17 May 2009 John 15:9-17

Posted on May 15, 2012 by genesis

A lawyer talking to law school graduates at the University of Texas lamented that one of the most difficult parts of her job is to try and sort out, in any murder case, who lives, and who dies, and most importantly, who gets to decide. Is it the lawyers, the judges, the juries, or is the decision made by the police when they begin their investigation. We all know the consequences are not the same in every case. We all know the law is not perfect.

This lawyer has seen some who live and some who die. She has seen the decision be made in some cases by lawyers and the force of their arguments, and in some cases by judges and their sentencing philosophies, and in other cases by juries and their sense of revenge or their sense of leniency.

But despite the differences, when this lawyer took the oath of office to uphold the law she took an oath to be obedient to the law.
John’s gospel this morning is asking that we who profess to be Christians be obedient to Jesus’ command. That we also know life and things like blessings and joys, grace and hope are not always in our control. Any more than death and struggles and pain and grief and worry and fear are ultimately in our control.

But we trust in our Lord. We trust Jesus when he commands us to abide in his love. We trust him when he tells us the best way to do this is to keep God’s commandments. Keeping Gods commandments insures we will abide in God’s love.
As Christians we believe God’s law, unlike human law, is perfect. We live in that perfection when we live God’s greatest commandment, loving one another as he has loved each of us. But, this is not all we believe.

As professing Christian’s, we believe that God is sovereign. That God’s law is absolute, ultimate, and perfect. We believe that God is our loving Lord, the ruler of the universe as well as the powers and principalities of this world and the next and that we are called by God to be God’s children.

As professing Christians, we believe in God’s providence. We believe that in all things and all times, good and bad, God will provide for us. God will provide for us, not as we desire, but as God sees fit. We believe that God’s providence is good.

As professing Christians we are called by God to follow Jesus, to live our lives following his example. Jesus’ life was lived more perfectly than any human can live it, for he lived in complete and unwavering obedience to God. Sure, there were times he cried out to God, but in all things he asked that God’s will be done.

This may be out greatest struggle. Living obediently is so hard and we confess, sometimes we simply cannot even make ourselves be obedient. We sin. Our nature is as an evil, sinful, obstinate, selfish human being.

Yet, despite the truth of our existence, God chose to help us. We have received God’s son, who shows us the way to the truth and the light. Jesus shows us the way to stop sin, the way to live with and for God and the way to a life of obedience to God’s commands.

Years ago, during the “Iranian Hostage Crisis” one author said that he had a conversation with a woman, a secretary at the university where he worked; who told him that she had gotten to know a graduate student from Iran. She had even received him into her home where he lived with her family.

Because of the Iranian revolution, his funds had been cut off and she was trying to find him odd jobs in town to help him support himself. He heard her story when she tried to get him to hire the young man to work in his yard. “Does he support the revolution and the taking of the hostages?” I asked. “He thinks it’s all just wonderful,” she replied.

“Well I think it’s rather remarkable that you have befriended him as he supports enemies to our country who are holding our citizens captive and that you are working to help him out, that you have received him into your home. How did you come to do that?” he asked in amazement.

She slammed her fist down on her desk saying, “I don’t get to decide because I am a Christian. You think this is easy?”
This woman understood obedience. She doesn’t get to decide who God loves. She doesn’t get to decide who Jesus loves. Her job, and ours, is to be obedient, to follow Jesus’ commandment that we love one another as Jesus loved us. That we love each and every one God sends our way. We don’t get to decide who lives and who dies. Our job is to be faithful and obedient to God’s insistence we love. We know loving is not always easy.

Yet, In the midst of the sometimes harsh reality of this calling, there is good news. For you see dear friends, Sunday always comes! The day God gave us for worship always comes. It is the day the Lord has made and we are to rejoice and be glad in it. For when Sunday comes we have the chance to remember our vow of obedience, to take stock of when we have loved, when we could have loved without strings attached, and also when we did not love as Jesus’ expects.

This month there will be many graduations in and around Austin. Not only from school, but there will be graduations from families too, as folks leave home for college, or the military, or to get married, or to go off to work. There will be graduations from careers as people get laid off or retire or burn out and start something new. Even death is a graduation of sorts, a graduation from this imperfect life to a more perfect one.

Who lives, who dies, who decides? I don’t know. It is simply not ours to say. Our calling is different. Jesus commands his disciples to follow him, to be obedient and to love him by living as he lived. Even to death on the cross.

Clint Eastwood has acted and directed in a number of great movies. One of my favorites is Gran Torino. In it Eastwood stars as Korean War veteran, Walt Kowalski, a deeply unhappy and tormented man incapable of dealing with the decline and decay of his world. Walt cannot cope with change, and his only reaction is anger and blatant racism.

Walt’s physical and emotional decline parallels the decline he sees in society, and in particular his own neighborhood. When an Asian family moves in next door, Walt feels nothing but contempt and hatred for those he deems something less than human.
The teenage son next door becomes the target of street gangs and is forced into trying to steal Walt’s only prized possession, his 1972 Gran Torino. Walt is livid. But he figures things out quickly and realizes his greatest threat is from the street gang that bullied the teenage boy to attempt to steal his car.

Defending this new threat to his property, Walt finds himself helping his neighbors against the gang. To his surprise they treat him with the utmost gratitude and thanksgiving. Initially put of by their praise, Walt slowly accepts their appreciation. Even more slowly, he begins to care about what happens to them.

Without meaning to, Walt becomes a protector and hero to the family and the salvation of the teenage boy becomes Walt’s mission in life. People who meant nothing to Walt, in fact, people he despised and reviled, become his reason for living. Love discovers Walt and he takes up his cross for a greater good.

Being obedient, we do not decide who is in, who is out, or who is worthy. No, our grounding purpose is to be obedient. And finding the only real purpose possible as a Christian, we love the others God sends our way so we may ultimately know God’s love.

We then discover we are willing to sacrifice our own lives as we care for our enemies, those we see as less than human, even those we despise and revile, to prove such love. This is the life we have chosen when we took our Christian vows.

We enter this new life each day by being in the arms of the one who first loved us, our God almighty. We may stay in those arms each moment of each day in simple whispered words of faithful prayer and worship, in steady attentive study of God’s word and in simple humble acts of love.

Jesus promises us, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen 051312.gpc

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29 April 2012 “The Good Shepherd” John 10:11-18

Posted on May 1, 2012 by genesis

Recently I read a wonderful story about a caring church very much like ours. Stan Wilson, who is pastor of a church in Mississippi, wrote about what seems to be quite common, that many churches have unwritten rules.

Having served in a few churches, I’ve found this to be true. But churches do not have a monopoly on unwritten rules. We find them at home, we find them at work, we find we have them with our friends and, perhaps most notably, with our families.

Raising children, or husbands for that matter, requires rules. Some are put in place before a child is born, or before a marriage. Others materialize as we discover the unique life styles children and spouses choose for themselves and for us. Many rules are spoken quite clearly, others are created on the fly, and some, well, let’s just say rule bound folk can, if they wish, wiggle around any rule any authority anywhere has ever created to try to bring sanity and safety to an otherwise chaotic world.
The unwritten rule at the church where Stan Wilson serves is a good rule for a church. Their rule is they will never ignore a member’s basic need. I believe we Presbyterians have that same unwritten rule. We never ignore a member’s basic needs.

In our Gospel reading this morning, John creates for us the image of Jesus as the good shepherd. As a good shepherd, Jesus, by his nature, attends to folks basic needs. In this good shepherd image, attending as he does, Jesus has influenced how the church views him and his relationship with each of us in a number of ways.
First, Jesus as the good shepherd, as a leader, has influenced the church’s images of its own leaders, so that in many traditions the ordained minister is referred to as the ‘pastor’, and taking care of the congregation is referred to as ‘pastoral care.’

Jesus is also seen as the gate for us sheep. When Jesus says, “I am” like he does in John’s gospel, the possible images of Jesus available to us are endless. The images of Jesus as the good shepherd and the gate and the great “I am” are intensely relational; they have no meaning without the presence of the sheep.

We sheep who gather around Jesus receive our identity as members of his flock. And as members of his flock, we cannot be separated from who Jesus is when he says “I am the good shepherd.”

We are being asked this morning to consider from a fresh vantage point what it means for us as a church to live as Jesus’ sheep. And to ask ourselves, are we living our life according to the model for community envisioned here by Jesus. His model is one grounded in mutual love for one another. His is a model lived out for us in the relationship of Jesus and his followers. Or have we forgotten we are all members of the same flock, that we are all one in God’s eyes. Whether we are Christian, or Jew, Muslim or atheist, we are of the same flock.

This may sound counter intuitive to our notion of Jesus’ ministry. How can those who do not believe be shepherded by Jesus? As we expect, Jesus does not see the world the same way we do. Jesus believes in us whether we believe in him or not!

He is, after all, the good shepherd and as such he makes a claim on all sheep. How could he do otherwise? Jesus, we find, sees the world collectively. We are all members of a special group, a family unit. We are members all of the body of Christ.

As a collective of sheep, we owe our ongoing grace to the protection given us by our good shepherd. We know wolves attack sheep individually but the shepherd protects us collectively. Jesus does not judge. Jesus saves.

Truly, Jesus knows us by name in our sheep like behavior – some of us may be called Houdini, for we are always escaping through some hole in the fence; or we may be called Pegleg, who limps from the time she stepped into a hole; or Bossy, who likes nothing better than butting heads.
The image of the relationship between sheep and shepherd, between us and Jesus, is characterized by Jesus’ sense of personal intimacy. As such, we know the voice of Jesus. Our past experiences lead us to expect that when that voice calls us, we will be cared for. Our care from Jesus becomes real for us, not as some abstract inherited theological doctrine but as a living presence that has demonstrated its faithfulness on many occasions. We sheep have learned that when we hear Jesus’ voice, we are safe. For that voice knows our moods, our fears, and our anxieties.

Cat lovers can probably relate very nicely to this truth. Cats seem to know our moods better than most animals. Many cat owners will claim their cats are their best spiritual directors. When they are frantic, their cat goes to sleep in their lap. When they are sad, their cat leaps out at them from dark corners and when they are just fine thank you, their cat takes a break and goes off to do things on their own.

But life doesn’t always make us feel we are part of Jesus’ flock. Often we feel lost, abandoned and afraid, even forgotten by God. But Jesus will have none of this. Jesus never rests for us, for all of us.

In John 10:16 he makes this clear, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.” Though others are not in this fold, Jesus still protects them. He shepherds all in order for the body of Christ, the church, to be fully what God intends.

While this call to unity certainly has an evangelical tone, we are after all called to go and make disciples of all nations, there is also a careful reminder that there may be times that any of us may drift from the flock. We do it when we speak unkindly of one another, loose our temper and blame or claim someone has endangered the integrity of the flock by their alleged behavior. We call it sin, we call it selfishness, we call it many things but Jesus is clear. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves, treat others the way we wish to be treated, and let God be the judge of our brothers and sisters, friend and foe alike.

Our church is very much like Stan Wilson’s church. I know we attend to one another’s basic needs. It may be an unwritten rule by and large. But we do respond when one of our flock needs us for one reason or another.
Stan asked his Bible study class one Sunday why they had never thought to make explicit what they all knew to be true. He asked them, why not say it our loud? It seems like great news to share in our anxious time. Lord knows prices are going up for more things than just gasoline. Why not make it official? Why not state out loud that no matter how bad it gets, we will be there for one another?

There is a church in Oregon that made such a statement, they have a rule that no one in its membership will be in need. The members claim that this rule has freed them in surprising ways. They work fewer hours so they can spend more time with one another; they are able to afford to work less because they know they can count on each other.

We know many who are busy working two jobs to keep their family going. We know of kids who skip recess because they have to study for national tests. I wonder if a simple pledge never to let one another starve would loosen us up. If we knew that it’s not finally up to us to secure our future, wouldn’t that free us so we could begin to spend a little more unhurried time together and with our families?

Of course, the truth is it is not finally up to us to secure our future. Our future is in Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice forgiving our sins and ensuring our eternal life with him.

Yet, it would be foolish and irresponsible of us to think we need not work to care for ourselves and our families and our world. This assured future is exactly that, the future. The here and know requires mature, faithfully based decisions about how we will live our lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Stan Wilson did not get an answer at his bible study that Sunday. In fact, he writes that the very mention of the subject seemed embarrassing, as if he had violated a taboo and uttered something that must not be spoken. He suspected that not only do we fear the future, we also fear each other. We are afraid that somebody will try to take advantage of us, afraid that we will have to expose ourselves at our most intimate, private level, our weakest humanity.

But this is our call this morning, to share intimately in one another’s life. What could be more important than loving one another? What can be more important than promising, so long as we are able, never to let a brother or sister go hungry?

Hunger of course comes in many forms, we hunger for food true enough, but we also hunger for human companionship, for love, for support, compassion, friendship and peace. In loving one another, taking care of one another’s needs, as Jesus does, we reveal the risen Son of God, the Good Shepherd, the one who lays down his life for us, his sheep.

With a living God revealed and loose in the world, we might no longer live in fear, and no longer believe that the world turns only when people look out solely for themselves. We might start to look out for one another, and violate one of the cardinal rules of our economic order and abandon selfish investments for an investment in the body of Christ.
Easter has been known to evoke robust theological claims and rogue behavior. Peter and John annoyed the rulers and elders and were tossed in jail because they taught that in Jesus there is resurrection for those locked in the fear of death.

In loving one another, as Christ Jesus loved us, we reveal the hidden rule of the risen Son of God, who lives and reigns in each of us who believe. In loving one another as Christ loved us, we reveal ourselves to be the instrument of God’s peace to the world. And the world may then begin to live without fear, anxiety, and hate. Could there be a better Easter blessing!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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15 April 2012 “And They Believed” John 20:19-31

Posted on April 15, 2012 by genesis

I know of this professor, a psychiatrist, who has spent a number of years attempting to design a test, a questionnaire actually, that would measure people’s spirituality. He has a thesis and it is this: some people have a higher quotient for spirituality and are more adept at spiritual matters. He wants to devise a test that will measure levels of spirituality. He asks people questions like, “Do you pray” or “How often do you find yourself thinking about God?” Questions like that.

His main interest is the possible link between spirituality, or a lack of it, and addiction. On the basis of his preliminary results from administering this test to many people, he feels that he has established a link. That is, people prone toward addition are often people who score low on a test of their level of spirituality. He theorizes that, lacking much spirit, they attempt to solve their spiritual yearning through inappropriate ways, through the spirits of alcohol for example.

Being Christian, we consider spiritual matters quite naturally. Scripture speaks freely of a Christian spiritual nature. As Peter Haas has reminded us, “the biblical story of God’s presence culminates with our transformation into Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Being Presbyterian, we do not always speak so freely of our Christian Spirituality.

As we think about our spiritual beliefs we may remember hearing people who have said things like, “I am not very religious. I am not active in any religious community. But I do consider myself very spiritual.”

What we presume they mean is that, though their lives have no religious disciplines and practices, and though they are not committed to any particular religious institution, they have an interest in spiritual matters, a fascination with things of the Spirit.

I remember the story of a woman who had a daughter who was active in a church youth group. She, perhaps out of gratitude for what the church was doing for her daughter, had volunteered to keep the church’s books. She was an accountant by profession. She spent hours working for the church. But she never ever attended Sunday morning worship. When asked about this she replied, “I’m just not very good at that sort of thing. I cannot see the point of it. Other people seem to enjoy the music, the sermons, and all the rest, but I confess that I just do not get it. I am not good at religion.”

Being Christian we may have never thought about religion and God and church that way. What seems so natural to us may just as naturally not work for other folks. We know there are people who are really tone deaf. When they hear beautiful music, the just do not get it. Our beautiful and moving anthems would not stir them. We know there are people who are color-blind. It is a real disadvantage when it comes to appreciating art or “feeling” the wonder in our sanctuary. Might there then be a sort of spiritual equivalent to being tone deaf or color blind?

We have heard people avoid the church because they are angry at some social stand that a given denomination has taken. Or they do not like the pastor. Or they do not like to be hounded for money. But this is different.
There are dear souls who seem to lack an ability to believe. Those people for who spiritual matters do not come naturally. It is all a struggle for them. They hear the stirring testimonies of others whose lives have been touched in some dramatic way by God, but they listen as outsiders, as those who have not the foggiest notion of what these people are talking about.

Just last Sunday we heard read the story of Jesus being raised from the dead. Perhaps it is sad to say, but some folks say they have heard that story so often, and have read it so often, they are prone to forget what a wild, surprising, and shocking story it really is.

Indeed, we should not be surprised if one Easter when we are hearing that gospel story again, someone stands up and shouts out, “Are you kidding? This is the strangest thing I have ever heard! Are we really supposed to believer this?”

No one ever has, but someone might. But even as we say that, we realize there are plenty of us who have never doubted the truth of the account of the empty tomb. Some of us are the sort of person who can stand and shout, “Christ is risen? He is risen indeed!” without flinching.
Well, more power to you some would say. More spiritual power to you that is. More power to believe. But what about those who are not good at spiritual faith, not good at believing?

Last Sunday’s gospel was about the women who went to the tomb. They found it was empty. They were told by an angel that Jesus had risen, and they were to return to Jerusalem to tell the joyous news. They heard and they obeyed. They may have struggled with this unbelievable news. But, they had faith enough to obey the angel in the tomb. They believed on the basis of a secondhand report. They believed enough of what they heard to follow this new command.

But today’s Easter story is for those of us who struggle believing secondhand reports. They told Thomas that Jesus had been raised. They told Thomas that the risen Christ had appeared before the gathered disciples. But Thomas was not there and because he did not see the risen Christ for himself, because he had only heard but not see, he did not fully believe. His cry may be our own, “Unless, I can see, touch, for myself, I will not believe.”

And Jesus appeared to Thomas and said to him, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

In saying touch me, put your hands into my scars, Jesus was not rebuking Thomas for his doubts. Rather, he was giving Thomas the proof that he needed. Jesus did not say to Thomas, “Now, close your eyes and try to believe real hard.” Nor did he say, “Thomas, if you would just have more faith, be more like the other disciples, you would not have this problem.”

No, Jesus gave Thomas the proof he needed. Out of love, he gave him tangible proof.

I do not know about you, but I am grateful for tangible proof. There are those who hear the historical reports of the gospels and, despite the two-thousand-year plus space between our time and their time, they only need hear the good news and they believe.

There are other folk who need something else. The stories of the gospels are fine. The gospel word is interesting. But they need more than words. They need to touch. For those people, the good news is that Jesus gives them what they, you and me, need. Touch, see, and believe, Jesus says. For us, well, we have one another, the personal stories of the miracles and joys beyond expression. We have this church. We have the stories of the histories of two congregations becoming one. Stories retold at Easter as families from our past come to relieve the presence of memory and love in this place. Our spiritual nature is nourished in such memories and feels alive.

Then there are those who say, “Christianity is a wonderful spiritual ideal.” But who gets worked up over a spiritual ideal? Instead we need the church, a place, a building, somewhere to go and know that God will be tangibly, visibly, really there. Sure, we believe that God can be found anywhere, at any place, but for some, we need some place.

For others there are saintly folk. We all know them. They are real, living, breathing people, embodiments of the faith. We might not be so strong a Christian, so dedicated a follower of Jesus, had we not known real, living, and breathing witnesses who testify to us by their daily lives that there is a force loose in the world, a force for good, our God. For many, seeing God through others has brought believing.

Or perhaps it is the Eucharist, the highlight of our worship, that mystery toward which we move each first Sunday, that may be the pierce that gives us the physical, tangible reassurance that we need. Our God meets us in bread and wine and nourishes our body and our soul.

Thank goodness Jesus is more than some noble idea, some spiritual concept. He meets us at the table, and in the stuff of ordinary life. We stand daily with our doubts, our questions, and our hesitations about what we believe. Then we are brought to the table where we taste, touch, see, and believe. And once again, as he ministered unto Thomas, Jesus has ministered unto us.

Jesus ministers to us every moment of our lives. Jesus seeks us in our waking, in our joy, and our struggle. Jesus has risen from death itself to find you and me that he might seal our faith in him.

With this blessing, let us move courageously into this life with deep love and an awakened recognition of the presence of our risen Lord, a presence deeply woven into a rich Christian spirituality of hope. A hope sustained by the vision of St John who was assured of God’s future for us as he said:
“Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever, Amen
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Additional resources:
Pulpit Resources, Volume 34, Number 2, April 23, 2006, pgs. 21 – 24.
The God Who Is Here, Peter Traben Haas, pg. xiii.

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25 March 2012 “Peculiar Glory” John 12:20-33

Posted on March 27, 2012 by genesis

Ann Weems is a best-selling poet, writer, speaker and conference leader. She is also an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Ms. Weems has written a poem using today’s Jeremiah and John readings titled “We would see Jesus.” Listen to how she captures the essence of the human condition in the first paragraph.

“Broken covenant. Broken covenant. Broken covenant.
Over and over and over again.
Faithless faithless faithless.
Jeremiah, O Jeremiah,
I’ve seen how Rembrandt painted you:
Your head in your hands, eyes downcast,
Shoulders slumped.
God has been in covenant with faithless people.
But in exile they pray for forgiveness,
Reminding God who God is:
A God of covenant love
A God of mercy.
They promise to repent.
God responds:
I have loved you
With an everlasting love:
Therefore I have continued
My faithfulness to you.

Thankfully, despite our faithlessness, because God loves us with an everlasting love, God continues being faithful to us. God so loves us and God so continues being faithful to us God promises in the gospel reading this morning to make a new covenant with us. In this new covenant, God’s law will live inside us. God will actually write that law on our hearts and then, when we all know God, from the least of us to the greatest, God will be our God and we will be God’s people and God will forgive our iniquity and remember our sin no more. God loves us with an everlasting love!

This is stunning news. The logic of God’s claim seems out of sorts. It is not uncommon for us to reason to a conclusion based on self-evident facts. For example, if it is the case that Spot is a dog, and if it is the case that a dog is a canine, then it must be the case that Spot is a canine. The facts are self-evident and we easily reason to the conclusion Spot is a canine.

What is stunning about the news this morning, that God will make a new covenant promise with us, is not self-evident. When we are honest about our self-evident lives; lives filled with sin, lives falling far short of God’s call to faithful discipleship, lives lived for the here and now and not for the Kingdom to come, we should never expect a new covenant promise from God.

The fact is we have been faithless again and again. We have broken God’s covenant again and again. What business does God have wanting to make a new covenant with us? God should rightly cut his losses and run. But, our God never cuts and runs.
At the inauguration of the forty-second president of the United States, Billy Graham, arguably the world’s most famous Christian Evangelist, was asked to give an inaugural prayer. It was not easy for him to get to the podium that inaugural day, by then he had been a minister for fifty years, he was aging and weak, yet he pulled himself up to the podium. He got God’s attention on behalf of the nation and then went right to the opening statement of his prayer: “Oh God, we have sinned…” The shock of this opening statement was like a slap in the face. You could almost feet the guilty downward glance of the nation as Billy Graham publicly put his finger on the real problem with the world. “Oh God, we have sinned”

We’ve come up with many other names for sin that are more pleasant, names that hardly hurt at all. We’ve worked hard to rid ourselves of the negative influence of words like sin and hell and guilt and wrath. Suddenly hearing the word sin on television, coming from the steps of the capitol, with the whole world watching, was a shock to the system. Billy Graham’s prayer, “Oh God, we have sinned,” pins us all to the wall.
Being so pinned, God should be breaking off our relationship, not creating a new one. The evidence of our behavior, our faithlessness reasons us to that very conclusion. Yet, here is God, evidence and reason to the contrary, doing otherwise.

The evidence and reason for God’s amazing grace to give us a new covenant begins in Jeremiah and is fulfilled in John. It just may not be so obvious. What Jeremiah and John have woven within their passages we may have missed. Both make references to the past, the present, and the future.

From the past we read in John, “This voice has come for your sake…” From the present Jesus said, “The hour has come,” and “it is for this reason I have come to this hour.” Looking to the future Jeremiah said, “The days are surely coming…”

We have the Glory of God that has come, an hour that has come, Jesus who has come and finally, days coming. We have progressed from a prediction, the days that are coming, days for a new covenant, one written on our hearts in Jesus through the Holy Spirit: to that day actually coming at the specific hour when Jesus recognizes the hour he is to be glorified. And we have Jesus’ teaching drawing us to the recognition that the Glory of God has truly come, that the judgment of the world is at hand now.

These references to the past, the current time, and the future reveal the timeless nature of God’s presence in our lives and the depths to which God will go to be in relationship with us.

Central to our understanding the depths to which God will go to make this New Covenant with us may be our understanding Jesus’ motivation and his final glorification. There is, however, a risk in reaching out through time and space to what may be a new understanding of our relationship with God. Our hearing about Jesus’ motivation and glorification may add to our shock this morning. Especially when we confess how we have responded to this news.
A truth that may have escaped our understanding is Jesus died for God before he died for us. He was obedient to his Father. We do not usually think about Jesus’ death this way. Jesus died for our sin that we may have eternal salvation but we may have forgotten it was God’s act that sent Jesus into the world as incarnate. It is God to whom Jesus prayed “Thy will be done.”

What may be more shocking is God does not need us to make Jesus’ death worth it. What Jesus did is already worth it regardless of who we are or what we do or have done. It is worth it because Jesus died on the cross to obey his Father in heaven. Any other reason to make Jesus’ death worth it pales in importance.

This news has importance consequences for us. We are clearly called in John’s gospel to serve Jesus. We are to follow him because wherever he is those who serve him are to be also. He clearly promises us, “Whoever serves me, the Father will honor”.

Jesus is glorified by his death and resurrection and his return to God. His return to God, in obedience, brings about universal salvation. Through Jesus’ glorification God’s relationship to the world is irrevocably changed. The essential part of Jesus’ glorification for us is that it demands from us a response and a decision. A decision to accept the restoration of our relationship with God. Despite our broken covenant, despite the fact that over and over and over again we have been faithless, despite our prayer ”Oh God, we have sinned” we are to be restored in our relationship with God.

This is how God and humanity are reconciled in Jesus’ death. It is through the restoration of our relationship with God as we have restored our discipleship serving Jesus. If we have no relationship with God through Jesus’ death, Jesus died in vain.

Clearly Jeremiah and John seek to know God, to see Jesus. The goal of service discipleship is our immediate restored relationship with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The need is immediate and the need is urgent. Any other reason for our existence, our discipleship, our love for God and all humanity pales in importance.

There is a tension and a judgment implicit in this urgency. For Jesus’ death to effect our reconciliation with God we must commit our lives to belief and service in Jesus. We must decide to accept the offer of reconciliation.

In this reconciliation there is an inseparable interrelationship of the divine and human, an interrelationship that is most fully expressed in the incarnation, in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and in the interrelationship of God and Jesus in the love that the incarnation reveals.

Jesus’ death is the ultimate expression of his love. His love to God and his love to his own people. Our decision to believe is the decision to become a partner in that relationship, to become a member of a community that is as bound to God and Jesus as they are bound to each other. It is not easy to be bound to each other. It is not easy to be church.
The metaphor using the grain of wheat is Jesus’ way of teaching us his death brings about this restored relationship, brought about not for reconciliations sake but for the sake of obedience to God. Jesus’ act is the ultimate obedient act; it is the ultimate act of service to God. Jesus tells us; whoever serves me must follow me, not only to death on a cross, but to faithful obedient service.

The glory of God has come, now is the time of judgment for the world, the power of this world is overcome, not because Jesus’ death is a sacrifice alone, one that atones for human sin, but because it reveals the power and promise of God and God’s love of the world.
God has promised us a new covenant. That new covenant is Jesus Christ. In response to our sin, God and Jesus are united in their love for us. In response to our sin God has loved us with an everlasting love that, as Tom Currie has said, “scandalizes us, constrains our agendas, draws us out of ourselves and into the strange polity of his body”, his church. But here we are. Bound together to serve the one who loves all scandalized folk.

God has continued to be faithful to us. God believes in us and we are being called once more to believe in God. Any other belief pales in importance.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever, Amen
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18 March 2012 ‘Saved By the Son’ John 3:14-21

Posted on March 18, 2012 by genesis

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him might have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”

This may be the most quoted line in the bible, “For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son.” Not only is the line memorable, it is the bedrock of God’s grace toward a fallen world.

Hearing of such grace it is easy to overlook what is less often remembered from this passage. Just as Moses has lifted up a serpent, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Just as Moses has lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must Jesus be lifted up. For a first time hearer there must have been confusion. Why would Jesus be compared to a serpent.
Our Old Testament reading from Numbers speaks at length about serpents. The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people for they had sinned by speaking against the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”

Moses understands. The poisonous snake bites folks so, by God’s command, an image of a snake is placed on a pole. When those bitten people look at the snake image on a pole they will live.

I expect Jesus understands too. The Son of Man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Jesus is lifted up on the cross, giving his life for our sin. Three days later he is lifted up to heaven, being resurrected, giving us life for all time.

But why compare Jesus to a snake of all things?

Stories about snakes always make me nervous. It seems everyone has a snake story or two. Before Janet and I moved our family to our small farm in Washington County I called the poison control center in Galveston and asked them about snakes. I wanted to know what to do if a snake bit one of us or our pets.

They were quick to inform me snake bites should not be my biggest concern. In Texas, more people die from bee stings than snake bits. I’m not sure I felt better or worse with that news.

We raised chickens, among other things, there on the farm. And we had our fair share of chicken snakes. They weren’t particularly aggressive towards people, but I am sure they have grown in size as time has passed and I retell their stories. By know they are all at least twenty feet long!
But they were snakes after all so they were dangerous, especially to baby chicks and our mother hens. Their biggest drawback was they just flat scared the heck out of you when you went into the chicken coop.
First of all, you know they may be there but you do not see them often. Secondly, when they are there they are seldom moving. I do not know if they see you coming and stop their slithering or what. But, they stay still and wait until your eye catches them up in the rafter. Or worst of all, in the hen’s nest. They must have known the scare factor alone was a great safety net for them.

But they weren’t too smart. Usually, by the time I got back with a shovel to take their head off, they were still there, in the same place, intent on getting their dinner I suppose.

My most challenging time with a snake was when one was in the house, in the living room, on the arm of Janet’s favorite chair. You usually only get one chance to scoop a snake up to get it out of the house, and a shovel usually doesn’t work so well on the chair in the living room. Somehow I managed to scoop the snake into a grocery bag. Can you imagine If I had missed that snake and it has slithered of under the furniture. I expect no one would ever have slept in that house again.

Today’s Old Testament reading from the Book of Numbers makes reference to a time when the Israelites were in the wilderness with Moses. Poisonous snakes were in the midst of the people biting them such that many had died. When snakes appear in the ancient world, stories of them are not much different than when they appear in our world, there are good snakes as well as bad. You may believe like many, the only good snake is a dead snake. But there are examples of snakes being good.

The hooded Cobra on the head piece of the mighty Pharaoh of Egypt was there to protect the Pharaoh, to spit venom at his enemies if anyone tried to hurt him. The Sumerian God of Healing walked around with two intertwined snakes upon his staff. This same staff was later adopted as the symbol for the American Medical Association, a curious image of healing. If you have been through a surgery recently you may still feel the effects of this sort of healing. Doctors often hurt us in order to make us whole again.

But, as a general rule we do not care for snakes. We usually prefer furry, fuzzy creatures like bunnies instead of snakes. But there are no bunnies in the bible. There are, on the other hand, plenty of stories with snakes in them.

According to the story in Numbers, this snake on a staff idea came from God. Actually, all of the snakes in scripture belong to God. The slithering ones that are alive, as well as the beautiful brass one on the staff, they belong to God. Like in life, there are good snakes and there are bad snakes in scripture. But, they all belong to God.

In the story at hand, poisonous serpents, sent by God, bite the people into their senses. Being brought close to death, they remember how much they appreciate the gift of life. They are shocked into recognition that they owe much to God and to Moses. In a way, they are poisoned into their senses.
Then Moses prayed for the people. But God does not call off the snakes. Instead, God tells Moses to put a brass serpent on a pole, and make the people look at it. So that in the future, when they are bitten, when evil overtakes them, they will look at the saving snake on the pole and live on. In John’s Gospel, Jesus dares to use this brass serpent on a pole story as a figure representing himself.

Nicodemus has visited Jesus. He was a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus at night, and began to question him. Nicodemus had recognized Jesus to be a teacher, one who has come from God and he wanted to know more about him. He particularly wanted to know how Jesus’ prophecy about entry into the kingdom of God through being born of water and the spirit was possible.

Jesus dared to use this brass serpent on a pole image from the Moses story to answer Nicodemus. He dared to use this shocking image as a parable of what he was doing to save the world. Jesus speaks to him of slithering serpents, darkness, death, light, life and salvation, all mixed up together in himself. It may be a strange way to make his point, but there it is.

The sinful Israelites were dying from the bite of their sin. In judgment, their sin was killing them. God chose to save them by having them turn to the object of their judgment, the serpent, in order to live.

Just as Jesus taught Nicodemus, he is teaching us through this parable about our sin, judgment, and our only way to life. There is no snake in judgment for us. No, Jesus is the object of our judgment and it is to him we are to turn in order to live.

The painful truth is in order for us to live Jesus must first die. He must die and assume his place on a pole, on that cross. Once there, we and the world will be saved through him. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Our understanding this morning has opened us, perhaps painfully, to the good news of today’s gospel. Good news that is the single most revolutionary truth in the New Testament. Our God is a God of love and in Jesus Christ we learn of that unconditional love. In Jesus Christ we are born from above and will see the Kingdom of God. For God so loved the world that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

In Moses’ time God’s love was not as central. It is there, but its emphasis is not foundational. Those early Israelites had glimpses of what God’s love might be in their messianic dreams, but their ambitions for domination and power distorted their hopes and dreams of a messiah. The Jewish leaders expected a messiah who would confirm their exclusivism, destroy their enemies, and give them power over all nations.

It never happened this way. The Messiah, who actually came, came preaching about a kingdom whose core is grounded by the power of love instead of the power of power.

The gospel of Jesus and the whole thrust of New Testament faith teach us about God’s real love. God’s love is a love that is for us. God is on our side. We do not have to design and practice ways of gaining God’s favorable attention through our Christian acts. We already have God’s favorable attention. There is no need to beg God to love us, understand us, and help us. We need only trust God. To beg and plead and cajole is not a symptom of trust. It is a symptom of mistrust.

How ironic that we search and sacrifice, beg and plead for what is ours for free. The unending source of what we want is freely offered to us by God in the life, death, and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. We get temporary snatches of unconditional love from human beings, but that is not the same as God’s love.

When we find ourselves in the deepest of life’s pits and we see no way out, it may occur to us that we cannot cope with all that happens to us in life alone. When we feel all alone in our angst; might we take this truth of God’s unconditional love into our heart and remember, we are never alone. God finds us no matter how deep the pit, no matter how hopeless life seems and God brings us life again. God brings us life again and offers eternal comfort that comes if we will but believe these words to be true.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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11 March 2012 Spring Housecleaning John 2:13-22

Posted on March 14, 2012 by jwoodrff

There is something comforting about the predictable nature of success and accomplishment in America. If you want to be a doctor, or teacher, or truck driver the requirements are clear and the way forward is known. In these clear paths there are equal requirements for all. That equality gives a sense of fairness, a feeling that we find comforting and just.

Given then the will and the means, all who are interested can marshal their resources, work hard, and earn the right to become who they have chosen to become. It is a part of what we call, “The American Dream.”

In our Exodus reading this morning, God is clear about our path to a different sort of dream, one of ultimate freedom and discipleship. The requirements are for all to follow. They do not require great technical skill or strength. But they do require our attention to detail. From the Ten Commandments God sets our way to salvation clearly before us. God makes clear who liberates us from the slavery of sin and we find that way comforting and just.

One way of thinking about these commandments is to see them as God’s formula for success and accomplishment. If we want to become a disciple of Christ, a child of God, the requirements are clear and the way forward is known.

Knowing that these very specific commandments are required, we are then free to choose to follow them. For then the life we desire with God is available to us. The conclusion is clear. If we work hard at living the Ten Commandments we earn the right to become who we have chosen to become.

No, that is not right! Perhaps it is the earliness of the hour. I suppose I cannot blame bad theology on the time change. If we work hard enough we then earn the right to become who we have chosen to become. Really? All we have to do is work hard enough and we will become children of God?
Clearly, this is wrong thinking. We do not work hard following the Ten Commandments to earn anything. We do not get right with God by following these commandments. Nor do we get right with God by living the Ten commandments as if they were the specialized curriculum to follow so we might become certified or qualified to become a Christian. This formulaic thinking is wrong thinking.

That point is made clear in John’s gospel. Jesus disrupted the temple system with its laws during one of the significant feasts of the year so that neither sacrifices nor tithes could be offered that day. He threw the mechanics of temple worship into chaos as he challenged the authority of the temple with its formula for success.

The Passover of the Jews was near. Jesus went to the temple where he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Cattle, sheep, and doves were required for making burnt offerings in the Temple. Since Passover was a pilgrimage feast, many of those coming to worship in the Temple would have traveled a great distance and would not have brought animals with them. They needed to buy animals in Jerusalem in order to participate in temple worship.

The money changers were there because the temple tax could not be paid in Greek or Roman coinage. Because of the human image of the emperor’s head on those coins, they could not be used. Therefore, the sale of animals and the changing of money were necessary if the worship in the temple was to proceed.

Jesus is well aware that this is how the system in the temple works. Yet, he drove all of the people selling cattle, sheep and doves out of the temple. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those selling the animals, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

The Jewish leaders must have been angry. They asked him; by what authority can you do this? He told them he was the new temple to whom worship was due. The old temple way forced people to buy a relationship with God. We cannot do that now. We cannot simply follow the Ten Commandments as if they were the same as any other law and expect then to have a relationship with God. These commandments alone don’t buy that relationship. It takes much more.

William Willimon, who is Bishop of the North Alabama conference of the United Methodist Church, tells the frightening story of a parishioner who arrived at church one Sunday morning to the sounds of a great commotion inside the church.

As he approached the church a couple of hymnals came flying out the door. The new ones, twenty dollars apiece. Then came the big Bible, the leather bound one that cost two hundred dollars. That one. Flying out the door.

Then came the furniture; a couple of pews, the lectern, the communion table, the pulpit, the silver candle sticks and chalice. Then came the baptismal font, followed by the Presbyterian Book of Order, then the Dean of the Seminary, members of the budget and finance committee, elders, the president of Presbyterian Women, sorry Carol. Then out came the Sunday school teachers, Lee and Bob. We don’t want Carol to be alone. All, out the door.

The elder ordering worship came running out, his clothes torn, cuts and bruises on his face, screaming, “Jesus is in there cleaning house!”
The church members could not believe his ears. Jesus, our Jesus! Jesus who is meek and mild, the compassionate Jesus, our best friend and most loyal patron, that Jesus is cleaning house and everything and everyone is being tossed! “Yep, said the elder, I saw him myself. He burst in this morning while I was turning on the lights and the air conditioning. Boy is he mad!”

This may have been the first time Jesus has been in the temple since he was a child. He comes in now, finds the vendors selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and goes ballistic. Why? This is the usual way to worship, isn’t it? We cannot have our sins forgiven; we cannot get right with God without a sacrifice. That is the law. We need the hymnals, the bread and wine to help us do business with God and to help God do business with us.
Jesus says otherwise, he screams at us this morning, “Stop making my Father’s house into a Mega Mall!” This old temple is not such a big deal. Destroy it and in three days, I will build it back.

This is the pivotal moment in our gospel lesson. Jesus says, enough; stop trying to buy a relationship with God. Do not degrade the gift of God’s grace filled life to that of a financial transaction or following ten commanded steps.

Instead, Jesus offers us a new temple. One that is not dependent on buying a relationship with God. This new temple is the temple of Jesus’ own body. A body that desires to be formed in each of us.

All of our aids to worship and even our outreach ministries, our church, our books, our ideas, our songs, as helpful as they are, pale in comparison to the new “temple” of Jesus Christ formed in us. The real danger may come if we allow these beloved pieces of the life of our church to become a barrier between us and Jesus. We know not to worship these things. We have great history and tradition in this sanctuary. We give richly through our rentals and leases. We can honor them, appreciate them, and find comfort in them, but do not allow them to become the barometer for how we get to God. We get to God through Jesus Christ alone.

There is another danger in allowing these beloved pieces to become a barrier between us and Jesus. We stand the risk of allowing them to become a barrier between us and the poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan, the foreigner, the neighbor to whom we are to love as we love our self.

The good news to us this Sabbath day is that Jesus is consumed with passion for God’s house. Jesus loves us, but loves the righteousness, truth and holiness of God even more. He will purify God’s house, and transform our little Genesis church in this wildwood into God’s very body. We should expect some buffeting around in the process.
Jesus will take his spring housecleaning a step further. Not only will he clean out the old temple and make way for himself as the new temple. He will also create God’s temple in each of us.

Jesus explains this desire by reminding us of his life, his death and the resurrection to which we are all called. His life and death bear testimony to the power of God in the world. His life has become God’s presence on earth, and God as known in Jesus, not the Temple, should be the focal point of our Christian living.

Jesus challenges a religious system so embedded in its own law it is no longer open to a fresh revelation from God. A temptation that exists for contemporary Christianity as well as for the Judaism of Jesus’ day.
We cannot fall into the trap of equating the authority of our own institutions with the presence of God. All religious embeddedness is challenged by the revelation of God in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

God did not send his Son into this world for our religious institutions. God sent him for us, to be in relationship with us, to tell us clearly, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

Lent is the time for Jesus to be inside each of us cleaning house. I wonder what sort of rubble he will send flying out the doors of our souls this Sabbath day. Rubble sent flying so we might get right with God.

I do not know what the rubble will look like. I just hope the air will not be so filled we cannot catch our breath for the new life, the new temple, our new Christ Jesus and our role as his disciples.

In expectation of the rubble that is about to fly it might be wise if we gird ourselves in prayer.

Let’s try this one; Lord Jesus, drive out our self-contrived demons, whip us into shape, clean us up, dust us off, until we are able to worship only you in word and in deed, on Sunday and on Monday, and on each day as we rightly should. Help us Lord to be honest about our life and the pieces we hold onto that separate us from you. Help us Lord to praise you as you help us send the rubble in our lives flying. Fill us holy Lord with your simplicity, your humility, and your steadfast love.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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04 March 2012 The Suffering that Saves Mark 8:31-38

Posted on March 4, 2012 by genesis

In old Greenwich, Connecticut, stands a church with a cross in it. Unlike most churches where the cross is on the wall behind the preacher, like ours, this one is bolted down into the concrete floor in front of the chancel, not more than three feet from where the preacher stands. Its position defies reason and art and convention. No session in their right mind would have designed such a placement. It is an obstruction. The preacher’s words have to pass through it; the congregation’s eyes always have it somewhere in their view, so that even when they look away, it is still there, impressed on the back wall of their retina.

It is a sturdy wooden cross, ten feet tall. The crossbar is set high on the vertical beam, so high that it seems out of proportion compared to other more proportionate crosses that decorate other more proportionate churches.

Nothing about this cross is pretty. It is made of raw, untreated wood, and when you see it up close, you think of splinters, of something hard and immovable. It is set deep in the concrete floor as well as bolted to it, so that a blow makes it vibrate rapidly. Strike it hard enough, and it will answer back in a low tone.

The Old Greenwich cross has to be reckoned with. It is in the middle of everything – weddings, funerals, communion, baptisms, dedications, Sunday morning services. Where do you put the casket? Are the bride and groom going to stand on either side of it? What if the bride’s dress gets caught on a splinter? Where do you put the guitar ensemble? Where do you stand during children’s time.

Every event that takes place in that church has to accommodate this cross in some way. It cannot be moved easily like the pulpit or the communion table or the choir. It’s almost as if the church was built around the cross – as if it were the first thing down before the walls went up and the roof went on. Something tells me it was.

In the lessons from Genesis and Mark this Sunday, God begins laying the foundation for the earliest church and God sets Abram as the cornerstone.
When he was 99 years old God made a covenant, a promise, with him. Abram was to be renamed Abraham and he would be the ancestor of many nations and God would be God to him and to his offspring after him.
The early church theologian Irenaeus made an interesting observation about God’s covenant promises with humankind. He wrote, “The gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than they are. Since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, it is clear that the Word . . . gave us the gospel fourfold in form but held it together by one Spirit. For the cherubim have four faces, and their faces are images of the activity of the Son of God. Therefore four general covenants were given to humankind: one was that of Noah’s deluge, by the rainbow; the second was Abraham’s, by the sign of the circumcision; the third was the giving of the law by Moses; and the fourth is that of the gospel through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In the covenant gospel of Mark, our Lord Jesus Christ calls his disciples to take up their cross. He said it to those who were in listening distance over 2,000 years ago and his call is still active today. All who are baptized are marked by the sign of the cross of Christ, the sign of both death and life.
Catherine of Siena speaks of this death and life in her image of the cross as a tree. She wrote, “We are trees of death and you, Oh God, are the tree of life. What a wonder, in your light, to see your creature as a pure tree, a tree you drew out of yourself, supreme purity, in pure innocence! You made this tree free, you gave it branches. But this tree became a tree of death so that it no longer produced any fruits. You engrafted your divinity into the dead tree of our humanity. O sweet tender engrafting! So through you who are life we will produce the fruit of life if we choose to engraft ourselves into you.”

Our life as a true disciple is an engrafting of ourselves into God who has already chosen a place within each of us to dwell. Jesus calls his disciples and says to us, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will loose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Here we find our first indication of what true discipleship is. First, Jesus identifies us as his people with a promise of life. A life measured by our willingness to find God living in our heart and soul. Then Jesus covenants with us to follow him in self-giving love.

Jesus is clear about this. To follow him in self-giving love we are first to deny ourselves. Now, we are not to abandon ourselves, nor are we to enter into a depressed state, or withhold from ourselves what we need for a life of worth. We are to deny ourselves instead for a very specific purpose. Our purpose is to live more like Christ. Praying always, loving always, and serving always.

But we have a problem. The old self we know all too well. We live for our own pleasure, our own interests, and our own agendas. We have lived this way so long we do not realize the superficial nature of our “faith.” And even if we overcome our nature, how might we fathom the notion of a new self. How could we. We have spent many a long day and night crafting who we have become. Only to be accused of setting our mind on human things!

This may be too much. Perhaps denying ourselves is impossible for us. Actually, it is. If we will be, unless we set aside our usual way of reasoning for a moment and consider the impossible notion it is God who is calling us. God called Abram and changed him. He changed his identity and moved him around the world. But Abraham was never alone and he was never asked to craft a new self alone.
No, our new self will be created for us. That is if we truly have a desire to be more like Christ, to be found by our God whose creation never ends. If that is truly our desire our way is clear. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind…You shall love your neighbor as yourself….”

Second, we are to take up our cross. The paradox of finding our real life in Christ is our willingness to surrender ourselves completely. Surrendering ourselves to Christ Jesus, being in covenant with him for life is marked by the cross of Christ. That cross is more than a description of how Jesus will die; it is how he will live with his disciples. It is a cruciform covenant established by Jesus that identifies his followers. As with earlier covenants, the cross describes a relationship with God that is lived every day. It is not a goal that can be worked on to achieve.

Now, we best be clear, ours is not a call to martyrdom or self crucifixion. Jesus’ cross, we remember, was the cross of our sin. He freely took it upon himself to pay the debt we owe to God for our sinfulness.

The cross we are to take up is represented by the burdens in our life. We are to carry them for the good of the Lord and to glorify God. Yet, we are not to wear our burdens for the world to see. Our cross is not about human things. It is a symbol of the death of our old life as much as it is a promise of the resurrection to come.

Third, we are to follow Jesus. We are to live with Jesus in our hearts. For this we should rejoice. To realize the grace and beauty in a life of commitment to follow Jesus is a blessing. We have struggled to reject our own selfish life habits. We have prayed we accept the cross that Jesus has placed on us. We desire the life with Christ and we pray our human things won’t stay in the way. But we must not forget. We are not in this life to try and become a saint!

If we believe this teaching is about suffering as the basis for true Christian discipleship, we are wrong. We cannot say to ourselves, the more suffering I have in my life the better disciple I will be. That is not what this passage is saying. To lose ones life for Jesus’ sake, to save ones life by losing it is for a very specific and particular reason and there are very specific and particular limits.

St. Paul says in best, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”

The life we are to lose is the life of sin we live. The body of sin that is so pervasive in our lives. But we are not talking about the obvious sin in our lives. Those we know clearly and they are set up easily for our confession.
We are being asked to bring Jesus into our mundane, day to day mindlessness, where we may not notice our sinful nature. We may not notice the comments, the gestures, the manipulations, the judgment in our family life, our work life, our private and public life, and even our spiritual life. The cross we take up is one of small proportion because our sin is usually of small proportion. True discipleship occurs for the most part in manageable moments.

Fred Craddock, a wise preacher, pointed out in an address to pastors; “We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $1000 bill and laying it on the table – “Here’s my life, Lord, notice me. I’m giving it all.” Sounds a bit prideful doesn’t it.

But the reality for most of us is that God sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $1,000 for quarters. God then calls us to go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there, unnoticed. You see giving our life to Christ isn’t usually glorious and should not be pride filled. It is done in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at a time.”

Friends, Jesus is laying out how each day of our lives should be. We are to deny the self that will not allow our little acts of love, 25 cents at a time. We are to take up our cross, build our lives around it, like that Old Greenwich Cross. We are to look through it or around it every moment of every day to praise and worship and remember what Jesus has done for us. Then we will find great blessing and joy, following Jesus, going through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there.

That is how our mundane day to day becomes the Kingdom of God. That is how our weak human nature becomes God’s blessing to a broken world. One hurt person at a time being attended to by one like us who has decided to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Jesus.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.

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26 February 2012 Starting Over Mark 1: 9-15

Posted on February 26, 2012 by genesis

Every year I try my best to adjust. I remind myself, folk wiser than me about these things have good reasons for it being this way. But this year it is time to complain. It is time to speak up! Jesus was just born, and now this. Christmas was only nine weeks ago. Nine weeks ago Jesus was just a baby. How can he be old enough for this? In a short nine weeks Jesus does all the good he can, teaches the most important teaching, loves like no one before him, for this.

I suppose we could be the church in Wilshire Woods that decides to become the church in the wildwood and ignore the whole thing. Take down the purple, forget about Lent. I suppose we could. But, what would we do with Jesus? I mean, all four gospels tell the story. Jesus takes his last road trip and the church universal says it is time to pack our bags.

So, let’s pack. If you look in your bible for a reference to the season of Lent, it will not be there. Like the Trinity, Lent is not biblical language. Lent is taken from the old English word Lenten, meaning “spring”. From the Latin it means “lengthening of days.”

The days are getting longer and spring is in the air though there is still a nip in the air. I realize we cannot blame the rush on the season. Seasons come and seasons go. We know Lent must come. So, I will calm down and we can embrace a new season in our lives even though I grumble. Lent has come right on cue.

So, embracing this season, what do we know? Lent is more than a reference to the season before Easter. Theologically, it is a time to cleanse our spiritual system. It is a rich time to remember what it would be like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can acquire for ourselves.

Henry Roberts was preaching in Monroeville Alabama when his friend, Tom shared his story about a woman who followed God’s call to live by God’s grace alone.

Tom and his sister Mary grew up in a shack of a house in Bermuda, Alabama. His father was a two-mule farmer, his mother a part-time beautician. Tom and Mary would walk out of their house to catch the school bus for the eight-mile trip to school. While they waited for the bus, sometimes on a cold day, they would see black children walking on the road to their rundown black school about four miles away. What they did not know was that some of those black kids had already been walking for thirty minutes in the rain and cold and would still be walking long after the school bus would pull up to the white school. One day Mary asked, “Why can’t they ride the bus with us?” No one ever came up with an answer that would make sense back in the 1940’s.

Tom, now in his 70’s, moved to Monroeville and recently met a very impressive lady, Mrs. Jones, when she joined the local Kiwanis Club. It is new territory for a woman to be a member of the formerly all-male club, but what is even more unusual is that Mrs. Jones, the retired librarian at a junior college, is black. She has three children – one a medical doctor, another a college professor, and her daughter is the senior editor for a national newspaper. What is even more amazing is that Mrs. Jones was one of those black children who sixty years earlier walked past Tom’s house to her black school. It is not so important where you come from, but who you are and where you are going that makes a difference.

This past Wednesday we began the Lenten Season embracing who we are. We began with our Ash Wednesday Service. It was an appropriate way to embrace Lent. Gathering together we worshipped, heard God’s word read and proclaimed, and we celebrated the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Unlike in New Orleans this past week, we did not celebrate Mardi Gras. Instead we offered ourselves and our sin once more to God. We stood before God and one another ,spoke aloud our name and were reminded, we are ashes, and to ashes we will return. With contrition in our hearts and a desire to change our life direction we opened our souls to God’s forgiving grace. We recognized our moral failures; we were honest about our need for grace and pardon, reconciliation and salvation.

Despite this very public confession, Lent is actually a very private time. We don’t often form Lenten repentance groups to get together and pray sorrowfully for our sins as we prepare ourselves for the three-day feast of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. Instead, we usually spend private time in reflection, studying scripture, learning anew the power of Jesus’ saving act for our lives. At least that may be our intention.

Lent, taken seriously, spent this way, can wear us down. We can stay penitent only so long before we begin to resent the whole forty days. If we take the call to almsgiving, fasting and prayer and apply it during these days we find that we have suddenly stepped so out of character with our usual selves that the almsgiving and fasting and prayer make us extremely difficult to be around. We become very fussy Lenten want-to-be’s. We want to be faithful, but pious living is just too hard for us.

We, by and large, are a society of takers; we are not so easily givers. We don’t easily give things up. We want to add things to our lives to make them more enjoyable. The notion that something can be taken away to make life enjoyable is just not a formula we understand.
So with apologies to any math lovers in worship this morning, lent becomes the math class from you know where, and we cannot join a study group to get through it.

One preacher has explained Lent as an Outward Bound for the soul. The real test comes when we go into the wilderness “solo”, alone. Being alone is difficult. It is not the exposure to the elements we worry about. It is the exposure to ourselves. The exposure to our private thoughts which seep up into our consciousness. They terrify us because they reveal our truest self. We are sinful, selfish, angry, judgmental, alone, worried, anxious, desperately wanting approval, acceptance, and love. We are at our core, a mess.

During Lent it may feel as if our mess has been shoved onto a desolate mountain top where we are alone and without the anesthesia of our stuff. Oh, yes, our stuff is an anesthesia. Our treasures on earth so completely occupy our time. They essentially block out our recollection of our sin and they relieve us from the pain and fear of having to be penitent. Our treasures, our stuff on earth become our addictions. Anything we use to fill the empty space inside of us that really belongs to God becomes our addiction.

That is what we find so hard about Lent. It is not giving up chocolate, although that would be hard enough. It is emptying the space inside of us we fill with earthly concerns. Space that belongs to God alone. Space that belongs to God’s call to live by God’s grace alone.

We know what I am talking about. It is personal remember. This is the season when God is nudging us aside to make room for God in our life. We do not accept God’s nudging so easily. We do not give up our addictions easily, so we nudge God back. Oh, I’ll pray tomorrow. I’ll read scripture another day. I’ll just wait until later to do or not do this thing I know God wants from me. God doesn’t like our nudging back.
The hardest thing to do in Lent is to pray that we stop nudging God away. That we open that space inside of us that belongs to God alone, and leave our treasures behind. One thing I can promise. When we do, we will be very uncomfortable.

During these days, pay attention to how often your mind wants to fill that God alone space with stuff again. How often is their a craving for the thing or things emptied? How does that feel? We might try sitting with that feeling instead of trying to fix it and see what we find out about ourselves.
As the scripture warns us, we will be tempted in the wilderness. We may even hear a voice in our head warning us that we deserve our treasures. It may tell us, if we give them up we will starve, we will go nuts, and we won’t be ourselves anymore. If that does not work, the voice in our head might say something like, “If God really loves you; you can have whatever you want”.

If that is what we hear, read Mark’s story again, and tell the devil to get lost, for we will decide for ourselves what we will do for Lent. Better yet, let’s not decide what we will DO for Lent. Let’s decide who’s we will BE.
If we expect great things from God and from ourselves at the end of these forty days of Lent there will be a new beginning in our lives, a new way of living. We will live with the rule of God. We will live by God’s grace alone.

Hans Kung, the German theologian says, “The church of Jesus Christ is home not only for the morally upright but for the failures…the Church is a healing community proclaiming the Father’s indiscriminate love and unconditional grace, offering pardon, reconciliation and salvation to the down-trodden and leaving the judgment to God.”

When the world asks, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” the stories of the Lord and of God’s people of all the years answer back: “You can overcome the circumstances of your birth.” It is who you are and where you are going that matters.

The heavens opened when Jesus was baptized with God’s affirmation. Some people could not see it while Jesus was here on earth, and some still cannot. But eyes of faith see wondrous things happen all the time.
Believe and you will begin to see things happen in your life. Listen and you will hear: “You are my child, whom I love, and with you I am well pleased.”

Listen and you will hear, for it is God calling to live by God’s grace alone.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever more, Amen.
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12 February 2012 “I Do Choose” Mark 1:40-45

Posted on February 12, 2012 by genesis

By all accounts, Andrew Beckett was a successful Philadelphia lawyer. He was winning cases and making a lot of money for his firm. He was on the fast track to becoming a partner. One of the youngest for the firm. He lived for the law and he lived for his firm and he was being richly rewarded.

That was before he was diagnosed with HIV. That was before the HIV swiftly became full blown AIDS. Lesions began to show on his body. And he was fired. He was shunned by his community. He was dying, physically and professionally. With every fiber of his will, he would fight, he would fight them both. His life story was made into the movie Philadelphia. Andrew Beckett, our lawyer, was played by Tom Hanks.

Mark’s gospel this morning is the story of another man with lesions. His are from leprosy and not AIDS. He too was shunned by his community. He was dying, physically and communally. With every fiber of his will, he too would fight, he would fight them both.

These two different stories remind us this morning how connected our lives are to the stories in scripture. How many of us have felt shunned by our profession or our family or our community or even our church and our God? How many of us have felt we were dying physically, spiritually and mentally when the conditions of our life turned us on our head and abandoned us? How many of us have decided with every fiber of our will to fight them all?
There seem to be many ways to do this. For some, anything goes as long as we win! We can be like Beckett and use the law and our wits. Or we can try another way, we can turn to one who has more authority and power than any on earth.

The leper in Jesus’ story knew about the law. He has been, by law, separated from his family, his home, and his community of support. The law is clear about ‘unclean’ things. Persons afflicted with this disease may contaminate others who will also become impure. The law forbids such a thing.
In Marks’s day those unclean were expected to act in a way that clearly let others know to stay away from them. They were to dress in torn clothing and warn others not to come too close. The law in Leviticus was specific, they were to cover their upper lip and cry out, “Unclean, unclean.” To warn people away.
God spoke further to Moses saying, “He shall be brought to the priest and the priest shall make atonement on his behalf and he shall be clean.” Only the priest had authority to designate persons clean or unclean. This was clearly the law. Yet this man with leprosy turned away from the law. He turned instead to Jesus to be made clean, to become pure. He turned to Jesus and he model’s for us how we too are to turn to Jesus.

He began with prayer, kneeling before Jesus he said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” This is how we are to respond. When life and time take their toll we are to pray with every fiber of our will.
The prayer the man with the leprosy prayed was anything but demanding. He said, if you choose Lord you can make me clean or not. Blessedly, Jesus did choose to make him clean. He stretched out his hand and touched him and immediately the leprosy was gone.

This man’s desire to be made clean, to be cured, is not foreign to us. Finite human life is like that. Our body doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to. We get hurt, we contact something and next thing we know we want to be made right again.

But, our desire to be healed doesn’t always work out like we would hope. There is no guaranty the treatment we receive from the health care folk will cure us. There is no guaranty the treatment we craft for ourselves will work either. Bad things do not always work out for the good.

After sternly warning him, Jesus sent him away. Why would Jesus sternly warn the same man who had just moved him to pity? And why would he send him away? Was Jesus’ response a mirror image of societies? Was he angry this unclean man had asked him to be cured? Was he upset this man had not followed the law and gone to the Priests to be made pure?

No, I think not. Jesus knew his new teaching with authority, his new form of treatment, was not recognized by the law. Knowing this, Jesus realized for the man to be re-united with the community he must not claim to be cured by a touch from Jesus. No, it was necessary that he return to society by way of the will of the law as administered by the Priests.
He was not angry with the man who begged him to make him clean. He was angry at a society that would shun people to the point of creating laws for exclusion and then dare to claim sole authority to decide who could return into that community. The audacity of their assumption of such power over those afflicted with a difficult life was what Jesus was angry about and it was why he had come among them to proclaim a new authority. One that is rooted not it the law, but in God’s love alone.

So Jesus says, go dear one, show yourself to the priest. Return to the community of laws so that you will no longer be ostracized, outcast, one of the untouchables.
But the cured man did not obey Jesus. He began instead to tell his story and proclaim the word about Jesus. His testimony about him was so strong Jesus could no longer go into town. He had to stay out in the country. Even there, the people sought him.

The people sought him for they had heard and now seen about this new authority in their midst. This new teaching was one with real life changing power. A power found from prayer and engagement and healing.
The prayer from the man with the leprosy was not about being healed. No, his prayer was about Jesus. That Jesus has the ability to heal like none before him and none since. There is in Jesus, the power and the might and, if he chooses, the will to bring about healing lasting today and forever.

The man with the leprosy has faith in Jesus as the one who has this power. His faith is that Jesus’ power conforms not to the law, but to the will of God. By recognizing that the one to whom we pray is filled with the authority and power and will of God we realize something more is possible in our lives than just being cured from today’s complaint.

If we will engage with God, if we will petition God, if we will pledge our love to God, being physically and mentally cured is possible. On the other hand, if we will engage our life in faithful ways with God being spiritually healed is all but guaranteed.

To be cured is to be relieved of the symptoms of a disease, it is to receive a treatment that cures the disease and then restores us to health. This is good. But what we receive through the teaching of Jesus Christ will be beyond a cure.
To heal is to cause to become sound or healthy again, to become whole again, to correct or put to right our condition. But more is available. In Jesus’ new teaching; with the authority of God, we will become eternally healthy. We will become whole, meaning we will become one with God, and with God we will triumph over evil and even over death itself. That is how powerful our God is. Our God heals enslaved humanity for eternity.

Our Philadelphia lawyer fought the law firm for firing him because he had lesions, because he had AIDS. Their action was unjust, it was not right. Winning consumed our lawyer. By beating them he thought he could beat his disease and society would no longer shun him.

As the movie unfolds and his dying progressed, those feelings changed. He began to see how loving and caring people treated those with AIDS differently than the cold and uncaring in society. He realized a new peace in his life. A new peace which allowed him to release his anger and drive for justice at all costs. A new peace that allowed him to accept his condition and acceptance that he was dying. He realized no lawsuit would stop that.

This acceptance allowed him to stop hating and start living with grace and beauty the remaining days of his life. He stopped fighting the law and turned to a more powerful truth, one that would overcome the evil of his disease and even his own death.

In our 2 Kings reading this morning, Naaman had become angry too. He was angry at life and the law and how the prophet answered his call for a cure with a process. He had expected instead a personal visit.

Unlike the man with the leprosy, Naaman’s prayer was a demand for healing with the expectation of healing on his terms. Not a wise response on his part. But our God is forever merciful.

God’s response to Naaman and to us is to trust that the way to a full and healthy life is the same for everyone. Everyone receives the same special attention. The word of the Son of God is the same for all.

Jesus has taught us this morning that societies ways are not his ways. He does not want us to follow society’s morality, we are to follow his! He also teaches us that the desire for God is to be a way of life for us, not just a religion. We do not worship Presbyterianism, we worship God. To worship God is to be engaged with God, and that engagement is to be a way of life for us.
As a way of life we can be assured, we may not always be cured of what afflicts us. But knowing God loves us, we will be healed. We will triumph over the powers of evil and death. We will triumph over the powers that enslave humanity.

This is how powerful our God is and in our love for God and God’s for us we find our way to peace. We find our way to stop hating and hurting and start living with grace and beauty every day of our lives. We find our way in our Lord, our savior, Jesus Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 021212.gpc

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05 February 2011 Miraculous Intrusion Mark 1:29-39

Posted on February 7, 2012 by jwoodrff

05 February 2011 Miraculous Intrusion Mark 1:29-39

One of my favorite teachers told his class one day if publishers stopped publishing books for 10 years he still would not be able to catch up on all the books he wanted to read. His sentiment is widely shared. Folks who love to read love to have books.

I expect the new medium for reading, the electronic readers, speeds things up a bit. But folk who love to read have to be careful or they find themselves with stacks and stacks of books. Janet and I freely confess to our stacks. Our children have learned a gift card to a book store for birthdays or Christmas is a fine gift for either of us. Only when we move are our books a bother.

I particularly admire books that stay on the best seller list months and even years after their original printing. The Bible, of course, tops that list. Another popular book has been Rick Warren’s, “The Purpose Driven Life”. In its first 16 months of publication the book sold 10 million copies in English and 3 million in 20 other languages. It has now sold well over 30 million copies.
“The Purpose Driven Life” has such enduring appeal because people today are desperately looking for something that will help them find the purpose for their lives. Any study of the human story supports Warren’s main claim. We all want to know who or what that something is that gives meaning to our lives.
Sure enough, if you ask, we will by and large say we know the purpose of our lives. We may stumble a bit for just the right word or thought, but we do have one. Actually, people can be pretty predictable about it. People the world over feel their purpose in life is to provide for their own well being, their families safety, their communities health, even to just be left alone in peace.

Yet the question lingers. What do we come into this world to do? Perhaps it is our lack of faith that confuses us. We may even doubt there is a reason or a purpose that would drive our life. The evidence is not always so clear.
But, we have inquiring minds. So we sift our way through our life story and we search for an answer. Are we here for personal gain, to get what we can get while we can? Is our purpose found in others; our family, our friends, our work? Or, is there something or someone beyond this world of sense and sensibility, someone greater who defines our purpose? These are all fair questions. We feel grounded and justified when we know our reason for doing what we do.

According to Rick Warren, knowing our motivation for doing what we do is a key to understanding our reasons for the choices we make. Our motivations may reveal a lot about who we are and what we believe that affects what we do.
Jesus knew his true motivation. He knew his foundational truths, his reasons or justifications for existence. And because of his certainty, he did nothing accidentally, but always purposefully. Jesus lived a life of intentional vision, intentional direction and intentional action.

In the scripture this morning we learned Jesus’ early ministry was intense. His life was full. He was preaching and teaching non-stop. His day planner was full and he seldom rested. He did not complain about the demands on his time and energy. Instead, he faced them head on.

Not only did Jesus live this way, he was actually eager to expand his life ministry of preaching and teaching to one of healing the sick, protecting those less fortunate, comforting the lost, and strengthening the weak. Talk about a purpose filled and driven life!

These past few Sundays the scripture has asked us to consider our call to live life as an extension of God’s kingdom building. God has called us to become the way through which Jesus expands his ministry. If we will allow it, each of us is to become a minister of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine such a purpose? If we will come and follow Jesus our life will be a living example of the message Jesus has for the world.

This is the purpose driven life to which we are called. Jesus said, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came to do.” Let us go, Jesus said. Did we miss that invitation?
Jesus invites us to go with him to whatever place Jesus has for us. He wants us to go with him to be his voice, his vision, his ministry. Jesus calls us to be a part of his purpose driven kingdom building life. This is such good news to a world so infected by personal agendas, selfish interests, and weak justice.

From the gospel we learn Jesus immediately left the synagogue where he had been teaching. It is then the miracles begin. Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law, then he heals many others who were ill. He even cast out demons.

The next morning, he went to pray. Work, then pray. Not a bad way to spend a life. Then he set out to the next town to “proclaim the message there also;” saying to his disciples, “for that is what I came out to do.”

Jesus’ life has a clear purpose. He came to live God’s message of hope and salvation. His motivation is his love for the world. Jesus cared for all people. He loved his neighbor and his enemy. He cut off no one from the kingdom.

John 10:10 makes Jesus’ purpose clearer. Jesus came into this world taking the form of a human being so we might have life and have it more abundantly. Jesus wants us to be alive. His purpose is for us to be alive in our love, our joy, our purpose for living with him. He wants our life to be blessed, to be filled with the grace and joy that comes from his abundant love. Jesus does not preach a prosperity gospel. He preaches and teaches a gospel of service and faithfulness to discipleship.

Such a life is costly. It cost Jesus his life. It costs us our life too. We follow Jesus Christ by leaving our nets, our boats, our families, our dreams, for a life of service. We walk with him to one village, then the next, and we teach his love by our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. We live this way so God’s kingdom will come and not our own.

Jesus did not come to judge the world; he came to save the world. His purpose driven life bore witness to this truth. A truth we receive through the word of God.

One of our early confessions, The Barmen Declaration, reveals the nature of this word of God, it says, “Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture is the one Word of God whom we have to hear, and whom we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” God’s word, Jesus Christ, becomes our motivation for living. Living in the scripture, the Holy Word, deepens our love; it deepens our knowledge and our desire to serve Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Attending to the scripture the word of God reveals for us the power of the Holy Spirit. A power that justifies us by grace through faith and sets us free to live as motivated followers of Jesus Christ. Faith, and our life of purpose, comes from our immersing ourselves in God’s holy word and living out that word faithfully.

Today’s text finds Jesus busy at that purpose – proclaiming the good news, preparing the way for the kingdom of God, serving others and living his life faithfully so that salvation will be available for all.

Jesus’ life was not always lived this way. Except for his last three years he was living in relative obscurity as a carpenter. In order for his purpose driven life to be known he made a radical shift and revealed himself as a man inwardly seized by God. Being seized by God requires a great leap of faith, unimaginable trust, and a deeper love than we may realize. But we are not alone when seized by God. Jesus walks with us, and the Holy Spirit descends upon us, and we are forever changed.

It certainly changed Jesus. His radical shift became his exodus of sorts. It was his exodus from his life as a carpenter to his life as a servant of God. A servant of God leaves everything to be driven by God’s purpose.

Before he became Pope, Joseph Ratzinger wrote about this purpose filled journey. He said, “We not only have to leave the place that nurtured us and become independent, but we have to come out of our own reserved self. We must leave ourselves behind, transcend our own limits”.

I would add, only when we go beyond our own limits will we know God’s purpose in our lives. Only when we are inwardly seized by Christ will we begin to know what it might mean for us to fully commit our life to Christ. That coming out began with Jesus earliest kingdom building when he said “come and follow me.”

Before we figure out how we might follow Christ we struggle with the many competing voices vying for our attention and our allegiance. We wonder if our passions for living might be a clue to the path we are to follow or avoid. We wonder if the places we spend our time and energy are clues to how our God given purpose for living is revealed or redirected. We know we are sinful and selfish folk driven to idolatry. We know we cannot become Jesus. But, it is possible we can follow him.

It is entirely possible for each of us to weave our Christian passion into our life. It is entirely possible for our foundational belief in the truth of God’s word to be woven into this world living. We do not have to become monks or hermits or go off and live in a cave somewhere to separate ourselves from life’s temptations. That is not the life of purpose to which we are being called. Nor are we being called to a life of excess.

Albert Schweitzer was recognized by many as one of the most outstanding individuals of the modern time. The world remembers him as the selfless doctor of Lambarene, where in his jungle hospital he labored for half a century in the service of suffering African humanity.

Less known is the fact that Schweitzer was one of the world’s leading interpreters of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He was also a scholar of theology who shook the seminaries with a revolutionary interpretation of the historical Jesus. He was a word-famous virtuoso of the organ, and a respected philosopher of history. He was also honored with the Nobel Peace Prize and became even more renowned with his principle of “the reverence for life.”
Yet, none of these were his real purpose; he turned his back on all of this to live the life to which God had called him. A life of humble service to those the world had forgotten and passed by.

Once in a talk to boys in an English school, Schweitzer said, “I don’t know what your destiny will be. But one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.”
Schweitzer’s purpose-driven life was one of unselfish service, and his message to the young schoolboys is Jesus’ message to us.

Come, follow me. Be seized by God for service.

Come, follow me. Go and serve others, for that is what we are called to do.
Come, follow only me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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