Good Shepherd Sunday

         We love the story of the good shepherd. It is an ancient picture of Jesus. Some of the earliest Christian art depicts a shepherd carrying a lamb across his shoulders (even in one of our windows.) We love the image of the shepherd who provides safety, comfort and care. The people of Jesus’ day held out a hope for another shepherd king, after the model of David. He was a shepherd one day and then a shepherd of God’s people. Psalm 23 also gives us a comforting image of the shepherd. Verses 3 and 4 move on to a kind of spiritual guidance away from danger and death. Verses 5 and 6 move to another equally desirable picture of a victory feast where we will celebrate and live with God forever.

         It is a true hope. It can also be misleading. There are times when we need comfort and direction. At other times, we ignore our true purpose. Who wants to be a sheep? In our anxiety we look for leaders who provide protection, direction and control so that we can feel safe. How realistic is this? Who can guarantee protection from all harm? Who can guess the right way to move forward? Who can control people and events so that we never come to harm? We must let go of an idealized hierarchical view of leaders and institutions and consider our shared responsibility.

         We think about the good shepherd as opposed to evil or bad. The original word is closer to honor, or the honorable or the noble shepherd (from The Gospel of John in Cultural and Historical Perspective, by Jerome Neyrey). The Greek and Roman world was a culture of honor and shame. The honorable leader does what is necessary for the good of those the leader serves. In the Greek honor myth, the leader is brave, wise, just, and victorious over the enemy. Jesus would seem to be a failure in that he loses his life. The loss is for a greater purpose. He delivers us, not from the wolf, but from sin and death. Jesus also has the power to lay down his life and take it up again, making him equal to God.

         Jesus shows us true leadership. He does not settle to offer protection, direction and control to make us feel comfortable and safe. He chooses a creative and unexpected path that leads to a fundamental change. We are more than well fed and content. He leads us to eternal life. Unlike passive sheep, we participate in Christ. We share in his death and in his resurrection.

         It is true that sometimes we follow. We follow as disciples who take on the work of our master. Our new community is not hierarchical – we share authority and responsibility. We are not passive – we actively follow and lead others to life.

         This is why we read the book of Acts during the Easter season. We see the evidence of how the resurrection made a difference in the lives of those first witnesses. The disciples were frightened one day, and overnight they boldly copy all that Jesus had done. They heal a man and are brought before the authorities to explain themselves. In danger, in public, Peter speaks the truth to the religious authorities. He doesn’t soften their guilt in Jesus’ death. He offers everyone the opportunity to share in his faith.

         In the first letter of John (the other 3:16) he writes, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us – and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” We are called to the noble sacrifice of ourselves. We are called to something beyond words and ideas. We must serve with our actions and with our bodies.

         Do we tolerate this kind of leadership? Are we cranky when it is difficult or complaining when it is costly? Do we take on the responsibility of this kind of leadership? Do we avoid hard choices? Do we set aside our own need to offer ourselves?

         Jesus does not in fact lead us directly to a place of safety. Our faith does not work as an escape from the problems of life. Jesus, the noble shepherd, offers whatever is necessary and invites us to offer whatever is necessary – so that we may all walk the path from death to life.

         We are called to be good disciples, noble disciples. When necessary, we are the noble leaders who in turn give of ourselves. It is not the sacrifice that is honorable in itself. The sacrifice is for the sake of something more important than us. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep – and he takes it up again. Jesus dies so that we live. We are invited into this selfless offering, to die in order to live. It is the essence of what we believe and who we are.

The Third Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2015

How to be a new church

         My favorite memory of Christmas was the greening of the church. When I was young, we would gather on the afternoon of the Sunday before Christmas. We would decorate the church with real greenery and candles (no plastic!) Then we would go from house to house downtown and sing Christmas carols. We would end at someone’s house or the church and drink hot chocolate and eat Christmas cookies. I carry the memory of this with me to this day. It’s why the Christmas season is so important to me.

         I’ve always hoped to re-create this wherever I’ve worked. It has not been possible. People don’t all live downtown – we are all spread out. The season has gotten much more busy. Fire marshals frown on the combination of evergreens and candles. No one goes caroling anymore.

         We all hold memories of some special or transformative version of the church. We hope, we believe, that if only we could go back to that thing that worked so well … we think we can restore what once worked. We are not alone. We all long for the greatness of our past. I think this explains why so many people had high hopes for Jesus. They thought he was coming to fix everything. They thought he would restore the glory of Israel. He would drive out the Romans. He would restore true worship. He surprised them all by dying and rising and creating something totally unexpected.

         This is how we find ourselves in much the same place as that first church. There is much written about the emerging church, and how the church must change in a new world. We have to let go of our established place. We have grown used to being culturally dominant. We think of our nation as a Christian nation, where we expect everyone to share our values and our worldview. Now that the world has changed, we can wring our hands in longing for the good old days, or we can imagine where God is leading us next.

         We used to have a place of privilege in our culture. Sunday was a holy day. Now it’s just another day of the week in our 24/7/365 economy. We may mourn that we have lost our place. We have also regained our freedom. We are no longer captives to the culture. We can critique it and serve it as God calls us.

         This is the task of that first church. The disciples had expected that Jesus would transform the structures that they knew. Jesus creates something completely different. Jesus saves us from more than the Romans. Jesus frees us from sin and from the effect of sin. We are free from death. Since this is true, we live in a new reality. We live in a new dominion, the kingdom of God. We are only temporary travelers in this world.

         We have a message of freedom. We remember that Jesus has come to forgive sins. The gospel is good news. We are not about judgment – that’s God’s job. Our job is to help people figure out how to be free of those things that bind them to death. We are a people of joy, not regret. We proclaim release to captives, not reasons for damnation.

         In our instant and open world we have to live lives of integrity. We have to live what we proclaim. It is no good talking about the love of God if live as if we don’t believe it. People judge us by how we love, not by how well we articulate our understanding of God. It is important for us to be ready to serve others. In our busy and isolated world, the best way that we might serve is to simply listen and care what people have to say and what they worry about.

         We offer an alternative to our hyper-individualized and self-directed world. We offer community. We offer accountability. We are connected to a way of worship that transcends fads and trends. We walk an ancient path together. When we gather, it may be the only experience in a week where people see others who are not of the same age, class, and education. We are a body that values the gifts that we all can bring.

         Like the early church, we are beginning a journey where we do not have all the answers. The dominant culture of the time had everything described and controlled. The early church had faith in Jesus, without knowing at all how they would organize themselves or how they might spread the good news throughout the Roman world. We need to recapture some of that curiosity and experimentation. The world will welcome our questions and it has no need of our easy answers.

         That first church challenged everything about their world. They challenged the role of women, the economy of slavery, and the state religion that gave god-status to emperors. The first Christians were misunderstood and disrespected. They changed their world. We find ourselves in a new place. We no longer control how the world around us operates. We have no idea what will happen.

         This is frightening and it is freeing. We can hold onto beloved traditions as long as they keep us hopeful and joyful. We can also let go of all the traditions that others need us to prop up. We are free to serve God and follow Jesus. We are free to proclaim a new message to hearts that have not heard. We are free to create new ways of journeying with others. This is faith; not believing in something that never changes, but believing in God no matter what happens.

Easter Sunday 2015

         Today we celebrate new life. Today we celebrate victory over sin and death. It is right for us to wear bright colors and adorn the church with flowers. We feast. We laugh. We eat chocolate. We surround ourselves with signs of new life. It was a long winter and it’s great to think about another season.

         Is it enough? The signs of spring are wonderful, but are they resurrection? The natural cycle of things is marvelous. Today we rejoice in the upswing. New things are happening! Life is springing from the earth. However, the natural order has its downside. Whatever lives also dies. The seed becomes a flower only long enough to produce another source of seed to die again. Easter is about more than inevitable cycles of life and death.

         Jesus shows us a new thing, a new way. Jesus lived among us as a human person. He ate, he walked, he grew tired, he wept. He also proclaimed a new reality, the kingdom of God. Jesus knew the way that things were, and he invited us to choose another way. The resurrection is all about choosing a new reality while living in the old. Jesus upends the old structures of domination and retribution and he opens a way for us to live in a new world of freedom and reconciliation.

         The old reality condemns Jesus to death. The old reality is about control and scarcity, and old systems hold on to old power. The new reality is about forgiveness and freedom. There is no dominance of the strong over the weak. There is no status determined by wealth; there is only the grace of God available to all.

         This is shown in how the truth is revealed. We’d expect the beginning of a new world to be announced by God with hosts of angels and brightness and glory. Instead, the news is first given to helpless women, alone and afraid in a graveyard. How this turns everything on its head! In a time when women were not trusted with anything, the first news comes to them. They didn’t have the strength to roll the stone away. They still fled in terror. Yet God chose them to be the first witnesses.

         God still invites us to believe the impossible news. We are not only witnesses to resurrection we participate in it. When we are baptized, we join Jesus in death and resurrection. We also live in two worlds. We live in this world, still under the power of rules and control, wealth and fear. We have to make our way and share what we have along the way. We are also part of another world. We also live in a world of generosity and forgiveness, humility and courage. We know that God loves us and that love is unbreakable. We know that the life we have begun with God will never die.

         Which world do we choose to live in? We so often forget where we are. We see the empty tomb and we are quick to locate it far away in time and space. The tomb is not a place from an ancient time. For us it is a door. It is a threshold into another way of living. In the book, The Soul of Money, Lynne Twist writes that there are three great lies. “There’s never enough. More is better. That’s just the way it is.” Rejecting the first two lies might make a good stewardship sermon someday. Today I’d like to respond to the third, “That’s just the way it is.”

         We often live with a kind of amnesia. We hear the truth from God. It touches our hearts. We long to believe it. God loves us. We are forgiven. We can live with generosity and without fear. If we only lived these few simple truths as if they were true, think how different the world would be. In our fear we protect ourselves. We cut ourselves off from others so that they cannot hurt us. We hoard and amass our belongings as if there was no one else to help us. We take drugs to mask our pain or escape through endless choices of entertainment. We live as if Easter never happened.

         The lie is, “That’s just the way it is.” We can reject that lie. God rejects that lie. That lie is the tomb. Jesus walks right out of it. We can too. When you celebrate Easter today, begin with love. When you sense fear, question your anxiety. Will you, in fact have enough? Those who have power over you or those who threaten your peace, do they, in fact have the last word? Beyond the daily struggles of our life, how can you offer reconciliation? Who can you forgive, or confront, or love? Within the constraints of your resources, where are you free? What can you do that you have been afraid to do? What can you risk that you are afraid to lose?

         We are witnesses to resurrection. We still have our two feet firmly planted in this world. Our allegiance is to another. Our true life is with God and cannot be lost. We can give up looking for dead answers among the dead. Jesus invites us to celebrate our life and to share life all around us. Jesus is risen and so are we.

Good Friday, April 3, 2015

Silence

Today is a day full of words: hard words, emotional words, mean words, empty words. All our words pile up to describe or excuse or control. Through all this we confront the one we call “the Word.” Pilate is confused and amazed. In his awe or his despair he asks, “What is truth?”

The characters in this drama are all searching for truth and meaning. They ask continually of Jesus, “Who are you?” When they don’t get an answer, they pass him on to the next authority to try and get some answers. They never find the answer that satisfies them, so they decide to kill him.

As we watch (and as we follow along) we want to find a sense of justice, or at least a little common sense. What do these crazy people have to do with us? Don’t they know to whom they are speaking?

This is more than frustration at some sort of badly written plot twist. We recognize ourselves in the hate and the fear of the crowd. We see our own actions in the compromises of the leaders. We remember how we run from our responsibilities. We see our own betrayal.

Jesus answers with silence. It would almost be better for us if Jesus were to speak up and tell us the truth. Tell us what we’ve done wrong! Tell us all our sins! His silence is worse. Have you nothing to say? He lets us condemn ourselves with our own words.

Jesus is silent. There is no defense. There is no explanation. The story suggests something about the scriptures being fulfilled. Even if we could understand what that means, it seems a weak justification for the suffering and loss we witness and applaud.

Through suffering and false charges, through pain and death, Jesus is silent. We marvel. We wonder. What is the point? To forgive our sins? To make us sorry? To make us give up and walk away?

Jesus is silent. God is silent. In this emptiness, in this broken and open place, we do not have the slightest idea what God is doing. We have no control. We have no direction. We are lost.

Before we get to Easter, we pass through this empty space. This is loss. This is death. We spend our lives in an illusion of our invincibility and in our rightness. Today we strip all of that away. Our life is not in our hands. Our actions lead to death. We stand by the tomb, sealed in silence. We must wait for God who alone gives us life.

Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2015

Foot Washing

There are 26 bones in the human foot and 31 joints (I don’t know how that works.) One quarter of the bones in our bodies are in our feet.

How do we feel about touching feet? Why? What images and feelings do feet bring up for you?

Jesus offers us a new commandment. We are to love one another. The example he uses is washing the disciples’ feet. In his day this was an act of service, hospitality, and humility. Some churches wash each other’s hands. In the other extreme direction, the Pope and the Queen of England each pick out twelve people to wash their feet.

We may be disconnected from the original meaning of Jesus. Today, what do we mean by foot washing? How is this a way to love?

Intimate? Generous? Humbling? Embarrassing?

In our day, it is a way to reject all pretense that we are other than human. There is no mistaking our vulnerability. There is no denying our wounded, aging, creaturely selves.

This is awkward and strange. Just like love. This is how we love each other. We fumble and we are unsure what we are doing. We don’t know how we look to others. We don’t know if we are doing it right. Love requires vulnerability. Love requires risk. Service is not a contained, intentional act that reaches a predictable outcome. We open ourselves and offer ourselves and we do not know how our actions will be received. Love is in relationship. There is give and take. We try to understand and to be understood. Only then do we seek a deeper level of love where we meet the other person as an equal – as another sister or brother on the same journey.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 15, 2015

Complaining about snakes

         The people are complaining. They are always complaining. This is the tired old story of the people of God. The people are blessed. They grow tired, or greedy, or fall into old habits. They suffer (through their own fault or from some cause outside of them.) They call to God for help and they are saved. Repeat as necessary.

         In the wilderness, the people are complaining again. They are wandering and becoming impatient. As punishment, (or some other reason), they are bitten by poisonous snakes. They cry out to Moses to pray to God and save them. Moses crafts a snake of bronze and wraps it around his staff and carries it through the camp. Everyone who looks on it is saved.

         Phyllis Tickle writes about this passage and compares it to our gospel reading. This story in Numbers has a good psychological message. Everyone gets bit. Everyone is suffering. Those who look down and focus on their problems find no relief. Those who look up and accept the possibility of God’s intervention find life. The snakes are still there. The people are still in the wilderness and having to eat the same old manna every day. The change is in their perspective. They are looking up to God instead of looking down on a problem they cannot change.

         Jesus himself also gives an interpretation of this passage. He is speaking with Nicodemus, a Pharisee who is curious about Jesus. Jesus tells him about being born again or born from above. He speaks about the mysterious movement of the spirit like the wind. Nicodemus doesn’t know what Jesus is talking about. It is this context that Jesus says that just as the bronze serpent was lifted up, so must he be lifted up, “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Then Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

         Then he goes on to say how those who refuse to believe are condemned already. Now I don’t believe that this is a threat or a judgment. I think that Jesus is saying that those who do not believe get what they already have. Those who refuse to look up are stuck with looking down. They have nothing but their problems and no way to be rid of them.

         In contrast, those who look up and believe in the gift of God through Jesus on the cross, they have a way to look beyond their problems. This is not a denial of problems. It is belief in a new solution. God will cure us of more than biting snakes. God will cure us of our sin. God will cure us of our stubbornness. God will cure us of hopelessness. God will ultimately cure us of death. Instead, God gives us life.

         So today we consider our present problems. We’re worried about money. We’re worried about our future. We don’t know what the church will look like. We only know that everything will be different. Our worries beset us like so many poisonous snakes. What we choose to believe will very much affect the outcome. If we stick to what we think we know, keeping to familiar ways of doing things, we are likely to scurry around on the ground, trying to chase our many problems out the door with a broom. We are not likely to get anywhere. In fact, we may be overcome by the potential poison of our problems and become bitter and petty and argumentative.

         We have the opportunity to also look up: not to avoid our problems but to see them from God’s perspective and seek the new life God is offering. God wants to save us. God wants to heal us. It is God’s desire that we become a community of love and faith, proclaiming good news through our words and deeds. Any discussion and worry about our future should begin with God’s hope for us. Perhaps the first thing we must do, therefore, is to set aside our own solutions. God cannot help us if we fuss about with our own tired agenda.

         We should not be surprised that we have complicated problems that test our skill and our faith. God never promised us ease. God never promised us comfort – at least not in this life. God has promised us salvation. God has promised us life. But God may have to lead us through wilderness and struggles before we get to that Promised Land.

         Today, we have our wilderness struggle. Will we listen to the same old story of our stubbornness and our desperate desire for God to get us out of our mess? God has not abandoned us. God has always been with us. Perhaps in our desperation, we are only now willing to see how God is here and believe that God is listening. The future is uncertain. We also know that God desires life for us. As long as we hold onto the past and the old ways of doing things, we leave no room for what is possible.

         The cross would not be our first choice. We aren’t thrilled to accept loss as the cost of change. God isn’t calling us to change simply to upset us. God offers life that is better for us. Even as we rid ourselves of the familiar and comfortable, we are also ridding ourselves of our death-dealing habits. The future for us is life. It just may not look like what we expect.