudes will grab our saltiness. We tango with idolatry in what we think are innocuous ways until one day we find that we have lost our Christ-salt and have become tasteless.

The traditional way of desalting water is to distill it. The water is brought to a boil and comes off as steam which is captured and allowed to cool. Since water and salt become gaseous at different temperatures, the salt stays behind. Christians as just as human as everyone else. When pressure mounts in our lives there has to be a release. We hit a boiling point and flip out. When confronted with brokenness we react with brokenness, and before we know it, rather than being the people of God’s world — people who flavor, challenge and preserve godly values and present a godly presence — we are just like everyone else in the people’s world.

If you remember that I said earlier that Jesus said, “You (plural) are the salt of the earth, ...the light of the world.” That’s ‘Y’all’ if you are of southern heritage. That means that we together are salt. So while each one of might think of ourselves as a grain of salt with little impact, together, as the church, we are a box of salt. That’s important. We need to work together to watch each other’s back, to guide each other when we are being attracted away from Christ, when we are being filtered away from Christ, when we are being distilled from Christ. Together we can maintain and protect our common saltiness for the glory of Christ and the sake of the world which God loved so much in him.

Thomas Long in his commentary on Matthew  titles the section on salt and light, “What Good Is the Church?” He begins his answer with: “The church that lives according to the vision expressed in the Beatitudes is a colony of the kingdom of heaven placed in the midst of an alien culture.” He concludes, “The point is that the church, like salt, has one purpose — to live the kingdom life in the world. Whenever the church loses sight of that mission and becomes something else — a social club or a theological debating society, for example — it becomes as worthless as salt would be if it weren’t salty.” (1)

The church — God’s people — are engaged in the world. Steven McKinley wrote, “This is how the Christian life is lived … in community. Sinful community? Yes. Imperfect community? You bet. But still lived in community, and I will not apologize for being part of that community, nor for inviting, encouraging, and urging others to be part of it.”(2) That’s the salt and light effect, flavoring and challenging the world.

God’s people have been doing this for centuries. Church people established religious colleges and created social service agencies, like the Welfare House and the Outreach Council. God’s people engage the world through ministering in prisons, nursing homes and hospitals. God’s people go to where the natural and human-made disasters happen and they stay after the first responders leave. God’s people were often the ones to spearhead the creation of shelters for orphans, battered women, runaway youth, and homeless veterans. It is a battered, bloody, and bedraggled world to which Christ came as savior, and Christians engage with it.

When Jesus calls his hearers — me, you, the church — to greater righteousness, that involves our “insides” matching our “outsides”. That’s the point of the rest of this chapter when Jesus reinterprets the law. If we are called to follow Jesus, who came to fulfill all righteousness, then we, too, need to seek to “fulfill all righteousness” or as Jesus will say later in the Sermon: “Desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (6:33 CEB).

If “righteousness” is defined as “doing what God requires,” then the “greater righteousness” might be fulfilling the Law rather than just obeying the Law. Obedience to the Law only requires an understanding of the legal codes. Fulfillment of the Law requires a relationship with the Law-giver, in order to know God’s intentions through the Law and what actions are right for each situation.

God’s people, in relationship with Christ, engage the world to flavor, challenge, and preserve so that God’s Law, God’s rule may be fulfilled.

Thanks be to God.

(1) Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Westminster Bible Companion) (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), pp. 51-52.
(2) Quoted by Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” Matthew 5:13-20, February 9, 2014.