Category Archives: Luke

Our Church Is Dying Because We Are Killing It

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This was my sermon for Sunday, August 1, 2010.  The scripture passages I used were  Colossians 3 and Luke 12:13-21. It wa a harsh sermon, but one I felt needed to be preached. If you have a chance to read it and have a comment for me, I would appreciate it.

—–

A new Pastor in a small Oklahoma town spent the first week making personal visits to each of the church members,
inviting them to come to his first services.
The following Sunday the church was all but empty.
So, the next week the Pastor placed a notice in the local newspaper.
He said that, since the church was dead,
it was time to give it a decent Christian burial.
The funeral would be held the following Sunday afternoon.

Out of curiosity, a large crowd turned out for the “funeral.”
The church was packed for the first time in years.
In front of the pulpit, they saw a closed coffin, covered in flowers.
After the Pastor delivered the message,
he opened the coffin and invited his congregation to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.
Wanting to know what the corpse of a “dead church” would like,
all the people eagerly lined up to look in the coffin.
Each “mourner” peeped into the coffin then quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look.
In the coffin, tilted at just the right angle, was a large mirror.
Every church, like every organization or living organism, has a life cycle.
Plants, animals, people and churches are born, they grow, they mature, and they also die.
When an organism’s or organization’s life is full and complete,
when it goes through it’s life cycle naturally,
death is often welcomed and seen as a fitting ending.
But if the death is not from natural causes,
if it comes early or is unexpected,
then death is seen as an unwelcome intruder.

First United Methodist Church is dying.
If present attendance and giving trends continue,
First United Methodist will have to become part-time church in 2 years or so,
and by the end of this decade,
there will fewer than 30-40 people worshiping here on a Sunday morning.

A church that has been a part of this community for over 170 years will be on life support,
perhaps breathing its last breath.
A congregation that once had over 500 people attending Sunday School,
now has fewer than 20 on any given Sunday morning.
Worship attendance that averaged over 400,
now hovers around 80.
Many of the people here today will not be here in 10 or 20 more years,
and since my arrival we have had more than 120 members die.
The funerals I conduct each year far outnumber the baptisms, new members we add, and the weddings I perform,
even when they are all combined together into one number.

Financially our church has also struggled for years.
Even before I got here, there were deficits at times of almost $50,000 a year.
And though we have been able to survive some tough times through several large bequests and the regular giving of our members,
the deaths of so many have begun to take a toll on our finances.
Your bulletin this morning tells you that we have a deficit of $16,000.
The fact is that this deficit is based on giving and expenses coming in and going out in equal rates throughout the year.
Of course, this is not how giving and expenses work.
As of last month our deficit was actually $25,000,
and our giving for the year was down $5,000 from last year at the same time.
We could very well end the year with another $50,000 deficit.

Needless to say, this can not continue for very long.
First UMC is dying.
We are hemorrhaging members and money and we are not long for this world if present trends continue.

Now if we are reaching the end of natural life cycle then fine.
Let us celebrate what has been accomplished here,
the many ministries that have been carried out,
and the hundreds, even thousands, of people who have come to a saving knowledge of Jesus because of First Church.
Let us acknowledge what has been done,
give God the glory,
give the church a decent and proper burial,
and then move on.

But what if this isn’t our God-given time to die?
What if our life as a congregation is being cut short by unnatural causes?
What if we are killing the church by what we are doing or not doing?
I think this is what is happening.
First UMC is dying because we are killing it,
We are choking the life right out of it in two notable ways.
First, we are not living our lives in Christ.
Second, our priorities are all messed up,
that is, we are not at all concerned with what is most important:
the lives and souls of people.

First, we are not living our lives in Christ.
Paul talks about life in Christ in our reading from Colossians.
So if you have been raised with Christ, Paul says,
seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly:
You must get rid of all such things-anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

And then he goes on to add in verses just after the ones we read:
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another,
forgive each other;
just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Above all, clothe yourselves with love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
to which indeed you were called in the one body.

Some of you know that I have been trained as a conflict consultant.
In addition, I was appointed to two churches that were high in conflict before my arrival – in Tamaqua and Elysburg,
and have done consultations in over seven churches.
In my experience there is nothing that kills a church faster than its members not being in Christ.
Churches in conflict and decline are known for high levels of pettiness, and they are places where people have forgotten about the dangers of the tongue.
You remember what James said about the tongue, don’t you?
“The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With it we bless our Lord and Father,
and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.
My friends, these things ought not to be so.”  (James 3:8-10 ESV)

And in case you don’t think these verses apply to First Church,
let me say that I have seen some of our members leave Church in tears because of things that were said to them or that they overheard someone else saying.
People have walked into our church while members of the church stand outside its doors loudly complaining about things that bothered them about the service they just attended.
And when it comes to issues we might have with others,
with mistakes they make or concerns we might have,
we will talk to anybody and everybody about them,
but never approach the person we have an issue with.
This is not life in Christ,
and this kind of behavior is deadly for a church.

What would our church be like if we truly practiced, in Paul’s words,
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness, and love?
What a place of joy this church could be if we got “rid of . . . anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from” our mouths.
What if we actually tried to work with each other and treat each other as fellow children of God and followers of Jesus?
And what if, instead of complaining and griping to each other,
we followed the advice of Paul who once wrote to the church at Philippi:
Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things.
What would happen if we did this?
Well, maybe, just maybe, we could not only live again but thrive.

Second, our priorities are all messed up.
In this way, we are very much like the rich man in today’s gospel reading.
He has spent all his time and energy in trying to get ahead,
but he has forgotten the most important thing of all.
Many churches do the same thing,
and I am afraid that we are a part of that many.

Let me ask you,
what is the purpose of the church?
What is our reason for being?
Anyone?

And yet how much time or energy do we spend sharing Jesus with the world?
How much of our budget is focused on ministry or mission?
How much time do we spend in committee meetings talking about Jesus and our calling to make disciples?
I’ll tell you how much:  not much at all.

Instead, almost all of our time and energy is spent on preserving the church for ourselves and our needs.
Our focus is internal rather than external,
on maintenance rather than mission and ministry.
I don’t know about you,
but I do not want to be a part of a church that is almost exclusively concerned with keeping its doors open while outside of its doors is a world that is going to Hell in a handbasket.

I want to be a part of a church that, in the words of  Darryl Dash,
is willing to follow Jesus wherever he goes, whatever it costs.
A church willing to turn its back on everything – its building, programs, staff, everything – in order to follow Jesus.
A church where institutional advancement is not as important as Kingdom advancement,
and a church that is not concerned with its own institutional survival,
and where pastors are not CEOs managing/leading people toward a goal,
and plans/goals/numbers/budgets are not the main thing.
I want to be a part of a church where following Jesus is the main thing.
Where, in fact, it is the only thing.
Any focus that is not on Jesus, that isn’t geared toward mission and ministry is a focus that will lead to death.

Evangelist Robert Linthicum said this at a Presbyterian Church conference in New Orleans recently.
“If the church is caught up in trying to preserve itself and its institution, then preservation and continuance is exactly what is going to slip out of its grasp. Trying to save the store is the surest way to lose the store.”
Rather than trying to save itself, Linthicum said the church has to focus on its changed surroundings and serving the community.
“The church will not be saved by trying to preserve itself
but by giving its life away in service to the world.
Such service and ministry to the world is the surest way to salvation.”

It was the great Christian write, C. S. Lewis, who once wrote:
It is so easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects – education, building, missions, holding services.
[Yet] the Church exists for no other purpose but to draw men to Christ,
to make them little Christs.
If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

Another (Wade Hodges) has added:
The greatest crisis facing most churches in America is not a financial/attendance crisis.
It’s that our ministry in the world, our way of being in the world,
looks so unlike the ministry of Jesus in the gospels.
And to this, John White, says:
Our churches, like secular associations, are concerned with fund-raising, beautiful buildings, large numbers, comforting sermons from highly qualified preachers, while they display indifference to the poor, and to the pariahs in society – drunks, whores, homosexuals, the poor, the insane, and the lonely. Jesus himself would have no place in our all-too-respectable churches, for he did not come to help the righteous but to bring sinners to repentance.
Our churches are not equipped to do that sort of thing.

And not only are we ill-equipped to reach out to the world beyond our doors,
but on the rare occassion when the world actually comes to us,
we can be cold and distant and unwelcoming.

Last week I met a woman who attended one of our worship services while I was away.
I was saddened to discover that her experience was less than satisfactory.
In fact, she said that not one person in the church actually said hello to her or welcomed her,
let alone tell her that they were glad she was here.
I say saddened rather than shocked,
because I had heard the same thing before.
Here is a letter I received a few years ago from a woman who attended our church one time.
And please note, this woman actually took the time to sit down and write.
Her words are a warning to us.

To the Pottstown Methodist Church

Sunday, June 25th, I went with my daughters to visit your church.  I am a life-long Methodist from Kansas and visit in this area often.  We have been trying to find a church in this area to attend.  This church seemed like the right kind.  However, I think we must have been invisible.   As we stood in the dark entryway a woman’s voice called down “The sanctuary is up the stairs.”  We traipsed up the dark stairway to be met by an usher who handed us programs but made no attempt at a greeting.  We found our own plae to sit in a nearly empty church.  The organist was very good and the service was good.  We enjoyed the hymns. [But] no one looked at us; no one even nodded to us; we left at the end and no one seemed to see us.  We were invisible.  I hope this was an unusual occasion because you will never have a church in this way.

I think she was and is right.
And what this woman wrote about 4 years ago has become a word of prophecy for our church.
Will we heed it?
I hope and pray that we will.

Now I realize that I have been a little harsh this morning.
But I am critical because I care,
and if you are like me,
you care about our church as well.
If you are like me you want to see First UMC live.
You want to see us rise above the negativity and pettiness.
You want to see us get our priorities straight,
and you want to see this congregation be a light for the world around us.
You don’t want to see our church die a premature death.

If this is true,
then let us begin this morning to reject attitudes and a focus that will only lead us to that death.
Let us put on Christ,
who has been, is and will always be the source of our life.
Let us strive to reorder our life and focus so that it is only on Jesus Christ,
and let us reject the ways that lead to death and seek to live.

I end with some words from Dallas Willard, who wrote:
Now, some might be shocked to hear that what the “church” – the disciples gathered – really needs is not more people, more money, better buildings or programs, more education, or more prestige.
All it needs to fulfill Christ’s purposes on earth is the quality of life he makes real in the life of his disciples.
Given that quality, the church will prosper from everything that comes its way as it makes clear and available on earth the “life that is life indeed.”
To that I can only say, Amen.

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My Sermon: Narrow-Mindedness Leads to Constricted Hearts

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This sermon is based on the following scripture passages: 

Jeremiah 1:4-10
The word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD!
Truly I do not know how to speak,
for I am only a boy."

But the LORD said to me,
"Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’;
for you shall go to all to whom I send you,
and you shall speak whatever I command you,
Do not be afraid of them,
for I am with you to deliver you,
says the LORD."

Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,
"Now I have put my words in your mouth.
See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,
to pluck up and to pull down,
to destroy and to overthrow,
to build and to plant."

1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Luke 4:21-30
In the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus read from the book of the prophet Isaiah, and began to say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, "Is not this Joseph’s son?"

He said to them, "Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’" And he said, "Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

—–

Let me state some obvious facts that need to be restated from time to time.
One, God is not a card-carrying member of the Republican Party.
Two, Jesus does not belong to or work for the Democrats.
Three, the Holy Spirit is not a Tea-Partier, a Libertarian, or affiliated with any other political movement.
Let me go even further in stating what should be obvious:
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not citizens of these United States.
And all of these things are true even if the Republican, Democrats or other parties and movements would like to lay claim to the divine presence.
And though we may print “In God we trust” on our currency,
and though there are many who confuse the priorities of our nation with the mind and purpose of God,
God is not confined to any nationality or people.

I bring this up because I believe that people can be very parochial,
and I don’t mean Catholic school system parochial either.
You see, parochial come from the Late Latin word parochialis.
Dating back to the 14th century, it did originally refer to a church parish,
but later it defined a unit of local government,
and then, finally, it came to mean “confined or restricted as if within the borders of a parish: limited in range or scope,”
and even “a person of local or restricted interests or outlook.”
That’s what I mean when I say this morning that people can be very parochial

I remember that, when I was in High School, the state of Kentucky,
issued new license plates for cars.
They were beautiful things . . .  with an outline of the state,
the imprint of a running horse and its foal,
and the twin spires of Churchill Downs for a top border.,
There was just one problem.
For the first time in as long as people could remember,
the plates left off the county names.
You see, people in Kentucky are quite proud of where they are from,
and this includes the counties they live in.
Kentucky has 120 counties, second most of any state in the U.S.,
and its good folk like to show where they’re from on the cars they drive.

To say this caused a brouhaha would be putting it mildly.
In just a matter of days legislators were inundated with calls and letters,
and in about a week the state began issuing stickers with county names that people could apply to their licenses.
And you know what?
Everybody did just that. 
I can’t remember seeing a single car without the county name on it after the stickers were mailed out.
And while on one hand this was all about pride of place,
on the other hand it was little more than sheer parochialism.
After all, one of the reasons people liked the county name on the license plate was so they could tell where other people were from.
You knew immediately if someone was from out of the area.
You knew right away whether or not someone belonged.
In a sense, you knew if a person was one of your people or not.
All that, just by looking at their license plate as they drove down the road.

Of course, parochialism is nothing new.
Narrow mindedness and prejudice has been part of the human race ever since Cain was exiled from his homeland for killing his brother Abel.
You probably remember, for instance, that one of our readings for last week was from Nehemiah.
The passage we heard described how the people,
newly returned to their homes after years of exile in a foreign land,
listened to and took the words of the law to heart as they were read to them.
It is a beautiful passage in many ways.
In it we see the power of God’s word,
and how it can reach out and touch those who hear it.
But all was not a bed of roses for the people of Judah upon the exiles’ return.

A little study of both Ezra and Nehemiah shows us that those who returned home had more than a little bit of a superiority complex when it came to how they treated those who had been left behind for all those years.
In fact, the exiles were deeply suspicious of them,
and ultimately Ezra, their religious leader,
issued a decree that he hoped would set some things right.
You see, many of the people who had been left behind during the time of the exile had begun to mingle with people from some of the surrounding nations.
Eventually some of them actually married foreign wives from Edom or Moab or elsewhere.
This did not set well with Ezra and others who had returned home.
They saw this as a dangerous practice.
They felt that being chosen by God meant that the Jews should keep their race and nation pure,
and so, shortly after the Temple was rebuilt,
Ezra ordered all the Jews who had foreign wives to divorce them and send them back to their former homelands.

Imagine the turmoil that this decree caused.
One wonders how many families and homes were destroyed because of this narrow-minded view.
How many lives were shattered because the religious leaders believed that this was what God wanted for his people?

And is that what God wanted?
Let’s look at scriptures for today for a answer to this question.
For instance, when the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah in our first reading, what did God say to him?
Did he say, “I am going to make you a prophet to Judah?”
Did he say, “Look, I want you to only prophesy to my chosen people?”
No, this is what Jeremiah records:
The word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I consecrated you;
and I appointed you a prophet to the nations."
To the nations . . . to all people. . . not just to some.

Even the idea of being chosen,
which goes all the way back to Abraham,
has, at it’s core, that the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people,
were chosen for a purpose far greater than just their own good fortune.
As God told Abraham: 
“I will bless you and make your descendants into a great nation.
You will become famous and be a blessing to others. . .
and all the families on the earth will be blessed because of you.
(Gen 12:1-3)

All the families on the earth will be blessed because of you.
What a wonderful purpose and mission!
And yet this grand purpose was often forgotten over the ensuing centuries.
This truth may be what prompts Jesus to say the things he says in the synagogue at Nazareth.
If you remember the gospel from last week,
you’ll recall that it ended on a high note.
Jesus has come to his hometown, goes to church, so to speak,
and is asked to read the scripture and preach a short sermon.
When he is finished,
everyone there is amazed at and pleased with what he has said.
As Luke records it: 
“And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.”
But then Luke adds: “And they said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’"

It’s almost as if they cannot believe that Joseph’s boy could be capable of doing and saying what Jesus did and said.
Everyone there, after all, knew all about Mary’s unexpected pregnancy before her marriage to Joseph. 
To them, Jesus was probably little more than an illegitimate son.
And we all know the word that is used to name an illegitimate boy, don’t we?
Their amazement at and pride of Jesus is mixed with more than a little prejudice,
and perhaps that explains what Jesus says next:
“Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’
And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’
Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.
But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah,
when the heaven was shut up three years and six months,
and there was a severe famine over all the land;
yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha,
and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian."

What Jesus does here is to confront head-on their prejudices and narrow-mindedness.
He tells them that God has no use for their parochial attitudes,
and that God’s love and care is bigger than their tiny, constricted hearts.
He does this by picking out two foreigners, two non-Jews, from the Old Testament that received God’s favor over or instead of those who were “God’s Chosen People.”
Needless to say, this made the people in church that day very angry.
None of us like to have our prejudices exposed.
None of us like to have someone call us narrow-minded.
And yet, this is exactly what Jesus did.
It made the good church members so mad that they, in Luke’s words,
“got up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built,
so that they might hurl him off the cliff”

Now that is angry.
Thank God I have never preached such an inflammatory sermon myself.
I doubt that I could get away from an angry mob as easily as Jesus did.

But you see, don’t you, what Jesus is doing here?
He is doing something that has been described as the prophet’s and preacher’s job throughout the centuries:
comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.
Jesus is challenging them to remember why they were chosen in the first place.
He is trying to get them to see that God is bigger and better than their image of the divine.
That God is not just a reflection of what they think and believe.
God is not a Jew.  He is not Israelite. 
Further, God is not a Pharisee, nor a Sadducee . . . not even a Scribe.
God is above and beyond all those labels and human distinctions,
and God calls his children to be above them too.

And lest we think this problem of narrow minds and constricted hearts ended with the advent of the Church,
Paul shows us in his letter to Corinth that this isn’t the case.
All through Corinthians Paul has written about the things that have divided the church, divisions that threaten to destroy the very body of Christ in Corinth.
In chapter one he points out that just because a particular Christian was baptized by Apollo or Peter or some other church leader doesn’t make that person better than those who were baptized by somebody else.
As he says,
It has been reported to me that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, "I follow Paul," or "I follow Apollos," or "I follow Cephas," or "I follow Christ."
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1Co 1:10-13)

Paul then goes on to address the fact that some Christians in Corinth think themselves better than other Christians because of their wisdom and knowledge.           
Paul also confronts those Christian men who think themselves better than others because they have been circumcised.
Still other believers are chastised because consider themselves above the newer Christians because they have rejected the religious laws of Judaism,
In effect, they ridicule those who still follow the law,
and in their “freedom” they cause some of their weaker brothers and sisters in the faith to stumble,
Even the celebration of the Lord’s Supper has become an opportunity for those who have in the church to lord it over those who do not.
And that finally brings Paul to a discussion of spiritual gifts.
And again, some Corinthians seem to have a knack for finding a way to look down their spiritual noses at those who don’t have the same gifts they possess.
I speak in tongues and prophesy, says one Christian,
so I am better or more spiritual than you.
Another counters, “Yeah, well I can heal people, so I am better than you.”
And on and on it went.

By this time, I would be ready to wring a few necks,
but Paul is better at dealing with this type of thing than I am:
He tells the Corinthians that they are all part of the body of Christ,
that none of them are better than the others,
and that each of them have been given a gift or gifts,
not for their own good or spiritual pride,
but for the good of the body.
He then tells them that the real problem is their narrow minds have led them to have constricted hearts,
although he puts it in a different way:
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues.
Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts,
and I will show you a still more excellent way. (1Co 12:27-31)

And what is that more excellent way?
And what is also the cure for narrow-mindedness and hearts that are three or four or five times too small?
It is the way of love, of course.
And this is what Paul writes about in today’s epistle reading.
I close my message with my own paraphrase of text.

If I speak with great eloquence, conviction and beauty, but do so without love, my words are little more than bombastic bellowing or a grating noise.
And though I have the power to speak for God and understand every mystery and comprehend all knowledge, and if I have all the faith that could move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And though I give away everything I possess, and even if I offer my own body as a sacrifice to the flames of fire, but have not love, I have gained nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind. Love does not envy, love is not arrogant or proud. It does not act unseemly; it is not self-seeking, not easily provoked, and does not dwell on evil. It does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, has faith in all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

As for prophecies, they will vanish away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it too will end. For now we know in part and prophesy in part, but when all is brought to completion, then all that is partial will pass away.

When I was I child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I put away childish ways. For now we see as in a mirror darkened and distorted, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know even as I am fully known.

And so it is that faith, hope and love live and dwell within us, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The Power of Music

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Mary-Luke 1-46-50-Bulletin Cover Art

Image by Will Humes via Flickr

Based on Luke 1:46-55

There are few sermons that can compare to the beauty and depth and insight that we find in music, in the hymns we sing,
and especially in the Christmas carols.
This is because music captures something that words alone cannot.
And yet I don’t want to downplay preaching too much.
I remember something Barbara Brown Taylor once said, “to preach is to toss the fragile net of our words over the bone-melting music of God."
In other words preaching is an attempt to capture in words the God’s bone-melting music.

In today’s lesson from Luke,
Mary waits and anticipates as only an expectant mother can.
She waits as a new life, given by God, grows within her.
She will, in six months time, give birth to a new word and world.
And the best way she knows how to convey all this is to break out into song,
we call it the Magnificat.
You see, God’s song of love and grace has been growing in Mary,
and this song of life rises from the deep recesses of Mary’s heart to her lips.

There’s always been something about this season that demands music;
There’s something in the air at this time of year that causes our souls to burst forth in song.
I do not remember his name,
but one rather famous theologian was once criticized because,
it was said every time he came to the end of human logic,
every time he came face to face with the unfathomable mystery of God,
he would sing a song . . . one of the hymns of faith.

You see, the bone-melting music of God is impossible to capture by mere words alone, no matter how gifted a preacher may be in stringing together verbs, adverbs, nouns and adjectives.
And so this morning, my purpose is not to turn the Magnificat into some exercise in dissection,
where we examine each word and phrase for its deeper meaning.
That would take the life right out of them, and the beauty of this passage would be obscured by the very words I’d speak.
Rather, I hope that today we have and will continue to sense this bone-melting music of God.
A music that invites us to participate, to join in, to raise our voices in hope and expectation.

Howard Thurman captured the sense of this when he wrote:
There must be always remaining in every person’s life some place for the singing of angels –
some place for that which in itself is breathlessly beautiful,
something that gathers up in itself all the freshest of experience from the drab and commonplace areas of living and glows in one bright light of penetrating beauty and meaning.
[For] . . . life is saved by the singing of angels.

So let me tell you a story written by Anne Lamott, and after hearing it,
you can tell me whether or not you have heard both the singing of angels and the bone-melting music of God.

–Begin Story – from her book Traveling Mercies and retelling of story on This American Life–

One of our newer members, a man named Ken Nelson, is dying of AIDS, disintegrating before our very eyes. 
He came in a year ago with a Jewish woman who comes every week to be with us, although she does not believe in Jesus. 
Shortly after the man with AIDS started coming,
his partner died of the disease. 
A few weeks later Ken told us that right then and there,
in the hole in his heart that Brandon’s death left,
Jesus slid in and had been there ever since. 
Ken has a totally lopsided face, ravaged and emaciated,
but when he smiles, he is radiant. 
And he says that he would gladly pay any price for what he has now,
which is Jesus and us.

There’s a woman in the choir named Ranola,
a beautiful, large, black woman who is smart and jovial and sweet and as devout as can be, but who has also been a little standoffish toward Ken. 
She has always looked at him with confusion, when she looks at him at all,
in his goofy, ravaged joy. 
Or she looks at him sideways.
She was raised by Baptists in the South who taught her that his way of life—that he—was an abomination. 
Maybe it is hard for her to break through this. 
I think she is, on the most visceral level,
a little afraid of catching the disease. 

But Kenny has come to church almost every week for the last year,
and won almost everyone else over. 
He missed a couple of Sundays a while ago because he was too weak to come, but then a month ago he came back,
weighing almost no pounds,
his face even more lopsided, as if he’d had a stroke. 
Still, during the prayers of the people,
he talked joyously of his life and his decline,
of grace and redemption,
and of how safe and happy he feels these days. 

So on this one particular Sunday, for the first hymn,
the so-called Morning hymn, we sang “Jacob’s Ladder”,
which goes, “every rung goes higher, higher,”
and though Kenny couldn’t stand, 
he sang away sitting down, with the hymnal in his lap. 
And then when it came time for the second hymn, the Fellowship Hymn,
we sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” 
I noticed that Ken still couldn’t stand up to sing.
The pianist was playing and the whole congregation had risen–
and only Ken remained seated, holding the hymnal in his lap—
and we began to sing,
“Why should I feel discouraged?  Why do the shadows fall?” 

And Ranola watched Ken rather skeptically for a moment,
and then her face began to melt and contort like his,
and she went to his side and bent down to lift him up—
lifted up this white rag doll, this scarecrow. 
She held him next to her,
and he was draped over and against her like a child and they sang. 
And it pierced me.
Then Ken and Ranola began to cry.
Tears were pouring down their faces
and their noses were running like rivers.
But as she held him up,
she suddenly lay her black, weeping face against his feverish white face –
put hers right up against his, and let all those spooky fluid,
those tears of healing and joy, mingle with her own.
He looked like a child in her arms,
who is singing because tiny children just sing all the time
because they haven’t made all the separations between speech and music.
And so he sang and she held him up,
and she sang and he held her up.

I can’t imagine anything else but music that could have brought this about.
How is it that you can have a chord here and then another chord there and then your heart breaks open?
I don’t know the answer.
Maybe it’s that music is about as physical as it gets
Your central rhythm is your heartbeat,
Your centra
l sound a breath.
We’re walking temples of noise,
and when you add the human heart into this mix, it somehow lets us meet on this bridge that we could not get to any other way.

–End Story–

That, my friends is the power of the angels’ song.
It is bone-melting music of God.
And so today we make music,
we sing and rejoice and praise God with our voices, with instruments,
and with our hearts, minds and souls.
We hear the word of God proclaimed,
we experience his saving work in the world and in our lives,
and in response we pray our prayers to God,
we give to God his tithes and our offerings,
but best of all, we offer God our music, our songs, our praise.

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Swords or Plowshares, Fear or Love

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This is my sermon for Sunday, November 18, 2007.  It is based on the texts of Isaiah 2:1-5 and Luke 21:5-19, and in it I rely heavily upon a Remembrance Day message from the Rev. Anne Le Bas and an article "Choose Love" by Yael Lachman found in Yes Magazine.

———-

Seven hundred years or so before the birth of Jesus a man paused for a moment to look at and examine the world in which he lived.
He was in a small nation named Judah,
and what Isaiah saw was not very pretty.
In fact, it was pretty brutal.
The mighty Assyrian empire had conquered nations and civilizations from the borders of  India all the way to ancient Egypt.
It was an empire like none had ever seen before.
Its armies had swept across the world,
holding its conquests in an iron grip.
Assyria was infamous for its cruelty . . . destroying without mercy,
uprooting and scattering defeated peoples as slaves across their empire,
and plundering and looting everything in sight to fund the huge military machine that kept the empire growing.
The kingdom of Israel had already fallen victim to its marauding armies,
and the leadership of that nation had either been executed or deported.
A little nation like Judah stood no chance against them.
The Assyrians were at Judah’s gates ready to bring destruction, death, and despair in their wake . . . All seemed to be lost.

I imagine most people in that situation would have either given up hope,
retreated into bitterness or anger,
and desperately sought whatever safety they could find for themselves.
But not Isaiah.
Instead, he wrote the words we heard in our first reading. 
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more."
Things would not always be as they are now, he declared.
One day God would create a new world from the current devastation,
a world in which the nations would no longer learn war,
but instead create a peaceable kingdom.

I tell you all this because I believe it’s important for us to understand the background to these familiar words from the prophet Isaiah.
You see, it is all too easy for us to be misled by their beauty and to think that they were written by someone who had no idea how wicked and hopeless the world can be.
Isaiah’s vision sounds like the dream of someone in an ivory tower,
protected and safe – an idealist without a clue,
But it wasn’t like that at all . . . far from it.
These words were written in the middle of appalling conditions,
and they were written by someone who was utterly powerless to do anything about them.

But though Isaiah’s words were written long ago,
when we look at our world today,
we can see that his dream is as far off now as it was then.
War is more destructive than it has ever been.
Wars have always taken a dreadful toll,
but that toll has grown greater as the technology of death has developed. Weapons – conventional, nuclear, biological, and chemical –
are capable of wiping out immense numbers of people indiscriminately,
and small groups of suicide bombers can terrify a whole nation,
disrupting its life completely.
But just as Isaiah could hold onto hope in the face of the Assyrian hordes who threatened to destroy his whole world,
perhaps we should not be too quick to give up on hope either.

Twenty years ago this past November 8th,
another man faced an appalling loss.
A bomb has exploded during a Remembrance Day service at Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, killing 11 people.
It was the highest death toll in a terrorist attack in Northern Ireland in over five years,
and at least 63 other people were injured in the blast, nine of them seriously.
The device went off without warning at 10:45 am at the war memorial where the townspeople had gathered to pay their respects to their fallen dead.
Hidden in a nearby hall,
the bomb blew out one of the building’s walls,
showering the area with debris and burying some in several feet of rubble.
The dead included three married couples, a retired policeman and a nurse.
Thirteen children were also among the injured.

When the bomb went off Gordon Wilson was standing next to his daughter
Marie, at the town’s war memorial.
She was the nurse who died.
Wilson was holding her hand under the rubble as she lost consciousness,
and his courage in responding to that tragedy is famous.
He refused to bear a grudge but instead insisted on moving on towards forgiveness and reconciliation between Catholic and Protestant people.
And because of this the people of Ireland and Great Britain talked about her tragic death for weeks, months and even years.
You see, as Ms. Wilson lay dying under the rubble,
holding the hand of her father, she began to reassure him,
and then, right before she died, she said,
“Daddy, I love you very much."
"Those were the last words she spoke,” reported Wilson,
and then he stunned everyone when he added,  "I bear no ill will at all.
Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life.
She was a great wee lassie,"
Further, Wilson said that in the first angry hours after the bombing,
his first reaction was to pray for his daughter’s killers.
Wilson was and is not interested in trying to fit his daughter into some
itemized list of political atrocities.
"Marie’s last words were about life," he said,
"It would be no way for me to remember her by having words of hatred in
my mouth.”

But what happened afterwards did not end with Wilson individual response.
Out of that ruin grew an organization which is still going strong,
the Spirit of Enniskillen Trust.
This group does all sorts of work with young people growing up in places where there is conflict and division,
helping them to develop the tools to listen and to debate peacefully with those who differ from them to end cycles of vengeance and suspicion.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares. said Isaiah.
It is work like this that can help make his vision a present reality.

What does it mean to beat your sword into a ploughshare?
It means taking something destructive and transforming it into something creative and life affirming.
A sword kills:
a ploughshare opens up the ground for new life,
for the seed to grow, to flourish and to multiply.
Of course Gordon Wilson and his wife, Jean, were devastated at their daughter’s death,
and of course they were angry,
but they chose to take the sword of that anger and beat it into a
ploughshare that has brought life and hope to many others.

They are not alone in doing this.
We can all think of examples.
Nelson Mandela, leading a process of reconciliation in South Africa,
despite his own suffering.
Former hostage Terry Waite, who has been involved in work to promote healing and justice after his long captivity in Lebanon.
Waite and Mandela and many others are motivated by the desire that their own suffering in war should not be wasted pain,
a sword which destroys themselves and others,
but that it be beaten into a ploughshare to bring life out of death.

And for followers of Christ, the prime example of this act of beating swords into plowshares is that of Jesus himself,
who took the cross, an instrument of death,
and turned it into a symbol of new life and hope,
a demonstration that God’s love is not defeated even by the worst the world can do.
Jesus could have avoided his death –
he could have changed his message to suit those in power.
He knew that preaching a message of radical love and empowering those whom others had a vested interest in keeping down was bound to get him into trouble,  but he did it anyway.
He knew what would happen to him,
and he also knew what happens when violence and the sword rule.
Our gospel lesson attests to this.
When some people exclaimed about the beauty and splendor of the Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus replied,
“As for these things that you see,
the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another;
all will be thrown down."
He then added,
and you don’t have to be a prophet to realize this truth about our world,
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.”
And to his disciples he said,
“They will arrest you and persecute you;
they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons,
and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name.
You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.
You will be hated by all because of my name.”
And what he said for his followers also came true for him.
And yet, he never responded with violence or hate,
but always, always with love,
and with forgiveness,
even as they nailed him to the cross.
And for countless millions of his followers throughout the ages,
it is this symbol and Jesus’ story,
which has inspired them to respond to evil with love,
and to keep responding that way even when they suffer as a result.

Now I’ve never beaten a real sword into a real ploughshare,
and I don’t suppose you have either,
but my guess is that it would not be an easy thing to do.
It must take effort and time.
It must be noisy, perhaps even painful too.
You’d have to be skilled and practiced in metalwork. 
You’d also need a good deal of faith.
What if you need that sword again in a hurry – what will you do then?
Above all it would be an active process,
a process in which you have to get personally involved.
It wouldn’t happen all in a moment and all by itself as if by magic.
In the same way, choosing God’s way of life and love rather than destruction and hate is not easy either.
That is why people so often fail to do it,
why they lapse so easily into seeking vengeance,
into narrow mindedness and prejudice,
and into a fearful suspicion of anything or anyone different.

Perhaps we hope that we will never be faced with the challenges Isaiah or the Wilsons or others have faced.
Perhaps we would rather not think about how we would behave if we did.
But the truth is that we can’t wait until the bomb goes off or the Assyrians are at our door to discover what we are made of.
People of reconciliation of love and of forgiveness are able to respond as they do because they are already in the practice and habit of beating swords into plowshares in their everyday lives.

We may not like to recognize it,
but the truth is that we all carry swords that need beating into plowshares right here and now.
We can all wield weapons of destruction if we choose to.
They may not be made of steel or iron, but they are no less damaging.
Our words and our attitudes can destroy others.
Our silence can mean that evil goes unchecked.
Our greed can rob others of the chance of life.
Envy, fear, insecurity can lead us to cut others down.
We look for the causes of war in great political events,
the decisions of governments and generals,
but in reality they start in the small decisions that each of us make about the way we relate to those around us.
On their own they may seem like nothing,
but taken together our actions or inactions are the seeds that lead to war.

And just as war is our responsibility, something we set in motion here and now in the small things we do, so too is peace.
Whenever we see others hurting and do something to set that right,
we strike a hammer blow that shapes the destructive sword into something positive and good.
Whenever we turn aside to do something about a wrong that we would rather
ignore,
we beat that sword into something that will bring life.
Whenever we look at another person and see the commonalities we share
rather than the differences of culture or outlook that divide us,
we take one small step towards that world of peace for which Isaiah longed.

In researching my sermon for this week I found an article that had been written eight days after September 11, 2001.
“The author, Yael Lachman, wrote:
I was up in the mountains last week.
Tuesday morning, just after dawn,
I crawled out of my tent and ran smack into a ranger whose job that morning was to whisper the news from New York and Washington, DC.
When he had finished, we looked at each other for a long, helpless moment. Then we both turned away before either of us could cry.
The ranger went off to find more campers.
stood there staring at a tree.”

“There are moments in your life when the world splits open and forces you to decide what is most important to you and what you are going to do about it. Immediately, my mind thought of all the scenarios taking place back in the city:  fear and hysteria crackling over the airwaves;
calls for retaliation;
a declaration of war . . . and unthinkable devastation.
Then something made me stop and look.
Right in front of me, the river ran down the mountain.
A [groundhog] froze on a rock.
The real world grabbed me by the collar and hauled me back from the brink. Once it had my attention, it demanded to know exactly what I intended to do. What is required of me, right now, by everything that is holy?

That’s the question, and we must find an answer fast.
We can no longer fail to respond.
Standing by the river,
I scrambled around in my mind for inspiration,
for an image of someone wise who had lived through a war and who could tell me who I was supposed to become in these desperate days.
I was expecting a freedom fighter, maybe—someone with a gun.
But the person who sprang to mind was Chiura Obata,
the Japanese-American painter who fell in love with Yosemite and the High Sierra.
He appeared to me looking exactly as he does in a photograph from 1942, taken at the Tanforan detention center.
In the photograph, Obata is calm and smiling,
teaching a bunch of children to paint.”

“Of all the things to do.
There’s a war on, your people have been rounded up like cattle,
and there you are playing with a paintbrush.
I blinked, hoping to conjure a more martial role model this time,
but Obata stubbornly remained.
He sat before me, out on a rock in the middle of the river,
watching impatiently as I struggled

to comprehend.
Then all of a sudden, I got it.
Obata wasn’t teaching those kids how to paint;
he was teaching them how to love.
Day after day, right through the barbed-wire fence,
Obata taught those children how to see beauty, how to keep their hearts open. He knew that when evil and destruction arrive,
we must refuse to stop loving the world.
Then—and this is the crucial thing—
we must act on behalf of that enormous love.”

And then Lachman says something that we may not want to hear.
“What America has just painfully learned is that we have not loved enough.
We have cringed at gruesome wire-service photos and turned our backs on the suffering of the world.
We have allowed our own government to bomb civilians,
withhold medical supplies,
and sell weapons to brutal thugs in every part of the globe.
Through our own ignorance, we have helped create a world where desperate people will gladly sign up to be the messengers of death.
And now that death and destruction have reached our own shores,
we must decide how we are going to respond:
with love, or with fear.
The whole world is holding its breath,
waiting to see which one we will choose.”

So, he asks, which will it be?
“Love, or fear?
[Yes, Lachman says] there are people who will try to tell you that love is a luxury and that life in all its miraculous beauty is less urgent right now than the need to retaliate against the forces of evil.
[But} I am here to tell you that unless we respond with love,
we will certainly hand evil a great victory.”

Of course, we all know, some six years later, how we responded.
With fear, with the sword, with the spear.
And, though you are more than welcome to disagree with me on this,
I believe the costs of this decision will be with us for many years to come,
and it will be far more than the hundreds of billions of dollars we have already spent and will yet spend to prosecute a war whose foundation was and is fear.
How much would it have cost us to respond in love?
What if we had used all these resources to try and build bridges to our enemies rather than kill them?
Would we be any worse off than we are now?
And if I may, allow me to ask the simple question that was so popular a few years ago:
“What would Jesus have done?”
The man who said, among many other things:
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
Do good to those who would or have done you wrong.”
In looking at his war-torn world over 2500 years ago,
the prophet Isaiah foresaw a world where:
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks, 
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
and neither shall they learn war anymore.
It is obvious that that day has not yet arrived,
and sadly, this is partly due to the fact that those who claim to follow Jesus refuse to live by his words.
We have declined to act as he would act.
We have chosen and still choose the sword and the spear.

My friends, we all hold in our hands the tools that shape the future.
It is up to us whether they are swords that bring destruction, death and despair or plowshares that bring life, hope and love.
Amen.

The Conviction that We Are Right Disease

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In a recent interview in Relevant magazine with writer Anne Lamott, Dean Nelson asked the following question:  Does it seem odd that you worship the same God as people you criticize the most severely, namely people like George W. Bush?

Lamott answered by saying:

I try not to follow people who follow Jesus. We’re all screwed up in ways that are more similar than not. Almost all of my problems are problems of perception, where I am seeing something so wrong, through my very human, anxious, greedy eyes. Our common ground is this disease of a conviction that we are right. It’s like the Bob Dylan song “With God on Our Side.” I don’t want to try to convince people to come to Jesus. I just try to tell my truth and share my story and the stories of daily salvation.

I don’t know too many people who don’t have the “Conviction that I am Right” disease (including, of course, yours truly).  Recent comments (now at 153 and counting) on a post by Julie on the blog CRN.Info and Analysis readily illustrate this.  Of course, people can actually be correct in their convictions, but some of the problems that accompany this disease are arrogance, self-righteousness, Phariseeism and the elevating of one’s self while simultaneously denigrating others.  These problems are all in evidence in the comments on the post mentioned above.

Lamott also speaks about her problems of perception.  It is interesting that as I have been doing research on the texts for new week’s sermon and service (Christ the King), I ran across another way of interpreting the following well known verse:  ” And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. And parting His clothing, they cast lots.” (Luke 23:34 MKJV)

It seems that the word translated as “know,” is just as often or maybe more often translated as “see,” as in “to perceive.”   The following are taken from Strongs and Thayers respectively:

εἴδω
eidō
i’-do
A primary verb; used only in certain past tenses, the others being borrowed from the equivalent, G3700 and G3708; properly to see (literally or figuratively); by implication (in the perfect only) to know: – be aware, behold, X can (+ not tell), consider, (have) known (-ledge), look (on), perceive, see, be sure, tell, understand, wist, wot. Compare G3700.

εἴδω
eidō
Thayer Definition:
1) to see
1a) to perceive with the eyes
1b) to perceive by any of the senses
1c) to perceive, notice, discern, discover
1d) to see
1d1) i.e. to turn the eyes, the mind, the attention to anything
1d2) to pay attention, observe
1d3) to see about something
1d3a) i.e. to ascertain what must be done about it
1d4) to inspect, examine
1d5) to look at, behold
1e) to experience any state or condition
1f) to see, i.e. have an interview with, to visit
2) to know
2a) to know of anything
2b) to know, i.e. get knowledge of, understand, perceive
2b1) of any fact
2b2) the force and meaning of something which has definite meaning
2b3) to know how, to be skilled in
2c) to have regard for one, cherish, pay attention to (1Th_5:12)

How different would our understanding of Luke 23:34 be if it read “they do not see what they do,” or “they do not perceive what they do?”  Maybe it makes no difference at all, but the juxtaposition particularly of “seeing what they do” with the horrendous actions of actually crucifying a man is both disturbing and enlightening.

What do we not see . . . what do we not perceive in the actions we take every day?  How might our convictions of rightness be shaped by opening our hearts and minds to new ways of seeing and perceiving?

Luke 18:1-8 – My Paraphrase

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Luke 18:1-8 (My Paraphrase)
Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to continually pray without losing heart.  He said, “There was a judge in a certain city who did not fear God and had no respect for people. And a widow in that same city came to him and said, ‘Do justice for me against my adversary.’”

“For a time the judge refused, but later he said to himself, ‘Though I do not fear God and care nothing for people, yet because this widow keeps troubling me, I will give her justice.  Otherwise, she will just keep coming until she wears me out.”

And the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said.  Will not God grant justice to his chosen, who cry out to him day and night?  Will he be slow in helping them?  I tell you, he will quickly give them justice.  Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

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