The Wilderness of Control

Luke 13:1-9 

February 28, 2016

Lent 3

We’re obviously missing part of this conversation.

We don’t really know too much about these

“Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”

that they were telling Jesus about.

Canyonlands, Photo, Paul Siebert

What it seems to be is that some Galileans,

who would be Jewish were killed by Pilate –

We know historically that Pilate was a really nasty guy.

The passion stories almost paint a sympathetic picture of him,

but he was one of the cruelest of the time.

And people were often killed for punishment then.

But Pilate did these people even worse, either they were killed

in the pagan temple where the sacrifices were done

or they were killed and then their blood was put on the altar

after the sacrifice.

So their punishment was death,

public humiliation, religious insult

AND  insult to their families and heritage.

So some people were telling Jesus about these Galileans

and Jesus could tell that they thought that

because these people were killed in such a horrible

and insulting way and their families were so insulted

that God must be punishing them because they

must have been terrible sinners – not Pilate.

They don’t put the blame on Pilate for his actions,

it was God’s doing, and it was the Galilean’s fault,

because, you know what else is God supposed to do?

And that was pretty much how people understood things then. If someone had a bad fate,

they were poor, or sick or unfortunate

or they had tragedy or accidents in their families in their lives

it was assumed that God was unhappy with them

It’s a stubborn element in our understanding of God

It has prevailed in the Christian church

throughout it’s existence.

And lots of people still subscribe to it.

The prosperity gospel says, pray hard enough and God will

give you riches and comforts.

And if you don’t’ get those things,

your faith just wasn’t strong enough.

I think I’ve heard Pat Robertson do it with

every disaster that’s happened in the last 10 years:

There’s an earthquake in Haiti?

Haitians must have been worshiping the devil.

Hurricane in New Orleans?  It’s because of the vices there.

9-11 Terrorist attacks?-

New York supports feminism and homosexuality.

God must punish sinners, so tragedies must be punishments

and anyone we see having a bad time must be a terrible sinner.

We understand and know the mind of God

we can even pre-determine it if we think hard enough.

Why not just get rid of those hopeless sinners before

they contaminate us and before

God has to even be bothered with it. See where it leads?

Even if we aren’t Pat Robertson,

we still sometimes use that way of thinking:

when illness or calamity hits us, we wonder

“What have I done to deserve this?”

And then we look at other people’s misfortune too

And then we say things like

“There but for the Grace of God go I.”

And “I thank God for my blessings”

Basically, this theology does one thing:

It gives us all a sense of control.

God has to punish, what else could God do?

And we get to control God.

It’s all in our hands:

1. Our actions to control what God does.

2. We control the image and will of God

3. We control the behavior of others with fear of what God will do to them.

Human beings are not willing to let God lead.

We need to run the ship.

Control is something most of us struggle with

in our lives, in our relationships with friends,

parents, spouses, co-workers, children.

When do I need to take control and when do I let it go?

How much is enough?

It’s also a struggle with our relationship with God.

We are reluctant to let God be in control.

We are reluctant to put our trust in God

God’s timing, God’s methods,

we are reluctant to trust God’s love for us

and God’s forgiveness of us.

Even though we read and hear over and over that this is God’s way.

• ·    Do you feel in control of your life?
• ·    Are events in control?
• ·    Some people say “God’s in control”. What does that mean when things go wrong?

  

To be clear, I don’t think God makes every bad and horrible

thing in this world happen.

Every bad thing isn’t a punishment

that is not the God I know.

That’s not the God that Jesus tells us about in this parable.

The God that Jesus knows does not write humanity off

because of their mistakes.

Basically, Jesus says to the people

who are accusing those Galileans:

“if that’s the God you’re selling,

then you will be living by that too,

and you better be afraid because you’re a sinner too.”

But here is the God that Jesus knows:

A God who does not cut at the root when we

do bad and even horrible things.

That gardener says, “Let’s see how this goes for one more year.”

God the gardener knows that punishment

and control don’t bear fruit,

patience and forgiveness and nurturing bears fruit.

Richard Rohr the same great theologian I quoted last week said:

“The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is control.”

The God I know from the cross of Jesus

doesn’t make bad things happen,

but God can certainly use bad things to

make good and great things come to life.

That is the God that we can trust with our whole lives.

Change

Luke 13:31-35

February 21, 2016

Some Pharisees are trying to help Jesus

Joshua Tree National Park
Photo, Paul Siebert

to tell him to go away and hide,

but Jesus tells them that he’ll continue

to do his work and he will end

up in a town that was very dangerous for

prophets like him. Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was a beloved city,

it was the center of religious activity for Jewish people

a place where the temple was built and

where people came to worship and pray.

But like many cities like that,

it was also a center of commerce,

it was a successful thriving place for business,

tourism and trade and it was always doing fairly well for itself.

So when prophets would come in to tell them

to do things differently,

to stop worshiping consumerism,

to care for the poor among them,

to change their ways for God,

they tried to shut up those prophets and teachers

and they would kill them if they needed to.

They didn’t want them to ruin a good thing.

Jerusalem did not want to change.

Change is hard.

It is hard enough to just

change our personal ways -

diet, exercise, stopping smoking.

Sometimes we make changes happen,

But sometimes our lives change without our intention

they become unbearable or stuff happens

and we have no choice but to change.

Those changes can be scary.·    

•      What has been a big change for you?
•     Do you resist change or thrive on it?
•     What future change makes you worry?  

Change is going to happen, even if we don't want it to.

And the bottom line is God needs us to change.

Things are not okay in this world,

and it’s not just someone else’s problem.

If everything were okay just as it was,

why would we need Jesus?

Jesus looks at this rebellious city of Jerusalem

and he says he has felt like a mother hen

who gathers her chicks under her wings.

The preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor said:

“If you have ever loved someone you could not protect,

then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament about Jerusalem.”

All you can do is open your arms and keep reaching out again.

And God does the same with us.

When faced with children who reject, deny, scatter and self-destruct

God does not close herself off to Jerusalem

God doesn’t look to punish or toss us aside.

God opens her wings one more time like the mother hen.

Richard Rohr another great theologian said:

“Most us were taught that God would

love us if and when we change.

In fact, God loves you so you can change.

It is the inherent experience of

love that becomes the engine of change.”

God’s love makes change possible

in Jerusalem and here in our lives.

Jesus in the Wilderness

Luke 4:1-13

February 14, 2016, Lent 1

For Lent, we are including conversations about our own "wilderness" as part of the sermon.   

Death Valley
Photo, Paul Siebert

When we say the word temptation

we usually thinking of two things:

either lust or really fattening dessert.

Either way, it’s one specific 

moment or action.

Something that we want to do but shouldn’t.

And sure those are examples of temptation.

But when we see Jesus 

in the wilderness here,

those are not his temptations.

Bread is one of his temptations,

but it’s not a temptation because it’s bad for him,

it’s a temptation because God did not provide it.

The temptation that Jesus is dealing with

is trusting and relying on something other than God.

And that is our temptation too in our relationship with God.

We are pulled in many different directions,

sometimes we are driven by our own anxiety

and impatience and we choose to take our path and identities

into our own hands instead of following God.

Isn’t that what the devil is trying to do here?

He’s trying to tempt Jesus to strike out his own deals,

follow his own path.

To get him to make his own bread,

gain control of his own life, get his own power,

and show God who’s boss.

We spend a lot of our lives trying to show God who’s boss.

We are independent thinkers and doers,

and I think that a lot of us struggle with

depending even on the other people around us,

let alone God.

  

For a lot of us, it’s hard to rely on others,

what are some reasons that it’s hard to rely on others?

- lack of trust

- they don’t do what we want when we want it

- they want to do things differently

-We have to be open and vulnerable.

Depending on others requires

trust, vulnerability,  flexibility, so does depending on God.

We can practice our trust with other people.

Answer these three questions

in a small group or on your own.

·         When have you needed to rely on others?

·         Are you comfortable with it or do you fight it?

·         Does relying on God feel the same?

Relying on God is not easy.

Sometimes God wants us to do the opposite of

what we have our minds set on.

Sometimes we want things to move faster or slower

than God moves things.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what God is doing.

The greatest temptation is not eating delicious desserts

or even doing bad things.

Our greatest temptation is like Jesus greatest temptation.

Not trusting God, not listening to God,

letting our own angst and insecurities guide us.

Trusting a path that we can’t see and that we don’t know the end of can seem like a wilderness, like being lost and

But even when we lose our way,

even when we give into those temptations,

we know that God is with us in the wilderness.

Ash Wednesday Sermon

Luke 5: 25-39

Feb 10, 2016

Ash Wednesday

Death

We live in a culture that doesn’t like to deal with death.

Sure there’s a murder every minute on TV,

and we’re obsessed with it on the news

but that’s someone else.

We act like if we have the right combination of

exercise, food, health care, and plastic surgery

that we will not ever have to deal with our own mortality.

And yet here we are today:

Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.

We come here on Ash Wednesday to remember our own death.

There is no shame in dying. No exclusive rights to living to anyone.

We will all die, it is something that we all share.

Every living thing will die.

This is actually something that binds us together.

And we also live in a culture that doesn’t want to deal with sin.

Everything can be rationalized,

We feel in this day and age,

that guilt is just a blow to our self-esteem.

as long as I don’t murder or steal, I am clean.

As long as I make good choices, sin is someone else’s problem.

And yet here we are today: Remember that you are dust.

We come here on Ash Wednesday to remember our own sin.

Even if we make some good choices in life,

we are still a part of the systems and processes

that kill and oppress and isolate and exclude.
If we are human, we sin and we are part of sin.

In bondage to it and cannot free ourselves.

It’s actually something that binds us together too.

Sin and death.

These are two things that we talk about a lot in church

Maybe that’s why less people seek out church these days,

or they opt for the exclusively happy, self-help type churches.

Churches like ours aren’t so popular because

we are here to embrace and  talk about

the very things most people want to forget.

And some people think that Ash Wednesday is just too

depressing we should change it or avoid it.

We don’t want to bring the children

and expose them to this kind of sad stuff.

But we are not here just to be maudlin.

And we aren’t here to beat ourselves up about our sin.

We are here to look at the truth of our lives and our situation

And sometimes truth is not fun or joyful,

but it always sets us free.

The truth is only depressing if we think

that it’s our fault or that we are personally responsible

for this whole thing and all we have to do is try harder.

It’s only depressing if we think that it is

somehow our job alone to fix the whole thing.

In the gospel story in Luke,

Jesus is eating at Matthew’s house and

the Pharisees come up and ask him why he’s eating with

sinners and tax collectors.

Those Pharisees, they were, of course, sinners just the same.

They were in bondage to their sin and their own death

the same as the tax collectors.

The only difference is that the tax collectors and prostitutes

and other people like that knew that they were sinners.

They already had the veil removed from their

eyes because they were told that they were sinners

so many times by the rest of the population.

The only thing that separated them from the Pharisees,

is that they knew. They knew they needed a physician,

that is why Jesus found a place with them.

They let the physician in.

We don’t see the doctor and we don’t want the cure,

unless we know we’re sick.

God wants to get in there and fix, change, and make new.

The ones who knew they were sinners just get to join the party.

Ash Wednesday is about us taking off that veil,

it’s about taking away the pain killers and the

anesthetics and being truthful about our situation.

Lent is about acknowledging the reality that we’ve been hiding from.

It’s about turning around what we’re able to and

and laying the rest of it at God’s feet.

Ash Wednesday and Lent are only depressing

if we think that the ashes are the end.

It’s only depressing if we think that our bondage

to sin and death will have the last word.

But we’re also here to say that it will not.

This cross on our forehead,

this reminder of death and sin,

traces the same place on our forehead where

another cross was traced.

Where our old self died and a new life rose up from the waters,

and we received a promise of baptism:

Remember that you are God’s and to God you will return

sin and death will not prevail.

Ash Wednesday is a stop we make on the way to that promise.

The reminder that we need that promise.

That we need God.

That is something that binds us all together too.

We are in bondage to sin and death.

And the great healer, the great physician

will make each one of us whole again.

Jesus: Fully Human and Fully Divine

Luke 9:28-33

Transfiguration

February 7, 2016

James and John and Peter, three of Jesus closest

friends and disciples go up to a mountaintop to pray.

It’s probably something they’ve all done before many times.

They probably thought this would end up like any of those other times.

But this time is different.

This time, Jesus starts glowing a brilliant, bright light.

And Moses and Elijah are there with them.

It’s a miraculous moment.

Really earth-shattering for the

three disciples watching this.

Because this is proof to the three of them that Jesus really is God.

Now they have been following Jesus for a while.

This mountaintop transfiguration

 is half-way through the story of Jesus.

Face of Jesus
Church of the Transfiguration, Orleans, MA 2002

They have already left everything and followed Jesus,

they knew that he was extraordinary for sure.

They loved his teaching, he had a charisma,

he was doing wonderful things with people

he seemed to be able to heal and cast out demons

and do other amazing things.

So they knew he was special.

But they also had been traveling with Jesus for

quite a while, and you really get to know someone’s

humanity when you travel with them, don’t you?

So the humanity of Jesus they knew.

But the whole Son of God and Messiah thing,

might not have been so obvious to them.

 Remember, the narrative of the miraculous birth of Jesus

with Mary and Gabriel and Joseph and Zachariah

and Simeon in the temple and all those other things

were not something that the disciples would have heard.

Up until this point, Jesus still might have seemed

like any other extraordinary religious leader or prophet.

But then there was this moment.

Now they knew that Jesus was divine too.

And this moment is important for the disciples.

They know that Jesus was God come to earth to live with us.

This question about the nature of Jesus:

is he human or is he God?

It’s kind of the original theological argument for Christians,

Many theological questions have come out of it.

The arguments over the Nicene creed

the long creed that we read together on festivals,

were about Jesus divinity vs. humanity.

The Athanasius creed  – the very long creed we don’t read –

was about Jesus’ humanity and divinity.

And all the greatest hits of heresies:

Docetism, Gnosticism, Ebonism, Adoptionism,

Arianism, Nestorianism, Appolloinarianism

were heresies that denied

or manipulated the idea that Jesus was

fully human and fully divine.

This field of study that is concerned with

the nature and person of Jesus is called Christology.

Now, you might say that Christology and  

all this kind of stuff is boring or irrelevant.

And you still might think it’s boring after I’m finished with my sermon,

but I think that theological ideas like this

are very important to the way we

live and believe and do ministry together in the church.

Remembering that Jesus was human

might have been easy for Peter and the disciples

that lived with him, but sometimes the church now

forgets that Jesus was human.

That he had all the same functions as other humans.

We have wanted to put him on a throne away from

everyone and everything and forget about his humanity.

But if we forget that Jesus was human,

we forget that he walked the earth,

that he suffered the same as us,

More importantly, we forget that God

loved us so much that God became human for us

to be with us, to understand us, to reach us.

So it’s important to see the human side of Jesus.

On the other hand, many people believe that Jesus

was special, but they deny that he was God.

This is not just for skeptics and atheists either.

The people of the church sometimes

don’t believe that Jesus was God.

But if we forget the divinity of Jesus,

then Jesus just becomes another teacher,

just another prophet, just another great guy.

And again, we lose the wonderful truth

that Jesus was God come to earth.

We also forget that when we follow Jesus,

we are following God, and we depend on God’s power and God’s will.

When we just follow the great teacher, the all human Jesus,

then the power is only in our hands,

it’s in our will and in our ability, not God’s.

So when Peter and James and John saw Jesus glowing

on that mountain top, it wasn’t just about a miraculous

event for those three guys up there.

It was a revelation about Jesus  and God

for them and for all of us.

It was about the future of the whole church and it’s ministry.

Because Christology doesn’t just stop at the nature

and person of Jesus,

it also leads us to understand the nature and make up

of the Body of Christ–the Church,

the mystical body that is formed

when you and me and all other Christians get together

and worship and learn and do ministry together.

What we understand about Jesus, we also understand about the Church.

Just like Jesus, the Church is both human and divine.

When we have forgotten about our humanity as a church,

we have forgotten that the church is fallible.

We have forgotten that the church can make mistakes.

We have forgotten that we need to change and correct ourselves.

When we remember our humanity,

we remember where we belong:  with God’s people.

We know that the Church can’t stay in gilded palaces

and sterile and safe church buildings

only thinking about high, lofty, and holy stuff.

We know that as the body of Christ,

we belong with the ones that Jesus chose to share his ministry with:

the poor, the blind, the imprisoned, the oppressed.

But the Church has also forgotten about its divinity.

When we do that,

we can become merely a service agency or a social club.

we only depended on hard evidence and planning

instead of depending on faith and God’s power.

We have forgotten that we are tied together and motivated

by something larger and stronger

 than human action and determination.

When we forget about the divinity of the church,

we sell ourselves short of God’s vision and plans.

And when we remember that the church is also divine,

we know that anything is possible with God.

We are part of God’s plan and power.

Peter and James and John and the rest

took a while to realize that Jesus was not just

another human.

But once Peter saw Jesus divinity revealed,

glowing up on that mountain top,,

he decided that he wanted to stay there.

He offers to make three dwelling places, temples.

Places to protect Jesus divinity and keep it holy

up there on the top of the mountain

and not be bothered, or touched,

to be safe from the riff raff below.

But even after the revelation on that mountain,

After the voice of God boomed, and told them

“this is my son, the chosen. Listen to him."

  

The divine, body of Jesus

the incarnation of the one true God,

still warm from his glowing episode

on the mountain top,

walked back down that mountain

to deal with a boy being thrashed

in the dirt by convulsions.

From the human to the divine to the human in

just a few short minutes.

This Epiphany, we open our eyes to who Jesus is.

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the carpenter,

and the son of God: the prophet, the instigator,

the one who makes the party, the bridge builder,

When we see through the eyes of faith,

we know that Jesus is more than that,

he is the Alpha and the Omega,

the beginning and the end.

Fully human and fully divine.

God come to earth.

And when we see who Jesus really is,

we see who we really are:

Children of the living God,

tied to one another  by God’s Spirit

one body of Christ.

Jesus: The Bridge Builder Between Us and Them

Luke 4: 21-30

January 31, 2016

Christ Mosaic
Hagia Sophia, Turkey
12th Century

Jesus preaching in his home town part 2.

If you missed part one,

Jesus has just been baptized,

tempted by the devil

and then he want to his hometown to preach

in front of his childhood friends and his aunts and uncles and cousins, 

and probably his mother and father

and sisters and brothers for all we know.

Jesus read the scripture from Isaiah:

“God has anointed me to

bring good news to the poor.

release to the captives

recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to proclaim the Year of the Lord’s Favor.”

It’s the beginning of Jesus ministry and

stands in Luke as kind of a mission statement.

Then he gives his very brief sermon:

“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus is saying that just because people heard it

come out of his mouth, it is done.

That could be seen as a bit gutsy for a hometown boy,

Still, at this point, everyone is pretty impressed

with Jesus and the “gracious words”

that have come out of his mouth.

They all say, “My isn’t this Joseph’s son?”
In other words, we know him, he’s one of us.

 And wouldn’t you think that then with that

Jesus should just have stopped,

let them ooh and ahh over him, buy him lunch,

he could heal a couple of people,

do his laundry at his parent’s house and

then just move on to Cana or wherever he was headed next.

But Jesus doesn’t want to leave it at that.

Like a lot of young people who come home for the first time

after being away, Jesus wants to start something.

He tells them “Prophets are not accepted in their home town.”

In other word, they will not be accepting him.

They will not be his followers, he knows this.

He tells them because they will expect him to just

come and serve his own people.

The people in his hometown will expect him

to help family and friends before he goes out and helps other people.

“Physician heal yourself.”

“Do for your family what you’ve done in Capernaum.”

And that would have been the inclination

of most people in Jesus position at that point in time.

Family relations were everything in Jesus time.

You owed everything to your family, immediate and extended:

gifts, favors, special attention.

You stayed with them, you didn’t leave for the most part.

Family was first and second and last

 and not always in a good way.

People were restrained by their family obligations

as much as they were protected by them.

People were obligated to serve their  own

and build up walls for other people.

There was a lot of talk of “us” and “them.”

At the very least, it was expected that Jesus

would be sent to the people who shared his

heritage and belief system.

But Jesus comes to the next part,

which is what throws the hometown people into a rage.

He says, “there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah,

when there was a severe famine yet Elijah, the prophet

was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.

And there were also many lepers in Israel in the time Elisha,

and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

Elijah and Elisha were of course well known prophets.

But the widow at Zarephath in Sidon was a gentile.

And Naaman the Syrian was a gentile.

Not Jewish. Not family at all.

What Jesus he’s saying is that

Elijah and Elisha could have gone out and helped

their own people, they could have helped only

friends and relatives or at least only Jewish people.

But God sent them outside-  to strangers

The God of Israel was working with and through

people of other faiths and no faith at all.

Elijah and Elisha were not sent to the people inside

they were sent to the people outside.

Jesus is making this dramatic point in this story

and Luke includes it in there to make a dramatic point

to us today about Jesus life and ministry.

Mission statement number one:

God is going to reach you and me and all of us through the

poor the prisoner, the blind and the oppressed.

Number two: God is going to start this work, not in here with “our” people,

but out there with all of “them”. Whoever you’ve been referring

to as “them” in that derogatory tone,

that’s who God will be working with and through,

and if you want to follow God, go there.

So God is not in here with the people we like, and feel comfortable with.

God is out there with people we’re not comfortable with,

and probably even people we don’t like.

Jesus ministry is about God breaking down boundaries that we’ve made

in order to reconcile the world to one another.

This got Jesus chased out of the synagogue and almost

thrown off a cliff.

I like to think that this wouldn’t elicit that response

in the people here today.

I’d like to think that Christians would be

accustomed to this understanding.

But this does run contrary to main stream today.

In our consumer based society,

we fall into the trap of just wondering “What’s in it for me?”

And the “us” and “them” ideology which seems to dominate lately.

and which American Christianity has often fallen into this trap too.

We have people that go to church

only wondering what’s in it for them.

And consequently, we have major branches of Christianity

today that are very popular and full on Sunday mornings

who tell us that the meaning of the cross is

that God wants us to live comfortable, prosperous lives.

So when people are looking for a church they only ask,

am I comfortable? does the service make me content?

do I enjoy the worship experience?

Do I like the people I’m worshiping with?

Does it have programs that my kids enjoy? 

Do I feel good after being there? Does it feed me? Do I feel comfortable.

Which are some questions to ask,
But that’s just the beginning of the questions to ask about a church.

The primary question that Christians should

not be does this church make me feel comfortable,

but does this church sometimes make me feel uncomfortable?

Does it stretch me? Does it challenge me to

encounter people I might not have met before?

Does it help my children love people who are different

from them and not fear them?

Without those kind of things, we are just a social club and

not a church of Jesus Christ of Nazareth in Galilee

who was almost thrown off a cliff by his own people.

The people in Nazareth, Jesus home town

had one main misunderstanding, they identified Jesus as Joseph’s son.

A child of theirs.

But Jesus knew and we know that Jesus

was not mainly the son of Joseph,

Jesus was the son of the living God,

the father of all people, not just some.

And the good news is that in our baptism, we are the body of Christ.

We are the children of the God of all people.

We belong to a family bigger than what we know

bigger than our home town.

We are insiders called to be outsiders to welcome those outside in.

And  if we are insiders who are always called outside

then where is inside and where is outside?

Christ is the bridge between people

of all class, and race, and age, and economic status,

and every religion and belief system.

The good news is that

in Christ there is no inside and outside.

In Christ we are all one.