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

0200512.gpc

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29 January 2012 Taught in His Love Mark 1:21-28

Posted on January 29, 2012 by jwoodrff

29 January 2012 Taught in His Love Mark 1:21-28

They went to Capernaum and on the Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and began to teach and the people were astonished at his teaching. They were astonished because he taught as one having authority and not as the scribes.
Mark’s telling of this story of Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue follows the telling in vs. 14 – 20 of the coming of the Kingdom of God. As Jesus passed along the sea of Galilee he saw his future disciples and called them saying “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Then his teaching begins, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.”

This morning we learn the coming of God’s kingdom will not be easy. There will be unclean spirits who come to prevent God’s kingdom from taking hold. And some of those unclean spirits may be in each of us. But Jesus has come to teach us about his power, the power to command the unclean spirits to leave us, so the kingdom of God will thrive, amazingly, through each of us.
But Jesus begins his teaching there in Capernaum where he enters the synagogue to teach with authority.

To this day I recognize that the one person in my life who spoke with a clear authority was my Grandmother. I moved to live with my grandparents when I was 14. I was not alone. At some point all my siblings and my cousins were raised by my grandmother. My brother and my sisters and my cousins, we all lived with her and my grandfather, some of us for a few months and some of us for several years.

It is no surprise we are all the better for it. We are all the better for it and we all have wonderful memories of living with grandmother. She taught us how to play canasta, a grown-up card game for little ones to play. She always had food on the kitchen table. When your belly is full life is generally pretty good. And she took us to church. Jesus was ever present in her life.

I have many memories of grandmother at home. The clock that was by her bed and the clock that was in the living room. A chest that once held nuts and bolts and saws in the garage. I also have a pair of her wire rim glasses. The only time they came off was when she set them next to her clock. Through her clock, I hear the world she heard and through her glasses, I envision the world she saw. God’s kingdom.

But it was her life teachings that I still remember most. She was kind and gentle and strong and sure. She stood above all the others in my life who think exercising authority over another means screaming and shouting and showing great force to get a message across. Grandmother didn’t teach that way and neither does Jesus. Theirs is a teaching grounded in confidence, mature faith, and love. Teaching with such rich qualities reaches deeply into our souls.
We can be sure Jesus does not let false teachings slide by. No, Jesus could be quite clear when wrong is wrong and when right is right. He won’t hesitate to let us know when we’ve been wrong. Thankfully though, his teaching with us is grounded by his love. We are, after all, children of God. God loves us and God wants what is best for us. Because God wants what is best for us he sends his son Jesus to be in our life.

The Gospel story this morning makes this point well. Jesus is here for us. He began there in the synagogue at Capernaum where his authority had been recognized by the folks because of the way he taught. The Gospel doesn’t tell us exactly what that way was, but we can be sure he was teaching about the coming of the Kingdom of God with certainty, clarity, and passion.

The folk there in the synagogue took notice of Jesus. He always spoke the truth. He presented matters of great importance, matters of life and death and eternity, clearly and with conviction. He taught in a systematic way, he did not ramble like the scribes.

He spoke as the lover of men and women, concerned with the everlasting welfare of his listeners and he relentlessly pointed to God and God’s love. Jesus spoke with authority from the very heart and mind of God. His teaching then is timeless and is intended for anyone with ears to listen and a heart to feel.
Clearly the people in the synagogue recognized this as a new teaching, they had never heard the scribes teach this way. They had never known the scribes to live like Jesus either.

Jesus did more than just teach by his words, he also taught by his actions. He acted to cleanse a man consumed with an unclean spirit, right before their eyes. They were astounded at this new teaching. Jesus doesn’t just talk about the coming of the Kingdom of God, Jesus acts to bring it about.

We all know people who talk a good talk but seldom deliver on what they promise. I’m not just talking about politicians now. People we work with, even friends and relatives don’t always act the way their words promise. And it hurts sometimes. We depend on people in our lives to live up to what they say. And truth be told, other folk depend on us for the same reason.

Equally true, sometimes you and I promise what we know we cannot deliver. We certainly know how to act human. But for those of us who have decided to follow Jesus, God has called us to a better life.

Anne Lamott is a favorite writer and in her book Traveling Mercies she tells the story of her own reluctant agreement to live in the authority of Jesus Christ. Sometime in her late twenties, after her father’s death from brain cancer and a breakup with her boyfriend, Lamott began a serious downward spiral into alcoholism and drug abuse. She was having some success with her writing, but success wasn’t enough to keep her demons away. When she began to obsess about life, to be overwhelmed with worry, guilt, or anger she would drink again. Predictably, things got worse. Convinced she was consumed by evil and the darkest forces in life she even had thoughts of taking her life.

One night during a period when she was sober she was lying and bed, “shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill” she became aware of someone with her, “hunkered down in the corner of the bedroom”, she soon realized “beyond any doubt” that it was Jesus.

She writes, “And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”

In the morning, Jesus was gone, but he would not leave her heart alone. He pushed and pulled on her and her habits of dulling down life by her abusive decisions. Jesus entered into her mind when she was awake and even in her dreams. He hounded after her to the point where she could do nothing but give up and give in and turn her life over to Christ.

She says, “I took a long deep breath and said out loud, ‘all right’. You can come in.” It was a dramatic turning point in her life. The old life was gone and a new life had begun. Jesus’ teaching had won her over. Jesus’ love had convinced her there is a better way to live.

Our call this morning is to open our lives to the truth of the authority of Jesus’ teaching. Our call this morning is to realize that Jesus Christ has the power and the authority to bring our lives to a place where we will make a new decision about how we live. How we live a better way.

Dearest friends, the time in our life when our actions do not match our words is over. These new actions will save us from ourselves. This new kingdom that will come into our lives, God’s kingdom, will save us from the things we do that separate us from God. From those demons that pull us into sinful actions. To those demons, Jesus says with authority, “Be silent, and come out of them!”
Having the troubles in our lives replaced by Jesus’ teaching is never easy. Often the mistakes we make have been our teacher. Sometimes those mistakes take their toll.

But God has blessed us. God’s grace is woven into the fabric of our lives. I have heard you tell your stories of God’s blessings. I have heard you tell that even in the valleys of the shadows, filled with struggle, God has found you.
We can remember the warmth in our heart and soul when God has found us. We can remember when God’s light has shown upon us and his kingdom has moved our pain and suffering to receive God’s grace, God’s forgiveness, God’s love.

Truly, we haven’t always felt such grace, but we do trust God and we know that if we decide to leave our old ways of living and come and follow Jesus, submitting to his authority, we will know what words to proclaim and what our life style should be to match those words. We can look to the bible and see clearly what God’s ‘to do’ list for us would look like. Building the kingdom of God from the very way Jesus lived his life.

The life Jesus would have us live begins when we accept his love and come and follow him. It is a life lived in his authority where we are compelled to make decisions to live with compassion, generosity, honesty, courage and love. In the midst of a time when these teachings are not in vogue, we can make a decision for God and God’s kingdom. We can make a decision to commit ourselves to live under a new teaching and a different kind of authority.
To do this we may have to set aside the worldly view of others, even those of our parents and our teachers, our friends and our family, even our pastor or our grandmothers.

My grandmother’s bible, her King James version, compete with her handwritten note of how many times she read a particular book or epistle or gospel, is on my bookshelf in my study at home. I see more clearly through her memory. I sense that the lens’ through which she read her scripture helped her to see more clearly too. I like to think that they converted life’s blurred vision into sharp focus for her.

The Reign of God teaches a similar thing: it takes the haze of suffering, of vocation, of life, of even religious devotion, and opens up the possibility for clarity and freedom. It opens up the possibility that our life ministry serves a cause that inevitably shall prevail, that the peace and reconciliation we proclaim through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not only Good News, but also news of the final word, God’s kingdom has come near.

We confess that this is true. From this moment on let us pray that we find actions of love and peace and grace that do indeed match our words.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen. 012912.gpc

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22 January 2012 Revolution Mark 1:14-20

Posted on January 24, 2012 by jwoodrff

22 January 2012 Revolution Mark 1:14-20

When I think of enduring revolutions in human history it is difficult to find many that have stood the test of time. By that I mean few, if any, powerful empires of the past still affect our lives. True enough, when Rome was being Rome, people lived as Rome would have them live. But there is little of that Rome left today? The big, the bad, and the ugly only affect the world for a short time.

But, we do find the revolution brought about by this man Jesus still influencing the world over 2000 years later. Sure enough, there have been others; Mahatma Ghandi, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose life messages of non-violent resistance to injustices still live with us today. Yet, there is something radically different about Jesus and his messianic movement. His revolution is a call to bring about the kingdom of God.

I cannot imagine a more powerful yet impossible possibility. To be called to bring about the kingdom of God makes little sense in our post-modern world where faith and reason have the potential to be anything we want them to be. Our being part of a revolution to bring about the kingdom of God is so radically different.

We are familiar with revolutions brought about by profound intellectual and faith based shifts, like the reformation for example. We are also familiar with revolutions brought about by struggles for power and wealth or to stop persecution. In many of those revolutions folks took up arms.
Jesus’ revolution is different. He does not call for a great intellectual debate. He does not call up the troops. Jesus calls ordinary folk like you and me with whatever sense or sensibility we can muster.

How can this be? Doesn’t Jesus realize we are not revolutionaries? Oh, we may think we were back in our day, we may think we had the tiger by the tail, we may think if the ubiquitous ‘they’ would just let us be in charge we could straighten things out.

Yet, we know better. We won’t be organizing for a new world order anytime soon. Our usual way of bringing about change will not bring about the kingdom of God. Our 2012 ideas about how to change the world will not work in this revolution.

Jesus’ revolution is fundamentally different from anything the world has ever seen. The world attempts to bring about change through power and strength and control and violence. Jesus’ model is one of love and peace. The world attempts to bring about change with Special Forces. Jesus accomplishes his mission through ordinary folk like us in a revolution that calls the world to give peace a chance while loving our enemies.

This truth should set our heads to shaking as if to say, no, this just will not work. How could it be that Jesus’ use of common ordinary folk can possibly change the world? We have no specialized training, no specialized skills, no extra-ordinary qualifications for kingdom building. And peace! Why, making war is easier.

We understand our resistance. We have no business being called to bring about a new kingdom. We are after all simple minded human beings who live in this finite and sin filled world. What possible connection could we have with God and God’s kingdom?

One of my favorite stories is from the Danish Philosopher and Theologian, Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard worried about this same question when he said, “Who am I that God would have any interest in me, let alone want to draw me into a relationship. I am frail, sinful, finite, plagued with selfish ways, and downright disloyal to God. Compared to God, my life has little meaning.”
Kierkegaard compared his life to that of God’s created world, to the universe. He realized the enormity of the universe; we know it to be, what, 15 billion years old. In comparison, Kierkegaard thought, “I might live 50 years. God is responsible for a 15 billion year old creation. My 50 years in comparison is meaningless. You could not even plot my 50 years on a 14 billion year time line and notice me. For 50 years in comparison to 15 billion would not even be a blip on the screen.” Sort of depressing isn’t it?

Then Kierkegaard remembered God’s promise, the promise of eternal salvation. And he remembered all he had to do to receive God’s promise was to believe and he would freely receive this gift. For his belief in God, Kierkegaard would live into infinity. Infinity trumps the 15 billion years of the universe.
Kierkegaard’s new understanding saves him from the obscurity of a pointless life and places him above even the vast expanse of the entire life of the universe. What an incredible radical revolutionary reality that is! God’s love for us, God’s promise to us of eternal salvation if we will believe in God makes the universe meaningless. The power of our God is limitless, the sovereignty of our God is limitless, the love of our God and the grace of our God are limitless.
We are reminded by this morning’s gospel how it all began. First Jesus says to Simon and Andrew, “follow me and I will make you fish for people.” Then he walks on and sees James and his brother John and immediately he calls them; and they left their father Zebeddee and followed him.

By calling a group of extremely ordinary people, a habit that he continues to this day, Jesus enlists us in his revolution. The plan is simple. Jesus proclaims the good news that the kingdom of God has come near and then he calls us to come and follow him. Come and follow him to build God’s kingdom in our families, our work, our leisure, our church, our very being. Sitting right where we are sitting, with a renewed urgency, hear Jesus’ call to holy obedience, to life changing action. Come and follow him.

The irony is we are completely and totally unprepared to join Jesus in kingdom building. But, that does not stop Jesus. Because that is just what Jesus wants us to be, totally unprepared. For he alone will teach us.

Jesus will teach us all we need to know and he will give us all the skills and abilities and talents we need to help him bring about a world filled with hope and forgiveness and love. He will teach us his gospel of grace. All we need do is immediately and completely leave the life we are living and follow him.
Before we think this is a romantic and happily ever after fairy tale, think again. While our call may be clear, we fail repeatedly to understand what total and complete discipleship means. We repeatedly disappoint God as we forget time and time again the need for urgency and singular focus on God’s will. Yet, Jesus sticks with us and gives us all he has, even his life, anything to lead us to the kingdom.

You see, God’s call is unyielding. Our saying no to God is not an option for God. God is determined about us. God is determined about us because God’s kingdom will not come without us. We are important keys to God’s kingdom. Can you believe that? What good news. This peculiar miracle, Jesus’ vocation for ordinary women and men, called to be his disciples, is a cause for celebration. For our life now has profound meaning. We are builders of the kingdom of God!

Consider also this morning the pairing of Marks message with Jonah’s. Two stories involving the sea, fish and fishermen. It reminds me of the parable about a fishing village on the shore of a great lake stocked full of fish. The fishermen there were extremely good fishing planners. They bought the best equipment, hired the most qualified deck hands, bought the biggest and fastest boats and gear. They built a fishing headquarters and had representatives all over the world to sell their fish. But they never caught one fish. They planned well, but they never actually went fishing.

I wonder if we have been good fishing planners like these people and never actually gone fishing. The gospel message is clear about this; we are called to catch folk up in God’s net of grace, love and salvation. And until we cast our net, we for sure will not catch folk.

Assuming we at least have the desire, perhaps some specific directions for fishing will help.

First. Fishing requires patience. Great patience is required to share God’s love to a person who has found their church experience hurtful or frightening or insulting.

Next, fishing requires timing. There is a right time to fish. We are wise to wait until the time is right and our message will meet open ears.
There is a right place to fish. We must reach out to people in need wherever they are. Jesus’ model is one of developing friendship with folk whoever they are, whenever we are with them, wherever they may be.

Next, fishing requires the right lure. People get hooked on all sorts of glitzy lures. Artificial lures they are called. Yet, we fish with live bait in the form of a real person, Jesus Christ. And Jesus is not artificial; he offers true and lasting love, joy and peace.

And finally, fishing men and women mourn over the loss of a fish, they truly regret it if one gets away. True fishing men and women may come home without their catch. But they are glad they tried, and they will try again
People want to hear about love, joy, peace, salvation, hope, life and love. We need not be timid; the time for our involvement in a personal revolution with Jesus is at hand. The most selfish thing we can do is to discover the joy and peace of God’s love for ourselves, and not share it with a world crying out for these very things.

Sharing the good news means offering a word of hope, a word of forgiveness, a word of love. When we do we offer nothing less than a gospel of grace to the world. And from the way the world looks, today is not too soon to try our first cast.

To be successful, Jesus is the model for us to follow. He challenges us to go beyond the edges of our boat. To step out of our comfort zone. To allow the compassion and desire he has placed in our hearts to flourish.
Often people will say the squeaky part of the wheel gets the grease. That may be true, but the squeaky part of the wheel is the slowest moving part. The place for change is on the edge of the wheel where things are moving fast. Creative people, people with vision and passion for living do not stay with the slowest moving status quo in life. No, they hang out on the edge of the wheel where things move quickly. To change the world we have to think fast, make changes and adjustments quickly and reach out where there is hurt, injustice and pain with passion and love.

When Jesus called the disciples, they stepped out, they left their boats and villages and families. When God called Jonah, he reached out to strangers.
I wonder if we have the courage to go beyond the safety of our boat, to go where God is calling us to cast our net, to catch folk up in God’s grace, love and salvation. I wonder if today is the day the revolution begins

No fishing license is required.

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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31 October 10 “Jesus Saves” Luke 19:1-10

Posted on November 9, 2010 by jwoodrff

In Flannery O’ Conner’s first novel, “Wise Blood,” Ms. O’ Connor presents a host of characters seeking salvation, only they never realize they have to first let go of themselves. Hazel Motes, the hero of the story, is caught up in an unending struggle against his own innate, desperate faith. O’Conner names men Hazel, with predictably tragic consequences.

Hazel falls under the spell of a ‘blind’ street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabbath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds the “Church of God Without Christ”. Even so, he is still side tracked in his efforts to lose God.

He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with ‘wise blood,” who leads him to a mummified holy child, and whose crazy maneuvers become an inseparable part of Hazel’s delusion filled human struggles.

O’Conner and her characters portray life as a constant struggle with redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom longed for and lost. To make her point, she parodies our human obsession with seemingly important things in our desire for redemption. As one example, she pokes fun at us about our obsession with cars. Well, some of us seem obsessed with cars. Early in the book, Hazel assures himself that, “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.” He proudly proclaims this street truth while using the hood of his car as a pulpit for his “Church Without Christ” ministry. Salvation doesn’t come easily to the street proud.
O’Conner is dark and her characters are dark. She reveals the rawness of the human character while exploring how precarious our life is. So precarious, we stand on the edge of the abyss of our human conditions and cannot avoid its pull.

In our reading from Luke, Zacchaeus’ story is also about the human pull to the abyss and our desperate attempts for salvation. Unlike O’Conner’s, his shows us the sure way from the abyss of despair to the firmness of hope and the changed life that avoids the pull from the “Church without Christ.”
Zacchaeus’ story contains a simple, yet powerful truth, our salvation comes to us in the life changing presence of Jesus Christ. Our salvation is not rooted in our life goals or objectives, our stuff, our station in life or how we present ourselves to these worldly powers. No, our salvation, our justification is not in powers or principalities, it is in a person, Jesus Christ.

Zacchaeus’ only desire is to try to see who Jesus was, to put his own eyes on the prize. The crowd stands in his way, so, he ran ahead, climbed a sycamore tree in order “to see him.”

Yet, Jesus is the one who sees Zacchaeus first. In that instant, with desire in his heart for Jesus, with Jesus’ look his way, during that surprising moment of human connection, Zacchaeus is saved.

Jesus tells him, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today. I cannot image what his thoughts must have been, ‘Oh my God, Jesus is coming to MY house! Oh, it cannot be! Oh my God, I must get down from this tree and run home quickly and straighten things, clean the bathrooms at least!”

Zacchaeus never makes it home to straighten his life. No, instead he hurried down from his tree and was happy to welcome Jesus. He need not worry about worldly things. He was made happy to simply, yet powerfully, welcome Jesus into his life.

Jesus started all this, Jesus is the one who looked up and said, I must stay with you. Isn’t this backwards? Shouldn’t we be the ones seeking Jesus, to stay with him? Isn’t it our desire alone that brings us our salvation?

Simply put, no. It is God’s desire, it is Jesus’ seeking us with his gifts of grace and love that save us.

This is good news for us this morning, our salvation occurs in the loving, life changing presence of Jesus Christ. It is a presence that comes to us through the power of the Holy Spirit in our baptism, it is a presence that comes to us through the nourishing and forgiving bread and cup of the communion table.

Yet, scripture challenges us with the notion that our salvation is not yet complete. We live in a life filled with sin and ultimately death, we live in a world where the powers of evil invade our lives without mercy.

But even our sin and the powers of evil will go away, we will be saved from them in the final destruction of sin and evil at the end of the ages, when the fullness of the kingdom of God is realized. We are saved, yet we must wait for the fullness of our salvation.

We realize, like ourselves, Zacchaeus had not been a model citizen. To often, he had yielded to the temptations of his position. All that changes when Jesus comes into his heart

The truth is, when Jesus fills our hearts with his grace and love, we are forever changed through and through. There is something powerful about the heart that moves our lives in a particular way. More Christ like I believe.
Zacchaeus does more than promise to stop his evil ways, he offers to correct his past wrongs and he offers to live differently in the future. He tells Jesus how he intends to change his life.

Notice that Zacchaeus initiates this response. He is seen by Jesus, but Jesus doesn’t tell him what to do. Zacchaeus has a free will. But, having a free will does not give us the freedom to do whatever we want to do. No, we have a free will so we will do what is right.

Zacchaeus knows what he has done that is wrong, you see, a heart filled with Jesus Christ cannot live the old life. The new life, the new way to live, doing the right thing, is to live as Jesus lived.

By searching our hearts, we too will know what to do with our life. Actually, knowing what to do with our life won’t be our question any longer, we will already know our answer. By listening to our inner voice, we will correct past wrongs. By following Christ’s voice, we will live our lives differently forever.

There are many ways we can correct past wrongs, live differently. Jesus modeled them for us. He shows us in the scriptures the depth and breath of how we are to live from the heart as reformed Zaccaeus’.
One way is to see our relationship with the poor and the outcast in society differently. Searching our hearts, hearts filled with God’s love and grace, it is possible for us to see all people in a new way, in a new relationship as children of God.

Another way is to see our relationship with our own family members differently. Listening to the inner voice of God, we recognize our family and friends as God’s chosen, who are just as forgiven, just as loved, and just as nurtured as we are ourselves.

Another way is to see our relationship with the peoples of the world differently. Be they from another country or another religion or another point of view. Following Christ’s voice, we hear the common voice of humanity. Brothers and sisters of the same loving God, be they Democrat or Republican, Muslim or Jew, Gay or straight.

Our reading in Luke this morning reveals perhaps the greatest truth the world seems oblivious to, God is always seeking us first. But, like Zacchaeus, we often don’t notice God until we realize that God has been noticing us all along. Often we don’t seek God until we actually feel God’s love, a love motivated through God’s son Jesus Christ, who seeks us day and night. Being finally found, we may begin to hear God’s word, and realize God’s nudging in our lives.

Our seeking God may begin with a longing that is like none other we have ever had before. Our seeking God may begin with an experience that opens our eyes in ways we had never seen before. Our seeking God may begin with our surprising surrender, a surrender that creates an even more surprise connection between ourselves and God.

How often in scripture do we read of Jesus telling us to surrender our lives to him? How often does God’s Word, Jesus Christ tell us to leave everything in this life and to come and follow him and be his disciple and to receive his grace and his promise of eternal salvation? Often enough to know our way to the truth.

Yet, there are those moments when we deny the truth and reject God in our refusal to believe that we are not in charge, that we are not the one who is sovereign, all knowing and all powerful.

Despite this, Jesus is seeking us this morning, calling our name, so we will surrender our selves to him. So we will truthfully recognize our real vulnerabilities to life and limb, and we will hear the good news. God is calling to each of us this morning and desiring our mutual connection, our ultimate eternal union with God.

Zaccaeus sought Jesus climbing a tree, we seek Jesus when we accept the truth that something or someone is missing in our lives. We seek Jesus when we surrender our lives to Christ.

Then our Lord reaches out, calls our name and brings us out of our tree. For Jesus ascended to his tree to save us. Jesus has climbed onto the cross to seek us, to speak our name to God so we will be forgiven and saved.

Faith is like this, first surrender, then connection. Surrender from self, connection to God.

This is to be our life in faith, and it comes from God, our God, the one who nourishes and deepens our relationship as we spend time in prayer, in study, in reflection, in solitude and in service.

This is our life in faith, coming from our God, who searches for us, desiring to be connected to us through his son Jesus Christ, who, having fallen in love with us, given grace abundantly to us, is praying we will come down from our tree, to see him on his, where the Son of Man has come to seek us out and to bring to each of us our truest salvation.

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

Additional sources:
“Lectionary Homiletics”, Volume XVIII, Number 6, October-November 2007, pgs.35-43.
“Pulpit Resource”, Volume 35, Number 4, October-December 2007, pgs. 21-24.

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24 October 2010 Our Merciful God Luke 18:9-14

Posted on October 27, 2010 by genesis

From our reading in Luke, it is evident that Jesus has great passion for the lost. Thank goodness, you may be thinking! Thank goodness that Jesus has passion for the lost. Certainly, in the context of our sin, or in the reality of our faith life, or in our track record for living the commandments, we are there, lost.

Equally as certain, there are times other than our God times when we feel lost. When the doctor’s don’t know what’s going on with us, or when they do, and it’s not what we want to hear. Family crisis, friends in trouble, our countries never ending challenges with politics and war and the economy.

Some days just getting in the car and strapping up the seat belt can cause us to feel lost. Lost in the world of I 35!

There certainly are more exotic spots to feel lost than I 35. I’ve hiked in the San Juan Mountain’s in southern Colorado and definitely had the fear of being lost. Anyone who has traveled in a foreign country, where you did not speak the language, knows the fear of being lost. Just getting in a cab in New York City will bring about that same fear!.

Growing up, getting married, having kids, finding a job, these too may bring on the fear of living lost!

Some of the craziest things happen to us when we grow up, get married, and have kids. Well, to tell the truth, growing up, getting married and having kids is just a smoke screen. Crazy things just happen to us whether we grow up, get married, have kids, or not!

We do grow up and we do begin to live, more or less on our own, and we begin to form opinions, choose things we like to do, have places we like to go, fun stuff for the most part if our health holds up.

The biggest fear for many of us came when we finished with school and realized we had to get a job. Earning money, that’s a fearful proposition, especially in today’s struggling economy.

Dave Ramsey is a Christian spokes person for how we should manage our money. Actually, Dave speaks about how we should manage our debt. He has written books, he’s been on the radio, and he does live events. His non-negotiable demand is that we should actually cut up our credit cards and throw them away. All of them!

Putting them in ice in the freezer doesn’t work, we can always thaw them out. Cut them up with a scissor and throw them away, that’s what Dave says we must do.

Then, we should begin to work as many jobs as it takes to get ourselves out of debt. He allows for car and house payments, within reason, but our credit accounts must go.

Dave preaches living on a budget and selling all unnecessary stuff. One devotee put an ad in the local paper which read, “2009 Volvo for sale, Dave says it has to go!”

There is no place in our life of debt and fear and worry for frivolous stuff, our boat, gone; our second or third car, gone; our big riding lawn mower, gone; our 50” flat screen television, really gone! Dave has us clean house and he preaches us down to the basics, to simplifying our lives, so we can become debt free. Being a Dave Ramsey devotee can lead one to severe and extreme behavior. Being a Christian may have the same results.

In Jane Austin’s much beloved novel “Pride and Prejudice”, the various folk in the story live with such arrogance and sure judgment about their station in life that they unknowingly limit their possibilities for really living a blessed life. They limit their possibilities to know love without pretense, to know marriage without manipulation and to know happiness without false pride.

Luke would offer, living this way as a Christian, with pride and prejudice, would limit our faith. Living without humility as a disciple of the crucified and risen Christ limits God’s ability to bring real grace into our lives. Our pride, our prejudice limits our ability to become the people God wills us to be, doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.

In our reading from Luke we learn through this parable that folk who center in themselves and their own perceived righteous ways and in their own contempt for those deemed less worthy have no humility. Their pride of prejudice pretty much condemns them in God’s eyes!

The Reverend Jay Losher rightly points out how familiar the parable is to us: Two individuals went to pray at the temple, one a Pharisee, the other, a tax collector. The Pharisee prays filled with proud self-assurance, eyes toward heaven, he prays, God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even this tax collector. Knowing God agrees with his assessment of himself, he then goes on telling God about how good he is.

The tax collector is the mirror opposite in action and word, ever looking downward, beating himself up in real emotional turmoil, he prays simply: God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

Jesus makes sure that what we learn from this lesson is that the tax collector goes home “justified”, and the Pharisee does not.

The Pharisee looks to the past and all the good deeds he wants to lift up to God. The tax collector anticipates the future, a different future, where judgment brings the wrath of God for unrepentant sinners, his heart is humbled. The Pharisee lives with pride, disobedience, and faces real death. The tax collector lives with humility, obedience and realizes eternal life.
The Pharisees’ way to pray is actually quite dangerous. C. S. Lewis notes, with a great deal of truth, “A person is never so proud as when striking an ATTITUDE of humility.”

The great Lutheran reformer, Martin Luther, understood this point in his great “Lectures on Romans”. As he explains it, there is a difference between sinners and sinners. Luther wrote: “There are some sinners who confess that they have sinned but… they give up hope and go on sinning so that when they die they despair, and while they live, they are enslaved to the world.

There are other sinners who confess that they sin and have sinned, but they are sorry for this, hate themselves for it, long to be justified, and under groaning, constantly pray to God for righteousness. (These are) the (true) people of God.”

For Martin Luther, the more we think of ourselves as a saint, the more sinful in fact we are. The more we think of ourselves as a sinner, the more saintly in fact we become.

The Pharisee was more than proud – he was prejudiced. As Nelson Mille in his novel “The God Coast” noted about one of his characters, she “excludes any realities that upset her prejudice.” Our prejudices do indeed get us in trouble. Though we may be seldom right about our perceptions of others, we are never in doubt.

Changing ourselves from ourselves is usually beyond ourselves. That’s why we need God and God’s grace in our lives, to overcome our resistance to changing ourselves.

As the Reverend William Malambri reminds us, God’s grace can be a tricky thing. Especially for us folk who experienced it first long ago and may have since forgotten what it is. Being a Christian isn’t new to most of us. We certainly haven’t perfected it, but we have learned some of the steps. We know when to come to church, how to follow along in the bulletin, sing the familiar hymns, say the familiar prayers, and receive the familiar body and blood of Christ.

We usually don’t fret too much when we stumble and sin, we know we will confess our sins each Sunday and be forgiven. We’ve read the book by James Moore, “Forgive me Lord for I have sinned, but I have several really good excuses!”

Or, we reason, I’ve sinned far worse than this in the past, my sin is not so bad this time. There’s always grace to save us.

From this line of thinking our pride will cheapen God’s grace and lead us to our disobedience and ultimately to our eternal death.

We cheapen God’s grace when we water down the cost of grace, don’t we. We cheapen God’s grace when we accept it without considering it cost Jesus his life. We undermine grace when we act, in our pride and our prejudices, as if what we have done and who we have been has earned us the grace we have.

We loose touch with the reality of God’s grace in our pride and our prejudices when we are convinced that we are good Christians! Pharisees!
We are not good, we are evil and sinful and for Jesus to remind us of this he has to offer grace to people we probably never would. People we would ignore or worse, hurt with our pride.

Jesus shows us the true way to God’s grace by accepting the unacceptable, by showing mercy to the merciless, by welcoming the unwelcome, by loving the unlovable. When Jesus does that, he startles us. Wait Lord, we must think, what about me, see all the good I’ve done, all the good I’ve been, I have great potential.

No, dear ones, Jesus reaches out and justifies and sanctifies us only when we humble ourselves before him. Jesus forgives us only when we tell the truth about our lives and who we are. Only in our humility and only in our obedience will we have eternal life.

Jesus knows the truth about us anyway, doesn’t he? We just as well confess with eyes cast down, beating our chest, praying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. It is a bitter truth. But, it is our truth, it is our truth about ourselves.
For his part, Jesus loves us and will always forgive us, always. And by his surprising Grace, if we will let him, he will change us and save us and fill us with his faith and continue to love us for all eternity.

In the words the first century rabbi Hillel, “Keep not aloof from the congregation and trust not in thyself, until the day of thy death, and judge not they fellow man, until thou art come to his place.”

These are the simple acts of one who is humble and forgiven, these are the loving acts of one being obedient and filled with God’s grace, these are the faithful acts of one receiving mercy and finding there eternal life, eternal life with our Lord and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let us therefore pray, God, be merciful to us, for we are sinners. Amen.

Extra resources:
“Lectionary Homiletics”, Volume XVIII, Number 6, October-November 2007, pgs. 33-34.
“Pulpit Resource”, Volume 35, Number 4, October, November & December 207, pgs. 18 – 20.

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17 October 10 “Faith on Earth” Luke 18:1-8

Posted on October 20, 2010 by jwoodrff

My very first Presbytery meeting in the valley was a number of years ago at First Presbyterian Church in Mission. I was first impressed with the generous hospitality from the host church. They had a tent outside on the front lawn. There were tables and chairs and fans and food and endless friendly fellowship. The usual Presbytery displays even seemed to have an added flair. The Exhibits Hall was teaming with an energetic enthusiasm!
But, I must confess, for me, going to Presbytery begins, honestly, as drudgery. Taking Friday and Saturday away from the expected weekend activities, soccer games and enjoyments to sit and listen to report after report doesn’t excite many!

On the other hand, seeing people you know and meeting new people and hearing new ideas always lifts my spirits. I’ve always left those meetings feeling better spiritually and excited about the grace of God at work in our Presbytery.

That Presbytery there in Mission was particularly memorable because of the rather novel way they opened worship. There where these rather large puppets mounted to a large mast and carried into the Sanctuary by costumed handlers. They mounted those puppets into holders and they stayed there during worship. For me, they created an almost eerie presence I couldn’t seem to ignore. It was as if those larger than life puppets were watching over us!

The rest of the service was great! We worshiped in Spanish and English and there was a reaffirmation of our baptism, coupled theologically with the celebration of communion. I particularly liked that.

I left worship feeling a peace and warmth toward our Presbytery as we were in community, many churches having become one, celebrating together as we took in the body and blood of our savior, Jesus Christ.
I was also affected by the business of that particular Presbytery meeting. A large part of the presentation that day was from a planning team looking at a redesign for the Presbytery. It seems we plan to redesign the Presbytery every few years.

The new design was to emphasize improved communication throughout the Presbytery, to build better relationships within the diverse geographical regions, and to create a connectional and unified emphasis to our ministry. This was good, it all sounded good!

As always, there were powerful testimonies from folk seeking candidacy or moving to new churches. We heard updates from New Church Development, Presbyterian Women, Pastoral Care, Stewardship, and the Committee on Preparation for Ministry.

Not to loose our reputation, there was at least one issue where the body was divided. There were passionate speeches followed by close votes. As is always the case at Presbytery, it was essential that we be intentional about our discussions with one another, for there were a myriad of follow up issues at hand. Many of those follow up issues were a result, on the part of some, to not let perceived injustices go unchallenged. For others, the discord was rooted in disagreement in fact or on principle. Many it seemed, had lost heart and were tired of the contention.

In our reading today from Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells his followers about their need to pray always and to not loose heart. To teach this lesson, Jesus tells them a parable about a woman seeking justice against her opponent. Time and time again she seems to fail in her attempts to have the judge in her case act for her. She may have passionately spoken to him. She clearly was intentional. She was not going to let her perceived injustice go unchallenged. Eventually, her unwavering persistence with this earthly judge results in the justice she seeks.

From this example, Jesus promises quick justice to those who cry out to him day and night. He says we need to be persistent with God, no less than we might be with an earthly judge.

Jesus says we need to persist in our prayer life too. He doesn’t say how we are to pray, or what we are to pray. But he makes is clear, we are to pray always.

We have all learned that doing something time and time again changes us forever. Perhaps persistence is Jesus’ real teaching for us this morning.
In prayer, we want to be assured that God hears us and answers us or directs us, or affirms us. We want to affirm that God loves us and will continue to provide for us. Praying brings such assurance.

Persistent prayer shapes us, it forms us, it softens us and it also hardens us. Prayer comforts us and yes, prayer even makes us uncomfortable.
Jesus’ call to us this morning is a call to pray always and be made whole. His call is for us to become complete in our faith and in our personality as a person of Christian faith, which will eventually form us into the image of the person our God created us to be.

Our modern day problem is we don’t have the time to be as persistent in our prayers as the widow in our story. Our day is filled with to many other demands. And rightly so, we do have obligations, we do have duties, we have become bound to the duties we have chosen to live with.

Jesus wants to know, when the Son of Man comes, will he find that faith on earth is a faith in him or will he find instead a faith on earth in our earthly duties? Does our persistence lie in living our own demands or in discovering God’s? Has our wholeness been crafted by our hands to meet our needs and bring justice to our life on our terms? Or, have we crafted a different way of living. A way where God is our center?

Now, do not be confused, do not assume that Jesus is saying to us this morning, if we aren’t praying always, we will have lost heart in God’s desire for us and our faith on earth. No, do not be confused that if we do not pray always we will not become one with God?

Our efforts to pray, however they occur or how frequent or infrequent, are not the point. Jesus offers that we don’t have to wear him down. A single word will do. His name perhaps.

Jesus will change our lives because of his grace, his love, his gift. Not because we prayed the minimum number of required prayers. Jesus doesn’t require a litany. A simple mention of his name will suffice.
Then ,from our attention to Jesus, He will help us find an easy way to expand that attention from a single word to a boundless expressiveness of praise and adoration and humble walking with our God. In our repetition, in our insistence, in our prayer we will begin to notice that our prayers change. They change from being prayers so obviously rooted in our own desires, seeing our answers first, to giving God a little wiggle room in our lives.

We know how our prayers can start out asking for our personal wants. Oh Lord, do I buy the condo on the beach now or wait until next month? God could use a little wiggle room here to help us see we may not need a condo on the beach in the first place!

When we pray and seek only our possible answers, we close down the possibilities of seeing God’s answers for God’s needs.

It is God’s answers to prayers that bring about justice and hope and peace and humility for us and for the world. Our desires, our answers cannot do that. Only God’s answers for God can.

At that Presbytery, there in Mission Texas, we heard from a man named, Dennis Smith, who had been a missionary in Guatemala for over 30 years.
Teaching about Jesus and his love, Dennis told of the slow progress the missionaries have had in helping bring justice to the people in Guatemala. Slow, yes, but progress, none the less.

Repression and poverty and injustice defines the lifestyle for the majority of the Guatemalan people. Yet beauty, caring, and love are found in abundance in their families and their basic goodness towards one another.
Dennis told us a story of his overnight stay in a small rural village in the mountains. He stayed in a one room hut where the dirt floor was immaculately swept clean, the few possessions of those who lived there were carefully set in the room for comfort and function. He told us how for breakfast he was offered the most prized food source available to the family, a single boiled egg. In that simple meal, his host family had shown him the face of God.

Dennis told us the story of a woman whose family had lost all their possessions as they were forced from their land and their home to live on the edges of society in poverty, where they had to beg for food, live in a make shift shelter, with no hope for the future. Yet, she sought no revenge for herself or her family for that was not the way Jesus taught her to live. Jesus did not teach her to live with hate and anger, seeking violence in response to injustice. Instead, she prayed, and she did not lose heart.

In this powerful response to not seek revenge, Dennis had seen the face of God in a poor woman, there in the poorest of places in God’s kingdom.

Dennis also told the story of a Mayan pastor whose ancestors had been brutally violated for centuries and when he was asked how one responds to such brutality and injustice, the pastor said not one word.

Dennis asked the man later why he did not speak and was told that to do so would trivialize the memory of those victimized. To keep silent spoke louder than words. Jesus taught him, justice belongs to God. Here, again, Dennis could see the face of God in the face of that poor pastor, there in the poorest of places in God’s kingdom.

Where, I wonder, do we see the face of God in our lives? Ours certainly is not the poorest of places in God’s kingdom. Do we see a glimmer of that face in our own? Are we the poor face of the woman or the pastor that will reflect the face of God and bring justice to the world?

Our life of unwavering prayer, never losing heart, changes us and makes us whole and complete as true disciples of Jesus Christ.

Our life of unwavering prayer, never losing heart, allows God to reveal through us God’s peace for the world.

Our life of unwavering prayer, never losing heart, moves us to bring the sort of justice the world sorely needs.

That is, if we are willing to become the face of God.

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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03 October 2010 Our Place at The Table Luke 17:5-10

Posted on October 5, 2010 by genesis

Super size this, mega size that. We’ve been on this bigger is better kick for some time now. SUV’s, homes, office buildings, boats and planes, you name it we’ve been able to make it ginormous.

For the past three years I have been an Ordination Exam reader for Mission Presbytery. We have met each year in Dallas at the American Airlines training center. It is a mega sized training facility for the airline industry and their related support services. There is a life sized airplane in the building. Actually, it’s in a classroom in one of the buildings. It’s a Texas sized place.

A time magazine survey last year found that a majority of the people surveyed agreed that God wants us to be financially prosperous. This is part of the so-called “prosperity gospel”, where more is good.

The prosperity gospel is a religious belief found among ‘tens of thousands’ of Christians centered on the notion that God provides material prosperity for those God favors. It teaches that Jesus blesses believers with material riches. But, it misses the point that Jesus himself never lived in prosperity.

In the reading of our gospel this morning, the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” Why not! We’ve mega sized everything, we preach a prosperity gospel. Why not super size our faith too! Given the example from the apostles, are we to consider the possibility that we can simply ASK Jesus to mega size our faith and he will?

Simply answered, Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus is opposed to any increasing or mega sizing of faith this way. As a matter of fact, he seems to say that the exact opposite of an increase is what we should want. Jesus says, smaller is better; even faith as small as a mustard seed.

Bigger, it seems, creates the desire for even bigger. The mustard seed, on the other hand, grows from a small seed to a proportion larger than imaginable. Faith the size of a mustard seed will grow to a proportion out of this world. That growth will be partnered with an amazing wonder at the mystery of God’s grace that produced such abundance. Asking for faith the size of a mustard seed is what we should be doing.

Jesus answers the apostles with a parable, part of which asks, Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table?”
Jesus knew his apostles would understand the economics of work, be it with a hired hand, a servant or a slave. That person is doing what he is being paid to do and he isn’t finished until he is finished. For his labor he receives room and board, health insurance, vacation time, stuff like that. He’s receiving compensation for his work. When his work is done, then he may join in for a feast. The worker in this parable is to do exactly what he is supposed to do, no less/no more. He doesn’t expect special treatment and none is given. Once the job is done, then he receives his due.

We have in the parable the image of a laborer who does the minimum required of him. Actually, he might even have had an attitude, he may have resented even having to do the minimum of work. The land owner seems to sense the attitude of his servant. Sensing he may expect special treatment, he tells him, prepare my supper, put on your apron, and serve me.

This may seem to be a harsh way to answer the apostles. Their question seems appropriate, ‘increase our faith’. They know Jesus has the power to do amazing things. They have seen his miracles, turning water into wine, feeding thousands from just a little food, healing the sick, raising the dead. They have heard him tell folks again and again, your faith has made you well. So, why not? Jesus, increase our faith, then we too will have miracles in our lives!

But, Jesus senses we may expect special treatment. Jesus senses we may expect a short cut.

As the one who serves, Jesus wants us to remember, that from the very beginning, there were no short cuts, our faith was about a relationship and a commitment.

The relationship part may seem easy enough. To be in relationship with Jesus is to know his story, to know his teaching, to heed his call to come and follow me. It is to accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and to spend time with him in prayer and study and worship and service. It is to love him.

But, what about the commitment part? What might it cost, and for how long. How long will we be required to be of service of our Lord? How long are we to be a slave? Surely not forever! Surely there is a short cut. Let’s just ask!

Jesus tells us about the servant to make sure we understand that asking is not how we increase our faith. NO, we don’t just show up on Sundays and turn in our order. Hello, my name is Jesus, I’ll be your server today. Can I start you off with an increase in your faith?

No, no appetizers here. Jesus doesn’t wait on us, Jesus doesn’t owe us faith, or grace, or love, or anything. When we are in a relationship where we feel we are owed something, we are not really in a faithful relationship are we? A faithful relationship certainly requires another person, but it also requires a great degree of selflessness. We become smaller than our largely ego driven selves in a successful relationship, not larger.

When we grudgingly go through the motions in a friendship, at work or in our family, we become calculating and wonder how we can get the upper hand.

I believe Jesus wants us to know, this is not the sort of relationship we will have in the Kingdom Of God. To be sure, God’s children aim to do God’s will. But they do it with a gladness of heart, in a spirit of love and gratitude.

Do not be confused, Jesus is not advocating for a smaller faith, just a different faith, one not of this world.

He asks, “Who among you, if he has a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he comes in from the field, come at once and recline at table? We won’t say this to the one working for us. His reward will be a wage, an earned wage. “Will he not rather say to him, prepare my supper, dress up properly so you can wait on me until I finish eating and drinking.”
But Jesus does invite us, Jesus invites us to his table, he will say, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden. Come and recline with me at table. It is to this table before us that we are invited, this one, where we will find his body and his blood. Shed for us for the remission of our sins. Our reward is no wage, our reward is to spend our time with Jesus in the heavenly kingdom, both here and there.

Jesus will be the one tending to us at table, he will be the role model for us, the role model of faithful servant hood, to teach us how we are to be servants to God and to one another.

A key to this passage is this model for faithful servant hood, the model for how we are to act, how we are to live, how we are to have our being in a relationship with Jesus Christ. There is no shortcut to the Lord’s table.
Jesus is the servant whose example and gracious relationship with his followers captures and upholds our service. Our service is to him as Lord. Following Christ, therefore, gives us authority to serve as he served, not to lord it over others.

The truth for us this morning is, as followers of Jesus Christ, there is no need for desperate quests for increased faith. But there will be a journey of sorts, it will be a life long journey for a different faith.

A faith where God’s spirit works through us, making all things possible. A faith sustained right here in our church family, where we can be confident of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of our Lord is growing.

Our reminder this morning is that the relationship between our selves and Jesus Christ is not one based on earning some sort of merit or reward.

If our relationship with Jesus Christ is based on achievements and reward, we will always be a slave and we will never be anything more than a lost and bound slave to ourselves and this worldly existence.

As baptized Christians, we have become a faithful slave, belonging to our Messiah, Jesus Christ, and he accepts total responsibility for our lives, and because Jesus has total responsibility for every nanosecond of our life and every issue and circumstance and condition of our life, we enjoy Gods grace and complete and total safety and security in God’s kingdom.

For this good news, we labor in this fragile life out of a sense of duty and loyalty and love, not in the hope of gaining earthly rewards.

Kaye Gibbon is a writer, who tells the story of four generations of women who have learned the lessons of life. The truth they all understand is that life deals us a different hand than we had hoped, and less than we might think we deserve, and by grace we must learn to live with diminished expectations and compromised dreams. We start out with such high hopes and bright dreams, and every time we make a decision we have to settle for something less and thus lose the possibilities of all the other things we might have done. Yet, it is where we discover that life is found in the gifts that are given, in acts of kindness we had no right to expect, in the friendships that are give to us, in the causes undertaken for no reason other than they are right and good, in the helping of another that was not undertaken for reward, that the real joys and the real fullness and the real satisfaction of life is found in the grace that comes in the doing of ones’ duty, of being a servant for the Kingdom of God.

For this we are blessed by the grace of God. Then as Christ walks with us in our lives, strengthening each of us in our own ways with increased faith, we become the salt for the earth, the light on the hill, the seed for the world. We become the mustard seed, the mighty servant of the Lord, bringing shalom, peace and wholeness, as the increase that is beyond this world.

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

Works used:
Grothe, Rebecca H., ed., “The Minister’s Annual Manual, for Preaching and Worship Planning 2007-2008”, pgs. 81-87.
Hendriksen, William, “New Testament Commentary”,1978, pgs. 795-797.
“Lectionary Homiletics”, Vol. XVIII, Number 6, October 7, 2007, pgs. 4-11.

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26 September 2010 Tables Turned Luke 16:19-31

Posted on October 5, 2010 by genesis

I once had a philosophy professor say, if a stranger walks by and makes eye contact, we should thank them. Usually people will just glance away or ignore us all together. If, on the other hand, they make and even maintain eye contact, even for the briefest moment, we should thank them.

We should thank them because they found something interesting about us. Perhaps it was the way we looked, or the way we carried ourselves. Whatever the reason, being noticed is important to us. Oh, sure, there are times we might like to blend into the wall paper. But, we are human and we do like being noticed.
In our reading this morning in Luke, the poor man, Lazarus must have prayed non-stop to be noticed. He lay there at the gate of the unnamed rich man’s house. Covered with sores, Lazarus longed to satisfy his hunger with whatever fell from the rich man’s table. Yet, no crumbs came his way. Even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

Lazarus was not noticed by the rich man, he received no eye contact there at the gate from him. He received no sought after glance. He received no favor from the rich man’s table, no hospitality from the rich man. What made it worse, later in the parable it becomes obvious, the rich man knows Lazarus. He knew who he was all along, he knew Lazarus was the man from his gate, the one he chose to ignore.

The rich man chose to judge Lazarus and he judged him to be unfit and unworthy of even the most basic of human charity or hospitality. With no eye contact, no recognition of a fellow human being in need, the rich man shows us his heart is set in stone. He had become hard hearted.
I don’t know, perhaps he thought it wasn’t any of his business. We cannot tell from our reading, we do not learn much about him. He was dressed in purple and fine linen, which was an expensive and obvious upper class way to dress. He feasted sumptuously every day. We know he is rich.

But, we did not read that he was evil or angry or vindictive or a crook. He was just a rich guy who judges and ignores people, we got that.
Being so, perhaps he thought there were things in the world that were just not his business. I’m not taking his side, nor am I giving him an excuse, I just wonder. There is a lot of malaise in the world. There is indifference enough in our own lives. We find our little pet peeves, our little pet investments, our little pet projects, and we judge. Or we look past or we look through what we don’t like or what is not in our particular interest or business.

The rich man must have made his decision about Lazarus quickly. He felt no responsibility toward him. Lazarus simply did not exist.

At least, if his inaction is any indication, that must have been what he thought. This man, here at my gate, lying right here, poor, covered with sores, he is none of my business, he is not my responsibility. I owe him nothing. For me, he does not exist.

Then, they both die, the rich man and Lazarus. They die and Lazarus is with Father Abraham and the rich man is in Hades and oh, does he notice Lazarus now!

In our reading this morning this is the pivotal point in Luke’s parable. Suddenly, the rich man notices and even pleads for Lazarus’ attention. He pleads for his gentle, soothing, healing touch, to no avail.

No, says Father Abraham, no dice. You had your chance and you were judgmental and because of that decision, you sealed your fate. You did not stop to give a healing look, a healing look to acknowledge a brother in need, no, you had your chance. You did not send even one crumb from your table to nourish a fellow travelers hunger. Instead, you let the dogs lick his sores for his only comfort.

Now, in the terror that is Hades, now, you notice him. When the tables are turned, you even extend your selfishness by pleading for your brothers, they too will have their own chance to notice and change their selfish ways.

For us, the depth and breadth of our interests, our business, has been lying at our personal gate since day one. The characters change, and for the most part, we do too. We change, we soften in some ways and in others, we harden. We do, we are human after all.

God knows this about us. God knows how quickly our hearts can harden. Isn’t that one of the reason’s God sent Jesus into our lives? To soften us, to help us notice those there at our gates, be they stranger or estranged or most intimate loves.

Dustin Hoffman plays Bernie Laplante, in the movie, “Hero”. Bernie steals for a living. He sees a plane that has made an emergency landing in a small lake and when it seems everyone is out, he goes in. He’s looking for stuff to take. Instead, he notices a woman who is trapped in the plane. He ignores her. She’s none of his business. He leaves the plane. He doesn’t want to notice her. Grumbling to himself, not wanting to get involved, he eventually cannot ignore her. Hearing her pleas for help, he reluctantly pushes through the water, going back into the plane.

He turns himself to go back to pull her to safety. He notices her and he knows, despite his complaining, he knows what his real interest is, he knows what his real business is, he must save her.

He’s been a wreck lately, he’s having trouble with his ex-wife. He adores his son, who is beginning to see his dad as a looser. The police are on to him for his stealing. He’s such a loner, people don’t notice him. He’s just driven deeper into despair. Now this!

Grumbling and complaining all along the way, he does the right thing, he notices and acts. He pulls the woman to safety. Then he just walks away, unnoticed.

The woman he rescues happens to be a reporter. She tells her story of being rescued by this unknown man and wants to find him, to thank him. Her only clue to his identity is a shoe he left behind, so her paper offers a reward.
You know what happens next, right? The search for Cinderella begins. Who will the shoe fit? They line up around the block to try on the shoe, to become the hero. Then, lo and behold, they find him. The shoe fits this one guy who is the poster child for heroes. He is ruggedly handsome, but, he is not our guy. He is not Bernie, he is a false prophet.

Our guy, the right guy, is just fine with this. Remember, he didn’t want to be noticed in the first place, the one there at his gate. He certainly doesn’t want to be the one shouting to the world, ‘notice me now’!

Through the whole ordeal, he maintains his autonomy until the end when our guy steps up once again to save even the imposter and then the rescued woman realizes, Bernie is the one who saved her.

She has been searching to find the one who noticed her and saved her. The one ignored at first for the richness at hand. To the end, our hero is humble, yet his deeper character is one of a hero, a savior who notices.

Isn’t this our story too? Aren’t we searching for someone to notice us? We certainly are, and we know there is one who notices us and saves us. Despite the fact that all too often we ignore him for the riches at hand, he does not ignore us. There is a humble one whose character is of a loving hero, a savior who notices, his name is Jesus Christ.

Yes, Jesus notices us and saves us from Hades. Jesus notices us and weaves himself into our hard hearts, involves himself into our lives and changes us forever.

He changes us that we may then become the one who notices others. The stranger, the foreigner, the widow, the orphan, the guy who cuts us off in traffic, the one who is rude or mean at work, the ubiquitous ‘they’ in the world of politics or business, even the rascals in our family, we will notice them in a different way and for different reasons. To feed them and to tend to their sores, to love them by noticing them as a brother or sister in Christ, a child of God, like us.

But, have we truly headed our warning this morning? If not, we may find ourselves down there, in the place of torment. Have we remembered Moses and the prophets and their warnings, their law? Have we listened to them? If we do not listen, we will not be noticed, even if someone rises for us from the dead.

Or, perhaps now, remembering Lazarus, we will listen. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, for you and for me. He has noticed us so we can then notice one another, to live the right way, to go back into the plane when we need to.
All it takes is our being changed into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. Then, the well being of others will be our real interest, noticing them and reaching out to them will be our deepest business.

Dear friends, here is our future, this is the vision Jesus gives to us, there is our door, right up there, that cross, do we notice it? It will show us the way to the risen truth, Jesus Christ, our Lord, our savior, the one who notices us for all eternity.

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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19 September 2010 The True Riches Luke 16:1-13

Posted on September 21, 2010 by jwoodrff

Three contractors were touring the White House on the same day, one was from New York, another was from Missouri and a third was from Florida. At the end of the tour, the guide asked them if they would like to bid on a project at the White House. “Of course,” they replied in unison.
“We need one of the rear fences redone,” said the guide. “Why don’t the three of you each look at it and give me a bid.”

The contractor from Florida got out his tape measure and pencil, and after examining the project said he could do it for $900. “That’s $400 in materials, $400 for my crew, and $100 profit for me.”

The contractor from Missouri took the tape measure, pulled out a pad and pencil and came up with a $700 bid. “That’s $300 in materials, $300 for my crew, and a $100 profit for me.”

Without hesitation, the New York contractor said, “I’ll do the job for $2,700.” “$2,700,” exclaimed the guide. “You hardly even looked at the fence. How did you come up with that figure?”

“It’s easy,” said the New York contractor. “$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you,
In worldly matters, the New York contractor knew how to take advantage of a situation. Shrewdly done, we might say.

Our reading from Luke’s gospel this morning is a reflection on how so called worldly people often show more astuteness or shrewdness than God’s children, even in matters that may be affecting our everlasting salvation.

When I worked for the YMCA in Galveston we had a delinquency prevention program for school aged kids using Vista volunteers as staff. They were all young, industrious, self starters who impressed me with their energy and ideas. One of their continuing mantras for working in the local community was to achieve ones goals by what they called, ‘mobilizing your resources.’ They would assess their resource needs for their particular project and search in the community to discover where those skilled resources were. They had a plan. They set out clearly knowing what they needed to do, they discovered what resources were available and they would rally them to a common good.

The manager in our reading this morning took a similar approach. Faced with the possibility of loosing his position, he knew he needed a plan to secure his future. He had this new idea to mobilize his resources, to recruit his master’s debtors, who might eventually become his only friends.
He enlisted them by drastically reducing their debt, thereby rallying them to a broader common good. His, theirs and eventually, the rich mans.
If we misinterpret Luke’s parable, we may think Jesus is telling us that we should become worldly schemers. That is not the case. Jesus wants his disciples to look ahead, to mobilize our greatest resource and restore the one relationship that will make all the difference in our lives.

Our relationship with God is at times tattered and at times aloof. We’ve been entrusted with a lot as a disciple of Jesus Christ. We’ve also received a lot, unearned blessings, the grace from God. Yet, we often mismanage God’s gifts.

God judges us and in our judgment we discover our shortcomings and, most distressingly, we feel God’s disappointment. We have sinned, we have been unfaithful, we have been selfish and we have been lazy.
Despite our sin and our unfaithfulness, despite our weakest selves, Jesus offers us hope, again and again, Jesus offer us hope in his generous charity, for in Jesus Christ, it is never too late to restore our relationship with God. It is never too late for our rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation, we read in Luke’s Gospel this morning, is not only possible for us, it is highly probable. Rallying our resources may be the key.
Perhaps before we even know we are hanging out to far and living a life away from God, God is mobiling, trying to restore our relationship. When God created the world, and us in it, God declared it good.

In God’s goodness and grace, God has never stopped providing for us.
God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ to restore our broken relationship.
God’s grace makes us right with God and through our faith, given out of God’s love, we are made right with God.

In Luke’s parable, neither the rich man nor Jesus is praising the manager for being a crook or a shady dealer, only for his shrewdness, for the fact that he looks ahead and restores relationships for his future life.
This morning’s gospel reading is a call for each of us to mobilize our resources too. It is a call for us to know, at our core, what we need to do with our future. It is a call for us to see in our lives, our families, and our church what our resources are. It is a call to rally these resources, God included, to our common good.

Our manager this morning was preparing for his future, his life after. At some point in our lives we too see the need to prepare for our future, our life after. After the kids grow up, after that career ends, after our youth, our energy and our health.

How then might we begin to prepare for our life after? How are we to get ready for the future, to get ready for heaven?
You all know the Reverend Doctor David Johnson from Austin Seminary. David recently shared with me a sermon he preached here a few months back. It was a sermon about our future.
David suggested we might consider three questions. What are our strengths? What do we care about? Who is our God?
In considering our strengths consider Peter, who in the book of Acts, met an unnamed and lame beggar who was asking for money. Peter said to him, “I have no silver or gold, but I give you what I have; in the name of Jesus Christ, walk (Acts 3:6).”
Isn’t this our greatest strength, to give what we have? As David said, if we have the courage to say, “I give you what I have,” and then really give it, that will be the healing of the world.

Often people are amazed at our generosity. You all have experienced the good it feels to help another with your time, your money, a warm meal, a hand with a chore, a visit just at the right time. Sure, these things make a difference, but it is the giving from our heart that really matters.
All of our stuff will eventually be given away, we truly cannot take it with us, but it is the giving nature of our hearts that the world will always remember.
What do we care about? This is another way of asking, what are we going to do with our strengths? Like the church, we do not exist to just survive, we exist to serve, to serve God and to serve one another.

And you all do serve. You take on world hunger when you feed one person or one family who is hungry. You take on the world’s tendency towards discrimination and hate when you allow one person into your life regardless of their color, their religion, their sexual orientation, their status in society or their separation from society.

We all have a passion for helping certain kinds of people or being especially tender hearted to certain circumstances people find themselves in and we reach out to them. Through our passions God does some of God’s best work.

What God do we serve? This may be the hardest question of all. David reminds us, “The God we serve is not simply the Almighty. The God we serve is the Almighty-who-works-gently; the One who triumphs through a cross instead of an army of angels; the One who cares for the sparrow and the hairs on our head and the beggar at our gates; the One who overcomes giants with a child’s sling; the one who celebrates mercy rather than power and justice rather than wealth.

We serve the God who sent disciples out with nothing, to teach them that they lacked nothing; the God who fed thousands of people with a few morsels of food to teach us that we do not live by bread alone.
In serving that God, we might experience delay, but we will never experience defeat. We might be disappointed, but only when we discover that we have been hoping for the wrong things. We might be sent to places we did not intend to go, and we might be doing things we did not think we could do, using that which we did not know we had.” This is the God we serve.

As best we can, we must serve our God by putting our time, our talent, and our possession in the service of the reign of God, expecting at any moment Gods summons. We can only be shrewd and restore our relationship with God the same way God began the relationship. God shared God’s self with us and we are to share ourselves in return. How truly wonderful and merciful God’s call is to each of us this morning. Our call is evidence of our value to God and ultimately to ourselves. For we are the resource we must mobilize for God. We are the resource that is critical to restoring our relationship with God and one another and the world. Our blessed created selves are the key to our future and the future of God’s kingdom. Our life, remember, is not really ours. It belongs to God. And if we are squandering what is God’s, God will hear about us and ask for an accounting. What then will we do? Don’t think we can hide from God, we will all have our accounting with the Lord. And in that accounting, how will we restore the broken relationship that matters most?

Our relationship with God.
God held nothing back to restore God’s relationship with us. God gave his Sons life to forgive each of us of our sins. Jesus died for you and for me because God loves us and desires our love and our lives in return.
If God would do anything for us, than we should be willing to do anything for God. When we finally decide to love God before we love ourselves, then we will serve only God.

There is a story told about a man named Bob. Bob heard of a man who lost his job suddenly and unfairly. Bob and his wife began to pray for the man. One night Bob woke up, unable to sleep. A thought kept going through his head: “Give this man 10% of your wages.” When Bob told his wife, they prayed about it, and in the end decided that’s what God was calling them to do.

So Bob went to the unemployed man’s house, saying: “You don’t know me, but God knows us both. This will seem weird to you, but here is 10% of my wages. And I’ll send you a check each payday with 10% until you find work again.”

Can we not start with just 10% of our selves from the places we are most protective? When we are honest about it, we all hold a bit of ourselves in reserve. Call it selfish, call it lazy, call it being prudent, holding on for a rainy day, shrewd even.

God holds nothing back. God gives all God has to give. God has been 100% faithful to us. Jesus reminds us, whoever is faithful in a very little, say even 10%, will be faithful also in much.

This morning, God is waiting to hear our plan for the future, our plan to rally our selves to our common good, serving only God. For as we serve only God, our hearts will move with God’s heart, our feet will find the way of God’s righteousness, and we might be doing things we did not think we could do, using that which we did not know we had, our one greatest living resource, Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior.

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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Works used –
Hendriksen, William, “New Testament Commentary; Exposition of the “Gospel According to Luke”, pgs. 767 – 773.

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