No Time Like the Present

Genesis 18: 9-33; 22: 1-14           

Micah 6: 6-8                                 

Acts 17: 19-34                              

Abraham was 75 years old when God first called him to leave his country and his kindred and go to the land God would show him. The call and the promise came late in life for Abraham. He was at an age when, if he were born today, he could already be receiving his Social Security, getting his AARP discounts, and enjoying the leisure of retirement. We can imagine it would have been hard for him to trust in what the LORD was promising him, as a result of his answering this call. But off Abraham went, not knowing what the path ahead of him looked like, not having a clue how God was going to pull off the incredible things God had spoken of – “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

We can imagine that Abraham did plenty of wondering and imagining himself, as the years wore on and God had not yet gotten about the business of starting Abraham’s descendant pool. The Lord appears to Abraham in a vision, telling him his reward will be very great, and Abraham questions him – what ‘s the point of a reward, when I am still childless and have no one to pass an inheritance on to? God assures him his descendants will number greater than the stars. And so Abraham continues to be faithful, to trust, even though he eventually takes his wife Sarai’s advice, and takes her slave Hagar as a wife, and she conceives and gives birth to Ishmael. Abraham is 86 years old when this happens, so it’s 11 years since he started on this journey of faith.

And now today’s story comes 13 years after that. Abraham is 99 years old. He’s been on the move for God for 24 years now. That’s a long time to be faithful with no sign of action, of outcome, of even beginning to glimpse the start of the promise God has made.

Stop and think a minute about what was going on for you, in your life, 24 years ago……  Now – imagine if God had made a promise to you then, and you were still waiting today to see any sign of that promise taking place. Would you have given up by now? How many times? Would you have attempted to make it come about by your own efforts? What would your relatives and friends be saying if they saw you continuing to trust that someday this thing was going to happen, after all these years? One can imagine that the title of this sermon – “No Time Like the Present” – might have been what Abraham said, out loud or to himself, as he prayed to God every morning, every noontime, every night. Anytime, now, Lord. No Time Like the Present. No Day like Today….

But one day three men show up, and tell Abraham and Sarah that the time is drawing near. And Sarah laughs. But soon after that, she finds herself pregnant, and nine months later, finally, the promised day does come, and Isaac is born, and they name him “laughter”, because of course, it really is hilarious how all this has happened.

And we don’t hear much more about Isaac again until, one morning, the Lord tells Abraham that the day’s plans include him sacrificing his son on an altar. And, in a way that is astonishing to us, Abraham gets up and goes. He obeys, just as he has done each time the Lord has called to him. And at the very last minute, God reveals to Abraham a “way out” – a ram is caught by its horns in a nearby bush, and Abraham is able to sacrifice it instead, and go back down the mountain with his son.

God’s timing is not our timing, and God’s ways are not our ways. It can be hard to wait for God’s plans and purposes to be revealed. God can sometimes seem unknown to us, just like the “unknown God” that the Greeks in Paul’s time had made a shrine for. The Greeks worshipped idols relating to the visible things of earth – believing that if they made those idols happy with them, they would have rain, and good crops, and wealth, and health, and wisdom, and so on. But the God of Abraham was a God they did not know, did not acknowledge, did not understand. And so Paul seizes the opportunity – “No Time Like the Present” –to proclaim that God to the Greeks as the Lord of heaven and earth.

We do not see God as unknown – and yet we can have just as much trouble as Abraham did in understanding what God’s plan is for us, whether we are trying to discern that individually or collectively. But here is the good news – Jesus Christ is our model for living a life in obedience to God. God came to earth to show us what it looks like to what God requires of us – what it looks like to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God, as we heard through the prophet Micah.

These can seem like radical notions – crazy things to do, if we conclude we are to always do them, without condition. We can come up with so many situations and circumstances when it makes no sense to do these things. To love our enemies. To pray for those who curse us. To practice giving our whole selves up in service to God. But these are the day by day practices God calls us to. They give us our daily purpose, even on those days when God’s big plan for us is hard to figure out – when even God seems unknown to us. We can still get up in the morning and spend our day in obedience to God, doing these things.

I heard a story on the BBC radio hour this week about a man named Adriaan Vlok, who lives in South Africa. During the final years of apartheid rule, from 1986 through 1991, he served as the minister of law and order. In this position, he was responsible for upholding the apartheid laws, which included the ability to detain people without trial, to torture and to assassinate those anti-apartheid activists who were seen as a threat to the government. In 1999, he was granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was the only cabinet minister to admit to committing crimes, including the bombing of the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, even though he considers himself to be a lifelong Christian. In 2006, after having joined the Gideons and, as he put it, read the New Testament for the first time, he committed his life to following Christ. He came forward with public apologies for a number of acts that he had not disclosed before this time. He went to Rev. Frank Chikane, a black pastor whom he had tried to assassinate, and he asked forgiveness in the name of Christ, and he washed the man’s feet. In an interview, he said he did this because he needed to humble himself, to bring himself to see this man and these people of color, whether they were anti-apartheid activists or servants in his household, as equal to him in the eyes of God.

The footwashing was done privately, but Rev. Chikane asked if he could make it public, to help others understand the healing power of humility and reconciliation. But it ignited a public controversy, and Adriaan Vlok found himself being questioned on radio, TV, and newspapers about the details of his additional actions. An article about him tells us this:

“In one interchange before a panel of questioners on a televised talk show, Vlok was pushed on his motivation and his religious identity was scrutinized: - [and these were some of his responses]

"I’m a Christian. … I carry the name of Christ. This is something I had to do.”
“Yes but you were a Christian when you did these things (during apartheid).” 
“I was raised in the Church, but I did not have a relationship with God until about ten years ago.”

 "Then what took you so long?” 
“Who can understand God’s timing? It took a long time for God to deal with me.”

Vlok now lives in a modest apartment and spends each day gathering up leftover food from a nearby bakery and grocery, and delivering it to nearby shelters for persons who are disabled and impoverished.

We know and we don’t know what God is calling us to do. Perhaps we’ve been let in on a glimpse of the big plan for our lives, but we don’t know the details or the timing. Or perhaps we cannot see what the big plan is. No matter what, we do know what God calls us to do each day – to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with our God. To love our enemies. To love God with everything we have. As we do this, to the best of our abilities, we can know and trust completely that God will forgive our inability to get it right, that God will give us bread for the day, that God will hear our prayers, that God will participate with us in whatever good we try to do, that God will be merciful when we turn away.

There is no time like the present to follow Christ, to change our lives, to love and to serve the Lord.

House for All Nations

Genesis 12: 1-9

Galatians 3: 6-9

Mark 11: 15-19

What did Jesus mean when he said the temple would be a House of prayer for all nations? What did God mean when he told Abram that in him all the families of the earth shall be blessed? And what does it mean for us in this time and place, as we live and move and have our being in communities that are as diverse as we can imagine? What does it mean for us as we come to this table on World Communion Sunday?

Each of the passages we heard today proclaim that God’s blessing is for all the nations, all the families of the world, and that faith is what secures that blessing. This Old Testament passage begins the story of how God came to be known as the God of Abraham, and we as one of the Abrahamic faiths.

God commands Abram to go where God is sending him, and God promises Abram that he will become the father of a great nation – a great set of descendants, more than the number of stars in the sky, more than the grains of sand on the shore. God promises to bless Abram, and also that all the families on earth who believe shall also be blessed, just as Abram’s faithfulness establishes his blessing.

When Paul writes to the Jewish believers in the church in Galatia, he is challenging their position that Gentiles cannot be followers of Christ unless they are circumcised, unless they follow the Jewish law and essentially become Jews first. This church is on a path of excluding persons of faith who are not “like them”. But Paul refers back to this Old Testament story, saying that it is faithfulness that brings the blessings of Abraham to the Gentiles – the same blessings that are promised for all families on earth.

The words Jesus speaks as he clears the temple of money changers and those selling sacrificial animals are words that were first spoken by two Old Testament prophets, each speaking the word of the Lord. Isaiah said that the temple shall be a house of prayer for all nations, and Jeremiah warned about the temple being made into a den of robbers. We only heard this brief segment, but this story happens right after Jesus enters Jerusalem for the Passover – the story that is retold every Palm Sunday. Right after his triumphal entry into the city comes this story – but just as Mark does in many cases, it is connected with and related to another story – in this case the story of Jesus passing by a fig tree that bears no fruit. He curses the tree for being useless, and when he passes by it later – just after our story – it has shriveled up and died.  In both the fig tree story and the temple story, Jesus is describing the temple and the religious leaders as the ones who are barren – not producing any fruit – because of the roots – the leadership. Mark connects the two stories in order to strengthen the point of each. Jesus is predicting the fall of the temple, and proclaiming the kingdom of God to not be limited to the sacred buildings, to the structures and sanctuaries, but to be everywhere, carried by believers to all nations and all families of the earth.

So with all this in mind, what does it mean for us today to be a house of prayer for all nations?

The church is a place of prayer, and prayer prepares us to give. Jesus emphasized the importance of prayer throughout his life. Prayer connects us with God, and it keeps us centered on God’s will for God’s lives, not on our own will.

The church is a place to prepare for faithful living, and to increase our ability to do so. Here we learn together about God’s will, God’s kingdom, God’s grace and mercy, so that we are equipped as disciples to practice what we learn, to share it with others in both word and deed, in our daily lives.

The church is a place from which we can grow and bear good fruit, a place from which we do not simply come to get something, not a place that we approach as consumers of an experience. Rather it is a place that prepares us to give.

Give what? Well, to give the fruit of our lives. It is where we grow in our ability to offer more and more of our selves in our daily living to reflect Christ and to offer glimpses of God’s kingdom to others. A church that does not bear fruit is as barren as the fig tree. Christ calls his church to be much more than that.

Give to whom? Well, to all nations. And the purpose of this giving is not just to keep the church going, to fill our pews on a Sunday morning. But it is to share the kingdom of God. To share the good news that we have received. To share the salvation that we have been freely given. To allow people of all nations to experience through our love how God is good and how much God loves the whole world and all the families on the earth. To live out the great commandments, to love God with everything we have, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. To trust in God’s faithfulness to work good in everything we try to do, to bring it to completion, since we cannot do anything like that under our own power.

Give how? We give as disciples. We give in worship. We give in our school and work and home and leisure lives.

We give in in the world, where there are so many needs and so many possibilities. Our denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), provide numerous options to participate in worldwide mission and local mission – feeding the hungry, caring for the refugee, sheltering the homeless, being a good neighbor, working for reconciliation among all people, and on and on and on.

We give in our dedication to mission as a congregation. New Beginnings is a process of discernment, where we will work together to consider options for our future, and to make decisions that will move us forward to do God’s will here in this place. It will take place starting right after Thanksgiving and will continue into early next year.

May we have the courage of Abraham to step out in true faith. May we heed the call of Christ to worship God in word and deed, in everything we do. May we trust that God will perfect whatever we take on in God’s name, for God’s sake. May we always seek to love our neighbors in our communities and around the world, in the name of Jesus Christ who loves us, so that we can bear good fruit, fruit that will last.

May we come to the table this World Communion Sunday, acknowledging our place as citizens of the world, rejoicing in God’s promise that all families of the earth shall be blessed, committing as Abraham did to being faithful, no matter what it takes, and sharing Christ’s bread, Christ’s body, Christ’s unconditional love with all who are in desperate need for such love in their lives.

Amen.

God's Broken Heart

Genesis 4:1–17; 6:5–8; 7:1–5; 8:1; 9:7–17 

Psalm 51 

James 4:1–8 

Humanity runs on conflict. And that is not God’s will for us. This is an overriding theme in today’s scripture texts.

Conflict in the world began almost immediately. The very first siblings on earth were Cain and Abel. Their Hebrew names mean “Spear”and “Fleeting Wind”, which is an early indicator of how different these two siblings would be. They made different career choices – Cain was a farmer, and Abel was a sheepherder. They chose different ways of worshipping God, in the ways they brought sacrifices to God.  Cain brought his finest produce, and Abel brought wonderful meat.  And when Cain saw that God liked Abel’s offering more than his, he became very angry. God warned him that he wouldn’t always come out on top, but that he should not use that as an excuse to let sin overtake him. But as soon as Cain thinks he is “out of sight” of God, he goes out into the field, finds Abel, and kills him.

Now, we know that Cain is not out of sight of God. And when God seeks him out, and says, “Where is Abel? What have you done? Cain tries to pretend he has no clue, saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

But God calls him out, and punishes him, but also protects him. God does not let the sin go unnoticed, but God leaves a door open for Cain’s future.

So generations are born, the population of the earth grows, and so does the wickedness of humankind. The scripture says, “The Lord saw that humanity had become thoroughly evil on the earth and that every idea their minds thought up was always completely evil. The Lord regretted making human beings on the earth, and he was heartbroken.”  God’s heart was broken by what humanity was doing.

But Noah found favor in God’s sight.  Even as God decided to flood the earth, wipe out all the wickedness of humanity, as well as everything else, Noah and his family were saved, along with a set of animals. God intended to start over again. And when the waters receded, and the tiny band of people and animals came out of the ark, God made a covenant for all future generations, that a flood shall never again destroy the earth. God made a rainbow as a reminder of the covenant.

Psalm 51 acknowledges us as sinners right from the start, and asks God to wash us clean, and to teach us wisdom, to create in us a clean heart and a new and right spirit. It asks for the same saving grace, the same hope that God exhibited by restarting humanity.

The letter from James clearly states that conflicts continued into and after the time of Jesus. They are not wiped away by the flood, and the trust in God that is described in Psalm 51 does not eliminate conflicts either.  That’s really no surprise, is it? They will always be with us. James discusses the sources of conflicts; that they come from the things we crave and cannot have, because we don’t ask, because we ask for the wrong things, because our motives are about our own pleasure. Because we are not focusing on the will of God. James reminds us that God’s Spirit has been placed in us, and God yearns jealously for that spirit, for our faithfulness.

After the flood, conflicts continued.

And after James wrote these words, almost 2000 years ago, after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, conflicts have continued with no end in sight. 

Conflict breaks God’s heart – but still we continue.­

Even though we know that God yearns for us to kindle the spark of God’s spirit that is within us.

Even though we know that Christ has called us to unity among all people.

Even though we know that conflict is caused by the cravings for pleasures that we don’t need.

And conflict is not confined to the world outside the church; far from it. The universal church has people in it these days with so many different ideas and opinions about what is right and what is wrong, what is and is not God’s will. Those who agree with us are part of our own “we” group, and those who don’t are part of the “they” group. And even though both groups really are striving to know and to do God’s will, it seems that we cannot choose to just respect that, and to find ways to work together that transcend our differences, but instead we only dig deeper and deeper into our conflicts and the harm that it causes us all.

But there is a more excellent way for us to live, and we are given that way in scripture. It is the way of love, the kind of love that is not about warm fuzzy feelings, the kind of love that requires work, and patience and kindness, in order to love past our differences. It is the kind of love that Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. And it is the way of reconciliation that is the basis of our own Confession of 1967.

The Confession of 1967 was the first new confession of faith adopted by the Presbyterian Church in three centuries. It was built around a single passage of Scripture…. “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself”. It has three sections: God’s work of Reconciliation, The Ministry of Reconciliation, and the Fulfillment of Reconciliation.

One section is entitled “The New Life”- and besides the fact that it shares its title with the name of this church, it directly speaks to our tendency toward conflict and the role of Christ’s reconciling work in redeeming us and bringing toward unity in Christ. Let’s read this passage together – Cheryl, will you please bring up the extra slides?

The reconciling work of Jesus was the supreme crisis in the life of humankind. His cross and resurrection become personal crisis and present hope for humanity when the gospel is proclaimed and believed. In this experience the Spirit brings God’s forgiveness to humanity, moves them to respond in faith, repentance, and obedience, and initiates the new life in Christ.

The new life takes shape in a community in which humanity know that God loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept themselves and love others, knowing that no one has any ground on which to stand, except God’s grace.

The new life does not release a person from conflict with unbelief, pride, lust, fear. They still have to struggle with disheartening difficulties and problems. Nevertheless, as they mature in love and faithfulness in their life with Christ, they live in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on good days and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and helpful to others.

Amen.

This past week Pope Francis has been in the US. Many visits and experiences were planned for the short time that he is here. Gene Robinson is an Episcopal Bishop who had been invited to the White House to meet and welcome Pope Francis this week. Sister Simone Campbell was also initially invited. But the Vatican chose to remove them from the invitation list – Bishop Robinson because he is openly gay, and Sister Simone because she has been encouraging the Catholic Church to increase the roles of women.

Bishop Robinson wrote an open letter to Pope Francis,

and in it he said this:

o   “We disagree in our understandings about sexuality and the diverse and wonderful ways God has made us. But as far as I am concerned, that does not keep me from admiring you and praying for you and your ministry.

o   Our churches disagree on those whom we are willing to ordain, their gender and their sexual orientation. Still, that does not keep me from striving to love and serve those entrusted to me, and to pray for you as you strive to love and serve those entrusted to you. We both care passionately about the poor, and we share the notion that unfettered capitalism creates and perpetuates poverty, treating the less fortunate as goods to be used up and discarded.

o   You and I believe that God has a special place in God’s heart for those who are marginalized – whether they be refugees, undocumented immigrants, those living with HIV/AIDS, or those without food, shelter and healthcare. And we both suspect that God must wonder when we are going to find the courage to love and care for our beautiful and fragile planet.

o   We have so much that binds us together, and so little that separates us. We are probably never going to settle those differences. As for me, I am willing to acknowledge the saintly integrity with which you hold your views, even in I disagree with them, as I hope you might acknowledge my striving for integrity in mine.

o   It seems that in these times, the greatest sin would be to write one another off and to stop caring about one another. This, I think, would break God’s heart.

o   …and he signed it, A laborer in another part of the Vineyard,  Gene.

He says, to write one another off and to stop caring for one another would, he thinks, break God’s heart. To let conflict win the day, and to not seek the things that bind us together.

Christopher Joiner, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee,  recently wrote a piece entitled “Why I am [Still] a Presbyterian. He wrote it in response to the people who, he says, continually ask him, “Why are you still in the PC(USA)? Don’t you know it is in decline because it is too liberal / too conservative, too traditional / too trendy, too political / not political enough, etc?”

He gives five reasons. I will state them all, and expand on a few.

1.    God is big, God is sovereign – and we are not.

2.    We have a lot to learn – and our leaders are educated to be life-long learners. We place a high value as Presbyterians in thinking for ourselves. Which, he says, makes us a rather diverse and disputatious lot…

3.    We fight a lot, but we fight fair. “If God is sovereign and education is paramount, it follows that if you have ten Presbyterians in a room you’ll have at least twenty opinions. We spend a lot of time in groups talking about what it means to follow Christ, and sometimes those conversations get heated. But we spend a considerable amount of time making sure all voices are heard and all perspectives are honored. Decision making is therefore messy and slow, and we all spend a fair amount of time complaining about it. But we’ll take messy and slow if it means honoring all the people of God in their rich diversity. And we realize diversity extends beyond the relatively small boundaries of our little denomination, which means….

4.    We think it is important to play well with others. In any city in America, you will find Presbyterians partnering with persons of other denominations and other faiths in the work of the Spirit in the world.

5.    The world needs our witness. “The world and the universal church need to see a group of people who know how to stay together even when they do not always agree, a group of people who believe at the core of their faith that they will never know all of God there is to know and who therefore refuse to narrow-cast.  The PCUSA does not do this perfectly, but it does try to be this kind of witness in a world that desperately needs it. It defies the easy categories our culture is so good at imposing (and which we always get asked about) – liberal / conservative, traditional / contemporary, Democratic / Republican.

6.    That’s why he is Presbyterian – and that’s why I am called to be Presbyterian too.

The world and the universal church need to see a group of people who know how to stay together even when they do not always agree…

the greatest sin would be to write one another off and to stop caring about one another. This, I think, would break God’s heart.

Here at New Life, we are not strangers to conflict. And we have experienced the blessings of reconciliation. This does not mean that we will not face conflict going forward. But my hope and prayer is not that we will avoid conflicts, or that we will find a position on which we all agree, but that we will approach any areas of disagreement not as a win/lose, all-or-nothing proposition, but rather as “a group of people who know how to stay together even when they do not always agree, a group of people who believe at the core of their faith that they will never know all of God there is to know and who therefore refuse to narrow-cast. “ I truly believe this is the hope for our future, as a church and as a world, and I truly believe that if there is anywhere that it can and must be modeled, it is the church of Jesus Christ. May God reveal to us the way to be the ones who show how it can be done.

Sources cited:

We Make the Road By Walking, Brian McLaren: Chapter 5: In Over Our Heads

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/19/a-gay-episcopal-bishop-s-open-letter-to-the-pope.html

https://christopherjoiner.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/why-i-am-still-a-presbyterian/

http://www.creeds.net/reformed/confess67.pdf

More or Less

Genesis 3: 1-13
Philippians 1: 3-11
Chapter 4 - We Make the Road By Walking, Brian McLaren

Today’s Old and New Testament readings were both familiar ones to  me.  The serpent passage and the choice made by Adam and Eve that was the catalyst for sin in the world is one that has been told and retold and even caricatured in many ways. And the Philippians passage is one of several that my former pastor encouraged me to memorize during my time of discernment that eventually led me to seminary. But I had not thought about them in relationship to one another until they were brought together in this week’s chapter of our year-long study book, We Make the Road by Walking.

And the parallels between the two are striking.

In the Genesis passage, God has provided for Adam and Eve everything they need for a good life in the garden. They have been told to just stay away from one tree – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But temptation comes to them in the challenge that they could become like God, knowing good and evil. So they eat, and their eyes are opened, and they see immediately their own nakedness as a cause for shame. So they cover themselves, and they hide themselves from God  - something they had never thought of doing before. When God finds out, he banishes them from the garden, diminishing the life they would have had otherwise.

In the Philippians passage, Paul uses an early church hymn, something familiar to the church in Philippi, to explain to them what it means to have the same mind as Christ Jesus. The hymn has two stanzas – one telling how Christ did not exploit his equality with God, but rather emptied himself as a slave, and humbled himself in obedience to God – even to the point of death on a cross. The second stanza then tells how God highly exalted Christ, and gave him the name above all names – God named Jesus Christ as Lord, and one day the world will be unified in that confession – that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Adam and Eve were not satisfied with their position relative to God, but tried to grasp a more God-like status. They disobeyed God. They chose the wrong tree. God was not glorified in the choice these humans made, to exalt themselves, to compete with God. And God reduced their status as a result, giving them a harder life of pain, competition, sweat, labor, frustration, and death. A life outside the garden that was their home.

Jesus Christ’s position relative to God was equal, Paul tells us. But Jesus did not grasp after that equality. Instead, he emptied himself out, not only into the form and likeness of a mere human, but all the way to the likeness of a servant, a slave. And in that emptied-out status, he humbled himself in utter obedience to God, to the point of death on a cross. Therefore, we read – therefore – God highly exalted him and named him Lord. He glorified God in his life of obedience, in his humility, in his emptying. He modeled that for us – to show us a way of life that is an imitation of God’s self-giving love. He poured himself out for us, and then he asked us to follow him – to imitate him – with all of our lives, loving God with everything we have, loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Adam and Eve tried to grasp more, to climb up the ladder, closer to God. They lost their former lives as a result.

Jesus, who was equal to God, did not grasp what he had, but climbed down the ladder into the pit of brokenness that humanity finds itself in, to love and serve them, to give his life for them. As a result, he was highly exalted by God, and named Lord of All.

Who do we want to imitate? What do we desire for our lives? What drives our desires?

I’m just getting around to reading a book my daughter gave me my first year of seminary. My daughter is so well-read in theological matters, and she teaches me and inspires me regularly. This is a book by Martin Buber called I and Thou. It is a difficult book. You read a paragraph or two and put it down to think about it for a day or so, then pick it up again and read some more.

I’m just in the early part of the book, but I have  been thinking about this one thing I read for days now. Buber suggests that every thought we have, every action we take, every moment of our lives, is either focused on I / Thou – Thou being God; or else it is focused on I/It – it being some object or person. He claims there is no pure thought of “I” – that it always relates to either Thou- or It (or he / she / they – whatever). I think this is an important thing to consider when we consider the focus of our desire – the question I asked about what we desire for our lives, what drives our desires. If there is only two ways to relate to the world – I to Thou, or I to It, how can that shift our desires, our daily focus, our choices, our thoughts and actions?

This week I had a discussion at the Thursday prayer group about this chapter, these passages. And I heard a story about how someone’s work life changed, transformed completely, when a colleague suggested to him that he shift his gaze from working for his supervisor or even for the company who paid him, and instead to work as if all the work he did was being done for God. He said this changed his whole perspective on how to handle the pile of too much work, how to pray about getting it all done, how to turn it over and trust God to work it out, how to pray for those who were persecuting him in the workplace. He changed his desires. He went from an I/it focus to an I/Thou.

Jesus modeled the way to I/Thou. Everything Jesus did was for God. And this made even Jesus humble himself in utter obedience. Where are we in our lives of obedience to Jesus Christ the Lord? What are we willing to give of ourselves? What do we desire to hold back?

Jesus calls us to follow him, to imitate him, to be generous with all of who we are, all of what we have. When we do this, when we glorify God, when we focus our gaze on I/Thou, when we decrease ourselves so that Christ will be increased in us, then we are gaining our lives by losing them. Then we are trusting God to come alongside us in everything we do and to perfect it, to make it good. Then we are acknowledging that the kingdom of God is here and now, and that we desire to live in it, rather than the desires that are birthed from the brokenness of our lives.

But the way to build and increase that I/Thou relationship is not for us to work so hard to raise ourselves up to a standard that would begin to be acceptable to God; rather it is to let Christ lower himself to us, as he chooses to do; to recognize that Christ the Lord is Christ the servant, Christ the slave, Christ the friend of all humanity, of all people. To approach him as a friend, as a child; to turn our fears and our strivings and our feelings of less than acceptable upside down, and to recognize that Christ came down for us, that Christ emptied himself for us, that Christ humbled himself for us, that obedience to God is not about striving to be the best, but it is striving to be like Christ, in humility, in service, in friendship, and in love.

Come to me, says Jesus, all you who labor and are heavy laden. All you who have been thrown out of the garden because of the choices you have made. All you who have sought comfort and happiness and peace in the desires that are harmful, prideful, fearful, competitive. Come to me, imitate me, follow me, and I will give you rest.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.