Our calling INTO the Tumult.

Matthew 14:22-33 (NIV)

(22) Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd.

(23) After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. When evening came, he was there alone,

(24) but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

(25) During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake.

(26) When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

(27) But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

(28) “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

(29) “Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.

(30) But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

(31) Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

(32) And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down.

(33) Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

As is my custom, I always read over my sermon with Eimy the night before. I felt good about it last night, and I thought Eimy would too. At least I thought she would give me the benefit of the doubt. You see, yesterday Eimy celebrated a milestone. Seven years of marriage with me, and she hasn’t killed me yet. That is definitely longer than I had anticipated. I am not an easy person to live with. So I read through the sermon and looked at her and she was shaking her head, which is generally not a good sign. Too much, she says. It’s too risky. You are pointing out the 800 pound gorilla. Are you sure you want to do that? This is the first time I have gotten that reaction from her. Yet, I am going to try it. I am going to try it for a couple of reasons. This week has been a difficult week for me. There has been a lot going on in my mind. I have had some conversations with some people that made me think about things in a different light. I have been here for a little over a year now, and I really enjoy serving both Grace and St. Paul’s churches. I have learned a lot, I have made a lot of new friends, and I have really started to understand my calling in a way that makes it easier for me to grasp mentally. It is not an easy thing to understand a calling from God. It is not easy to make major changes to one’s life and the lives of one’s family based on a call that many times doesn’t feel concrete. No one gets a postcard from God saying here is what I want you to do. However, if understanding God’s call is difficult, acting upon it is sometimes near impossible, and that is what we are talking about today.

Any fan of literature will tell you how, throughout history, water has been used symbolically thousands of times. Across cultures, across languages, the use of water in stories has been used to mean a whole myriad of things. Generally, it symbolizes that which is difficult or dangerous. Indeed, it can be deadly. However, it has also been used to symbolize a major change of life, a rebirth, a symbol of changing one thing for another. It has also come to symbolize cleansing, literally cleansing that which is dirty, or figuratively cleansing a person, a spirit, a soul. In today’s story, each of these meanings can be seen.

Walking on the water. Jesus is walking on the water. This is a story that we have heard hundreds if not thousands of times throughout our life. It is one of the miracles that Jesus performs that we point out to non-believers. It is something we hold on to in our times of struggle, at those times when we feel our faith is weak. Our Lord walked across the water.

Many of you will remember the debate that came about a few years ago and to some extent still continues. The words, “under God” in our pledge of allegiance. We argued about whether this was an unfair or illegal imposition of religion into a secular, nonreligious America. Many may have heard some comment and defend “under God” as a phrase that didn’t refer to a Christian God or any other specific God but rather in a generic way. It is a reference to a God that one can make mean whatever they want it to mean. A recognition of a higher power. Now, I am not giving my own opinion about this particular debate, as my opinion is irrelevant today.

However, it brings up an interesting point. Do we understand God to be generic? If our God is generic, how can we recognize him? If you were to meet God on the street, would you recognize him? If you were to meet Jesus on the street, would you recognize him? If you could recognize him, how would you do that? Keep in mind that we really don’t know what Jesus actually looked like. The portraits that we have of him were painted hundreds of years after his death. While the artists’ intentions were good, their facts were not always that concrete. Most of our portraits show a European looking white male. There is one thing we do know about Jesus. He was NOT a European white male. So what we know about what Christ looked like is guided by what we know he DIDN’T look like. We don’t know what he DID look like.

Our scripture today tells of Jesus’ own disciples not recognizing him. They are afraid. Wouldn’t you be? They are in a boat, wind against them, driving far out to sea. At early dawn, they see a terrifying sight. A figure walking towards them on the sea!!!!! “It’s a ghost!” they exclaim. But then the figure speaks to them. “Take heart, it is I, don’t be afraid.” Yet, even then, they still weren’t sure that it was Jesus.

We know the rest of the story. Peter asks Jesus to command him out on the water as well. He does, Peter starts to walk and as long as his eyes are kept on Jesus, he is fine. However, the moment he realizes what he is doing, he begins to sink and Jesus must save him.

There is an old hymn many of you know by heart. It starts out, “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me.” Jesus calls the disciples a lot. We start this great gospel story with him calling a group of very ordinary people to drop their fishing nets, to leave their families, to venture forth with him on a perilous sea called discipleship. “I will teach you to catch people,” he says. As the journey continues, we realize, he is now saying, “I am going to teach you to carry a cross.”

Jesus is calling the disciples and us in many ways. There is another old hymn that you know as well that says, “Jesus calls us o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea, in our joys and in our sorrows, ‘Christian come and follow me.”

But in today’s story, Jesus isn’t simply calling us over the tumult. He isn’t calling us out of the tumult. Today, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus calls Peter out of the boat and onto the waves. Jesus is calling him, and us, INTO the tumult.

We, as a people, have trouble with this. Not just us, but we, as a religion, have trouble with this. We journey about on our boats, thinking that we are on this journey that Christ has called us to. But then, the waves start getting rough. The wind starts howling around us. Sometimes, the boat is rocking, but the weather is still ok. We have a problem with rocking boats.

Years ago, when my mother was in high school, she enjoyed acting in the musicals that they would put on each year. One year the musical that they did was Guys and Dolls. There is a song in that play that no doubt is also familiar to many of you. “I dreamed last night I was on a boat to heaven.” The song goes on and there are some problems on the boat. But it’s ok, because the passengers know right from wrong. Each time the dreamer tried to make the passengers do something wrong, they warned him, “Sit Down, you’re rockin’ the boat!”

We don’t like rocking boats. We don’t like our own little world to be clouded with things that make us feel uneasy. Our intentions are good. After all, we are Christians, and since we are Christians, we know what God thinks. We know what God wants us to do. We know how to keep the boat from rocking.

But, in doing that, we miss something miraculous. When Peter was sinking, he called Jesus to save him. Jesus did, and helped him back into the boat. He stilled the wind and the waves. But think about it, if Peter had not ventured forth, had he not obeyed the call to walk on the water, then he never would have had the great opportunity to recognize the miraculous ability of Jesus and he never would have had the opportunity to be pulled from the raging waves and saved by Jesus.

So many of us, too many of us, simply splash around in the safe shallows of our faith and because of that we have too few opportunities to test and deepen our faith. In today’s story we learn that if we want to be close to Jesus, we have to venture forth out on the sea, we have to prove his promises through trusting his promises, through risk and venture.

Let’s be honest for a moment. What is at the root of this story? One thing in particular. That thing is fear. Fear is the thing that rocks the boat. Fear is the thing that makes us think twice about asking Jesus to call us out of the boat onto the water. Fear is what holds us back in answering the call to come to Him. And fear is something that each and every one of us deals with daily, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. More than that, fear is something that this church, and every church struggles with every single day. We don’t talk about it openly. We feel we can’t talk about it openly because doing so forces us to put a name to that fear. Putting a name to that fear can open us up to criticism, to danger, to failure, to judgment. We have a hard time doing that.

We talk so much about the needs around us in this church and in this city. We discuss ways that we can act as individuals or as a church to counter some negative forces in our culture or in our community. Sometimes we attempt some of these things, and sometimes we don’t. It is all because of fear. We want to stay in the shallow water because if Jesus asks us to get out of the boat, at least we will only our legs wet, we won’t drown. Our faith is not deep enough to answer that call yet.

Let’s be specific. Let’s be specific not just to Grace or St. Paul’s, but let’s be specific to the USA, or to Pennsylvania, or to York. What are our fears? A few come to mind.

1)            Racism – We are afraid of people who don’t have the same color of skin as we do. We don’t say this out loud because it isn’t politically correct. But, let us admit it, we are afraid to interact with people whose skin tone is different than our own. We see it in how we are afraid to sit outside on the stoop of the church and greet passersby. We see it in how we are afraid to walk down the street and invite our neighbors to church. We might say it is because they might say no. And they might. But I posit the real fear that we have is that they might say yes. The fear is not fear of rejection, but rather the fear is a fear of acceptance. If they come to worship with us, we have to sit with them. That makes us uncomfortable, because they are different.

2)            Fear of the foreigners – We are afraid of those who come from different lands. We talk constantly about how we live in a free country. We are proud of this free country. We are proud of those who have fought to keep it a free country. We are proud that people around the world risk their lives to come here and live freely like us. Yet, when they come here, we ostracize them. We move to neighborhoods where we are less likely to have them as neighbors. We complain that they speak a different language. We complain that they listen to music that we can’t dance to. We speak the language of acceptance, but we live the lives of rejection. We fear that if too many more people come our society will change. We justify this fear by saying that it isn’t the people we dislike, it is that they want to change how we do things. But, let’s be honest, the reality is, we don’t want anyone telling us that we need to change. We don’t want any influences in our life, in our society, in our culture, that we don’t have any control over.

3)            Fear of different ideas – We fear those who disagree with us. When I was growing up, and no doubt it is the same for many of you. We had neighbors who might not have agreed with us politically. Maybe they put a banner up in their yard for a politician we were not going to vote for. What happened, they voted for their guy, we voted for ours, and we continued to be neighbors. Helping each other out, loaning a cup of sugar when one was needed, watering their flowers if they were out of town. Nowadays, I get the feeling that if my neighbor disagrees with me politically, he considers me an enemy. Look at the debates lately about national politics, or even state politics. With a proposed tax on companies that want to drill for natural gas, or with an inability for those we elect to put our society first and come to a decision and instead to try to make a point with a debate on a debt ceiling at the cost of an entire economy. A mentality of you are either my friend or my foe, there is no in between. If I am a Republican and you are a Democrat, we can’t be friends. How did we get to this?

These are just a few of the fears that we have that we don’t talk about. Well, today, we are talking about them. We are talking about them because we need to talk about them. It is about time that we stand up, take our feet and walk out of the boat, onto the waves and trust that our faith is deep enough and strong enough to hold us above the water. We know that, with our eyes on the living Christ, the one right next to us, we will not sink. And we know that, if and when we do start to worry, start to fear, and start to sink, all we need to do is yell out, “Jesus, Save Me!” and he will be right there, at our side, pulling us up from the deep, so once again we can stand eye to eye with Him and with each other. Because until we can do that, until we can have a faith that is strong enough to stop hating each other, we can’t answer that call.

Even more than that, until we have a faith strong enough that we can start really loving each other, we can’t answer the call.

"You give them something to eat!

This is the sermon that I delivered on July 31, 2011. The scripture is printed first for reference.

Matthew 14: 13-21 (NIV)

(13) When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns.

(14) When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

(15) As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it is already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

(16) Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

(17) “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

(18) “Bring them here to me,” he said.

(19) And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people.

(20) They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

(21) The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

                Just out of seminary, a young man became the pastor of a small rural church. Nervous on his first Sunday, he began his sermon by saying, “I will teach from the passage where, Jesus, with five thousand loaves and two thousand fish, feeds five people.” In general, the congregation managed to keep from laughing out loud. But one man couldn’t contain himself and let out a huge guffaw, and then continued to snicker throughout the sermon. The next week the pastor hoped to make a better impression, so he decided to preach a similar message from the same passage. “This morning I have a similar message as last week,” he said. “I am using the story where Jesus, with five loaves and two fish feeds five thousand people.” The pastor looked confidently at the man who had laughed so much the week before. “Now, sir, could you have done that?” he asked. “Why sure,” the man answered, “if I had what was left over from last week.”

                This week’s Gospel lesson is one of the most widely known miracles that Christ performs. In fact, if you look at the bible, it might be the most important. Not that the other miracles aren’t important, but they are only mentioned once, or maybe twice. But this story is mentioned in each of the gospels. It is that important! Because it is so important there has been a lot of analysis done over the years on this passage. As I prepared for the service this week I did a lot of reading, more so than usual. There are lots of themes that present themselves in these few lines of scripture. We have miracles. We have faith. We have trust. We have love. We have compassion. We have charity. We have hope. We have need. We have sadness. We have a need for prayer. We have people interrupting us when we need to be alone. I could go on and on, for there are many more themes as well.

                This morning, though, I want to take a slightly different angle in approaching this story. Today, let’s start off with something different. Let’s start off with a myth. A myth that has ramifications in this story and in our lives. A myth that has ramifications in how we look at the world, how we live in a community, and how we practice our faith, or sometimes our lack of faith. Let’s start off with the myth of scarcity.

                I read about the experience of one pastor who lived and worked in Manhattan. His wife, however lived in Western North Carolina and they would visit each other frequently. On one trip, the pastor realized he needed a battery for his camera, so he borrowed his wife’s car and headed to Wal-Mart. Now, it needs to be said that by law, no Wal-Mart can be opened in New York City. So, this pastor didn’t have a lot of experience in one. He entered the store and started to head back to electronics when he noticed cases of Coca-Cola on sale for a price that was unbelievable for this New Yorker. So he got a cart and grabbed a whole bunch of cases. He continued back towards electronics, but again before he got there he discovered paper towels that were also at an unbelievable price, so he got some of those as well. By the time he left, he had almost filled his wife’s small station wagon. When he got home, his wife came out to greet him and saw the car. She walked around looking in all the windows and slowly turned to him and said, “And we don’t need any of it!”

                This isn’t that hard to believe for us, because not living in New York, we experience this all the time. I have to wonder what my grandfather or grandmother would think walking into a Wal-Mart today. They both died before Wal-Mart came anywhere near my hometown. They did their shopping at the local grocery store. The store was small compared to Wal-Mart but still big compared to what they must have seen growing up in the 1920’s and 30’s in the heat of the depression. Anyone who lived through that must be able to tell us first-hand how much abundance there is around us today. It is staggering.

                Think about it. We live in abundance, so much abundance we often don’t know where to put it all. We first fill the closets and the attic and the basement and the garage and then we go across town and rent some space to store our stuff. The reality is that in the midst of all of this abundance of stuff, we have a mentality of scarcity. We think we need a little more. We are yearning to buy, if the price is right. Imagine our present day culture in any historical perspective. We have more possessions that any culture in the history of the world. We think of ourselves and our own personal value in terms of how much stuff we have. Yet our basic way of seeing the world is by virtue of scarcity. And if we are honest, almost no one of us is free of that yearning to have a little bit more. We don’t want to be accused of being greedy. We simply don’t quite have enough yet. Maybe other people do, we say to ourselves, but I don’t. I need just a little bit more.

                A reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller how much is enough? Rockefeller responded, “Just a little more than I have.” But if our primary motivating factor is a sense of scarcity, it is hard to be grateful. A genuine sense of prayerful gratitude for our abundance has lost its base in our ceaseless passion to perpetuate our myth of scarcity.

                We see this sense of scarcity in the lesson this morning. The disciples are anxious about the apparent scarcity of food. They nervously ask Jesus what to do. He says, “How much do we have?” You know the rest; a boy is found who has five loaves and two fish. Jesus gave thanks for the little but they had, and in that moment of gratitude, there was enough for everyone. The central theme here is gratitude. Gratitude is also central in the story of the woman who poured the expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet. The story of the ten lepers being cured and only one returning to give thanks.

                Many of us grew up in families where we were taught to always say thank you. We were taught to keep that expression central in our relationships with others. But now, hundreds of times a day on television, billboards, magazines, etc, we are beckoned to want more. We are reminded that the world is a place of scarcity, not abundance. This sabotages gratitude so we can rarely stop to rejoice in God’s abundance but rather we press on with the myth of scarcity.

So we have this myth of scarcity. I label this a myth, because what is really around us is abundance. Extravagant abundance. The lesson this morning speaks to this in lots of ways.

Anyone who has ever been to a wedding will know that in the service, the bride and the groom must vow to love one another in sickness and in health, in riches and in poverty, for better or for worse. In other words, they promise to love one another with everything they’ve got. To hold nothing back.

They promise to love with extravagance, without limits. The church says to love with unbridled enthusiasm. Love is a renewable resource. In giving you receive, when it comes to love.

Love is a spendthrift; it isn’t very good at math. It definitely couldn’t balance a budget, at least not when the love is true.

Jesus has been doing a lot of good. But he is tired now; he needs to be alone for a while. He has just learned of the horrible death of his cousin, John the Baptist. He needs some alone time. But, he is not about to get any. Many of us would be past our ability to be courteous in this situation. But Jesus is more than that, he somehow summons up compassion.

He begins healing and talking and then we hear of the miracle of the multiplication of the food. Scarcity in the face of great need is contrasted with the gracious, extravagant abundance that is offered at the hand of Jesus. Everyone doesn’t just eat, they are filled and there is more food left over than there was at the beginning. Extravagant abundance.

There is extravagant abundance all around us. Creation itself. Mankind, the rich diversity of races, the diversity of sizes and shapes, sounds and senses. Our God does everything in abundance, from creation, to loving, to accepting us even with our faults.

So we see now that even in our mentality of scarcity, the reality is one or abundance, even when we can’t see it.

The final point I want to make today is by far the most important.  Have you ever been hungry? I don’t mean it’s two in the afternoon and you haven’t had lunch yet hungry. I mean hungry hungry. Hungry like you haven’t eaten in three days or more. Your stomach aches in pain. You can barely stand up because of the pain and the lack of energy. I mean hungry, hungry. I have never been that hungry and I hope that none of you have been that hungry, but that kind of hunger is a reality for the vast majority of people on the planet.

Years ago there was a major famine in southern Sudan and Ethiopia. Interestingly, there is another major famine occurring there right now. Yet in the last famine many might remember a congressman from Ohio, Tony Hall warning that a million people were in the grip of a life threatening famine. In the same newscast, Dan Rather was reporting another record high on the Dow Jones as the American economy continued its record flight into increasing prosperity.

In the midst of this incongruous clash of famine and fortune in the space of a few minutes on the news, the words from today’s reading would penetrate the soul…”You give them something to eat!”

It sounds nice, but let’s be realistic, what can we do? What can I do? The problem is so big and I am so small. Even if I could help, it wouldn’t even make a dent in the problem. Well, let me tell you a story. Former president Jimmy Carter tells of a change in his church in 1976. Two families left. One family went to the white house. The other family was assigned to be missionaries in Africa.

Jerome Ethridge was an agronomist. He was not a preacher, knew no foreign language, and had no religious education except as a member and deacon at church. He and his wife were given rudimentary training as missionary recruits. There were sent to France to learn the language. Then they were assigned to Sokode, Togo. They ran a Christian library and taught languages to the young people who came by for books. Hundreds learned to read and write, but there was little chance for Jerome to use his agricultural skills or to be an effective witness for Christ.

When the opportunity arose, they were able to go to a much smaller and more isolated village named Moretan, in East Mono, a region of Togo. There, among people who mostly worshipped nature or crafted idols, the Ethridges assessed how they might meet urgent human needs. The greatest need was for drinking water, which was plentiful only during the rainy season. At other times, the women had to walk as far as sixteen miles each day to get water. With diesel well-drilling equipment furnished by some North Carolina Baptists and the help of local villagers, Jerome drilled 167 wells, 130 of them successful and capped with hand pumps. Over a period of eight years, every village within 80 miles of Moretan received a working well.

Next, with a leased bulldozer, Jerome constructed twenty-one deep ponds that hold the seasonal rainwater throughout the year. He stocked the ponds with tilapia, a fast-growing fish that provides a much-needed source of protein for the villagers. During these years, he also used his agronomy skills to help the people increase greatly their production of food, crops, forage for livestock, and trees that provided wood for cooking and home construction. Joann works with families on health and education projects, helped build a pharmacy, and provides transportation to a distant hospital for those too ill to be treated locally.

Finally, Jerome was ready to undertake a long-postponed task, to correct a problem that had always afflicted all of East Mono. For four months each year, rain changed the Mono River into an impassable barrier, isolating the area from the rest of Togo. Using cement furnished by his North Carolina friends, he and local volunteers built a bridge. When Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter visited the Ethridges, they were amazed to see the 230-foot concrete span across the stream.

Much like Moses, Jerome Ethridge has modest skills as an orator, and he doesn’t claim to be an expert on religious or theological subjects. He and his wife have just tried to serve the needy people around them, all without publicity or fanfare, and always in the name of Christ.

In addition to providing a better life for many people, what have the Ethridges accomplished in a religious sense? There are now 5,000 active members in 81 congregations in East Mono, each served by a local pastor. This is vivid proof of what just two people can do, inspired by faith in Christ and willing, like their Savior, to be humble servants.

They used what they had and God multiplied their offerings.  But there are three things we can learn from this story and the gospel reading.

1.       Compassion draws the hurting. One of Jesus hallmarks is compassion. This compassion draws the crowds to Jesus.  We are commanded to be compassionate too. In 3 Colossians we read, “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. Outreach and evangelism begin with compassion. Compassion opens doors that were closed by criticism and condemnation. Compassion is also the glue that holds churches together. As the old hymn, Blest Be the Tie that Binds says, “We share each other’s woes, Each other’s burdens bear, And often for each other flows, the sympathizing tear.” In a world rife with brokenness and sorrow, compassion is one of the most powerful healing forces the Christian community has. When we are compassionate we hear the words, “You give them something to eat.”

2.       We are agents of God’s compassion. The disciples often waited for Jesus to take the lead in compassion. Members of churches often wait for the pastor to take the lead in compassion. Churches often wait for the denomination to take the lead in compassion. Young folks often wait for the adults to take the lead in compassion. Men often wait for women… But Jesus says, “You, Grace or ST. Paul’s, you give them something to eat.” The followers of Christ’s compassion learned it by seeing it. Though he taught them that God is a compassionate God, seeing compassion in action made it come alive. We must teach our children about Christ, about the church, about the word of God. But it is crucial that they learn compassion by seeing it in action in the fellowship of faith. Maybe our experience isn’t that great and we feel we don’t know how to teach our children this. Maybe we feel we can’t give much in that way. And maybe we don’t have much to give in that way. But it is amazing what God can do with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. That brings us to the most important lesson of all.

3.       God will make us equal to the task. It doesn’t matter how much you have!!!!! What matters most of all is what God can do with what you have!!!

You have likely heard the term compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue happens when we see so much pain and anguish our hearts begin to grow accustomed to the daily sight of misery in the newspapers and on television. If we allow it to continue to penetrate our feelings, we would be overwhelmed. Compassion fatigue is a defense mechanism of our inner self to protect us from becoming paralyzed by the horror around us.

So we get used to it. It doesn’t strike home as much. And besides… “I’m just one person. What can I possibly do in the light of such overwhelming need?” Or in terms of our gospel lesson, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.”

One of the central propositions in our reading is that God can take our “not enough” and turn it into “more than enough.” Amazing things can happen when we see with eyes of compassion and make ourselves available to God as agents of compassion. And remember – Jesus never asks us to do anything he is not able to give us strength to do.

Somewhere in your experience this week, you will see a person or a situation where compassion is needed. If you are open to it, you will know in your Spirit that God needs and agent of compassion. And when you begin to wonder what can be done for this person, or in this situation, and the words will then come to you: “You give them something to eat.”

This sermon was taken from a variety of sources mixed in with some of my own thoughts. I read a number of other’s thoughts on this topic and would like to thank Dan Matthews for his thoughts on scarcity in God’s abundance. I would also like to thank Bishop William Willimon for his thoughts on extravagance. In addition, the story from President Jimmy Carter came from one of his books, entitled, Sources of Strength.

Houston! We have a problem!

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Houston! We have a problem!

The wheat will be separated from the weeds! The weeds will be thrown into the fire at the harvest where they will burn. In the fire there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth!

THE WHEAT WILL BE SEPARATED FROM THE WEEDS! THE WEEDS WILL BE THROWN INTO THE FIRE AT THE HARVEST WHERE THEY WILL BURN. IN THE FIRE THERE WILL BE WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH!

THE WHEAT WILL BE SEPARATED FROM THE WEEDS! THE WEEDS WILL BE THROWN INTO THE FIRE AT THE HARVEST WHERE THEY WILL BURN. IN THE FIRE THERE WILL BE WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A couple of weeks ago I was reminded that at least during the summer, coats and ties were not required here. Well, as you can tell I am wearing a coat and tie this morning. But, I wore them to make a point. I wore them in order to do justice to the fire and brimstone preaching that I just so poorly attempted. If it is now ok, I am going to take them off.

You see, I am not, nor will I ever be, a fire and brimstone preacher! I don’t believe in it. I am not saying that I don’t believe in heaven or in hell. But I don’t believe in fire and brimstone. I don’t believe that kind of preaching does anybody any good. I don’t believe it ever has. I don’t believe it ever will.

So how can we take a passage this clear and not talk of fire and brimstone? Well, as you read, you notice that once again, the disciples don’t get it. This allegory is not that complicating. Why can’t the disciples understand it. It is not like it is the first time that Jesus has used this type of parable to make a point. So why the lack of understanding? Maybe the point of having Jesus re-explaining the parable has more to do with re-examination than with re-explanation. Maybe Matthew is telling us that we need to step back and look at what is really being said. My opinion, the fire and brimstone has nothing to do with this parable. This is not a parable about separation of good and bad by God, but rather about separation of good and bad by us, even when done with the best intentions.

We, as a people, as a church, have a very bad habit of separating the perceived “good” from the “perceived” bad. Here is the problem, we believe we perceive as God perceives, and simply put, we can’t see like God. We don’t understand “good” and “bad” as God understands them. Yet, we keep thinking that we do.

The problem, therefore, lies with perception, not intention. We think we know what God thinks so well that we can’t see the forest for the trees.

Let me relate a little story that happened to me on my vacation that may help you understand this.

While on vacation, we decided to take a vacation. We spent the first week in Quito, but decided that we wanted to go to the beach. Therefore, we made plans to go to the seaside resort town of Tonsupo, just outside of the city of Esmeraldas, in the northwest of Ecuador. Now, this is only about a 40 minute flight or so, but it is also about a 5 hour drive. The reason the drive is so long is because Quito is at 10,000 feet, approximately, whereas the beach is, of course, at 0 feet. Therefore, there are a lot of winding roads to get there. Needless to say, there were a lot of nail-biting experiences on this trip. I am sure I will share some of them in future sermons, or privately if any one of you would like to share a near death experience you have had and we can compare notes. Today, however, I want to talk about the night before the trip.

We figured on going for just a couple of days, so as many could understand we had to fill the car to its absolute maximum level of overload. The best part of course was trying to get the suitcases tied to the top of the car. Now, we each have our preferred way of doing things, but when our preferred ways differ, insanity can ensue. What should have been a job that took twenty minutes tops, took about three hours. We thought we had it all taken care of, but then my mother-in-law came on the scene. Now, I love my mother-in-law, but even Eimy will agree when it comes to planning or organizing, nothing is right until it is done her way. This of course encourages an argument by all who disagree, which inevitably results in fighting, people walking away in frustration and finally, success after much consternation and questioning whether we should even be going on the trip or not.

So there we were, almost midnight, the night before the trip. The trip we were planning on getting up at 4am to go on. Finally the car was packed, we were exhausted, everything was ready to go. We had been through the trials, the arguments, the fighting. But finally, all was said and done. We were going to go to bed in order to get back up a few short hours later. Then came the sucker punch. The one you weren’t expecting. Out of nowhere, my brother-in-law blurts out, Houston! We have a problem!

Apparently we were so intent on making the bags up top fit the right way with the right balance and the right amount of tension on the bungee cords, that none of us had stopped to consider the height of the garage door versus the height of the bags. That is until my brother-in-law stepped back from the fray to notice the problem none of us could see. All of a sudden he realized, we couldn’t get the car out of the garage!

We had spent so much time arguing over the details that we failed to see the major complication our trip had.

Think about it, how often do we look at a passage and try to understand it through our own lenses. Or better yet, how often do we look at scripture with a preconceived notion of what it says. We have a preconceived notion of who God is. And there is nothing innately wrong with that. However, when we believe we know something, we stop attempting to know more about it. We feel if we already know it, there is no use in learning more. With some things this is ok, but with God, it doesn’t work that way. We feel that since we are sure the bags are on correctly, there won't be a problem. And of course, there isn't a problem until we step back and look at the situation with a larger frame of reference and the whole situation changes. We were comfortable with our thorough job tying the bags on the roof that we couldn't see the problem because we couldn't step back for a second and look through a different lens.

With God, there is everything to understand. So much so that we don't even know the things we don't know. We never will. We cannot hope to see creation through the eyes of the creator, our viewfinder doesn't zoom out far enough. But there is a twist, for with God, there is also nothing more to understand. God is love. Just as in a marriage, we know each other, but we will never know everything about each other. It is a constant classroom where we are always trying to know our spouse better than we already do. When we get to the point that we think we know all there is to know about them, our relationship starts to suffer because one party stops participating.

This morning we talk about the separation of the wheat and the weeds. But remember Jesus explanation. Jesus gave a name for each character in the parable this morning. We read this story so often, especially when it has been used to engender fear, that we fail to recognize the character we are supposed to play. We are both the weeds and the wheat. We are both the good and the bad. We are both the Godly and the un-Godly. That is our job, to grow. Weeds and wheat both grow. Our job is to grow, and that is it. We are to grow in our relationship to God through Christ. We are not to be deciding who is wheat and who is weed. We are charged to grow in relationship with each other and with God. But more than that, just as pulling the weeds before the harvest would hurt the wheat as well. In the same way, when we try to pull the weeds ourselves, we can hurt the wheat. Such behavior turns people away from the church, not toward it. God wants the wheat and the weeds to grow together until the harvest because until the harvest it is hard to tell which is wheat and which are weeds. Physically they looks the same. A person can be a weed for most of their life and still become wheat before the harvest. Pulling the weeds early can endanger that soul.

So this morning, our story tells us not about the God of vengeance. It does not tell us about the end times. While it speaks to what we can expect at the end, it’s true meaning is for the now, not the then. Let us learn from the disciples inability to understand so many parables. Let’s stand back and really look at the words that Jesus speaks, the actions he takes. Let us stand back and look at the problem, otherwise we spend our lives packing the car, only to miss the vacation because we failed to realize that we couldn’t get the car out of the garage at all.

Christ is passionate for soccer?!?!?!?

As I write this, I am watching Mexico vs. Chile in the Copa America (America Cup) 2011 hosted by Argentina. I have been watching all of the games of this championship and just about all of them have ended with surprises. In most cases this means that they have ended in ties. Argentina tied Bolivia. Ecuador tied Paraguay. Uruguay tied Peru. Brazil tied Venezuela. And just seconds ago, Chile scored a tying goal against a much younger Mexican team. I know most Americans dont understand or appreciate soccer. We don't understand the excitement of the game, the artistry of the plays or why in the world people break out in riots because of it. And why in the world am I talking about this in a blog about faith.

Well, to put it simply, it is all about passion. Soccer teaches us about a passion for life. A passion for a sport that is likely the most physically difficult in the world. A passion for an attention span to something that, at least as Americans, we don't always understand. Soccer in many ways is a mirror for the kind of faith that Jesus calls us to. A faith of passion. A faith of attending to those we don't always agree with or understand. The difference of course can be in the division that exists in any sport between the players, the fans, the spectators. But in the end, whatever happens, we all agree that the passion for this worldly diversion can teach us about how we should live our lives in the calling that Christ gives us. Living out our faith won't always be easy. At times we will come up against that which we don't like or don't understand. But with passion and perserverance, this sport of life, can end victoriously.

As I began this blog, I mentioned that for Americans, we just can't understand how in the world a game can end in a tie. Maybe this is a concept we should become more conversant about. In reality, when we perservere in life, in faith, in the love of Christ, we are victorious, even when that around us seems to remain the same, the score tied, in our hearts we still feel the passion of Christ, the passion of love, the passion of living the service that we are called to by Christ himself.

Let's be passionate! And to end on a personal note (which will be understood by anyone who knows me), "Let's go, Argentina!!!!

Surely God is in this place!

July 2, 2011

As I write this, my family and I are enjoying our third full day in Quito, Ecuador, where we are visiting my in-laws and celebrating the high school graduation of my brother-in-law. These past couple of days have been very emotional as it is the first time in five years since we have been back here to Ecuador. Much has changed; the city my wife grew up in is very different from the place that she left years ago.

As I sat down to write this, I happened to be preparing for an upcoming sermon where one of the lectionary readings in the story in Genesis of Jacob lying down with a stone as a pillow. He dreamed of an encounter with God and woke up saying, “Surely the Lord is in this place. This is the gate of Heaven.”

These words speak to me today. Even though this is a city that has changed so much since I was here last, still, I am sure God is in this place. Ironically, since Quito is the second highest capital city in the world in elevation, the idea that I am at the gateway of heaven definitely strikes a chord.

Whether at the heights of Chimborazo, or the depths of Death Valley, surely the Lord is in this place. God is all around, everywhere. In every place we are, in the faces and smiles of all those we encounter. God is ever-present and what a great realization that can be.

Praise God!

Father's Day

This is the sermon that I delivered on Father's Day. The lectionary was the Great Commission at the end of Matthew's Gospel and it was also Trinity Sunday.

Matthew 28:16-20 (NIV)

(16) Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go.

(17) When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.

(18) Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

(19) Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

(20) and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Good morning!

As I begin this morning, I have to ask you if any of you have ever had an experience in life where things just kind of pile up and you begin to see a meaning behind events? I mean, in seemingly common situations, things just take on a deeper meaning, like you have peeled off a layer or two and you begin to see those events at a much deeper level.

These past few weeks, that is exactly what has been happening to me. It is hard to explain, and even harder to analyze, but because of all these things going on in my mind, I feel I have to talk about that this morning, and I hope you will see the connections to the scripture this morning.

Of course, the gospel reading this morning is one of the most important of our faith. The apostles having now received the Holy Spirit are given the Great Commission. They are given direction for how to continue the work even though Jesus is no longer physically with them.

However, today is also Trinity Sunday. This is really the only day when the church focuses on the idea of the Trinity itself. As I prepared for this morning, I thought about how to talk about the Trinity. After all, it may very well be one of the most complex parts of our faith and has been written about by thousands of people throughout the ages. I thought I could find a clear, concise way of explaining the Trinity, but I soon found out, it is more complex than I had even thought. For example, Aristotle wrote probably the most influential treatise on the Trinity. His work covers 15 different volumes and is thousands of pages. Not something you can sit down and read in an afternoon. Many who have tried to understand the Trinity come away from the search with more questions than answers.  The best explanation that I could find simply defined the Trinity as a mystery. That, of course, didn’t help, because I already knew it was a mystery. Who knows, maybe that is the whole point. One explanation that I liked compared the trinity to mathematics. We tend to think of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as individual entities, which they are. So mathematically you can assume 1 + 1 + 1=3. However, that doesn’t really help, because in this case the math doesn’t work. The Trinity is not three different entities. I saw one explanation say that it is more like multiplication. 1 X 1 X 1= 1. That is a little better, but breaking something like our understanding of God into equations seems to simplify God in a way that seems disrespectful.

The trinity speaks to our own understanding of how we conceive of God. Therefore, it would stand to reason that any explanation that belittles that conception is too small, too simple to be used in our own minds to conceive of something that in reality is beyond comprehension. Kind of the same idea of how the Jewish people in biblical times refused to say the name of God. The idea was that saying the name of God would limit God, therefore contradicting the idea that God is limitless. Have I confused any of you yet? Let me step back a second and come at this from a different angle. Any understanding we have of anything has to come from our experience. So, the question then becomes, can we experience God in a way that helps us to grasp the idea of the Trinity better? In reality, that is an individual question. But over these past couple of weeks, I have had some experiences that have helped me gain a deeper appreciation for this concept. My hope is that the experiences I am going to speak of will help some of you as well.

Last week, as many of you know, Pastor Judy, Lynda and myself attended Annual Conference at Messiah College. This was my first experience of the full Annual Conference. It was amazing and wonderful and extremely boring all at the same time. But there were a few moments that I doubt I will ever forget. On Thursday night, there was a service honoring all the retiring pastors from the conference. Some of you may be aware that Pastor Bob Wallace of Calvary is retiring. I was sitting and watching each retiree go up on the stage to receive recognition for their years of service. Seeing Pastor Bob and his wife up on stage affected me more than I had expected. I think the main reason was that in some way, I don’t think I would be here this morning if it wasn’t for Pastor Bob. While we were looking for a church, I had written off the Methodist Church because I grew up in it and I wanted the church that Eimy and I joined to be one that would be neutral. But one day Eimy decided we should go and just attend a Methodist service and see what happened. After the service, Eimy was convinced that Calvary was the church we should join. Pastor Bob was a big part of that. Calvary welcomed us with open arms and provided a place for us to grow in faith with our kids in a way that filled us with a positive attitude about the importance of faith in our family life.

As I began to feel my calling to ministry anew, Pastor Bob provided support both for myself as well as for Eimy. I remember the first Mother’s Day after we started attending Calvary. Rose Ann, pastor Bob’s wife, knew that Eimy and I didn’t have any family around here. She called up Eimy and asked her to attend the Mother/Daughter Banquet with her. This meant a lot to us. And this is just one example. Needless to say, seeing Pastor Bob and Rose Ann on stage, receiving recognition was an emotional moment for me as it meant that they were no longer going to be around here, but also because to me it represented the first time I knew for sure that I had a calling and began actively pursuing it.

The next day, I sat and listened to Adam Hamilton speak. This was also important because Rev. Hamilton engages church members in a way that truly speaks to the message of the Gospel, at least in my mind. With all the problems that churches face today, Rev. Hamilton understands that we must work together in a way that brings everyone up. He understands that unless we do this, the Methodist Church will not be around for my grandchildren. It simply will have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Not because of a flawed message, but because of a change in how we, as a church, function in our communities.

Finally, I was able to see those who were to become ordained. I was able to witness one of the retiring pastors wash the feet of a young pastor who was to be ordained. I watched as she passed the ceremonial staff to him, reflecting the continuity of the church, the continuity of our communal mission, the continuity of the work which Christ has set before us.

Even though quite a bit of the conference was boring, in reality is served to encourage, motivate and impassion those who attended.

So that was one of the experiences I wanted to talk about. The next happened just yesterday. My mother decided recently that she was going to retire at the end of this school year, which was just last week. As it turned out, my brother was on the east coast for business and last week was also his 30^th birthday. Since he was going to be on the east coast, he and I had were planning a surprise retirement party. We had made quite a few arrangements when things suddenly got more confusing. My mother called me last week and said that she was going to have a surprise birthday party for my brother, on the same day that we had been planning her party. She had already invited a whole bunch of people and made arrangements for a cake and all that stuff. In addition, my brother’s partner graduated from graduate school with his masters. My mother decided that we could make it a combined birthday and graduation party. She secretly flew my brother’s partner in from California. She invited his parents who live in Scranton and invited a number of his friends as well. I then realized that we were going to have three parties simultaneously, and besides myself and my mom’s closest friend, no one knew there were going to be three parties. I didn’t know how in the world this was going to work out.  But in the end, it did. Somehow, despite my family’s infamous inability to keep a secret, miraculously, no one knew that there were going to be three separate parties at the exact same time, in the exact same place, with three separate guest lists.

I bring this up because my family, especially my brother and me, are not well known for our ability to work together. I love my brother, but we are polar opposites and we have always fought more than functioned together.

As I spent the day with my family, it hit me that we were acting, surprise, surprise, like a family. My brother was playing with Ian and Mia so lovingly, that I couldn’t believe it. He is not an overly affectionate person, and he has always been awkward with kids. But not yesterday. It was like he suddenly became the best uncle in the world. And For Ian and Mia, he was.  It was also not lost on me, that this is father’s day weekend, the second father’s day since my own father passed away. I could feel yesterday his presence in the interactions between Ian and Mia and my brother and his partner. I just knew that this is how my father wanted us to be. To be a family, that despite our differences, we loved one another first. The rest is just details.

So between the annual conference and the party yesterday, I began to see the continuity of life. The past, where I have come from. The present, what I have learned, how I live, how I interact with those around me. The future, of my ministry, of my children, of my brother, sister and mother. It was one of those times when I could see, for a split second, God at work in my life, in the lives of those I love.

This morning, we try to understand the Trinity. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. There are many explanations to help us understand this complex idea. Yesterday, though, it was all so very clear. Love. The love of God. The love of Christ. The love of a father. The love of a son. The love of family. The love of friends. When we feel that love, we can begin to glimpse the love of the Trinity.

But there is more. And this is when it gets really simple. The last lines of the Gospel of Matthew.

(19) Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

(20) and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Notice, Matthew doesn’t tell us to go to the nations and convert all people.  Matthew doesn’t tell us to go to the nation and build churches, or increase attendance. Jesus, in Matthew, could have instructed us to do these things. But he didn’t. He told us to make disciples. That is our task. That is the most important task. These are, in essence, the final words of Christ to us. Make disciples. Therefore, in everything we do, in every conversation we have, in every interaction with other people that we have, if we are not thinking of making disciples, we are not doing our job. Every decision made here at church. Every dollar we give. Every hour we volunteer. Every person we greet in here, on the street, on the phone. Making disciples has to be the focus. Anything less is our failure to fulfill this final command of Christ.

If we are concentrating on who we ask to come into our church. If we are concentrating on what type of hymns we sing on Sunday mornings. If we are concentrating on the fears we have around us. If we are doing any of these things, we are not fulfilling that instruction. We are God’s people. We are loved by God, by Christ. We have the promise of the Holy Spirit itself, to the end of the age. The presence of the Holy Spirit, the presence of Christ, the presence of God all around us, in us, in those next to us, in the words we speak, in the actions we take, in the lives that intersect our own. That is the meaning of the Trinity, that God is everywhere, all the time. If we can’t see that and act on it, then we aren’t the Church that Christ instructs us to be.

On this Trinity Sunday. On this Father’s Day. In this very moment of time, Thank God for being with us, giving us strength, guidance, protection and most of all, love so deep and so profound that we can never truly grasp it. That, my friends, is why we are here.

Beginnings

This is my first attempt at blogging, so bear with me as I figure this out.

I am keeping this blog for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, I would like to use this blog in order to analyze the intersection that exists where faith and culture meet. It is a topic that is very interesting to me, and to you as well, I hope.

Secondly, I would like to use this as a forum to post various sermons that I write for the churches I serve. The sermons cover various topics and many times relate to the first purpose of this blog.

I hope that as I discuss and analyze how culture interacts with faith, you can participate in that ongoing discussion. No man is an island unto himself, we each grow with help from others.