Abiding Challenge Day 5. Daughter

DWELL. LUKE 8:40-56
Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. Just then there came a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, who was dying.

As he went, the crowds pressed in on him. Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years; and though she had spent all she had on physicians, no one could cure her. She came up behind him and touched the fringe of his clothes, and immediately her hemorrhage stopped. Then Jesus asked, ‘Who touched me?’ When all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the crowds surround you and press in on you.’ But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me.’ When the woman saw that she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before him, she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him, and how she had been immediately healed. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace.’

While he was still speaking, someone came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead; do not trouble the teacher any longer.’ When Jesus heard this, he replied, ‘Do not fear. Only believe, and she will be saved.’ When he came to the house, he did not allow anyone to enter with him, except Peter, John, and James, and the child’s father and mother. They were all weeping and wailing for her; but he said, ‘Do not weep; for she is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and called out, ‘Child, get up!’ Her spirit returned, and she got up at once. Then he directed them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astounded; but he ordered them to tell no one what had happened.

REFLECT

I have three sons. I don't know what its like to have a daughter, but this story has always been inspiring to me.  Maybe its because I know that women and young girls are still mistreated, abused, and neglected in may parts of the world.  Women's rights are not protected.  Women still make less money than their male counterparts.  60% of people in poverty in the U.S. are women; 60% of children in poverty are in single-mother households.  Violence against women is a global problem that includes the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, physical abuse, and the trafficking of minors.  1,000 women die everyday from complications with pregnancy and childbirth.   The highest growing population of incarcerated people in the U.S. are women; over 1 million women are under the heel of the criminal justice system.  2/3 of them for nonviolent, drug-related crimes.   There is still deep misogyny in the world, that makes women and girls more vulnerable and disadvantaged.    

In the gospel story, a Father seeks out Jesus the healer to save his dying daughter. She is 12 years old girl, just before the age of marriage and fertility in that culture. She may never become a mother.  On the way, another woman approaches Jesus the healer.  She has suffered for 12 years with non-stop bleeding.  In that culture, she was unclean and unable to participate in the rituals of marriage or religious blessing as a result of her illness.  12 years connects this girl and this woman.  Bleeding was a sign of death.  This girl was dying too soon.  Without intervention, neither of these two women would experience the joy and love of motherhood.    

Jairus seeks out Jesus in desperation.  And Jesus goes with him. On the way, an interruption prevented Jesus from attending to the girl sooner.  The woman touched Jesus and she is healed.  He pauses to address the loss of power he feels in his body.  She confesses that she touched him.  And he says, "Daughter, your faith has made you well."  He credits her with faithfulness and identifies her as a daughter.  A woman, whose illness detached her from the family of faith and denied her status as a daughter of Abraham, is restored to full health and community life---including the possibility of marriage and family.  Jesus proceeds to Jairus' house only to confront the power of death.  Jesus challenges the family to let go of the power of fear and embrace the power of faith. He speaks to the girl, commanding her to get up.  And she does!  

God is acquainted with human vulnerability.  Jesus confronts the injustice of misogyny by healing these daughters. As Mother's day approaches this weekend, we give thanks for the gift of girls, daughters, mothers, and the women who give life to us all. And we are mindful of the pain of infertility and the threat of breast and cervical cancers.       

Pop singer John Mayer sings a song called "Daughters."  He says, "Fathers be good to your daughters; daughters will love like you do; Girls become lovers who turn into mothers, so mothers be good to your daughters too."     

PRAY

Mothering God, you carry us, feed us, and protect us like a hen cares for her chicks. We pray for girls and women around the world; especially those who are vulnerable and need your saving power to give healing and life. Provide for their protection and health.  Give them dignity, hope, and opportunity.  Amen.  

    

Abiding Challenge Day 6. apprenticed

DWELL. LUKE 9:1-6

Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. He said to them, ‘Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money—not even an extra tunic. Whatever house you enter, stay there, and leave from there. Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.’ They departed and went through the villages, bringing the good news and curing diseases everywhere.

REFLECT
Jesus was raised by a carpenter. Like all good tradesmen, he was likely apprenticed by Joseph to take up the family business. In this system, an apprentice would train under a master. The apprentice would work alongside the master for years, learning everything about the work. They must learn about the tools and materials of the trade; They must learn how to construct houses and furnishings from scratch. Masters would increasingly give their apprentices challenges as they learn to do what the master does. By imitation and information, the master would reproduce his skill in the apprentice. At a certain point in the learning process,the master would send the apprentice as a journeyman to apply their skills. They would work at a subsistence level, basically receiving room and board for their work. They would bring only the essentials to ply the trade, because they would not remain in one place. They would seek out labor where they could find it. After a season as a journeyman, their workmanship and skill would improve. They would continue to work with the master to grow in knowledge and skill. Eventually, they would settle in a place, marry, and become a master craftsman capable of reproducing the best work of the one who taught them. They would acquire students of their own---likely their own sons. This learning model effectively trained men for the necessary labor and industry of the 1st century culture.
Jesus applies this apprenticeship/journeyman model to his healing and teaching work. He is an itinerant rabbi, a master in practical theology. He is a storyteller and a healer, known to have cured the sick, raised the dead, and given sight to the blind. But his practice was not a solo project for one miraculous holy man. It was a teaching model that was intended to be passed on like the family trade. So Jesus trains disciples as apprentices. They watch him heal and hear his stories. They participate in the way he feeds crowds and offers the power of compassion to those who are suffering. And then he sends them out, as a master sends out journeymen, to apply what they have learned. They are sent like interns, with no self-sustaining resources. They will live on room and board in exchange for their labor. As unskilled apprentices, they will continue to learn on the job. Sometimes their work will be appreciated, other times thy won't be well received. They must move on and continue the master's work.
In my training for ministry, I was sent to Penn State Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA for three months of clinical pastoral education. I lived on the hospital grounds in nursing student housing. I was assigned to adult intensive care unit. There were six of us, supervised by a certified chaplain. We made rounds as chaplains, visiting the sick. Some people welcomed me. Others told me to go away. I walked with families through trauma and acute grief. I did not know how to pray with and for others until I spent a summer at Geisinger. The supervisor met with us daily to teach and to listen and to continue our formation as compassionate caregivers. It was challenging. I was poor. And I learned more about God and the human condition in three months than I did in the previous nine months of bible and theology classes. I continue to learn.
Following Jesus is a lifelong learning process for all of us. There are skills and tools and practices that are essential to reproduce the work of Jesus. Those of us who have been practicing for some time as apprentices and journeymen are ready to take on students. We are building a community, a kingdom, a way of life together. It takes willing practitioners and patience. Would you like to become an apprentice in the life of Jesus?

PRAY
Jesus, you invite us to follow you. You teach us the way of compassionate presence and healing. You show us how to confront systems of powerful injustice and oppression, not with weapons of violence, but with words of love and grace. You send us to practice what you have taught. Help us to go and do what we have heard and seen from you, master.

Abiding Challenge. Day 4. Haunted

DWELL:  LUKE 8:26-39

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

REFLECT

We must not dismiss the supernatural parts of the gospel story as pure fiction or fantasy.  This is a haunting story with demons and graveyards and eerie voices and fear.  When I read the gospel stories of demonic possession, I read mental illness and deep suffering.  In this story, Jesus has wandered into Gentile territory, among pig farmers and cemeteries and a man who is not in his right mind.  There are boundaries that good people ought not to cross, right?  Places we ought not to go to avoid danger and harm.  There are people and places that frighten us.  Jesus risks his own safety and his religious piety by breaking the cultural and religious boundaries---crossing the sea to do so.   We see Jesus here as an infiltrator, an invader who goes on the offensive to engage with the potential dangers of the secular world beyond Judaism. Rather than remain in a safe, pious bubble among his friends, Jesus shows us the way of the cross---as a participant in human suffering.  What if more Christians acted like this? What if churches sought out those who were suffering in isolation, in order to bring healing and hope to them?  So many churches have chosen safe and comfortable habits rather than the way of Jesus. Churches establish boundaries and avoid crossing them to avoid any danger.  

Jesus does not see danger.  He sees a man who is suffering.  The man comes to Jesus as a homeless beggar, crying out from a place of torment.  And although it may seem like Jesus is the one who has gone rogue in the story, the perspective of the gospel writer is that evil has overtaken and overwhelmed humanity.  Like weeds invading a garden, the power of evil and death has crept into the whole human family, threatening to destroy God's good creation and send us all into the abyss (devoid of life and communion with God). Jesus goes to pull out the weeds, so that life might flourish again.

The notion that the demons' name is 'legion' is also a reminder that an occupying army violently plunders this place and these people.  The army is the physical manifestation of a deeper spiritual reality---God's kingdom is threatened by the kingdom of malevolence (wickedness) an oppression. Jesus comes to set us free from the powers of darkness that threaten to destroy God's world and God's children.  Fear holds us hostage to the things that threaten us. 

This homeless man battling mental illness had been imprisoned, chained, cast out of society.  He was alone in the tombs until Jesus came. What does Jesus offer the sociopath, the serial killer,the mass murderer?  Can they ever be free from the demons that haunt their minds?  

Are there people living alone in their suffering around us?  2,000 years later are we doing much better with those suffering from mental illness?  Is not our answer self-medication and professional help? 

Is it possible that the power of love and compassion, which demands risk-taking for the one who suffers, could bring about real social and personal change? Mental health professionals and medication are important and necessary.  But they do not address the deeper spiritual implications of isolation and loneliness that often accompany illness, homelessness, and/or incarceration.  If we follow Jesus, he may take us to those places we dare not go alone.  Let us go together and meet the children of God who have been suffering apart from family and friend. Let us loosen the chains of injustice and the yoke of suffering that so many people experience.  This is the calling of the church.

PRAYER 

Lord Jesus, you go ahead of us to the places and people that frighten us. Give us your deep compassion to boldly meet them where they are and invite them into your healing love.  We ask for healing for people struggling with mental illness today.  Amen.  

  

Abiding Challenge. Day 3. Family

DWELL. Luke 8:16-21

‘No one after lighting a lamp hides it under a jar, or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand, so that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to light. Then pay attention to how you listen; for to those who have, more will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away.’

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.’ But he said to them, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’

REFLECT

Jesus redefines the family. For some of us this is good news. We expect our families of origin, our blood relatives, to treat us with love and respect. But so often siblings and parents are divided, disconnected, and disloyal. There are so many broken families. And yet, humans are made to live in them. We are programmed to be in families or to find one if the one we're in does not work. People are not solitary creatures. We seek to belong. And yet family life can be destructive and painful. Some of us experience trauma in our families. We keep our families small, for lack of trust. An extended family system make us feel vulnerable. Our emotional health is tied to our family relationships.

So, Jesus reorients the nature of family; those who hear the Word of God and do it belong to Him. For Jesus water is thicker than blood. Those who have entered the waters of Baptism (step one in a process of rebirth and renewal) and have joined the movement to hear the Word of God and live it are a new kind of family. Family is not only about ethnicity or lineage or ancestry. It is characterized by a human community that celebrates and follows the intentions of God, made known to us by Jesus, the prophets, and faithful proclaimers through the ages. Which Presumes that God has spoken, enlightening real men and women with truth and empowering them to bear that truth on behalf of the world. God seeks representatives who will hear and speak God's words for the world. God intends for us to live as family, united in love. When we do, the family multiplies. Love begets love. We are all beloved children of God called to love one another with actions that speak love. Jesus' family multiplies as the Word spreads.

But strife also begets more brokenness. We see family strife devour people and create more fragmentation. Like a cancer, enmity grows and eats away what is good and healthy. "Those who have will be given more and those who do not have even what they seem to have will be taken away." This is not economic, its relational. And it happens.

The human family is a broken and fragmented mess. But our allegiances need not be tied to tribal feuds, national politics, or ethnic prejudices. Instead, we are invited to bind ourselves to Jesus as the family of faith on a mission to love the world God made and work for its restoration and peace.

We are invited to be a family of siblings whose love for one another requires forgiveness when we hurt one another. We are invited to be a family whose love imitates the Father's love for us.  

PRAYER

Jesus, our brother; we ask that our families be filled with love and forgiveness and gladness. Protect those whose families are unsafe, especially children who experience domestic abuse or neglect. Form your people into a family through faith that we may love and serve one another. Amen.

Abiding Challenge. Day 2. Seeds, Soils, Sower.

DWELL. Luke 8:1-15
Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him,as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them* out of their resources.
When a great crowd gathered and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: ‘A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell on the path and was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. Some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered for lack of moisture. Some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew with it and choked it. Some fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.’ As he said this, he called out, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’
Then his disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, ‘To you it has been given to know the secrets* of the kingdom of God; but to others I speak* in parables, so that
“looking they may not perceive,
and listening they may not understand.”
‘Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away. As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for that in the good soil, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.

REFLECT

Do you ever feel like the time or the money or the personal resources you invested in someone or something were wasted? Like the result or the response you receive disappoints or fails to meet your expectations? That can be frustrating. We spend ourselves on people and things that sometimes don't bear any fruit. I've invested hours and hours of time in a person's life, only to have them walk away without any sign of growth or change. I've bought a thing, only to have it break within hours of bringing it home.
Sometimes, the investment that others have made in us doesn't pay off either. We waste time and the gifts we're given, too. We are worried and distracted by things that take us out of focus, things that prevent us from reaching the potential of becoming our truest selves. We choose easy and safe ways: comforts, pleasures, and entertainment that prevent us from experiencing the things that lead to real maturity. We have created a culture of perpetual adolescence in this way, avoiding hard things and the rich wisdom and deep compassion that often result.
The New Testament suggests that God has made an extravagant investment in our lives. God comes to us in the form of a servant, a teacher, and a friend. God takes on human flesh and the hardship that entails---including hunger, exhaustion, pain, and death. God does this to save us from ourselves. Only a God who digs into the human experience is a God worth believing in. A god that desires our worship and our offerings and sacrifices without any personal investment in our present and future well being is selfish and unworthy of the name. But we see a God who has come near.

The parable of the sower reflects on these things from the perspective of the one who sows seeds. (Jesus--teacher of sacred wisdom). It seems like a waste to scatter the seeds in this way. Usually, to assure growth and a good harvest, a planter selects only good soil on which to cast seed. But we see Jesus the Rabbi scattering the seed of God's mercy everywhere without discrimination. Unlike Gnosticism (believers in secret wisdom or knowledge that is revealed to a select leader and community), Jesus invites and challenges everyone to experience the abundant generosity of God.
Jesus acknowledges rightly that there are forces, both internal and external, that threaten the process of maturity in the human family. Though God's words and ways have become available to us, we do not always see or hear.
Jesus offers himself, giving us full access to God. We are invited to learn acceptance and gratitude. Good soil looks like patient endurance as we grow and mature into the people God intends for us to become; People that reflect the image of God, goodness and light and peace. People that remind others of Jesus.

PRAYER

Teacher, prepare the soil of my heart and mind to receive your words and your ways with acceptance and gratitude. Direct my thoughts and my actions toward the things that please you and bring more abundant life to others. Amen.

Abiding Challenge. Day 1.

DWELL

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him—that she is a sinner.”Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.” “A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the greater debt.” And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet.You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” Then he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” LUKE 7:36-50


REFLECT

Simon, the host of this little party, is offended by the interrupting presence and obscene actions of this woman. Known among the men as a "sinner", she was not welcome in his house. Can you imagine? A dinner party interrupted by this inappropriate behavior. Moreover, Simon questions Jesus' reputation as the recipient of this woman's strange and affectionate gesture. So, the teacher teaches. His little parable about two debtors demonstrates the power of grace to affect one's actions toward others. This woman has been forgiven much in her life and so she is capable of great love and generosity. Simon has been forgiven little, a self-righteous, law-abiding Pharisee. And so his lack of love and generosity reflects his own heart. Cold, judgmental, inhospitable.

Our love for Jesus, and by extension for the people Jesus' loves (the poor, the abused, the oppressed, the minority, the single mother, the addict) is directly related to the measure of grace and compassion we have received from him. Are we able to acknowledge our own faults, shortcomings, failures, and sins? Are we able to receive the grace and forgiveness that Jesus offers us? Faith prepares us to receive that gift. Jesus says to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven you." That is to say, your past failures to obey God's commands do not prevent God from loving you and holding you fast and blessing you with provision, protection, and peace. God loves you. Period.

Jesus said to Simon, "Simon, do you see this woman?" Jesus saw her as a person, a woman, a child of God, a sister. She was a human being worthy of acknowledgment. Simon had all but ignored her. He could not see her, only her sins. How often do we fail to see the person because we are offended by them? This is how the poor are mistreated--characterized as lazy takers and welfare cheats. Or young black men are seen as violent drug dealers.

Ultimately, Simon cannot see this woman, because he cannot see himself. She is a reflection of his own unacknowledged guilt and shame.

Jesus loves Simon and he loves this woman. He desires that they are reconciled to one another. He welcomes them into his life and shows them what it means to love. Because he longs to be in relationship with us. He wants us to experience the fullness of God's love. And to offer it to those who are hurting and vulnerable and lost around us.

What does it take to build a community of reconciliation where prejudice is replaced by love?


PRAYER

Lord Jesus, our love for you comes from a place of gratitude for the deep forgiveness you offer us. Help us to acknowledge our faults and our prejudices; give us the faith to receive your forgiveness and the will to generously share your love with those with whom we take offense and struggle to welcome. Amen.

Abiding

“My Father is glorified in this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”   John 15:8.

Become my disciples.  I was in Charlotte for a couple of days this week at a gathering of church leaders from a variety of traditions—Methodists, non-denominational, Vineyard, Pentecostal, Southern Baptist… I went because I have been exploring a ministry practice they have recognized and reproduced around the world.  It’s a growing movement called 3 DM that started in Sheffield, England.  It is a kind of revival or reformation movement within the church.  Its premise is that most congregations and church leaders have failed to make disciples of Jesus.  We have made good church people, but not disciples.  I know.  Because disciples are equipped to make more disciples.  To invite and challenge people into the Way of Jesus; a way of living life as children of God and representatives of His Kingdom mission to love all the people, places, and things that God loves and to take action consistent with that same love.  The love of Jesus is contagious, infectious and unstoppable.  Those who have caught it always pass it on.  Who have you discipled into relationship with God?  And there is no retirement age for disciples.  It is our mission as church.  To make disciples of Jesus by loving one another and the world God made.    

One thing that characterizes a disciple of Jesus is that we bear fruit.  That is we create or reproduce the love of Christ.  “Beloved let us love one another, because love is from God.”  So we know what bearing fruit looks like---it looks like the kind of love that Jesus offered to each of us.  So how do we know what Jesus’ love for you and me is like?  We abide in Him.

How many of you spent time abiding this week?  How does one abide?  It means to dwell with.  So how do we dwell with Jesus?  I suspect we experience His absence more than his presence most days.  We are too busy, already full. 

If the life of a disciple of Jesus is characterized by periods of abiding and periods of fruitfulness, what is the other way of life that most Americans live? How about Busyness and Burnout?  Or Work and exhaustion?  The new response to the question ‘How are you” is “Busy.”  People assume the answer.  Someone asked me, “How was Charlotte?”  Because they saw that I posted about it on Facebook.  They said “How was Charlotte, busy?”  Or for some it may be more like sloth and greed?  I do for me and little else of meaning or importance.  I think a generation has emerged in which that may be a choice. One may sit on the couch and eat be entertained.  That may be the choice for many.  Even some of us who are so busy.  We fill the silence, the stillness, the moments of inactivity with entertainment.  And so we fail to abide.  Its just too hard.  And what’s the point anyway?  Well, one point might be renewal of one’s mind and spirit.  When our lives are chaotic, hectic, and overscheduled we stop noticing and appreciating gifts. We forget that we are human beings, not human doings.  We forget who we are.  The beloved children of God.  We forget that we are the crown jewel of God’s creation, the cherished sons and daughters of the creator.  And when we forget that, we treat others as objects, as problems, as enemies.  We dehumanize and demonize and wage war.  When we see others as we see ourselves, and we fail to see the image of God in ourselves, we fail to love as we have been loved.  Apart from the vine we do nothing.  We fail to bear fruit.  To abide is to dwell with the one whose love makes us whole again.      

So,how do we experience the restful, rejuvenating presence of God in the midst of the busyness we call life?  How do we abide? First, we find silence and stillness.  We dwell in the words and works of Jesus.  We listen.  We take refuge.  We open our hearts and minds to receive God’s love.  By faith we embrace our God-given identity and name.

Second, we consider actions consistent with our identity.  What might we do that imitates the love of Jesus for someone else?  This is the purpose of abiding; to bear fruit.  To reproduce the same desire to love in someone else.  To reproduce the sweetness and joy and hope we find in the words and works of Jesus. To bear fruit is to offer something of value out of one’s relationship with Jesus to someone else. Someone may need the fruit of your life this week. Abiding and pruning and fruitfulness is a process we learn as disciples.  It includes daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms that we cannot learn in one morning.  I am learning and practicing these rhythms; I will invite you to do the same.

So, this week I give us a way to start:  the 10 minute daily Abiding Challenge.  Ten minutes every day.  I will send you, by email or Facebook, a daily gospel story, reflection, and prayer.  If that takes less than ten minutes, spend the rest in silent reflection.  Consider what God is giving to you and what you may be called to do about that. 

I will not be with you next weekend.  Cherie and I are retreating to the Adirondacks to abide together, to encounter the refreshment of God’s Spirit, and the restoration of our bodies.  We will come back.  Abiding always brings fruitfulness.  May you experience the abiding presence of Jesus, nourishing you back to life and fruitfulness this week.          

Good Friday. The Garden and the Tree

Garden Tomb

The story we hear tonight begins and ends in a garden.  At midnight, they come for him.  A swat team, armed forces.   In the garden of Gethsemane.  Among the olive trees. The warm night air, a cool breeze, silence and the rustling of leaves.   In prayer, he waited.  To be handed over.  And accused.  And beaten.  And mocked.  And hanged on a tree.  Cursed be he who is hanged on a tree.  He waited for the curse to take effect.  The curse that effected everything, that infected everyone.  The curse that wounded and paralyzed and blinded and impoverished and killed them all in one way or another.  The garden’s curse.         

We, people of the book recall that first garden.  Adam and Eve and the tree and its fruits.  Edible and delightful, yet prohibited.  Prohibited by the God who made them and loved them;  loved in their innocence, their vulnerable nakedness, their soft skin and bright eyes and faces full of curiosity and wonder and awe as they take in with their keen senses all that God had made.  These babes.  These young ones.  Children of the earth, children of God.    They were beautiful and fragile and sacred, beloved creatures made in the image. 

Until, tempted by their insatiable appetites and their desire for power they eat from the tree and become aware of themselves and their surroundings and their vulnerability, their weakness.  Aware of their disregard of, disrespect for, distance from God—they feel shame and guilt and learn to hide.  They learn to lie.  They learn to lie low and protect themselves at the expense of the other.  They learn to gratify their own desires and ignore the desires of the other.  They learn to trust snakes and ignore their God.   

And so they expel themselves into a world of danger and darkness and death.  Much of which they bring on themselves and on their descendants forever.   From the garden they roam.  They plant and build, but never recreate the garden.  They cannot return.  We are lost, displaced, a long way from home.  It didn’t have to be this way; this dark, this lonely, this ugly, this violent, this deadly. But we have made it thus.    

Maundy Thursday

Love one another as I have loved you.  In the night he is handed over, he teaches his disciples the one thing they must learn:  What must characterize the Christian community? Is it church buildings, altars, priests, pulpits, pews, stained-glass, pipe organs?  What is the essential mark of the church defined and commanded by Jesus?  In this intimate setting, the Passover meal, Jesus reveals to us the divine initiative---LOVE.  Not abstractly.  Not romance.  Not poetry.  Not even familial love.  Agape love.  Love demonstrated in humble service.  In a physical act; the washing of feet.  Its ancient meaning was clear:  Cleaning off the feet meant touching whatever you had stepped in as you walked the dirty streets of the village or in the case the city.  This act was either a personal hygiene task or a task performed by a woman.  The host would not perform this function.  It was no ritual.  This was about hospitality and cleanliness.  And Jesus performs this task to demonstrate the posture of a loving servant. 

The selfish ego refuses to care for the dirty physical needs of another.  Not so with the loving servant, who stoops below, who kneels, who touches, who humbles himself.  The shamed ego refuses to be served, to allow the other to come near and serve.  Peter could not imagine allowing the Lord and teacher to do this menial, dirty, chore for slaves.  It was scandalous then.  Overturning the order of things. A disciple is not above the master.  And yet, this master bends down and teaches from below. 

I have a friend who has been spending time at Water Street Mission with the homeless women who are living there.  She and some friends have been visiting them and providing hand and shoulder massages to them.  This gentle, physical touch is a sign of love, a gesture that says, “You are a human to me, a beloved child of God.  You are worthy to be seen and heard.  You are worthy to be touched and known.  My friend says that the women they have met are beautiful to them.  If you have hit the bottom, feel unloved and unlovable and someone comes to you and simply says you are beautiful, let me care for you- what must that mean? 

For over two years now, kneeling has been painful for me.  And when I do it, getting up is hard.  Kneeling is a position of discomfort.  And to do so puts one at a disadvantage.  But kneeling teaches us the way of Christ---it is the downward way.  Acting from below.  

Tonight, the physical conveys for us deep sacred, spiritual truths.  In water, in simple food and drink---Jesus is remembered.  To re-member is to put back together again the broken parts.  To call out of memory what was, so that it might be present again.  Jesus is present in the body.  Because bodies matter.  Yours and mine, made in God’s image, are cherished and redeemed.  Jesus rescues our bodies, minds and Spirits from the self-destructive, self-idolatrous, self-centered way we treat ourselves and others.  And he sets us free on this Passover night, to stoop down in humility and serve one another.  This puts an end to competitive egos that drive us apart, and set us against one another.  Love does not oppose the other.  Love accepts, welcomes, and blesses the other.  Love invites the other to be, with no agenda, no self-interest.  Love treats the other with honor and respect.  This is the way of Jesus, the way of the disciple, the calling of the church in every circumstance—love governs our action.  We may ask, is this action or word demonstrating love?  May you experience the love of Jesus, a love that changes hearts, clears minds, and washes and soothes weary, wounded bodies.  Amen.       

preachers

"But how are they to call upon him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in him whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without a preacher?  And how can they preach unless they are sent?  As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news." Romans 10:14  

I admit I'm not comfortable with the title "preacher".  When someone calls me "the preacher",I suspect they do so with some ambivalence.  I think the assumption is that a preacher comes to talk at people, spouting moral absolutes and biblical imperatives that judge, convict, and condemn the hearers.  Preachers purport to speak for God or maybe audaciously as God.  Preachers stand on street corners with bullhorns and condemn bad behaviors.  Preachers threaten people with the fire of hell. And they do so as those sent by God, as ambassadors or representatives.  Some are charlatans and salesmen and liars, for sure. Some are just adding to the noise.  And they make it harder for the authentic preacher to be heard. They bluster and shout and tell some people want they want to hear, just so that they will be praised by their hearers.     

 Now I'm not that kind of a preacher.  But I am passionate about the Word of God and the people of God.  And I believe there is good news, hopeful news, empowering and encouraging news to share with the world that is contained in the biblical story.  Stories about the hungry being fed, the blind receiving sight, violent enemies being defeated, prayers being answered, goodness overcoming evil, light overcoming darkness, the power of life defeating the power of death. There is also a way of life described and embodied by people in the bible.  From Abraham to Paul, the bible is full of fallible humans who, by the help of the Spirit of God, transcend their fallibility and enter into the creative work of God. There is redemptive suffering, liberation for oppressed captives, nonviolent resistance to evil, and sacrificial love found in the bible.  The bible contains a story worth sharing, but it does require interpretation.  The bible was not meant to be read privately.  It is a community's holy Word.  It seems that God appoints or sends people to do this sort of work of interpretation; someone who is just bold or crazy enough to ask the scripture and the God who speaks through it (to those with the ears of faith), "What does this mean?"  I think this is the task of a preacher.  To inquire and dig and search on behalf of the community of hearers who gather and on behalf of all the searchers for the truth about the things that matter the most.  This is the business of theology and the theologian.  Not to be confused with the academic or the biblical/religious scholar.  Though they are called theologians too.  I'm speaking of the human task of making sense of life from a perspective that requires God, a being than which nothing greater is possible--to paraphrase Anselm.     

Theology means a Word about God.  Divine speech. How we talk about God, ultimate things, things that matter the most.  The bible is the collected theology of an ancient middle eastern people that developed over the course of some 2,500 years. And yet, its content lives and breathes and gives meaning to contemporary life in 2015, too. There is a timelessness to it.                    

I've been preaching to a congregation for 10 years now. They hear me speak about biblical texts and God most weeks.  In 10 years, I guess I've preached about 500 sermons. But, I probably improvise on a hand full of common themes; Grace, compassionate service, beloved community, baptism, the table and Lord's supper, hospitality and generosity.   I'd like to be more versatile, more humorous, and more creative in my delivery and content.  But I suspect that's my concern and not the concern of my hearers.  They are more concerned about their own lives; the house, the family, their work, their physical and mental health, etc...And shouldn't they be? A Word about and from God that is disconnected from the world in which we live and move and have our being is not a word anyone can hear.  Thus the power and promise of the good news that Jesus of Nazareth was the Word made flesh. God comes to dwell with us and to know our stories and to claim us as beloved children.  

I'm convinced more and more that there is good news to be shared.  I'm convinced also that it is not good news if one is not willing or able to hear it as such.  And it is not good news if the announcer is not also thoroughly convinced of its goodness.  I'm convinced that Jesus of Nazareth was a preacher of good news precisely for the people who needed good news the most. And that any preacher's job is to find the people who long to hear good news and to share it with them, for them.  I'm certain that any preacher of good news will find in equal measure people who reject the message, hate the message, and care not for the message.  Chiefly because this good news threatens our own sense of what is good with an alternative narrative about the world in which we live.  A narrative that suggests that the losers and the poor and the brokenhearted and the oppressed and the weak and the dying and the insignificant are treasured, cherished, and valued by God the giver of life is a story that might threaten the winners and the powerful and the wealthy and the great.  Its why some preachers have been crucified.  What does it mean to be sent?  Who sends?  How does one know this?  What word must one speak?  What shall we say?  Can silence speak?  These are the questions the preacher asks.  

And there are no easy answers. Self-reflection is 90% of the work.  The other 10% is what comes out of my mouth. 

What would be good news for you right now?  What does your Spirit need to hear?  

Lord, give us your words; words of  life and love and freedom and grace.  Give us courage to speak and to listen. Amen.           

    

Sacrificial Love and Snakes

The art of preaching has two steps to it:  First, Find something or someone relateable in the text and uncover what God is doing with that character or characters. Second, if that doesn’t work, sing a hymn people like.  Well, today I’m not sure I followed either of these steps.  But as any good public leader knows, confidence trumps competence any day.  So, in confidence this is what I have to share today:

The Gospel of John puts a strange Old testament connection on Jesus’ lips right before the most famous gospel verse of them all.  And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world...Now that means that Jesus, reflecting on the crucifixion he was yet to endure, found its precedent in the book of Numbers.  So, one might conclude that the story in Numbers demonstrated God’s unending love and faithfulness for the people, right? Now maybe Jesus had a really strange idea of what love looks like or how God demonstrates love, but the Number story does not sound like a love story.  It sounds like a horror movie.  Like “Snakes on a plane” or “Anaconda”. 

So, it seems that the people of Israel, very recently rescued from slavery in Egypt, still on their way out, on the underground railroad as it were,with a longer journey than necessary ahead of them---not because God’s GPS was off but because the Israelites couldn’t follow.  Now, on the road they become hungry.  And they complain, pretty much right away.  Like the long car ride with the kids?  Whining in the back seat.  Imagine a large crowd of whiners.  They complain, and God feeds them.  Manna for breakfast and quail for dinner.  And plenty of water gushing out of a rock.  They get two meals a day in the desert on their way to freedom and they complain.  Their complaint, according to the storyteller went something like this:  We have nothing to eat out here and the food is awful too.  Ugh.  Parents, you know how this goes.  Kid:  What are we having for dinner?  (Assumption that you made dinner for them).  Parent: Chicken, broccoli, rice, applesauce.  Kid:  Ugh.  I’m not hungry for that.  Parent:  If you’re hungry enough, you’ll eat it.  Kid:  No I won’t.  I want something else.  Parent:  This is what I made for supper.  Appreciate it or be hungry.  Kid:  Ahhhhh.  Can’t I have cereal?  Parent:  NO.  Kid:  AHHHHHHHH. 

The Israelites say to Moses, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, we have no food or water here and wait hate the food her.”   Have you ever been to a restaurant for the first time, ordered from helpful waiters, promptly received your meal, ate it, and then complained because something wasn’t quite to your liking?  Or maybe eve received the meal, saw or tasted that something wasn’t right and sent it back?  Contrast this with our neighbors who do not have enough to eat. A complaining attitude rather than a grateful one.  Where does that come from?  Hearts enslaved to the world, where you scrap and strive to get more, get the next best thing.  We are taught to be dissatisfied consumers.

So the loving God sends poisonsous serpents to bite the people and they died.  The end. BUT they become acutely aware of their insolence, their sin against God. Maybe the snakes remind them of the story of the garden, Adam and Eve?  Clever of God to throw that in their face.  Because it was clear that the snake was a choice the first couple made.  They chose the snake over God’s grace.  Maybe that’s what God is saying.  You are free to choose.  Don’t choose the snake. And they cry out for mercy. God listens to their cries through the prayer of Moses and God gives them a medical intervention.  God does not take away the snakes.  God neutralizes the power of the venom with a bronze serpent on a pole.  Sounds like a potential idol is cast, but it is symbolic isn’t it?  God does not eradicate all the malaria-carrying mosquitos, God provides a net and the medical treatment.  The world and the God who made it are both dangerous.  We might face illness, violence, pain, weakness, loneliness, with fear and complaint and anxiety.  But God provides a way out. There is another way.  There is always another way.  Choose the way of God and live.   

A woman came to my office this week.  She was dropping off her mother’s clothes for Peter’s Porch.  She is the daughter of Monica Miller, who was murdered in Ephrata on February 18^th by Randall Shreiner. It was a domestic violence situation that escalated. What do you say?  The family wants this tragedy to shed light on the potential severity of domestic abuse and the inability of victims to escape from it.  They want to choose life and a way out for others.

So back to Jesus.  Remember, he is the one who sent us to the snake story.  Somehow, Jesus becomes like the bronze serpent lifted up for the people to see and live.  The cross, symbol of death, becomes life-giving.  How does this happen?  Theologians have theories.  Substitutionary atonement; restorative justice.  Call it what you want, God sends Jesus to provide the way out.  The way out of violence is non-violent resistance.  The way out of prejudice is radical inclusion. The way out of rivalry and competition is self-giving. Divine mercy toward sinful humans comes in the form of a single sacrificial death on a Roman cross.  When you need mercy, look at the cross. You will find it there.  Because in it God knows violence, suffering, and death.  God knows what it is like to be us.  In the wilderness.  Struggling.  Failing.  Dying.  Jesus knows. And the cross is the power of God to heal.  Amen.          

        

the one about the wilderness

Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days and forty nights; he contends with Satan, the adversary, and angels minister to him.  The original Greek text describes this experience using verbs in the perfect tense, giving the entire scene the sense that this is an ongoing action or reality. Its as if Mark is saying here, Jesus was, and is, and continues to be in the wilderness, under attack, comforted by angels.  Why?  Because Mark is suggesting that the entire length of Jesus’ earthly life and mission is a wilderness struggle. 

Now when we think of the wilderness, our 1^st world notion is more or less nostalgic and romantic isn’t it? Like hunting camp or hiking in the woods or a vacation in a beautifully harsh landscape.  We saw some wilderness, some desert on our honeymoon.  But we also stayed at two resorts and at three meals a day.  Wilderness adventure makes for good TV too, from Survivor to Wild Alaska, there are shows that put people artificially in hard conditions to see what happens to them.  And we know there are people who take risks in the wilderness, climbing high peeks or camping in backcountry environments.  Dangerous places that risk our survival attract people.  We admire people who endure, even if we are unable or unwilling to push our own endurance.

But we also know-- from a distance mostly-- that there are many places in the world inhabited by people who must endure harsh conditions every day.  There are places where people live where children must walk many miles every day to fetch a daily supply of water.  We know there are places where crops don’t grow and the expanding desert displaces populations of people who used to subsist there.  We know people live in wilderness environments, not by choice but by circumstances of their birth and placement in the world.  There are places that challenge daily survival for millions of people on the earth today. 

The wilderness is more than a journey into a place where conditions for survival are hard.  The wilderness is also a spiritual reality.  According to the story, the Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness.  The word to drive out is ekballo, same word for exorcism.  Jesus is exorcized by the Spirit and cast out into the wilderness---a place of danger and adversity, of extreme challenge and discomfort. Why does this happen?  In Matthew and Luke, Jesus undergoes a series of tests to determine his willingness to accept his fate as the Son of God, sent into the world to sacrifice himself for the sins of the world.  But in Mark’s gospel, that identity formation experience is left out.  Jesus is not there to learn, to grow, to prepare.  Jesus is there to wage war. Now, I don’t picture Jesus as an army ranger here.  His warfare is not with conventional weapons.  He is there to wipe out the forces that threatened humankind, God’s precious children.  He is there to destroy the power of sin at work in the human family, causing adversity, struggle, hardship, hatred, fear, mistrust, inequality, prejudice.  Jesus experiences the adversity and challenge of the human community as a wilderness, every bit as harsh and deadly as the desert landscape in which he finds himself.  People will treat him like the desert terrain treats him. And he will be in the fight for the rest of his life.  He will die in the wilderness of public life at the hands of powerful, violent men:  unloving, unkind, unrelenting law-breakers like you and me.  We are the wilderness. We are the wild and the chaos.  Jesus is the calm and the peace. 

What is happening in your life that is like a wilderness experience?  Where are you experiencing adversity and challenge?  Where are you experiencing hardship and risk?  Where do you experience threat to your health, vitality, and peace?  We experience these adverse challenges and risks more often than we think.  Know that Jesus journeys with us into the chaos and uncertainty and worry and despair that is the wildnerness life we live.  And that this wilderness is God’ good creation waiting to be redeemed, set free from its bondage to decay and death.  In Christ, the wilderness is cast out and the Kingdom of God is established, a kingdom of order, peace, compassion, and love.  Amen.

  

the one about inviting Angie

Come and see.  In the gospel of John these are words of personal invitation to step into a new life, a life with Jesus.  They are unexpected by the recipient, Nathaniel. Because he does not yet believe that Jesus is a rabbi worth following.  But Jesus promises that he is inviting them into a world in which the heavens are opened up, the veil between heaven and earth is pulled back, the distance between them and God is removed.  God’s world is being revealed in the flesh of Jesus, if they will come and see.

Come and see.  When have you heard these words or uttered them yourself?  They are spoken with some anticipation.  Come and see the baby.  Come and see the new house.  Come and see the puppy.  Come and see the flower garden project I completed.  Or a plea for companionship. Come and see me when you get a chance.  I am invited to come and see people in their homes quite often.  It is a way that we give people access to our lives. No?  Think of a time that you were invited to come and see or a time you invited others.  What was the meaning of the invitation?  With these words we let people into some part of our lives that has meaning for us.  

At Peter’s Porch, I go with a mission every month.  I pray about it.  I pray that God would make me open to see someone who needs to be seen and give me the courage to step into their world.  Show me a person or family that needs connection.  I look for the one person.  This month it was Angie.  Angie is 27, engaged, with four kids.  She lives in Ephrata.  She actually knows to people in this church.  She was going to LCBC, but they lack transportation.  She wants to become more than a consumer of feel-good religion.  She wants to contribute to other people.  She has empathy, the power to step into another person’s world, look around with them, and stay with them even if it’s dark in there.  I like these people.  She’s also starting over.  She was recently released from Lanc. Co. prison.  And I think she has the potential to become a person with faith, whose story may change lives, positively influence others, and serve God’s will.  But, baby steps.  I invited her to dinner church.  Actually I called her.  I told her that I prayed for guidance in my conversations and that God led me to her and her mom.  She confirmed it by saying that she was recently told by another minister that she would get connected to a place where she could help others.  So, I invited her to come and see.  I told her about us. She said yes.  Gave me her number.  Now, I was no pick up artist.  I basically got lucky once and she married me and she’s still married to me.  I’m no charmer.  I’m open and willing to speak the words; come and see.  I used those actual words.  And she said yes.  She needs a way to get here tonight, but she intends to come and see what we are doing here.  I hope some of you will come and see, too.  So that Angie can experience a community of believers, seeking Jesus together.

Actually I invite folks to come and see what we’re doing a lot.  Not because I think we are doing special things, per se.  People ask me if this is a big church.  It’s there way of saying, “Could anything good happen at little Zion on Main Street in Akron?”  The assumption is always "bigger is better".  I tell them we do big things. It’s not flashy entertainment here.  It’s real.  And personal.  And Jesus is the one who invites us in.  When we gather in community here, our intention is to show the love of Christ.  Disciples are people who are willing to give others access to their lives, their hearts, their minds, so that others might experience Jesus in them.  Because nothing matters more to me than what Jesus has done for me, for us, for the world.  My hope in the future of this world is in Jesus, in the gospel.  Disciples are people who have experienced the grace, love, and peace of Jesus and are called to share it.  When people come and see, do they see Jesus in us?  I hope they do.  Every time.    Amen.  

Post-script.  Angie did come to dinner church with her four children.  I picked them up in my minivan.  We ate together and talked about their life situation. We prayed together. We shared the Lord's supper. I took them home.  She has a written journal that she would like to share sometime, a sort of testimony of how God's grace has saved her.  I hope she can do that with us soon.  When we invite people into our lives, it is often our own eyes and hearts and minds that are opened.      

the one about kairos time

Based on Gospel of Mark. 1:14-20. 

Time, money, friends, material goods, land.  In this list of resources, which do you feel you possess the least?  If you could have more of any one of these which would you choose?  If you were to pray to God for any of these things, which would you pray about?  Who among us today wishes to expand their real estate? Show of hands.   Other items?  Friends?  Money?  Time?

Time is a real bugger.  At the end of the day, you run out of it.  We cannot add more of it, can we?  It’s a fixed economy, in some ways.  24 hours a day.  7 days a week.  356 days a year.  But what is the span of a lifetime?  Unknown, right?  You could live to be 107 or die tomorrow.  Pleasant, I know. But that’s the hard truth about time.  We can plan for tomorrow, but we have to live in the immediate NOW.  And time speeds up as you age, doesn’t it?  Does it seem like a year goes by faster to you than it once did?  Is that real? What is that?  We lose time.  We waste time. We spend time.  Time goes by and we don’t get it back.  When our dog died last month, we did not say “That was the exact right amount of time with her.”  No, we wished for more time, good time, walk and play time with her.  BUT, we also discovered that the timing of her death was right for our family and our life.  And that’s the other bit about time.  It is not always fixed by the clock.  Last week, we went to the farm show in HBG.  We weren’t there five minutes when we ran into one of our oldest and best college friends and his wife and daughter. Jake and I experienced God’s calling in our lives through prayer in a little chapel at SU.  He is a reminder to me that God called us to public ministry.  Later, we ran into Jim Dunlop, the son of our Bishop.  He and I are Facebook friends who have never met.  When he saw me, he recognized me and we stopped to talk for a few minutes.  What do we make of these chance encounters?  If we weren’t somehow dialed in or alert and aware, we would not experience them.  And though seemingly random, they might mean something else.  I’ve been thinking about Jake and Jim since.

Because timing matters.  It is a way that God speaks to us, according to Jesus.  He says, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news."  The word for time here is Kairos.  It's like when fruit ripens.  It's a moment.  Kairos is the encounter that interrupts, the experience that breaks into the routine.  A Kairos moment is an unexpected moment that gives us pause and transcends the schedule.  A Kairos will blow your plans, your schedule, your calendar totally away.  Illness, death, surgery, incarceration are all Kairos experiences. But so might be an opportunity or idea or or encounter or invitation into something new.  And in Jesus’ own life, he was experiencing a Kairos moment.  Mark says, "After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming."  His public ministry began, not on a Monday at 9 am.  Or a Sunday at 9:30; not immediately after his 33^rd birthday.   It began after John was arrested.  Timing is everything. The Kairos for Jesus is the arrest of John. Does John’s arrest foreshadow Jesus’?  John was arrested for his public ministry, a voice crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord.  Now Jesus begins a public ministry with the same message as his predecessor.  Except that Jesus is also claiming that the Kairos moment of John’s arrest and his inauguration into public ministry is the Kairos moment for all of us.  It is the moment when everything changes.  It is the moment when God comes near.  

And as a sign of it, he begins to invite people to follow him.  First four fishermen.  And they immediately go after him.  Why?  What is it that compels them to so hastily drop their nets and go after this man?  His invitation is not filled with promises and promotions.  It is simple.  Come and I will make you fish for people.  What does that mean anyway?  Casting a net to capture people?  How? Why?  For what purpose?  None of this is clear and they go anyway.

Because they are experiencing a Kairos.  It is more than a chance encounter with a preacher on the beach.  It has significance for them.  They may not know what it means, yet.  But they know that they have been summoned, called, invited into something they cannot ignore.  A Kairos is like the ripening of fruit.  These people were ready for action, ready to go, ready for a call.  They were fishermen with dreams and hopes and needs beyond their boats and nets.  They were eager to follow a teacher, a leader, a guide into a new and better way of life.  What if they had said, we don’t have time now.  We have three hours to mend our nets before dusk and fishing time. Clock time can be a powerful tool of resistance.  We are often too busy to notice a Kairos or when they happen we choose to keep our schedule and routine instead.  I can’t.  I have to do this. But these men respond. Jesus breaks into their world and they leave it behind and go. Why? They are disciples. And the first characteristic of a disciple, a learner, a follower of Jesus is this:  Be open to Kairos. God can call you any time.  Maybe this is a time in your life when you have questions or are seeking a way to see, know, hear, trust, and love God, yourself and others.  Maybe something is happening with you and you are struggling with a challenge or an issue for which you cannot see a positive resolution.  Maybe you have experienced something you don’t understand.  A Kairos demands attention and action.  What is God saying and what am I going to do about it?  Jesus’ commands to repent and believe are the faithful response of a disciple experiencing Kairos.  To repent is to stop and turn around.  To get reoriented.  To believe is to take up a new direction without knowing the destination.  It is to trust God to reorder your life in a way that will please God, serve others, and give you life.  I am here to help you mine out a Kairos experience and move in the direction God is calling you to.  Next week, we will honor two people who have demonstrated discipleship in 2014.  And we will welcome three people into church leadership, all who have had Kairos experiences in their lives that prepare them to enter public ministry as servants of Jesus.  Be open to Kairos time and a call to discipleship this week.  Jesus is still inviting you to follow him.  Amen.      

       

the one about the smelly man in the tattered coat

There’s a small congregation like this one and one Sunday the Pastor is ready to begin worship with a prayer and a new hymn when a man walks in the back and starts down the aisle. He is a visitor, never been in there before.  He sits down about halfway up next to an older couple.  He sits down, but says excuse me in a normal speaking voice. This draws the attention of about 80% of the gathered congregation.  He’s wearing dirty boots, sweat pants, an old brown sweater, and---despite the frigid temps outside--a windbreaker with a hole in the back about 3” round, looks like a burn hole.  He looks to be about 40 or 50.  He settles in.  He seems fidgety and uncertain, maybe a little anxious.  He coughs.  A lot. The kind of coughing that makes you want to get out of the way.   He takes out the hymnal and bible in his pew and thumbs through them, not looking for anything at all.  He looks at the bulletin.  The couple next to him slide down and smile when he looks their way.

Also, they notice right away, he smells bad.  Like cigarettes and liquor and body odor.  His hair is dirty but combed.  But the odor is foul and distracting. And not just to the people sharing a pew. Behind him and across the aisle, he is noticeable.  The pastor notices, too.  But worship begins.  He stands when the people stand and sits when they sit.  He doesn’t look in a hymnal or read the bulletin at all.  He just stands and sits, stands and sits. He stays for about half of the service, gets up, walks out, uses the bathroom, and exits the building.  No one speaks to him. He speaks with no one.  He comes and he goes.  What remains is the odor.  And the concern of others in the congregation.  Who was he?  What did he want?  Why was he there?  Would he come back?  What should they do if he does?  Was he homeless?  Drunk?  Did they have a policy about how to handle such occasions? The pastor did not know this man either.   His visit disrupted, startled, confused, and concerned a few people.  Afterward, there were conversations heard about those people hanging around.  And safety concerns for the church building.  And what they should do if he comes again. He seemed needy.  But he didn’t ask for assistance. They don’t want to seem unwelcoming or unfriendly, but his presence was a distraction from worship.  Even for the Pastor, who wondered about the smelly man in the tattered coat. 

the one about infanticide and baptism

Based on Matthew 2.  The slaughter of the Innocent babies of Bethlehem

Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus.  Amen.

Merry Christmas. My middle son, Luke, wanted a new scooter for Christmas.  And he received it.  Along with a new helmet.  I think he has three helmets now.  One for his bike and scooter, one for his skate board, and one for his roller blades.  Luke must wear them when he rides.  It’s a requirement.   I think we would wrap his body in bubble tape if we could to avoid injury.  With the exception of some minor scrapes, we have done so.  For 10 years.  Luke did fall off the monkey bars once, got a bad cut on his forehead, landed in the ER twice. Ended up with a bad staph infection.  A little wound debreeding in the OR and some high octane antibiotics and he was good to go.  That was not a fun weekend.  He still has that scar, like Harry Potter.He lost a weekend and a little skin.  His mother and I lost about 5 years.  It was multiplied by the fact that she and  I were in Philly with friends visiting a museum on the morning that he fell at school.  My wife’s parents handled the first er visit.  But our day out came to an early end. 

Talking helmets and head injuries, when I was a kid we didn’t have bike helmets.  I think I got a head injury about every other day.  Accounts for a lot of things, come to think of it.  You know that old saying, its like falling off a bike.  I tested that many times.  We used to build jumps out of scrap wood.  We’d fly down the hill as fast as we could and hit the jump doing about 35 miles an hour, and then we would crash.  No helmet.  Just me and the Cherokee chief, my first bike that outweighed me.  They build everything light weight now.  But then, you landed with the bike on you, it hurt more than the ground. I also got a three wheeler ATV one Christmas, when I was 10.  Don’t get any ideas, Jonah.  It ain’t, happening.  I remember racing in the woods against my neighbors’ dirt bike with no helmets on.  We could’ve died.  I flipped that thing a couple of times.  That was scary.  But I never broke a bone.  And I never told my mom. That was the rule, risks are secrets.   

When we were kids the seat belts were safely tucked under the seat cushions, out of the way thank you.  We did not wear them.  In front or back seats.  On those vinyl seats, ice cold in winter, hot and sticky in summer, you would just slide around.  My kid brother fell right out the car once.  Turning left in the inner section.  He pulled the car door handle, no child safety locks, and out he went.  Eventually we alerted my mother, who was driving and we turned around.  He was scraped, but uninjured.  Today, my mother would do time for that.    We don’t move the car, unless everyone is buckled.  And baby seats?  You have to have an engineering degree to install them in the vehicle.  This is one of the 700 things new parents have to figure out.  And the baby looks like an astronaut about to launch; seat is reversed, five point harness, baby helmet, padding, cushions, bubble wrap…in 1962,John Glenn was launched into space and orbited the earth in an aluminum can.  Our babies are wrapped in Kevlar body armor and strapped into a tank before we go to target.  As parents, we get a new perspective.

Its Christmas and we are celebrating the birth of Jesus.  His incarnation, the physical presence of God on earth, does not provide divine protection.  His birth was not to provide a blanket of safety and a way out of the insecurity, vulnerability, and risk of human life.  It was the opposite.  God joined us in the vulnerability.  God takes off his seat belt and climbs in the back seat with us.  God gets on the three wheeler, takes off on the scooter.  God takes the risk of being human.  And it is a great risk, a perilous one.  The story we hear of infanticide is remembered on the 28^th of December by the church every year.  As we celebrate the joy of birth, we encounter the risk of death.  It is the second bible story about infanticide by public policy or government decree.  The first is the story of the Exodus, now in theatres.  The Egyptian Pharaoh feared the growing population of foreigners in his country.  So he enslaved them and instructed their midwives to kill and the males, drowning them in the Nile.  Baby Moses was saved in a basket and rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter.  He would later become the public leader of the liberation movement that included violent opposition and the death of Pharaoh’s own son.  Four women protected baby Moses from drowning; midwife, mother, sister, Pharaoh’s daughter.  Maternal instincts doing the work of God.  Further proof that God is a woman.  Or he answers to one.

Jesus’ parents are warned in a dream to flee to Egypt to avoid the tragic massacre.  They do.  But the massacre happens. Mother’s wept and Father’s cried.  No one should have to bury their baby.  That is a rule in every culture.  Unfortunately, we live in a world where that is impossible to avoid sometimes.  War, disease, famine, violent oppression.  Children are casualties still.  We remember them today. All of them, in every time and place.  

Baby Jesus will grow up.  And be baptized.  And lead a liberation movement to free all people from the power of sin and death.  He leads the forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation movement.  He gives his life for the life of the world.   He leads the death and resurrection movement too.  According to the story, Jesus’ mother Mary will see his crucifixion and bury her son. Despite her attempts to protect him as a boy, she could not protect him as a man.  And he died young.  As a prisoner, executed under the watch of the son of the man who ordered the slaughtering of the children of Bethlehem. 

Today we baptize Mason James.  Our instincts are to protect our children.  We may think of baptism as a kind of holy protection.  An insurance policy against sin, death, and the devil.  And it is, in part.  But it is more than that.  Mason becomes a child of God.  You are handing him over today, in one of many acts of parenthood in which you must risk letting him go.  He belongs to God and to the Christian family. He is our baby now.   If he is raised to know Christ, then he may also risk following him.  If he does, he will experience the cross. Because Baptism is also Christian calling.  Put in his hands the Scriptures and teach him to love God.  Teach him to walk in His ways, ways of compassion, justice, and peace; Because we are performing infanticide today.  Luther called Baptism a daily dying and rising, drowning in God’s Word and the water.  When we are baptized into Christ we are baptized into his death and his resurrection, said Paul. Today, you put Mason in the hands of God.  The God who knows what it means to suffer the pain of losing your son. The God who knows what it is to live and to die.  I have done my share of presiding over the death of adult children, whose parents suffer terribly.  I have baptized many children too.  When we are born, we enter the good creation and take on the risk of living and the promise of death.  In Holy Baptism, we acknowledge the risks and the promise.  But we hope for something more, resurrection and eternal life.  We hope for divine protection, salvation, and peace.  We hope for Mason to reflect the light of God, to become a faithful servant and caretaker of God’s creation.  May you experience God’s protection and peace and may you risk everything for Jesus’ and his kingdom.