Saturday, January 28, 2017

January 29, 2017, The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany


I’m trying very hard to find positive examples for us to follow today. It is certainly easy to find negative examples, so let me try some unfamiliar ground. I have been a life-long fan of Boston teams. I have even been a fan of the New England Patriots, long before they were any good at football. In the decades of the seventies and the eighties, they were a laughing-stock. Now others despise them because they win too much. The difference is the mindset or the culture of the team.

The head coach is often disparaged because people think he cheats, or he wears a dull grey hoodie, or he grunts at press conferences. What he has brought to the team is a no-nonsense approach. Do your job. Good players are let go when they demand too much. It’s all about the team and everyone doing what they need to do to win.

I remember when the Patriots had a few good players – and it was all about a few spectacular plays and maybe a few wins, and maybe some success as a team. I raise this because a change in attitude that everyone accepts has made a great difference in this team. Attitude can make a great difference in our life together as well. Sports metaphors are often stretched to make the wrong lessons. We are not athletes, and we are not seeking success by our natural abilities, nor are we trying to achieve worldly acclaim. We are trying to be faithful together and to live as God calls us. Are we on the right path?

Micah is speaking to people who have lost their way. He is discouraged, and he imagines a heavenly court where the people are guilty of failing to follow God. What is required? Through Micah, God commands that we “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly” with God. All three aspects are with God – not just humility. We are to do right actions – with the help of God. We are to do good things out of love (not fear or pride) – with the guidance of God. We are to be humble, or live in a right attitude towards God and others. This is God’s more articulate, “Do your job.”

Jesus proclaims a similar and expanded message in his sermon on the mount. The blessings sound “spiritualized” compared to a familiar version in Luke. Jesus is not discounting the lives of the poor or the weak. In fact, the attitude he is describing is that of the mass of many poor people who make up the majority, who are trying to live faithfully. The poor in spirit are also the meek. Those who mourn the failure of God’s people are also the ones hungry for righteousness. They are also merciful or compassionate. They are seeking peace, as an act of reconciliation. They are pure in heart. The reward is persecution. They will be reviled and persecuted and spoken about falsely. This is the expected reward of living as Jesus calls us.

Why is this? To accept the ways of Jesus is to reject the ways of this world and it’s values and its rewards. We live under the illusion that our world shares our values. Increasingly this is not true. In the early church, there was a need to stand in opposition to the ways of honor and shame. The church opposed the machinery of the empire. They rejected the conventional measure of blessing – money, status, and power. The early church declared Jesus to be Christ, the anointed one, the Son of God – as opposed to Caesar. They accepted persecution because of this.

When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he no longer praises their gifts and their wisdom. He reminds them of the foolishness of the cross. The message of the gospel is not wise or clever. The good news is a gift that we don’t figure out as much as accept and agree to live into. From the outside it looks foolish. From the outside we are naïve, or stuck in the past. We are not trendy or creative. We have nothing to brag about. We know we are called to follow Jesus, who gives us life. The act of following is the path of living as Jesus lived. We try to do right and we ask for forgiveness when we fail. We have no idea when we will ever arrive at our destination, but we keep on going.

In the past, we could have taken pride in our liturgy or our status as a de-facto established church. No one takes any of that seriously anymore. We have nothing to sell, and nothing to boast of – except the love of God given freely and gladly taken. That’s all we have to offer. It doesn’t look like much, yet it is what changes hearts and changes the world.

God has no need for any of us to be superstars. God needs us to walk the path we’ve been given each day. We are called to live rightly, as God shows us. We are called to do good things out of the love we have been given. We are called to be humble and remember that all that we have is a gift from God. This changes us and it has the potential to change the people we meet.

Coach Belichek says, “Do you job.” That’s all he expects (which turns out to be quite a lot.) We can’t be overwhelmed by all the nonsense we see in the world. We can’t be perpetually outraged by what we hear. (Perhaps we shouldn’t even be surprised.) We can seek to know God and to follow Jesus. This may be even more important than we thought. God will use us to accomplish greater things than we ever thought possible. God will use us to bring light and life to the world.

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