A Potter's Perspective on Life, the Church, and Culture Supper’s Ready!
by Tim McClendon, United Methodist clergy for over thirty years in the South Carolina Conference
October 1, 2012
This is that time of year when I ponder what World Communion really means. I can say that I love everybody, but if I harbor ill will when I come to the Table then it doesn’t do much good. If I’ve been a jerk to someone, I have prevented them from knowing grace, too. I very much like what someone said, “The three phrases we most often desire to hear are: “I love you!” “I forgive you!” and “Supper’s ready!” In the sacrament of Holy Communion we hear all three from Jesus. It’s His Table, and all are invited. It’s up to us to come!
When I was a youngster in my home church we went to Sunday School and afterwards made our way into the sanctuary. The educational building was behind the sanctuary so that if you went from one to the other you usually entered through the back door that opened into the sanctuary right beside the pulpit and altar. If we saw the communion elements and the white cloth spread out we immediately pressed our parents into leaving early.
Communion services were so long and were as somber as a funeral service. We used the old ritual; where what we said reversed our efforts at the Protestant Reformation’s focus on grace. We went back to something that resembled a large confessional booth. We used words like, “We bewail our manifold sins and wickedness which we from time to time have most grievously committed in thought, word, and deed…” I felt sinful enough already. Our communion service added to my sense of guilt. The words of pardon were miniscule in comparison to the confession. I usually left feeling worse.
This is one reason that today when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper; we attempt to focus more on Christ’s marvelous work of grace than on our power to reform ourselves. We, more often than not, now refer to Communion as the Eucharist. Eucharist means Thanksgiving. The most important thing that we do when we come to the Communion Table is say, “Thanks!” to Christ for his gift of mercy. Rather than focus overly on our sinfulness, we thank God for God’s graciousness. What a better perspective!
World Communion Sunday is an event that bridges denominations and spotlights our commonality in the Body of Christ. This world would be so much better off if we looked for that which we hold in common rather than our differences. Holy Communion, rightly observed, reunites the Church. This is the pastor’s hope when he or she holds up the loaf of bread and says, “Because there is one loaf, we who are many, are one body in Christ.”
Therefore, our focus this week is in how to get over our differences and find common power to live in Christ. The Eucharist is a time of positive celebration, reunion, prayer for healing, and a sacred time to put others before ourselves. In my first parish I had three churches. I remember how shocked I was as I went to my first communion service at the smallest church of eight members. When I arrived there was a loaf of sliced “Wonder” bread still in its wrapper on the altar and a bottle of Welch’s grape juice and some small paper cups. They had not had communion in years. I was soon to find out why.
I went through the ritual and opened the altar for people to partake and NOBODY came forward. The reason they hadn’t had communion in years is that they were afraid. They knew full well that they were not living as consistent Christians. They felt too unworthy to come to the Table. I quickly switched sermons and preached on grace. Still nobody came up, but by the time I left there five years later, many did. Those few moved from guilt to grace, judging to acceptance. They found real communion with Jesus, a sacrament indeed.
Dentist Thomas Welch found himself in a somewhat similar situation back in 1869. Communion was problematic for a number of reasons. The alcoholic content of the wine was one of them. Dr. Welch was the Communion Steward for the congregation of First Methodist Church of Vineland, New Jersey. To his dismay, more often than not, communion either set some of the participants off on an alcoholic binge or on a rush to judgment by the abstention crowd. He and his family did experiment after experiment to come up with a solution and they did. He created unfermented grape juice, dubbed it “unfermented wine,” and soon churches all around wanted the product. By 1890 “Dr. Welch’s Grape Juice” had become a staple on communion tables, where it remains so today, all because someone saw communion as a sacrament that brought Christians together, not divided them!
Friday, October 5, 2012
Jesus
Jeremiah 18: 1-6
Romans 12: 1-2
John 1: 1-14
Jesus
We used to do a lot of camping when our kids were young. We started with a tent, and spent a lot of nights with that tent, and lots of campfires. Nowadays campers often have motor homes. A motor home allows campers to put all the conveniences of home on wheels. A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now he can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line, a sewer line and electricity. Most motor homes even have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. People buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world of nature. Yet they deck it out with the same furnishings as in their living room back home. They may drive to a new place, set themselves in new surrounding, but the newness goes unnoticed, because they only carried along their old setting. Nothing really changes.
If we accept the love God offers us, things do change—we change. But God does not change, nor does Jesus and his message. That message is timeless, and applies to us as it did to those who heard him 2000 years ago.
If Jesus is to be anything more than just another name, another historical mythic figure for us; if he is to become in any sense "Christ," "Savior," "Lord"; if his name and his story are to arouse in us anything like "faith," then we have to encounter him and not merely some ideas about him. Before there were ideas about Jesus there was Jesus. There was the Jesus who was experienced as a real person by those to whom he preached, those he healed, those with whom he lived, and those whom he angered.
We all have images of Jesus. We see artists’ renditions of him from the time we are small children, and it is our human nature to have an image of Jesus in our minds when we think or speak of him—just as we have an image of another person in our minds when we think or speak of that person. When you talk about a friend or a family member, you “see” that person in your mind. As children, or as new Christians, to the pictures—the visual images--we have of Jesus we attach what we learn about his personality, what we come to believe and feel about him. Just as we do about people around us.
Our faith needs more than reading or ideas about Jesus. And our faith needs more than artist’s renderings of their ideas about Jesus. We need in a real sense to experience him as a real presence in our lives. Our minds want to—need to—“see” the person about whom we are thinking or talking. There are four images of the Christ at work these days which seem to me to cause problems, or at least detract from the good that might come from seeking more closely an experience of Jesus as he truly is.
The first is the “Divine Jesus”. In this image the primary feature of the Christ is his absolute distinction from us: We are finite; Jesus is infinite. We are sinful; Jesus was sinless. We are mortal; Jesus, though he assumed mortality, was really always immortal. This image sees Jesus as one who stoops down momentarily from his throne to deliver us from our sinful condition: In this image the world is a sinful place, a place from which we should try to separate ourselves. In this image we must rise above the rest of the world. For too many, this Jesus is too perfect, and too removed from their lives for them to see him as their friend. This image fails to see Jesus’ very real, recognizable humanity. Jesus did not separate himself or his disciples from the world. He became immersed in the world, sat down and ate with all kinds of people whom the church leaders of his day despised. Jesus lived as we do. He felt heat and cold, fear and sorrow and happiness, confusion and doubt, hunger and thirst and pain just as intensely as any of us have or ever will. He did not come merely to rescue us from our humanness, he came to share it with us and with us change the world.
The second image that causes problems is “the conquering Jesus”. While he was alive, many people, including some of his own disciples, wanted Jesus to be a conqueror, to overthrow Roman rule. Over the years many more have created a picture of Jesus as conqueror who would overthrow the Roman powerful oppressors. There is the title King of Kings. This image forgets the Jesus who said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”, and the Jesus who commanded us to love our enemies, and to love one another “as I have loved you.” If conquering can ever be associated legitimately with Jesus Christ, then we had better be clear that at the top of the list of what must be conquered is our own tendency to rebel against God, and our tendency to want to create him in OUR image.
The third image I think we need to be careful of is the image of “ the judgmental Jesus.” Somehow, the old hellfire and brimstone theology of our puritan past has never quite disappeared, and today the picture of Christ as an impartial or even a vindictive judge has again found its way amongst impressive numbers of Christians. Individuals have frequently suffered under the impossible moral demands of those whose "Jesus" is all law and no gospel. No one familiar with the Scriptures can dispense with the thought of divine judgment. But when religious speakers determine that judgment is its own end and not a means to something else, they have altogether forgotten the Jesus who came, not to destroy, but to give life more abundantly. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
The fourth image of Jesus that can cause problems is that of the “accepting Jesus”. God’s love cares about the real condition of each of us; and if we are in fact a distortion of the person that we could be, then the only role that true love can have in our lives is the role of bringing truth and the intention to change. Yes, God first accepts us as we are. We do not earn his love. As soon as we turn to him—every time we turn to him in repentance-- he accepts us as we are at that moment. But that does not mean that Jesus likes me, accepts me, and then makes no great demands upon me. If I accept his love I am going to find myself changing, and God is going to use me to change the world around me.
But God doesn’t just love us as individuals. God loves his whole world—his creation. Jesus is God’s pledge of love not just for us as individuals, but for the whole world. Jesus who accepts us just as we are is not ready to keep us that way. Nor is he ready to accept the world, our world, and keep it this way. If we can trust any of the illustrations of God’s love for the world we must conclude that this love, far from accepting the status quo, wills to alter it drastically.
I believe the real image we should have of Jesus is as “the transforming Christ”. The image we should have of Jesus is of someone who accepts us but through his love wants to continue God’s creativity by changing us and then the world around us.
Instead of the divine Jesus who would keep us away from the world, we should see a Jesus who wants us very much involved with the world, just as he was. Instead of the conquering Jesus, the transforming Jesus doesn’t ask us to take over the world but to befriend it, person by person. Look at how friendless the world is today--how much in need the world around us is of transformation through God’s love.
Instead of the judging Jesus, we should see Christ as one who recruits reconcilers and stewards and poets of creation. Instead of simply “the accepting Jesus we should see a Jesus who calls us to responsibilities we would never dream of undertaking otherwise. Through his acceptance of us we are not to accept the violence, injustice, inequality, and degradation of the world around us: that is discipleship today. Through our acceptance of him, we become God’s hands and mouths in the world to bring God’s creative changes.
There is only one thing the church has to offer the world that no other organization can offer: Christ It is Jesus the Christ who transforms us. Jesus the Christ who loves us. Jesus the Christ who accepts us as we are when we repent of our past. But if we accept and love Jesus he will transform us, so that through us God’s love can work to transform the world. Amen
Romans 12: 1-2
John 1: 1-14
Jesus
We used to do a lot of camping when our kids were young. We started with a tent, and spent a lot of nights with that tent, and lots of campfires. Nowadays campers often have motor homes. A motor home allows campers to put all the conveniences of home on wheels. A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now he can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line, a sewer line and electricity. Most motor homes even have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. People buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world of nature. Yet they deck it out with the same furnishings as in their living room back home. They may drive to a new place, set themselves in new surrounding, but the newness goes unnoticed, because they only carried along their old setting. Nothing really changes.
If we accept the love God offers us, things do change—we change. But God does not change, nor does Jesus and his message. That message is timeless, and applies to us as it did to those who heard him 2000 years ago.
If Jesus is to be anything more than just another name, another historical mythic figure for us; if he is to become in any sense "Christ," "Savior," "Lord"; if his name and his story are to arouse in us anything like "faith," then we have to encounter him and not merely some ideas about him. Before there were ideas about Jesus there was Jesus. There was the Jesus who was experienced as a real person by those to whom he preached, those he healed, those with whom he lived, and those whom he angered.
We all have images of Jesus. We see artists’ renditions of him from the time we are small children, and it is our human nature to have an image of Jesus in our minds when we think or speak of him—just as we have an image of another person in our minds when we think or speak of that person. When you talk about a friend or a family member, you “see” that person in your mind. As children, or as new Christians, to the pictures—the visual images--we have of Jesus we attach what we learn about his personality, what we come to believe and feel about him. Just as we do about people around us.
Our faith needs more than reading or ideas about Jesus. And our faith needs more than artist’s renderings of their ideas about Jesus. We need in a real sense to experience him as a real presence in our lives. Our minds want to—need to—“see” the person about whom we are thinking or talking. There are four images of the Christ at work these days which seem to me to cause problems, or at least detract from the good that might come from seeking more closely an experience of Jesus as he truly is.
The first is the “Divine Jesus”. In this image the primary feature of the Christ is his absolute distinction from us: We are finite; Jesus is infinite. We are sinful; Jesus was sinless. We are mortal; Jesus, though he assumed mortality, was really always immortal. This image sees Jesus as one who stoops down momentarily from his throne to deliver us from our sinful condition: In this image the world is a sinful place, a place from which we should try to separate ourselves. In this image we must rise above the rest of the world. For too many, this Jesus is too perfect, and too removed from their lives for them to see him as their friend. This image fails to see Jesus’ very real, recognizable humanity. Jesus did not separate himself or his disciples from the world. He became immersed in the world, sat down and ate with all kinds of people whom the church leaders of his day despised. Jesus lived as we do. He felt heat and cold, fear and sorrow and happiness, confusion and doubt, hunger and thirst and pain just as intensely as any of us have or ever will. He did not come merely to rescue us from our humanness, he came to share it with us and with us change the world.
The second image that causes problems is “the conquering Jesus”. While he was alive, many people, including some of his own disciples, wanted Jesus to be a conqueror, to overthrow Roman rule. Over the years many more have created a picture of Jesus as conqueror who would overthrow the Roman powerful oppressors. There is the title King of Kings. This image forgets the Jesus who said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”, and the Jesus who commanded us to love our enemies, and to love one another “as I have loved you.” If conquering can ever be associated legitimately with Jesus Christ, then we had better be clear that at the top of the list of what must be conquered is our own tendency to rebel against God, and our tendency to want to create him in OUR image.
The third image I think we need to be careful of is the image of “ the judgmental Jesus.” Somehow, the old hellfire and brimstone theology of our puritan past has never quite disappeared, and today the picture of Christ as an impartial or even a vindictive judge has again found its way amongst impressive numbers of Christians. Individuals have frequently suffered under the impossible moral demands of those whose "Jesus" is all law and no gospel. No one familiar with the Scriptures can dispense with the thought of divine judgment. But when religious speakers determine that judgment is its own end and not a means to something else, they have altogether forgotten the Jesus who came, not to destroy, but to give life more abundantly. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
The fourth image of Jesus that can cause problems is that of the “accepting Jesus”. God’s love cares about the real condition of each of us; and if we are in fact a distortion of the person that we could be, then the only role that true love can have in our lives is the role of bringing truth and the intention to change. Yes, God first accepts us as we are. We do not earn his love. As soon as we turn to him—every time we turn to him in repentance-- he accepts us as we are at that moment. But that does not mean that Jesus likes me, accepts me, and then makes no great demands upon me. If I accept his love I am going to find myself changing, and God is going to use me to change the world around me.
But God doesn’t just love us as individuals. God loves his whole world—his creation. Jesus is God’s pledge of love not just for us as individuals, but for the whole world. Jesus who accepts us just as we are is not ready to keep us that way. Nor is he ready to accept the world, our world, and keep it this way. If we can trust any of the illustrations of God’s love for the world we must conclude that this love, far from accepting the status quo, wills to alter it drastically.
I believe the real image we should have of Jesus is as “the transforming Christ”. The image we should have of Jesus is of someone who accepts us but through his love wants to continue God’s creativity by changing us and then the world around us.
Instead of the divine Jesus who would keep us away from the world, we should see a Jesus who wants us very much involved with the world, just as he was. Instead of the conquering Jesus, the transforming Jesus doesn’t ask us to take over the world but to befriend it, person by person. Look at how friendless the world is today--how much in need the world around us is of transformation through God’s love.
Instead of the judging Jesus, we should see Christ as one who recruits reconcilers and stewards and poets of creation. Instead of simply “the accepting Jesus we should see a Jesus who calls us to responsibilities we would never dream of undertaking otherwise. Through his acceptance of us we are not to accept the violence, injustice, inequality, and degradation of the world around us: that is discipleship today. Through our acceptance of him, we become God’s hands and mouths in the world to bring God’s creative changes.
There is only one thing the church has to offer the world that no other organization can offer: Christ It is Jesus the Christ who transforms us. Jesus the Christ who loves us. Jesus the Christ who accepts us as we are when we repent of our past. But if we accept and love Jesus he will transform us, so that through us God’s love can work to transform the world. Amen
Grace
Jeremiah 1: 4-9
Romans 5: 6-11
Matthew 18: 1-6; 19: 13-15
Grace
During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating various possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death.
The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. "What is the rumpus all about?", he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, "Oh, that is easy. It is grace." It is all about grace.
A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New Your City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids. One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court in an area that served the poorest ward in the city. LaGuardia had dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread.
She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges. The shopkeeper told the mayor that it was a real bad neighborhood. She had to be punished to teach others around there a lesson.
LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said,”I have got to punish you. The law makes no exceptions. Ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his hat saying, “Here is the ten dollar fine which I now remit; and furthermore I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”
A total of $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren. Fifty cents of that amount was contributed by the red-faced grocery store owner.
Did the elderly lady in the story get what she deserved? Clearly the answer is, of course not. She had stolen a loaf of bread. Yes, she may have had a reason, but stealing is stealing and regardless of the reason, punishment would seem to be the order of the day. To us, seeing it as the grocery man saw it, it isn’t fair.
What we see in the story is called grace. Grace is when someone in superior power shows kindness or mercy to someone in a lesser position. Mayor LaGuardia, with all his power, showed mercy and rather than demanding punishment of the woman herself, paid the fine and then further helped her cause by the collection of the fifty-cent fines and giving the money to her. It was more than she deserved. It was grace. It is all about grace.
Children are very accepting and trusting. Unless they have been taught differently, or have been hurt or abused, children accept others openly and non-judgmentally. The disciples wanted to know who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. It was a judgmental question. It was a question of who is better than others. It is the kind of thinking we are too often guilty of. Jesus’ reply was not just about accepting children, it was to tell us that unless we are childlike, considering ourselves no better than anyone else in God’s sight, we will find ourselves in deep trouble. Today and everyday God wants a relationship with everyone, including those we too often choose to avoid, or judge to be somehow inferior to us.
Jesus put his finger on this when he urged the adults of his day to have a simple, childlike faith. In fact, he made it clear that unless we become as little children, with the transparency of trust that marks the life of a child, we cannot see the Kingdom of Heaven. We cannot understand the Gospel. This is the Good News of God's gift to us. His grace is the story of his unmerited favor. The Gospel is as simple as that—it is childishly simple.. God is love, and we are to love others as he loves us.
Every person is a child of God. Every person has worth in God’s eyes, and God wants each and every person in his kingdom. Every person has a God given purpose. We are called to try our best to help people see God’s love so they can accept God’s grace and fulfill God’s purpose. We are not to judge, and we are not to hinder anyone from coming into God’s presence because we are judgmental. Grace is received, not deserved.
For all of us who are people of faith, we know that we do not deserve God’s grace. Nothing that we can do will put us in a position of deserving God’s grace. All we can do is receive the gift that God offers to us freely. God loves us and mercifully gives us more than we deserve. Grace is received, not deserved.
God’s grace is about mercy, not fairness. God’s grace is there for the last, the lost, the least, including us. God’s grace is given to those who accept it with childlike faith. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That is what Grace is all about.
Geese
Joshua 1: 6-9
Hebrews 3:12-15
Luke 18: 27
Geese
My earlier education was as an ecologist, specializing in natural resource management and wildlife biology. For 15 years my family and I lived in New Jersey at the edge of the Great Swamp. The Great Swamp is a 15,000 acre gravy-bowl-shaped natural area that 10,000 years ago was a deep glacial lake surrounded by high granite ridges. The lake drained over what is now a high waterfall in the Millington Gorge, but every time there are heavy rains the basin tends to flood and overflow into the Passaic River. So, when that area was settled, most people knew enough not to build in what became known as the Great Swamp. In the late 1960’s the area was protected from the New York Port Authority which wanted to create another huge airport there for the metropolitan region.
Instead 11,000 acres of it became a Federal Wildlife Refuge, and other major portions became regional natural area parks. I was responsible for the planning and development of one of those parks, on about 1000 acres of wet, wet land. One of my first projects was to design and create a series of permanent deep ponds, for wildlife and for added protection to the spot where we built an 18,000 square foot solar heated and cooled visitor center and Environmental Education Center, the nation’s first solar heated and cooled public building. Those ponds became home for a lot of Canada geese. After a couple of years, several hundred geese would gather in the fall in those ponds, and one of the most beautiful sights, and sounds, was when the geese flew in in the evening at sunset to spend the night on the open water.
Canada geese were once very low in numbers. Now they are so abundant that in some places, like golf courses that have a lot of ponds, people think of them as pests. They love to eat grass, and grain. And each goose dumps a pound and a half of fecal material per day. So they can be a pain in the neck, and a lot of poop on the ground. I enjoy watching and hearing geese, since they are not eating my crops or fertilizing my yard. I have noticed that geese seem to be able to do something that we in the Church should want to do. For one thing, their flocks seem to get larger. Geese do this partly by reproduction, but they also invite other geese to come join them. They will actually go out and bring new geese, especially young geese, to their flock.
What are some lessons that the church can learn from the world of a Canada goose? One lesson is that Canada geese illustrate the concept of fellowship. Fellowship means “to have in common”, “to share”, “to participate for a common cause”. Why do the geese get together in large flocks before they head south for the winter? The geese get together, not just because they like each other’s company, but because they share a common cause, and together their journey is easier. That is part of why we as Christians meet together, to make our journey with Christ easier.
People in fellowship, who share a common direction and sense of community, achieve their goals more quickly and easily because they are traveling on one another’s thrust. Part of being in fellowship with one another in church is making sure that we are going in the same direction and that we are flying in formation. Have you ever seen a flock of geese take off and scatter in all different directions? They don’t.
Another lesson Canada geese can teach us is the concept of sharing the workload. When you see geese heading south for the winter flying along in a "V" formation, research has revealed that as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately behind it. By flying in a "V" formation, the whole flock adds at least 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own. When the lead goose gets tired, he rotates back in the "V" and another goose flies the point. (It pays to take turns doing hard jobs.)
Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone. It quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front. When we fall out of formation with God, the resistance will pull us down away from our goal of growing closer to Jesus. The geese get together for their survival. It is the same for us as Christians. If we embark on our spiritual journey together, the journey becomes easier. Lone geese do not survive long.
Unfortunately, it seems as a general rule regarding getting work done in the church that 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the people. That applies to churches who are not growing. Growing churches are active churches-- the more people involved in the work of the church, the more work for God that gets done. What would happen to the geese if only 20% of them would take the lead? The flock would not survive. What happens when 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the people? The people who are doing the work become discouraged and burned out.
The work of the church is important; we are the body of Christ building the kingdom of God. God works through us. We are his hands and feet, and only by our actions can others come to know Him. Each and every one of you has various talents that could enhance the ministry of this church. We need to bring them into our flock and make sure we all use our talents. If one person does not share his or her gifts in service, the church is weakened. By instinct, geese share the work load among all the geese in the flock. As a church, we should do the same thing.
A third lesson Canada geese can teach us is, they show us the value of encouragement. Have you ever heard a flock of geese flying high overhead? They make all kinds of noise, they honk at each other as they fly. Why do geese honk as they fly? Researchers tell us geese honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
We read in Hebrews 3:13 “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” When we honk what is the message we are sending? How many times is the noise that we hear behind people who are working the voice of encouragement? Or is it too often the voice of criticism? Just as the geese are trying to encourage one another as they are on their long journey south, as Christians we should do the same thing. We are on a long journey to Jesus and we need encourager’s.
Finally, Canada geese can teach us the concept of sharing our burdens with one another. This last concept is one that is desperately needed in the church, and not just the burdens of those already part of our flock. When a goose gets sick, or is wounded by gun-fire and falls out, one or two other geese fall out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with the goose until it is either able to fly again or dead, and then they launch out to catch up with their group.
Galatians 6:2… “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” Romans 15:1… “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves.”
Our community is full of people who are hurting, who have no flock to give them care. Jesus came for the least, the lost, the lonely. He commands us to reach out to them too, whoever they are and wherever they may be, and bring them in. The concepts we can learn from watching geese are concepts that can help make the church stronger.
I pray that as a church we will fly together in formati on, that we will reach out to bring others into our fellowship, that each of us will share the kingdom work of the church, that when we are honking at each other it is to encourage, and that we will share one another’s burdens. If the community around us sees and knows that is the way this church operates, people will flock to us. Amen
Hebrews 3:12-15
Luke 18: 27
Geese
My earlier education was as an ecologist, specializing in natural resource management and wildlife biology. For 15 years my family and I lived in New Jersey at the edge of the Great Swamp. The Great Swamp is a 15,000 acre gravy-bowl-shaped natural area that 10,000 years ago was a deep glacial lake surrounded by high granite ridges. The lake drained over what is now a high waterfall in the Millington Gorge, but every time there are heavy rains the basin tends to flood and overflow into the Passaic River. So, when that area was settled, most people knew enough not to build in what became known as the Great Swamp. In the late 1960’s the area was protected from the New York Port Authority which wanted to create another huge airport there for the metropolitan region.
Instead 11,000 acres of it became a Federal Wildlife Refuge, and other major portions became regional natural area parks. I was responsible for the planning and development of one of those parks, on about 1000 acres of wet, wet land. One of my first projects was to design and create a series of permanent deep ponds, for wildlife and for added protection to the spot where we built an 18,000 square foot solar heated and cooled visitor center and Environmental Education Center, the nation’s first solar heated and cooled public building. Those ponds became home for a lot of Canada geese. After a couple of years, several hundred geese would gather in the fall in those ponds, and one of the most beautiful sights, and sounds, was when the geese flew in in the evening at sunset to spend the night on the open water.
Canada geese were once very low in numbers. Now they are so abundant that in some places, like golf courses that have a lot of ponds, people think of them as pests. They love to eat grass, and grain. And each goose dumps a pound and a half of fecal material per day. So they can be a pain in the neck, and a lot of poop on the ground. I enjoy watching and hearing geese, since they are not eating my crops or fertilizing my yard. I have noticed that geese seem to be able to do something that we in the Church should want to do. For one thing, their flocks seem to get larger. Geese do this partly by reproduction, but they also invite other geese to come join them. They will actually go out and bring new geese, especially young geese, to their flock.
What are some lessons that the church can learn from the world of a Canada goose? One lesson is that Canada geese illustrate the concept of fellowship. Fellowship means “to have in common”, “to share”, “to participate for a common cause”. Why do the geese get together in large flocks before they head south for the winter? The geese get together, not just because they like each other’s company, but because they share a common cause, and together their journey is easier. That is part of why we as Christians meet together, to make our journey with Christ easier.
People in fellowship, who share a common direction and sense of community, achieve their goals more quickly and easily because they are traveling on one another’s thrust. Part of being in fellowship with one another in church is making sure that we are going in the same direction and that we are flying in formation. Have you ever seen a flock of geese take off and scatter in all different directions? They don’t.
Another lesson Canada geese can teach us is the concept of sharing the workload. When you see geese heading south for the winter flying along in a "V" formation, research has revealed that as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately behind it. By flying in a "V" formation, the whole flock adds at least 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own. When the lead goose gets tired, he rotates back in the "V" and another goose flies the point. (It pays to take turns doing hard jobs.)
Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone. It quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front. When we fall out of formation with God, the resistance will pull us down away from our goal of growing closer to Jesus. The geese get together for their survival. It is the same for us as Christians. If we embark on our spiritual journey together, the journey becomes easier. Lone geese do not survive long.
Unfortunately, it seems as a general rule regarding getting work done in the church that 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the people. That applies to churches who are not growing. Growing churches are active churches-- the more people involved in the work of the church, the more work for God that gets done. What would happen to the geese if only 20% of them would take the lead? The flock would not survive. What happens when 80% of the work gets done by 20% of the people? The people who are doing the work become discouraged and burned out.
The work of the church is important; we are the body of Christ building the kingdom of God. God works through us. We are his hands and feet, and only by our actions can others come to know Him. Each and every one of you has various talents that could enhance the ministry of this church. We need to bring them into our flock and make sure we all use our talents. If one person does not share his or her gifts in service, the church is weakened. By instinct, geese share the work load among all the geese in the flock. As a church, we should do the same thing.
A third lesson Canada geese can teach us is, they show us the value of encouragement. Have you ever heard a flock of geese flying high overhead? They make all kinds of noise, they honk at each other as they fly. Why do geese honk as they fly? Researchers tell us geese honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
We read in Hebrews 3:13 “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” When we honk what is the message we are sending? How many times is the noise that we hear behind people who are working the voice of encouragement? Or is it too often the voice of criticism? Just as the geese are trying to encourage one another as they are on their long journey south, as Christians we should do the same thing. We are on a long journey to Jesus and we need encourager’s.
Finally, Canada geese can teach us the concept of sharing our burdens with one another. This last concept is one that is desperately needed in the church, and not just the burdens of those already part of our flock. When a goose gets sick, or is wounded by gun-fire and falls out, one or two other geese fall out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with the goose until it is either able to fly again or dead, and then they launch out to catch up with their group.
Galatians 6:2… “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.” Romans 15:1… “Now we who are strong ought to bear the weaknesses of those without strength and not just please ourselves.”
Our community is full of people who are hurting, who have no flock to give them care. Jesus came for the least, the lost, the lonely. He commands us to reach out to them too, whoever they are and wherever they may be, and bring them in. The concepts we can learn from watching geese are concepts that can help make the church stronger.
I pray that as a church we will fly together in formati on, that we will reach out to bring others into our fellowship, that each of us will share the kingdom work of the church, that when we are honking at each other it is to encourage, and that we will share one another’s burdens. If the community around us sees and knows that is the way this church operates, people will flock to us. Amen
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Re-membering
Exodus 32: 11-14
I Corinthians 12:12-20
1 Corinthians 11: 17-19, 28-29
Luke 22:14-20
Re-membering
There was a study recently done by two physiologists on how members of the various sections of 11 major symphony orchestra perceived each other. The percussionists were viewed as insensitive, unintelligent, and hard-of-hearing, yet fun-loving. String players were seen as arrogant, stuffy, and un-athletic. The orchestra members overwhelmingly chose "loud" as the primary adjective to describe the brass players. Woodwind players seemed to be held in the highest esteem, described as quiet and meticulous, though a bit egotistical. Interesting findings, to say the least. With such widely divergent personalities and perceptions, how could an orchestra ever come together to make such wonderful music? The answer is simple: regardless of how those musicians view each other, they subordinate their feelings and biases to the leadership of the conductor. Under his guidance, they play beautiful music.
Memories. Remembering. Re-membering. What makes a memory? When we remember something or someone, in a way it is like fitting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together to form a whole picture again. We put together images, and sounds, and even smells, and of course emotions so we can make it all whole again and hold it in our minds for awhile.
All of us have memories, some fond and others far from fond, of persons, places, and events that have been significant in our lives. Memories are so significant that we could actually say that individuals are the sums of their memories. Even when someone ends up dredging up painful memories, the recognition and the sharing can be both therapeutic and community building.
What is true of individuals is certainly true of families. There is a continuing interest in researching genealogy, as evidenced by the various 'how-to' books, classes, and even web-sites on the internet. Part of why we do that is so we feel more connected, more a part of our past, and can pass on those connections to our children and grandchildren. We want to remember who our past relatives were, even if we never knew them. And, we want to be remembered. Sometimes we may think and act in accord with the way we've been formed by our families, and sometimes precisely the opposite. Ever have someone say, “You remind me of your Dad”? Or, “You remind me of your Mother.”? Close your eyes for a moment . . . now recall a family gathering with me. Who is there? How are you involved? If you think hard enough it's almost like we're there again with those people we love, isn't it? Such is the power of memory.
To be fully human is to remember. The Greek word for memory is “anammeis”—the recalling of history. Very close to the word we are familiar with, “amnesia”, which is a loss of memory. Loss of memory is a terrible thing. Losing our memory dis-members us. We remember so we are better equipped to face the future. We remember so we can remain whole. We remember so we can remain connected, to the people we know and the world around us.
Nations and regions and communities have a collective memory as well. The people of the nation called Israel were told by God that they were to be a people of memory. They were to remember where and what they had been and how they had been delivered from them by God's gracious action. This recalling of history is in itself a profession of faith in God. However, it's not just something that's located in the past and not to be forgotten. Rather, this re-membering makes us contemporaries with the events that are recalled; that history is also our history. To remember what God has done for Israel is to be part of the action because it encompasses the past, speaks to our own liberation today, and assumes the future. Why? Because God who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," is the One who acts.
What we heard in I Corinthians 12 is, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though al the parts are many, they form one body….. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Without you the body cannot be whole. Without you, Christ is not complete. Without you, Christ is not fully alive in this world yet. For the body of Christ to be whole each of you has to re-member Jesus. You have to put him back together by becoming one with him.
Jesus did not save us just by shedding his blood and dying as a broken body on the cross. Jesus saved us by being made whole through the resurrection, becoming whole again, and living and being alive today. Through salvation and sanctification, we are made whole by God’s grace.
If we call ourselves Christians we become part of Jesus’ body. The church is to be the body of Christ. As a church we are to become like the orchestra, with Jesus as our conductor. The conductor with his wand is silent. It takes the orchestra to make the music he wants played, and to play it the way he wants to hear it. The notes we are to follow are the commands of Christ.
Each time we celebrate Communion, we are remembering God's gracious action toward us, we are re-membering the Body of Christ. That is, we are being brought more and more into wholeness with the living Lord. That's why I believe that the best definition of Christian worship is, "gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread." In those simple actions we re-member the Body of Christ.
Re-membering the Body of Christ means that we are constantly putting ourselves back into God's active, living memory. When we come to church to worship together we are coming to re-member the Body of Christ. When we go our separate ways, the Body of Christ goes forth into the world through you and through me. God's love, God's care reaches out to the world through you and through me. God's love, God's care reaches out to the world through our words, our actions, and our touch. For Christians, this is how memories are made: gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread.
The Church into which the Christian is called is not a collective but a body. If anyone comes to church with the idea that the Church is simply a gathering together of persons to worship as if they were a crowd at a movie, that person is dis-membered. Christ’s presence, the interaction between him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the body; and any idea of Christian fellowship which does not make fellowship with Jesus the primary reason to gather, so as to do his work in the world, is out of order.
Maybe you remember sometime in the past, when you put your face above a headless frame painted to represent a muscle man, a clown, or even a bathing beauty? At the Columbus Zoo your face can become the head of an animal. Many of us have had our pictures taken this way, and the photos are humorous because the head doesn't fit the body.
If we could picture Christ as the head of this church would the world laugh at the misfit? Or would they stand in awe of a human body so closely related to a divine head?
Where do you fit as part of the Body of Christ? Come to the table this morning and re-member the Body of Christ for your family, for your friends, for your community.
Amen.
I Corinthians 12:12-20
1 Corinthians 11: 17-19, 28-29
Luke 22:14-20
Re-membering
There was a study recently done by two physiologists on how members of the various sections of 11 major symphony orchestra perceived each other. The percussionists were viewed as insensitive, unintelligent, and hard-of-hearing, yet fun-loving. String players were seen as arrogant, stuffy, and un-athletic. The orchestra members overwhelmingly chose "loud" as the primary adjective to describe the brass players. Woodwind players seemed to be held in the highest esteem, described as quiet and meticulous, though a bit egotistical. Interesting findings, to say the least. With such widely divergent personalities and perceptions, how could an orchestra ever come together to make such wonderful music? The answer is simple: regardless of how those musicians view each other, they subordinate their feelings and biases to the leadership of the conductor. Under his guidance, they play beautiful music.
Memories. Remembering. Re-membering. What makes a memory? When we remember something or someone, in a way it is like fitting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together to form a whole picture again. We put together images, and sounds, and even smells, and of course emotions so we can make it all whole again and hold it in our minds for awhile.
All of us have memories, some fond and others far from fond, of persons, places, and events that have been significant in our lives. Memories are so significant that we could actually say that individuals are the sums of their memories. Even when someone ends up dredging up painful memories, the recognition and the sharing can be both therapeutic and community building.
What is true of individuals is certainly true of families. There is a continuing interest in researching genealogy, as evidenced by the various 'how-to' books, classes, and even web-sites on the internet. Part of why we do that is so we feel more connected, more a part of our past, and can pass on those connections to our children and grandchildren. We want to remember who our past relatives were, even if we never knew them. And, we want to be remembered. Sometimes we may think and act in accord with the way we've been formed by our families, and sometimes precisely the opposite. Ever have someone say, “You remind me of your Dad”? Or, “You remind me of your Mother.”? Close your eyes for a moment . . . now recall a family gathering with me. Who is there? How are you involved? If you think hard enough it's almost like we're there again with those people we love, isn't it? Such is the power of memory.
To be fully human is to remember. The Greek word for memory is “anammeis”—the recalling of history. Very close to the word we are familiar with, “amnesia”, which is a loss of memory. Loss of memory is a terrible thing. Losing our memory dis-members us. We remember so we are better equipped to face the future. We remember so we can remain whole. We remember so we can remain connected, to the people we know and the world around us.
Nations and regions and communities have a collective memory as well. The people of the nation called Israel were told by God that they were to be a people of memory. They were to remember where and what they had been and how they had been delivered from them by God's gracious action. This recalling of history is in itself a profession of faith in God. However, it's not just something that's located in the past and not to be forgotten. Rather, this re-membering makes us contemporaries with the events that are recalled; that history is also our history. To remember what God has done for Israel is to be part of the action because it encompasses the past, speaks to our own liberation today, and assumes the future. Why? Because God who is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," is the One who acts.
What we heard in I Corinthians 12 is, “The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though al the parts are many, they form one body….. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Without you the body cannot be whole. Without you, Christ is not complete. Without you, Christ is not fully alive in this world yet. For the body of Christ to be whole each of you has to re-member Jesus. You have to put him back together by becoming one with him.
Jesus did not save us just by shedding his blood and dying as a broken body on the cross. Jesus saved us by being made whole through the resurrection, becoming whole again, and living and being alive today. Through salvation and sanctification, we are made whole by God’s grace.
If we call ourselves Christians we become part of Jesus’ body. The church is to be the body of Christ. As a church we are to become like the orchestra, with Jesus as our conductor. The conductor with his wand is silent. It takes the orchestra to make the music he wants played, and to play it the way he wants to hear it. The notes we are to follow are the commands of Christ.
Each time we celebrate Communion, we are remembering God's gracious action toward us, we are re-membering the Body of Christ. That is, we are being brought more and more into wholeness with the living Lord. That's why I believe that the best definition of Christian worship is, "gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread." In those simple actions we re-member the Body of Christ.
Re-membering the Body of Christ means that we are constantly putting ourselves back into God's active, living memory. When we come to church to worship together we are coming to re-member the Body of Christ. When we go our separate ways, the Body of Christ goes forth into the world through you and through me. God's love, God's care reaches out to the world through you and through me. God's love, God's care reaches out to the world through our words, our actions, and our touch. For Christians, this is how memories are made: gather the folks, tell the story, break the bread.
The Church into which the Christian is called is not a collective but a body. If anyone comes to church with the idea that the Church is simply a gathering together of persons to worship as if they were a crowd at a movie, that person is dis-membered. Christ’s presence, the interaction between him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the body; and any idea of Christian fellowship which does not make fellowship with Jesus the primary reason to gather, so as to do his work in the world, is out of order.
Maybe you remember sometime in the past, when you put your face above a headless frame painted to represent a muscle man, a clown, or even a bathing beauty? At the Columbus Zoo your face can become the head of an animal. Many of us have had our pictures taken this way, and the photos are humorous because the head doesn't fit the body.
If we could picture Christ as the head of this church would the world laugh at the misfit? Or would they stand in awe of a human body so closely related to a divine head?
Where do you fit as part of the Body of Christ? Come to the table this morning and re-member the Body of Christ for your family, for your friends, for your community.
Amen.
Hope
Psalm 31: 21-24
1 Peter 1: 3
John 14:1-4, John 20: 19-22
Hope
When the explorer Shackleton was on his quest for the South Pole in 1914-15, his ship the Endeavor was trapped in ice and he was compelled to leave some of his men on Elephant Island. As his ship was crushed and sinking he knew he had to try to find help. He promised that he would return for them. He took the best boat they had, strengthened it with materials salvaged from the ship Endeavor, and went on a 500 mile journey to find help at a base station further north. But when he tried to get back, he found a sea of ice between him and the island.
What should he do? He had promised, and he felt he had to keep his word. He tried to reach them, but failed. He tried again and again, but without success. Beyond the ice were his trusting companions, who had every confidence in him. They had only a few supplies with them. At that time of the year it seemed stupid to hope for any favorable change in the weather, and he was told that there was absolutely no hope of getting his little boat through the great ice barrier to Elephant Island.
He could not stop trying. He must reach his men; so at the risk of losing his boat and the lives of his crew, he pushed in nearer to the island; and unexpectedly there came an opening in the ice. He hurried in, rescued his men, and in an hour was back again with all on board. Had they been delayed only a few minutes, their frail vessel would have been destroyed by the crashing of the ice as it closed in.
When they were sure they were beyond danger and the nervous tension was over, Shackleton said to one of the rescued companions, "Well, you were packed and ready, weren't you?" "Yes," came back the reply, "we never lost hope. We believed you would come for us, even though circumstances were unfavorable. You had promised, and we expected you; so each morning we rolled up our sleeping bags and packed all our equipment, that we might be ready." And now they were all safe and homeward bound, happy that they had been prepared daily.
Before Jesus departed from this world, He left a definite promise in John 14:1-4. The Lord does not go back on his promises.
Hope. Webster’s dictionary defines hope as “the feeling that what is desired is also possible, or that events may turn out for the best; to look forward to with desire and with reasonable confidence.”
When Jesus was crucified, the disciples were completely without hope. They felt the last 3 years had been for nothing, and they were afraid. Even after Peter and John had looked into the empty tomb, and saw for themselves what Mary Magdalene had said about the tomb being empty, they still did not understand that Jesus had risen. They went back to their homes. Then Mary saw Jesus in the garden, and went to the disciples and told them about it but still they were so afraid they stayed locked away together. They had no reasonable confidence. Jesus had to appear to them directly in that locked room, before they understood and before their hope was restored. That the disciples saw happen on that day we know as Good Friday was a terrible thing, so terrible it would leave anyone who saw it without hope. They were crushed. Their hopes for a bright future for the Israelites were crushed.
The God we know in Scripture is a God deeply, personally, involved in our lives. A God who feels deeply the loss of every life, and the suffering of a nation. "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed," says the Lord. "I mourn, and horror grips me." There was nothing “good” about Good Friday. Not for the disciples, not for Jesus, not for God. It was not something our loving God wanted to happen to his Son.
The message of our Christian heritage is hope within redemption. Yes there's good, and yes,
there's evil; but good is never pure, and evil is never irredeemable. So the gospel offers us hope, a reason to believe with confidence. Neither earthly good nor evil is absolute. And the thrust of history is toward the heavenly good, toward the will of God. But we arrive there not by perfection, but by a continual process of healing, of death and resurrection, of conversion.
For Christians, the central hope of our faith remains the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Christ's death was at the hands of both human good and human evil. In the hindsight of history, we look back on the events between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the crucifixion as culmination of evil. However, most everyone who helped get Jesus hung on the cross thought they were doing it for a good reason. Rome wasn't bad as Empires go. They were pretty tolerant. But it couldn't tolerate a person like Jesus—especially the local officials who were afraid he might start an uprising when the city was full of Jews wanting out from under the Romans. Judas thought he was doing the right thing by identifying Jesus to the guards who came in the night. When he realized what he had done, he committed suicide in remorse. The High Priest Caiaphas had good reasons for believing it was better for one man to die for the sake of many and maintaining the peace. Pontius Pilate thought he had made a good decision by giving the Priests and people a choice. But that didn't make him right. Jesus' disciples were frightened for their lives. That didn't justify their cowardice. Humanity couldn't tolerate God in human form, so we killed him. It was a terrible evil.
But God redeemed that evil act by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus asked for forgiveness for those who put him on the cross, and God extended forgiveness to Jesus' murderers by raising Jesus from the dead. God offers hope for humanity in raising Jesus from the dead.
This is not good defeating evil. It is God taking evil and transforming it into good. We too, as Christians, have an obligation to work to transform evil into good. Each of us is called as a Christian to do what we can to counter the bad things that happen around us. We are called on to carry God’s love to others, not just through our gifts in the offering plate, and not just to our friends or people we know and like. We are called upon to give and to forgive, as Jesus gave and forgave.
Sometimes what we can do may seem very small and unimportant in the larger scheme of things, but we never know just how important a little act of kindness may be, how some small thing we do might bring hope to someone else.
In 1994, daily the city of Sarajevo was under siege. Mortars and artillery fire instantly transformed once beautiful buildings into rubble. Sarajevo's citizens were frightened, weary and increasingly despondent. Then, one February day, a mortar shell exploded in the market killing 68 civilians. Many more were wounded and maimed from the blast.
A cellist with the Sarajevo symphony could no longer stand the killing. He took his cello to the market, sat down amidst the rubble and played a concert. When he finished, he simply took up his instrument and left.
Every day, for 67 days, until the shelling stopped, he came to the market. Every day he played a concert. It was his gift of love to the city. He did it because he felt his community needed hope.
Because of the hope given us by the Resurrection, we are called upon to give others hope. We are called upon to play music in the midst of turmoil, draw a cross in the dirt, wipe the tears of a stranger. Jesus said, “As you have done it to the least of these……….”
Hope is music in the heart. It is a gift given to each of us to see us through the night. Once you have lost hope, you have nothing left to lose. Utter hopelessness kills everything it touches. But hope gives us strength to continue, whether it be a marriage that is worth saving, a life that is worth living or a situation that is worth salvaging.
In the end, hope is a spiritual thing. When all is in chaos and ruin, hope is the knowledge that the music still goes on. In this vast and infinite universe, we are not alone. There is a God, and he loves us. He loves us so much he gave his only begotten Son.
During those times when all may seem to be crumbling down around you, can you hear the music in your heart -- the song of hope? Listen carefully. It is there, playing for you. Amen
1 Peter 1: 3
John 14:1-4, John 20: 19-22
Hope
When the explorer Shackleton was on his quest for the South Pole in 1914-15, his ship the Endeavor was trapped in ice and he was compelled to leave some of his men on Elephant Island. As his ship was crushed and sinking he knew he had to try to find help. He promised that he would return for them. He took the best boat they had, strengthened it with materials salvaged from the ship Endeavor, and went on a 500 mile journey to find help at a base station further north. But when he tried to get back, he found a sea of ice between him and the island.
What should he do? He had promised, and he felt he had to keep his word. He tried to reach them, but failed. He tried again and again, but without success. Beyond the ice were his trusting companions, who had every confidence in him. They had only a few supplies with them. At that time of the year it seemed stupid to hope for any favorable change in the weather, and he was told that there was absolutely no hope of getting his little boat through the great ice barrier to Elephant Island.
He could not stop trying. He must reach his men; so at the risk of losing his boat and the lives of his crew, he pushed in nearer to the island; and unexpectedly there came an opening in the ice. He hurried in, rescued his men, and in an hour was back again with all on board. Had they been delayed only a few minutes, their frail vessel would have been destroyed by the crashing of the ice as it closed in.
When they were sure they were beyond danger and the nervous tension was over, Shackleton said to one of the rescued companions, "Well, you were packed and ready, weren't you?" "Yes," came back the reply, "we never lost hope. We believed you would come for us, even though circumstances were unfavorable. You had promised, and we expected you; so each morning we rolled up our sleeping bags and packed all our equipment, that we might be ready." And now they were all safe and homeward bound, happy that they had been prepared daily.
Before Jesus departed from this world, He left a definite promise in John 14:1-4. The Lord does not go back on his promises.
Hope. Webster’s dictionary defines hope as “the feeling that what is desired is also possible, or that events may turn out for the best; to look forward to with desire and with reasonable confidence.”
When Jesus was crucified, the disciples were completely without hope. They felt the last 3 years had been for nothing, and they were afraid. Even after Peter and John had looked into the empty tomb, and saw for themselves what Mary Magdalene had said about the tomb being empty, they still did not understand that Jesus had risen. They went back to their homes. Then Mary saw Jesus in the garden, and went to the disciples and told them about it but still they were so afraid they stayed locked away together. They had no reasonable confidence. Jesus had to appear to them directly in that locked room, before they understood and before their hope was restored. That the disciples saw happen on that day we know as Good Friday was a terrible thing, so terrible it would leave anyone who saw it without hope. They were crushed. Their hopes for a bright future for the Israelites were crushed.
The God we know in Scripture is a God deeply, personally, involved in our lives. A God who feels deeply the loss of every life, and the suffering of a nation. "Since my people are crushed, I am crushed," says the Lord. "I mourn, and horror grips me." There was nothing “good” about Good Friday. Not for the disciples, not for Jesus, not for God. It was not something our loving God wanted to happen to his Son.
The message of our Christian heritage is hope within redemption. Yes there's good, and yes,
there's evil; but good is never pure, and evil is never irredeemable. So the gospel offers us hope, a reason to believe with confidence. Neither earthly good nor evil is absolute. And the thrust of history is toward the heavenly good, toward the will of God. But we arrive there not by perfection, but by a continual process of healing, of death and resurrection, of conversion.
For Christians, the central hope of our faith remains the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Christ's death was at the hands of both human good and human evil. In the hindsight of history, we look back on the events between Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the crucifixion as culmination of evil. However, most everyone who helped get Jesus hung on the cross thought they were doing it for a good reason. Rome wasn't bad as Empires go. They were pretty tolerant. But it couldn't tolerate a person like Jesus—especially the local officials who were afraid he might start an uprising when the city was full of Jews wanting out from under the Romans. Judas thought he was doing the right thing by identifying Jesus to the guards who came in the night. When he realized what he had done, he committed suicide in remorse. The High Priest Caiaphas had good reasons for believing it was better for one man to die for the sake of many and maintaining the peace. Pontius Pilate thought he had made a good decision by giving the Priests and people a choice. But that didn't make him right. Jesus' disciples were frightened for their lives. That didn't justify their cowardice. Humanity couldn't tolerate God in human form, so we killed him. It was a terrible evil.
But God redeemed that evil act by raising Jesus from the dead. Jesus asked for forgiveness for those who put him on the cross, and God extended forgiveness to Jesus' murderers by raising Jesus from the dead. God offers hope for humanity in raising Jesus from the dead.
This is not good defeating evil. It is God taking evil and transforming it into good. We too, as Christians, have an obligation to work to transform evil into good. Each of us is called as a Christian to do what we can to counter the bad things that happen around us. We are called on to carry God’s love to others, not just through our gifts in the offering plate, and not just to our friends or people we know and like. We are called upon to give and to forgive, as Jesus gave and forgave.
Sometimes what we can do may seem very small and unimportant in the larger scheme of things, but we never know just how important a little act of kindness may be, how some small thing we do might bring hope to someone else.
In 1994, daily the city of Sarajevo was under siege. Mortars and artillery fire instantly transformed once beautiful buildings into rubble. Sarajevo's citizens were frightened, weary and increasingly despondent. Then, one February day, a mortar shell exploded in the market killing 68 civilians. Many more were wounded and maimed from the blast.
A cellist with the Sarajevo symphony could no longer stand the killing. He took his cello to the market, sat down amidst the rubble and played a concert. When he finished, he simply took up his instrument and left.
Every day, for 67 days, until the shelling stopped, he came to the market. Every day he played a concert. It was his gift of love to the city. He did it because he felt his community needed hope.
Because of the hope given us by the Resurrection, we are called upon to give others hope. We are called upon to play music in the midst of turmoil, draw a cross in the dirt, wipe the tears of a stranger. Jesus said, “As you have done it to the least of these……….”
Hope is music in the heart. It is a gift given to each of us to see us through the night. Once you have lost hope, you have nothing left to lose. Utter hopelessness kills everything it touches. But hope gives us strength to continue, whether it be a marriage that is worth saving, a life that is worth living or a situation that is worth salvaging.
In the end, hope is a spiritual thing. When all is in chaos and ruin, hope is the knowledge that the music still goes on. In this vast and infinite universe, we are not alone. There is a God, and he loves us. He loves us so much he gave his only begotten Son.
During those times when all may seem to be crumbling down around you, can you hear the music in your heart -- the song of hope? Listen carefully. It is there, playing for you. Amen
Aromas
Leviticus 2: 4-9
2 Corinthians 2:14-16
Matthew 26: 1-13
Aromas
Have you ever been assaulted by a smell? Long time ago, in New Jersey on a dock as friends and I prepared to go fishing for blue fish out off the coast, I saw a sign that said, “Old fishermen never die. They just smell that way.”
Now I do not have a sense of odor. Almost none. I lost it working with formalin in a biology lab as one of my jobs to pay my way through college. But I do remember that walking down the street, creeping out of a vent in the sidewalk; or strolling along the mid-way of a carnival or fair, wafting its way from a kiosk - sometimes an odor will "hit you". Sometimes that odor will even thrust your psyche back into another time and place.
Maybe it's the sweet smell of caramel apples. Maybe it's the pungent punch of garlic and onion. Maybe it's moldy and murky smell of a basement. Maybe it's the sea-weedy smell of the beach.
Whatever the odor, it is officious - meaning, it is "large and in charge." It teleports you back to a particular place and a particular time. I suspect each of you has memory smells. Our sense of smell is the physical sense most associated with memory. Smells, more than sounds, more than sights, more than touches, transport our minds and bodies back in time to an imprinted memory. Rising yeast might bring you back to your grandmother's kitchen. A wet sock smell brings you back to the locker room-or to the terror of the day you fell in a frozen creek up to your waist and almost froze. Roasting chicken smells like every Sunday dinner. Gasoline chokes you with memories of a car crash. Nothing evokes strong emotions, strong memories, strong longings, like the sense of smell. It is a powerful communicator to our inner being.
In the days of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, burnt offerings were the norm - small birds, little lambs, calves, great grains - all were sacrificed and burned. Burnt sacrifice was offered to appease God's righteous anger over the sins and transgressions the people of Israel had committed. In fact, burnt sacrifices were commonplace in several cultures during the time of Jesus. The Romans offered burnt sacrifices to their gods, especially when a Roman General came home to Rome after a great victory.
Jesus’ world was full of strong odors. Cooking was often done out in the open, over wood fires. There were no sanitary sewers in the towns he walked through. At the time of Jesus, the bathroom in most homes was a dung hill at the back of the house and even though they did not know what germs were or how it worked salt was used on the pile as a disinfectant to stop infection from spreading. There were no garbage men to make regular rounds. Garbage often simply rotted in heaps on the outskirts, or was burned with trash. Incense was burned in homes and meeting places, to help overpower the odor of unwashed people and all the other smells that surrounded the places. It must have been wonderful to Jesus to walk in the open countryside with a clean breeze between visits to the towns and villages.
Jesus also encountered strong odors among the people with whom he spent much time. Not just because even people who were well off didn’t wash as much as we do now—Jesus spent time with those who had even less access for personal hygiene. He also encountered awful odors in his ministry. There was the odor of rotting flesh from the lepers he met and healed. And there was the odor of his friend Lazarus who had been dead for four days by the time he arrived. We read in the Gospel of John 11, “…He was warned not to open the tomb because it would stink.” But he opened the tomb anyway.
Incense and perfumes, such as Mary used that day to anoint Jesus, were valued, and the perfume she used was especially valued. Not the way we use it today, but to mask odors. However, good perfumes were hard to get then.
So it is no wonder scriptures speak of odors so much, and how they refer to sin as a stench in God’s nostrils. The rank odors were common place, but no matter how common they were, they would have been repulsive. The writers of the scriptures wanted their readers to see sin, while common, as just as repulsive as the most awful smelling garbage that could be experienced. Scripture also likened sin and injustice to the stench of death. When sin dominates our lives it creates a stench about us that’s hard to overlook. God hates sin because it corrupts people, and separates us from him. It eventually destroys us. Because of that he has no intention of rewarding us for bad behavior.
A lot of people make the mistake of trying to cover up that smell, by doing good deeds, being kind to strangers, giving lots of money to good causes. They convince themselves that the fragrance of their good behavior will cover up the smell of their past. But they’re kidding themselves. That becomes hypocrisy, which Jesus considered the most repugnant smell of all.
On the other hand, service to God was said to be a sweet smell. Sacrificial giving of time and resources and self and a willingness to take risks, even risks to one’s life, to spread the Gospel was the counter to sin. It still is.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians in chapter 4:18 says, "But I have all, and abound: I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God." Those churches had supported him generously in his mission ministry, and he was referring to their gifts and service to him, given out of love of God.
There is an odor to a spirit of love. The Lord looks at the thoughts and intents of the heart. The Lord looks at what motivates what we do. What we do is not half as important as what motivates us to do it. Our hearts, our attitudes, are what the Lord is looking to.
Jesus called upon his followers, and us, to be the salt of the earth. He wasn’t just thinking about what salt does for food. We are to help disinfect the world of sin, and give our surroundings. Similarly, the Church today is to be the antidote to the evil and depravity rampant in society.
When we serve God whole heartedly, because we love him with all our heart and mind and strength and soul, scripture says we will have the fragrance of Jesus. May your aroma bring God closer to those you meet this week.
Amen
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