Welcoming Hope

Scripture Texts from We Make the Road by Walking (Brian McLaren) - Week 13

Isaiah 1: 10-20, 2: 2-5

Romans 15: 1-13

Matthew 9: 10-17

For Matthew, this story, recorded in his gospel, is very personal. Because Matthew was a tax collector, one of the very kinds of people that are coming under the scrutiny and the questioning of the Pharisees, those experts in and excellent followers of the laws of Moses.

The Pharisees pull the disciples aside to say, “What is up with your teacher, anyway? Why doesn’t he reject people like you and the other ones he is always hanging around with – tax collectors, low-lifes, and sinners of all varieties? What on earth would possess him to prefer “them” over “his own people”, “his own kind”?

Here we are, morally upright, law-abiding, followers of God’s commandments and laws, earning our livings and our reputations in a most respectable way, say the Pharisees. We are the ones who deserve recognition from him. We deserve it because we have earned it!

Even John the Baptist’s disciples can’t quite get it. They don’t understand why Jesus doesn’t think it’s important for himself and his disciples to make a positive example, a model for others to follow, in how to obey laws like fasting, and so on. Aren’t these the ways to live a sacred life?

And Jesus, as always, offers replies that are confounding to them, and to us; responses that are life-altering to them, as well as to us.

·      I have come for those in need, not for those who think they have it all figured out.

·      If you are doing so well, what do you need me for?

·      I desire mercy, not sacrifice; show me your steadfast love, not ritualistic offerings. Go and learn what this means, he tells them.

o   Jesus is quoting the prophet Hosea, and he is also saying much of what we heard from the prophet Isaiah in our Old Testament passage today.

·      Isaiah’s opening words to the people of Israel is that they had better stop acting like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who had sinned against God by not aiding the poor and needy, even though they were prosperous, with excess food and easy lives.

·      Isaiah says the Lord has no interest in rituals, sacrifices and prayers, that are offered as if they earn God’s approval. Solemn assemblies with unclean hearts are not pleasing to the Lord.

Instead, God’s people are called to cease doing evil, and learn to do good. Specifically – to seek justice, to rescue the oppressed, to defend the orphan, to plead for the widow.

Just like Matthew, the apostle Paul hears himself in the words of Jesus and the words of Isaiah. For he was just like the Pharisees through and through; a devout Jew who dedicated himself to observing the laws of Moses, and who had become so threatened by Jesus’ disciples and their insistence on loving sinners and Gentiles, of proclaiming Christ as Messiah, that he had taken it upon himself to lead a resistance movement that would shut them down, would do them in. He organized the tortures and killings of early Christians.

And then he encountered Christ the King.

And now, when he writes to the Romans about following Christ the King, Paul says all sorts of unexpected things.

·      We who are strong ought to put up with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves, but we must please our neighbor in order to build up that neighbor.

·      That which was written in former days was written so that we might have hope, which comes to us by the encouragement of the scriptures, and by steadfastness.

·      May the God of steadfastness and encouragement allow you to live in harmony with one another.

·      Welcome one another, just as Christ has welcomed you. In doing this you give glory to God.

o   You give glory to God by welcoming one another.

·      Even the Gentiles, those non-believers that we Jews have always disregarded up to now.

·      Abound in hope.

·      May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

These words are not about strict adherence to the rule of law. They are about the steadfast and abundant nature of God, as shown in Christ Jesus the King, the Lord and Savior of Heaven and Earth. As shown in the unending and unfailing power of the Holy Spirit.

As it is offered to all people in abundant joy, abundant peace, abundant hope, abundant welcome.

As we are called to generously share that abundant joy, peace, hope, and welcome with all those who do not deserve it, at least in pwm our way of judging who does and does not deserve things.

Paul had to get over it; he had to get over the judging and the false ways of dividing himself and his type from other people.

We have to do that too.

Because Christ the King calls us to do so; calls us to accept that the new way, the new commandment, the new covenant, the new wine cannot be held in old wineskins. It will burst out. We are reborn into new life, and we must carry that life out in new ways, in new structures, in new understandings of church, and of loving one another. In new ways of being Christ’s hands and feet and heart and spirit here on earth, to all who have need of it.

To give the hungry food, to give the thirsty something to drink, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked, to care for the sick, to visit the prisoner.

Matthew’s gospel tells us that when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and sits on his throne of glory, he will affirm the inheritance of those who do these things, who do these things for the least of these, for the most marginalized and the ones seeming least deserving, because that’s when they have done that for Christ.

There is no basis for judging who should receive our favor, our kindness, our generosity, our hope, our compassion, our love. Because when we freely give to anyone in need, it is as if we have given to Christ himself.

It’s been a rough time lately to have to face that call from Christ.

The world scares us in new ways every single day.

·      Terrorist bombings in Paris and Baghdad and Beirut.

·      Hostage taking in Mali.

·      Boko Haram massacres continuing in Nigeria.

·      Refugees fleeing for their lives from the total hopelessness of the Syrian Civil War.

There is so much temptation to close the doors, lock them tight, keep ourselves inside and safe, keep the strangers out.

How can hope even be a thing in the midst of all this?

How can we look around and see anything to be hopeful about?

To abound in hope, as Paul says – it feels like a lovely abstraction, but nothing that could become real for us or anyone else, for that matter.

How can we possibly hope to step past our fears to express love and hope to others when we don’t even know them?

Our tendency as human beings is to only proceed with an abundance of caution, if at all. To put safety first.

But Christ the King never promised safe lives. Not to his disciples, not to Paul, not to us.

The Lord God, acting throughout the Old Testament scripture, never promised safe lives to Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Joseph, or David, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah….

God promises to be with us. God promises to supply an abundance of hope. God promises to work through us, person by person, loving act by loving act.

God’s plan is all of us. God’s plan is that we all engage our whole lives in small acts of great love, and that when those combine with all the other small acts of great love, that the world will be changed.

Christ the King modeled this way for us. Christ the King called us to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, worship through mercy and not sacrifice. To love our neighbors and our enemies. To love ourselves and the other.

Today is Christ the King Sunday. Christ was and is and will be a King that is completely unlike any other – a King that confounds us when we try to make sense of his call on our lives – a King that calls us to be brave in our love, to be fearless in our hope, to return good for evil, to trust that God will work with that in ways beyond our comprehension, to create more good than we ever could on our own. But we must provide the spark, must be the hands and feet and smile and warmth and welcome. For all. And God will take it from there.

Staying Still and Moving On

2 Kings 2: 1-15

Psalm 23

Acts 1: 1-11

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Sometimes when a transition comes along in our life, we are tempted to hang on to things the way they are, and to wish for them to somehow be able to go back to when we loved the arrangement we were in -  we loved the way things were, the people who were in our lives; we loved the fact that our children were young; we loved the fact that our friends were close by so we could hang out with them. 

We loved the life that we had.  And even if it has moved on, often we try to stand still back in that one wonderful place, wishing that we could look around and see things as they were. 

We search for signs of that perfect time.

We search for signs of our own wholeness, the wholeness that we perceived was ours during that time.

 And this is what is happening with Elijah and Elisha, to a certain degree, in our Old Testament story today.   Elisha realizes that his mentor is going to leave him, is going to die.  Elijah is going to pass over the waters of Jordan. And Elisha doesn’t want to hasten that time; he doesn’t want to talk about it with people around him.  He certainly doesn’t want to talk about it to Elijah. 

But he journeys with him, and when the time comes, and Elijah asks him what he wants, and Elisha is told how he will receive this double blessing that he seeks,  he keeps his  eye focused on Elijah. He stays focused and centered on what matters most, but at the same time a transition is happening all around him.  The fiery chariot swings low and carries off Elijah in a blaze of glory and Elisha is left there standing on his own. 

And he can’t just stay there, he has to take the mantle and he has to use it to go and do the work that he has now been appointed to do. He has to move on. And so as much as he loved his former relationship with Elijah, and the mentoring and the teaching and the joy of that friendship, he has to go forward, and so he does.

In the Acts of the Apostles, the very beginning of it starts with the disciples in much the same situation as Elisha.  Christ has died, Christ has risen and Christ is with them for forty days.  And they can scarcely believe their joy.  They had been ready to just go back to their fishing lives after Jesus was crucified, and then Christ was with them again and all things were new.  And they had no idea where this was going to go, and then suddenly they understand from Jesus that going forward means going on without him.

And before they know it, he is raised from their sight.

And they continue to look up into the clouds for a sign of him, remembering the experience of seeing him go, remembering the feeling of him being there and just wishing  they could have back the time that was, just a moment before.

How very much we would love to stay in that place.  

We said together the words of Psalm 23.

We proclaimed that the Lord is our shepherd, that we have all that we need from God. 

And the sensation we get from the first verses of that beautiful poetic psalm is that we can lie down and be comfortable right where God leads us.

We have green pastures in which we are fed.
We have still waters from which we can drink.

(because after all, we are sheep!)

Our soul is restored. We are kept alive by God. God brings us back, causes us to repent.

But if we think about shepherds – they are always moving the sheep from place to place.  They come to a meadow and the grass is eaten by the hungry sheep, and they will have to move on to a new pasture. The predators will come and so they need to move on for safety. 

They are always on the move, so even though on a day to day basis they are provided with still waters and green pastures for their food and for their drink and for the sustenance of their lives, they keep moving. 

And The Lord goes with them, leads them, journeys along with them with both the rod and the staff for their security. 

And they walk through dark valleys, they don’t just walk through green pastures and still waters. 

We don’t either.  We walk through dark valleys until we come out the other side. We face many unknowns in our journey. But God is with us alwaysand God is always preparing the table that we need, always inviting us to join our neighbors and our enemies at the table. 

But not for us to just stay still. 

Two of my very closest friends have just moved out of state.

I have spent time at regular intervals with each one of them; for over 10 years with the one and for over 20 years with the other.  We would get together and talk about all manner of things; we would help each other celebrate the joys and walk through the dark valleys of our lives.  They have both been mentors for me; they have been thinking partners with me; they have journeyed with me through my corporate career; through my time in church and seminary; through the personal crises in my life; and I have journeyed with them through theirs as well.  

We have been good friends. 

And I’ve known for a few months that they were both leaving within a month of each other, and I have grieved greatly over these last few months in anticipation of their leaving. 

The idea of being left behind.  With them being gone and me being here, staying in place and knowing I can’t follow them.  Their lives take them in new directions. 

But I knew how much I was going to miss them, and I do miss them already. 

But even as they left, our relationships took on new shapes and forms.

My one friend is already back in Ann Arbor doing consulting work, driving back into town for a few days at a time, and we met for breakfast this week, just like we always did.

My other friend is living near Tulsa, Oklahoma, and as it happened I had to travel there this week for my cousin’s funeral, and so he picked me up at the airport and showed me around Tulsa and had dinner with me and we caught up with each other. 

When my one friend drove away from the restaurant the last time we had breakfast together as An Arbor locals, and as my other friend drove out of town in his rented moving truck last Friday, it had felt to me like they were gone forever.

I felt like Elisha or the apostles may have felt, each of us watching someone beloved to us leave, until we couldn’t see them anymore.

But I realized this week that it wasn’t true that I would never see them again, but that instead, somehow or other, our friendship would move on in a new way.

It’s the same way with our children as they grow and get on with their lives, isn’t it?

My children are grown and out of the house now, still establishing their life’s directions, I don’t know for sure where they will land or what lies ahead. And our relationship with each other changes as we move on together. We had a time of staying “still”, so to speak, living as family in the same place, and now we are moving on to new ways of experiencing each other.

As a church you are moving forward too.

Many things have changed over the past years, and many of you wish at various times and for various reasons that things would just stay the same. 

Certainly the people from Peace have gone through a grieving process as they have left behind the church building that they loved and that they grew up in, even as they have come to discover and appreciate the good aspects of coming into the merger. 

And the people from PC Utica have given up aspects of how they used to be, as they have moved into life as a merged church, a new church.

The people who gave birth to the second service have grieved as we set that aside this year, even as many of us have welcomed the coming together of the congregation in worship.

I think everybody struggles with the notion that this is now a new church.

And what does that mean for this church? 

It’s challenging to look at everything we do, and to say “how does this fit today?”; “what will we do this year and next year?”; “what will we keep doing because we’ve always done it?”; and “where do we need to make space for new things?”

In the New Beginnings process,they talk about the life cycle of a church having an incline and then a decline and at the very middle point they call it “the risk of recline.”

Because the temptation is there that since things have been going so well , if we can just stay where we are and hold everything in place just the way we’re doing it right now, then all will be well. 

We say to ourselves, “this is where we like it, this is what we want for the future. 

But the reality is if we try to stay in that spot, comfortably leaning back in our recliners, we are going to slide down into decline. 

And so all we can do is to begin to live into the changes that are happening around us, to accept them with grace and courage,  so that we can be part of Christ’s work in continually recreating and reforming the church, recreating its missions,  recreating its responses to the needs of the world,  participating in what Christ is doing in the community and in the world to make all things new. 

So, just like the apostles, just like Elisha, we love where we have been.  We miss what we had.  We stay still for a time, to remember, to be refreshed, … and then we move on.

My friend who moved to Tulsa wrote a reflection after he arrived, about letting go and moving on. He compared it to that piece of playground equipment that looks like a kind of horizontal overhead ladder – a set of bars where you jump up and grab the first one, then get your body swinging until you can let go with one hand and grab hold of the next rung, then let the other hand go and grab onto the rung ahead, and so on, and so on. That rhythm of letting go and moving forward does not allow you to stay put at any point.

If you are going to grab the next thing you must let go of the former things.

As sheep we will come to a place of pasture, where we can regain our strength through physical and spiritual nourishment, but we can be sure the Good Shepherd will be getting us back up before long and moving us forward, moving us on.

As we walk through our life’s journey, following the Way that is the Truth and the Life, let us keep from stalling, trusting in Christ to be the One by whom we are ultimately and completely grasped, and held onto forever more.

Justice for All

Deuteronomy 7: 1-11

Psalm 137: 1-9; 149: 1-9

Matthew 15: 21-39

As many of you know, we are working our way, week by week, through the Bible using a book titled “We Make the Road by Walking”. The subtitle is “A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation”. I knew the topic for this past week was bound to come up one of these days, and it is here, and it is a tough one. It is about Conquest – about the violence in our world, and about what God’s role is in it.

To be honest, I’ve been kind of dreading this week, addressing this set of scripture. If you read through all four of the scriptures for this week – we only heard two of them here – they are all really tough, really challenging. The first one, the passage in Deuteronomy, is not included in any of the standard Lectionary readings that most churches use. It’s really violent. It tells the people of Israel to be sure that when they go about clearing Israel of the seven nations that are living there, to be sure to “utterly destroy” them.

But in another sense, I am grateful to Brian McLaren for putting these texts in front of us and inviting us to consider these things. For there is no question that violence exists in our world and in our hearts; that conquest is something that humanity just seems to be destined for, that our world cannot escape.

I will admit to you up front that I don’t really understand violence. I don’t understand war. I have not experienced either one personally, but I know that many people have, that people here today have. Some of us whom we recognized today have experienced it. Some of us have lost loved ones to various forms of violence. Even though I have not engaged in war or physical violence at a personal level, I was thinking this week about what weapons I use, what I conceal and pull out when I need to, what I use to satisfy my own impulses for conquest and for destruction. And I realized that for me, it is words that I am most at risk of using in a hurtful way. The only thing I ever remember punching was a car door after a particularly bad argument I was in with the person inside it. Left a dent and hurt my hand. But if I’m not careful, I can spew out words that hurt almost as fast as a bullet, and like a bullet, I cannot reverse their damage once I’ve done that. So I know I must be cautious with my words, to resist the impulse of using them as a weapon, to be generous with them in offering compassion and encouragement instead.

Sadly, war and violence are big parts of our world and our collective lives. And even if we have not experienced them personally, we do place a lot of effort and energy into trying to avoid their effects on us and our loved ones. A big part of the reason that they are such a significant factor in our world is that, no matter what, we all see the world as made up of “us and them”. We can’t help it. Even though we read throughout scripture that God sees us all as beloved, and even though our own country’s pledge of allegiance claims the right to “liberty and justice for all”, we cannot help but place everyone in one of two camps, the “us” camp and the “them” camp. If we are doing well, we tend to put everyone else who is doing what we do into the “us” camp, and anyone who threatens our well-being into the “them” camp. If we are not doing well, we tend to associate ourselves with others who are in similar circumstances, and we see all those who are causing our grief or pain or misfortune as “them”. We all see the world through our own filters, experiences, and limitations.

And so when others hurt us, or we fear that they will, we feel rage toward them. It’s natural to do so. It is what we hear in the words of Psalm 137. The writer is in exile, a Jew in Babylon, missing Zion, hurting terribly from the way they are being treated by the Babylonians, wanting God to strike “those people” dead, confessing that they would be happy for them to get what they deserve, even if “those people’s” children were brutally killed. There are horrible images raised in those words – but there are also feelings that we all can pretty much relate to, if we are honest with ourselves.

Those are the kinds of times when we pray for a God of violence to strike down those who are hurting us.

It doesn’t take much for us to go from telling God about our rage toward others, to wanting God to act upon our rage toward others, and then to us acting on our rage toward others. Telling God our rage is prayer – it’s perfectly fine prayer, in fact. God wants us to come with everything we feel. But Acting on our rage toward others is sin.

But it’s really hard to pray all our feelings – we think we ought to filter them and only “show God” our good side.

And it’s even harder to not impulsively act upon our feelings. That’s what happens when I let my angry words come out before I have asked God to help me temper my anger, to dull my weapons, to change them into words that help and heal and soften soil instead, so something good can grow.

That’s why I was glad to be able to talk with the kids this morning about the second verse of Jesus loves me being “Jesus Loves You” – if we can only pray and sing these words when we are angry, how could that help us reshape our actions toward one another?

When the Canaanite woman came to Jesus and asked for healing for her child, he hesitated at first, describing her as a “them” when he was sent for the children of Israel – the version of “us” that he was part of. She was a Gentile. He had come to the area of Tyre and Sydon, which was a Gentile area. She saw him as Lord. But she was one of “them” – one of the “them” that had descended from one of the seven nations that lived in Israel when the Jews arrived to take over their promised land. She was from one of the seven nations that Deuteronomy said should be “utterly destroyed”.  Apparently they were not.

And here she is, accepting Jesus referring to her as a dog that he was not sent to feed, and pointing out to him that even the dogs eat the crumbs from the table. So he sees her faith in that statement, and he heals her child. And he goes right from there to a second mountaintop miracle of feeding. This is the second time that a crowd has gathered to hear him teach and to receive his healing, and he says once again to his disciples, I have compassion for them because they have nothing to eat. Let’s feed them. Is he thinking about his earlier conversation with the Canaanite woman – even the dogs eat the crumbs from the table?

So what do they have? This time it’s seven loaves and some fish. And he takes it and blesses it and distributes it, and all are fed, with seven baskets left over. Seven this time, not 12 like the first time. Seven, perhaps, for the seven Gentile nations that were to be utterly destroyed? The first time, 12 reflected the 12 tribes of Israel.

So here we see God being revealed as slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God is not repeating the destruction of the past. Just as with the flood, when God promised it would never happen again, so it is with the destruction of the seven nations. In a book about the Old Testament written by Matthew Schlimm, called “This Strange and Sacred Scripture”, he devotes an entire chapter to the issue of violence in the Old Testament, and he reminds us that God said just a bit later, in the book of Judges, “I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died.” God moves from the Hebrew word herem, meaning genocide, to shalom, meaning peace.

And Jesus teaches, heals, and feeds the great crowd of Gentiles. Christ’s new commandment – to love one another – both the “us’s” – our neighbors; and the “thems” – our enemies – now becomes a new approach to these seven nations that had inhabited Israel – those nations that were to be utterly destroyed.

And this prepares us, doesn’t it, for another new approach, one that is not typical, when we consider the brutality of the crucifixion itself. Where is the rage that we would expect to feel over the execution of our Lord and Savior in such a cruel way? Why do we not act upon our rage for this, of all things?

Well, first because of the resurrection. Christ won the final conquest – Christ is victorious over death – and so are we. We have nothing to fear anymore, for ourselves or our loved ones.  Jesus told his disciples, “In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!” We do not need to conquer the world; it’s already been done for us.

And next, because rage and revenge is not the response God desires from us. Love and reconciliation is what God calls us to do, with all of ourselves and with all of our lives.

And finally, Christ was very clear in the giving of this sacrament that we are participating in today. “Do this in remembrance of me. Do THIS (not those other impulses you have) in remembrance of me.” Come to the table, this is the joyful feast I have prepared for you – and you – and you too. For all of you. All are welcome at the table. Christ calls us all. Come with God’s beloved, all over the world, and remember that you are the body of Christ. By receiving Christ into you, here at the table, you become a participant in Christ’s reconciling peace in the world.

Come to the table.