Who's Coming to Dinner at Our House? August 29, 2010

Luke 14: 1, 7-14

Who’s Coming for Dinner at Our House? August 29, 2010

God, lead us in the way of welcome. May we be as welcoming to the stranger in our midst as you are welcoming to us. Give us ears to listen and eyes to see. Amen!

When I was in the sixth grade I was an outsider. During lunchtime, we sat at long tables with benches. Each table held six children. At the far end of the line of tables—closest to where the next class came in to line up for food—thus providing the best opportunity to be seen and envied—at the end of that line of tables was THAT TABLE. At THAT TABLE sat all the cool girls—the ones already wearing makeup and getting their hair done. I wanted, more than anything, to sit at THAT TABLE. But, alas, I was never, never, never invited. This so upset me that my mother had me talk to the school counselor—she did her best to convince me that the really cool kids sat elsewhere, but when you are 12—those kinds of arguments go nowhere. I knew then and I know now, that if I had ever ventured to sit at THAT TABLE, I would have been asked to leave, there was no room for me with the elite.

I survived, of course, probably not too much the worse for wear, but I never forgot what it felt like to be excluded from those most popular. Jesus is calling us today to stay away from tables that are only open to the elite and powerful and we are challenged to look at what this means for us as Christians and as a church. Just as in my sixth grade lunchroom, there was much meaning attached to where one sat to eat. Whom you ate with, where you sat at the table, and how you behaved were all judged critically in the society of Jesus’ day. Your place at the table was a symbol for your place in society. If you ate with less than desirable people, you were deemed less than desirable. At a banquet such as the one Jesus was attending, you could tell who was important by who sat the closest to the host. But Jesus, as he often did, took a common assumption and turned it on its head in order to get his point across. He not only ate with people who were shunned by others, he encouraged his followers to do the same. Invite the poor, the crippled, the sinners, to your banquet he tells us.

Just like I refused to believe the 6th grade counselor that life was better among the less than elite, most of us, and many churches stumble over Jesus’ words in this passage. In the midst of a bit of commotion at this dinner when Jesus has healed again on the Sabbath, people are trying to decide where to sit. Now this may seem unimportant to us, but it was not unimportant during Jesus’ time. Where you sat was who you were. Jesus, seizing the teachable moment, commences a brief homily on proper table etiquette at least as far as where one sits. But as Jesus always does, his talk goes far beyond mere table manners or the dinner at hand. He applies this simple advice to how we are to act when we are in God’s presence—with humility and thought for others.

Notice then that Jesus takes it a step further. He informs us that if our banquets are to reflect the values inherent in God’s reign of justice, we will invite the very folks that the religious leaders didn’t even want Jesus to heal—much less invite to the table. Jesus tells us twice in this passage that we are to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. We must not lose sight of the fact that Jesus was turning everything they knew upside down—for physical infirmity was equated with sin and sinners were not welcome at the tables of these righteous religious bigots. Any of this begin to sound familiar?

And here is how our summer of our study of blessings ends: Jesus says that when we invite these people, the very people who the religious leaders hate and scorn, the people who have no way to repay our kindness, we will be “blessed”. Blessed because we have opened wide the doors to God’s reign of justice on earth. Blessed because offering kindness to folks who have no visible way to repay us sets our relationship with God on a right path. And so, who’s coming to dinner at our house?
Jesus calls us to re-evaluate who the guest of honor is every time we sit down to partake of God’s banquet, which most often for us is expressed in our gathering together to partake of communion. Jesus calls us to engage in a spiritual understanding that the person who needs us the most is our guest of honor at each banquet. Beyond that Jesus reminds us that it is our assignment to reach out and find those who need what God, and we have to offer. “Invite some people who never get invited out” are the words in our modern translation. We had a phrase that we used to use to refer to children in the foster care system who were hard to place—we called them “hard to love”. These “hard to love” folks are the ones Jesus calls us to embrace and invite into our gatherings.

Jesus calls us to turn our celebrations upside down—to challenge the prevailing standards and invite everyone into our banquet hall. Who’s coming to dinner at our house? This might not seem radical to most of us. After all, inclusion is one of the core values of our denomination—I can’t help but wonder though, if we’ve figured out how to be inclusive of all of us—rich, poor, educated, not so much education, white, black, Pentecostal, catholic, conservative, liberal, single, married, gay and even straight—what’s the clue that we’re missing to have a truly and completely inclusive congregation? I believe that we might find it in the word “honor”. Jesus tells us to give the place of honor away—let’s think about that for a minute as we ponder who’s coming to dinner at our house.

Jesus reminds us that when we throw a party, we shouldn’t invite just those that somehow look, think, and act like us. We should invite the isolated, the poor, the marginalized. And then, the double whammy appears—lest we think that we get by with simply having outreach and mission programs, He tells us that we are to honor others more than seek the place of honor for ourselves. Now I will be the first to admit that “honor” has lost some of its meaning when compared to the culture in which Jesus lived, so it’s important for us to look beyond the way we use the word today. Though we use the word today in titles such as “your honor” or “the honorable so-and-so”, it had a much broader sense when Jesus spoke about it in first-century Palestine. Honor referred to the esteem in which the community held not only you, but your entire family and was necessary not only for social interaction, but, in some cases, for economic survival.

And so Jesus calls us to seek out those who have been dishonored—to invite them in—to dine with us at the banquet of life and to give them a place of honor. That would bring big changes in our world and in our church—simply to model this one behavior that Jesus showed us so plainly in His life, ministry, and even death on the cross. We do not need to look far to find people who need this radical respect to turn their lives upside down and call them into a place of healing and love. There may be some of us, sitting here tonight, who need reminding that we are loved and cared for by the God who created us and that we are honored by God’s people.
As we walk through these next exciting days, and my friends, I believe that we are entering into a new stage on this wonderful journey, we will be talking about vision—what we want this church to be. My friends, we already are a living, breathing, creation of God, reaching out to love and be loved, to touch and be touched. And so we worship in loving, caring, yes, even accepting ways, that encourage us to follow the ways of Jesus—to give honor to the stranger, or to the one whose ideas differ from ours—to come together to the banquet of life as one body—with many very different parts. And so we come, with excitement, with expectation with joy! Let us move boldly forward resting in the promise of Jesus: “you will be blessed!”
Amen and amen.

God's Outrageous Love August 22

God, we know that you love us in ways that we can barely imagine—help us begin to let our imaginations run wild with experiencing your great love for us.  Amen!
    Outrageous!  Breaking the bonds of everything that is expected—not anything you could imagine.  But God invites us every day to imagine just how broad and high, deep and wide God’s love for us truly is.  Some of you might remember this song from your childhood days:  Deep and wide, deep and wide: there's a fountain flowing deep and wide.  You notice that it comes with arm motions—always a challenge for me—that’s why you will never see me dancing to “YMCA”—just can’t get those motions right!  Isn’t it great that it doesn’t matter to God whether we do wide and deep or deep and wide as long as we get the concept that God’s love is bigger than the places in which we tend to live.  And so the question is obvious—what if we lived into the full, the deep, the wide love of God?  What would our lives look like?  What would we look like?
    I’ll tell you the truth—some sermons are easier to write than others—some seem to flow easily and then, there are weeks like this one, where the words struggled to find their place on the page and in my speech.  I’ll tell you a second truth—I have come to know that the harder the sermon is to write, the more it needs to be preached and the more I need to listen to God’s words.  And so, I invite us all to venture into this land of healing and redemption. 
    The woman in our simple gospel story learned all of this in one brief moment—but the living of it went long past the flash of grace in the synagogue.  Jesus was in the synagogue—teaching—as was his practice.  Picture the scene—the crowd is there—probably standing—the synagogues of Jesus’ time didn’t come with nice comfy chairs like we have here.  So over the crowd, he spies her.  She was unwell, fragile, and had enough sense to stay out of the way.  Nevertheless, Jesus’ compassion looks beyond the front row to the very back of the synagogue.  He calls her forward—you can imagine how long it took her to get to him—bent over that she was, the scripture says she “could not straighten up at all”.  But Jesus can see her, feels her need for healing and calls her out of that dark corner.  When she gets in front of him, he says, "Woman, you are set free from your infirmity."  And then he did something that no one had  done for years.  He touched her, and immediately she stood tall and responded by praising God.  And here is our clue for what our life would look like if we allowed the love of God to fully and completely inhabit our bodies.  If you think about it, this is what every single person did who Jesus healed or set free—the Geresene demoniac, the woman with the issue of blood, the man born blind from birth, the leper—every single one of them responded to the miracle of healing with praising God…there’s a theme here. 
    Picture yourselves in that scene—Imagine the hush that must have passed over that group of regular temple goers—I would venture a guess that most of them had never even noticed this quiet, bent over women—imagine the torturous stillness that must have fallen as she shuffled forward—what do you think they were thinking?  What do you think you would be thinking if Jesus were here and called her forth in our presence?  I can imagine her fear mixed with tentative anticipation—coupled with the pain that wracked her body as she walked slowly forward—could she possibly have known that her life was about to change forever?  And then, He touched her and she stood tall for the first time in years.
    And what about us?  I would be bold enough to suggest that there are not many of us here who have not been healed in one way or another—perhaps not in some miraculous physical way, but at least in a quiet, mindful way—Jesus has touched our hearts in some small or large way—and called us into a life of praising God.  To those of you who may have come this evening seeking healing, you have come to the best place—to the place where Jesus walks and talks among us—when we let the love of God touch us with great healing and joy! 
    Hear again the Psalm for today—from her perspective--this formerly old, tired woman, now freshly healed by Jesus.  She shouts: Praise God, my soul—everything, even that which is deep inside me praises God for this healing.  I will praise God and not forget all that God has done—giving me a new outlook on life, changing who I am, and healing me from this horrible disease that forced me to look down all the time—why look!  I’m standing tall—I’m no longer depressed and afraid—I want everybody to know the goodness of God—I feel young again—God is so good!
    This, my friends is what it means to praise God—to allow God to work the miracle in our lives—changing our perspectives, touching us in ways that defy our limited understanding of who we can be.  We are, many of us, bent over in some form or another—most of us gather every week desiring the touch of God—how do I know this?  Because we are here, gathered together to experience this healing touch of God in our lives.  And so we do!  And so we worship!  Here in the presence of God, waiting the touch of God…
    One of my favorite children’s stories is Beauty and the Beast—it’s a theme that runs throughout many stories and fables.  The thing of ugliness is transformed by the touch of the beautiful—kisses and frog-princes, comatose princesses and the kiss of a prince that awakens her—we could add many more.  Somehow we all know that pain is transformed by grace and sadness is overcome by joy.  Does it not make sense that we would want to stay in this healing place with God—to enjoy the constant companionship of the one who reaches in and touches us for good? 
    Why then, is every day worship so hard for us?  Why do we get distracted and wander away from the miracles that God has done in our lives?  Last week we talked about worship—corporate worship—worship like that in which we are engaged this very moment and I told you that this week I would talk about private worship and so I am.   No one sums up for me the essence of private worship than Brother Lawrence.  The little book “Practicing the Presence of God” was written after his death and contains bits and pieces of conversations between the author and Lawrence.  Did I forget to tell you that Brother Lawrence lived in the 1600’s—no matter, his call to us is as current today as it was then.  As a lay brother in the monastery where he worked, he did not have the complex theological training that the monks had—perhaps the very reason why he was so comfortable just spending time in God’s presence—no need to question, just be.  Here is his call to come into the presence of God:  "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it."  And so, he challenges us to be always in the presence of God—to be at all times in that delightful, healing place—where God in continual conversation reaches out to us, touches us, restores us. 
    If you have come today seeking healing, I invite you to spend much time in conversation with God—for our God is a loving God, reaching out to us—spying us back in the back of the room, bent over with physical or emotional pain.  There are no fancy riddles to answer or convoluted explanations to ponder—there is only the loving touch of God, always ready, wanting to seek us out, call us forward, and make us whole. 
Father John O’Donohue, one of my mentors in my journey towards living the full life that embraces all that God wants for me and for us, gives us a blessing for such a day as this.  He offers these words and I offer them to you:    May all that is unforgiven in you be released.  May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities.  May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.  Amen and amen.

We Are the People of God! 8-15-2010

The Reading for Today:   Psalm 100—a modern translation

Shout for joy to God, all the earth.

Worship God with gladness;   and with singing joyful songs.

Know that God is God alone.
      

We are made by God—we certainly did not make ourselves!
       We are the people of God, the sheep of the pasture of God.

Here, we come into this place with thanksgiving-- 
       and we flood God’s place of worship with honor;
       saying “thank you” and giving God praise.

 For God is good with a love that endures forever;
       God is faithful to all generations.

God, teach us to worship you in spirit and in truth!  Amen           

                Worship—that sometimes elusive process, that somehow, try as hard as we might—we don’t just seem to get there.  There are at least two ways we worship the God that made us—corporately—that is in communion with other folks and privately—alone with God.  This week I’m going to talk about the worship we do as a group of folks, a circle if you will, and next week I will talk about our private response to the love of God.  Here’s my favorite story about worship—seems like there was this rather large church—well, big enough to have a separate children’s church—one Sunday, the leader decided it was time to take a “field trip” and visit the morning adult worship.  She gave the children all kinds of tips and rules and then they tippy-toed across the courtyard and over to the door.  Just before opening the door—she turned to them and said, “Does anybody know why we need to be quiet and reverent when we go through that door?”  One bright little lad replied, “So we don’t wake up the ones that are sleeping!”  May it never be said that there are folks sleeping at Open Circle MCC.

In the beginning of this adventure, before we had permission to refer to ourselves as an MCC church, we called ourselves “Open Circle Worship.”  It was a brief phase and many of you missed it, but it says to me that we knew from the jump that we wanted to be about the joy of worship.  Since then, we have worshipped together every single week—sometimes different places and sometimes different people—but we have stayed the course on being about worship. 

We’ve begun a bit of a tradition here at Open Circle and you may wonder why.  We greet each other in love at the beginning of the service and then the choir begins to sing:  “As we gather may Your Spirit work within us…As we gather, may we glorify Your name.”   Have you listened to the words yet—we chose this song for particular reasons—“Knowing well that as our hearts begin to worship,  we’ll be blessed because we came.”   And in our summer of blessings, even as it draws to a close, we claim the blessing of worship each and every time we meet.  We’ll change the song from time to time, from season to season, but I trust that we always have a song that calls us into this time of worship—this time we set apart each week to worship as a community.   

                I do a lot of reading about worship—seems like a good thing for a pastor to do.  Ron Rienstra, one of those worship “specialists” lists 7 characteristics of worship and I was fascinated to see how well these characteristics are reflected in the words of our reading today—Psalm 100. 

Shout for joy to God, all the earth.  Rienstra says that worship should be Participative. Seems right, don’t you think?  Makes sense that this time of worship is a time when all of us should participate and want to participate—if the only folks who are worshipping are the ones of us at the front—we have a problem.  God is God of all of us and all of us come together to worship.  But that is sometimes easier said then done—we come as we are—some of us comfortable with worshipping—how shall I say?—“out loud”.  Some of us are not—God nevertheless, call us, as “all the earth” to shout for joy—and so we work together to make our corporate worship a place of safety and comfort for all of us to enjoy—stretching ourselves beyond our comfort zones whether in the quiet, meditative times or the noisy, clapping, hallelujah times. 

Worship God with gladness;  and with singing joyful songs.  Two of Reinstra’s characteristics fit here.  He says that worship is both expectant and Spirit-directed.  Many of us, having gone to “Worship” with a capital “W” for years, no longer come expecting much of anything—thankfully, we’re in the process of changing that for many, many people who walk through this beautiful doors.  The energy that permeates through our service does not and cannot come from me or from our singers, reader, or altar ministers.  It comes from the expectation that God has called us here and so God will meet us here.   Rienstra reminds us that the Spirit blows where it will and so he suggests that we worship with our “sails raised” ready to catch the spiritual energy that happens to, with, and among us as we worship together.   I guess he has a point—a sailboat with its sails tightly tied around its mast is not likely to go anywhere at all—and so we come, ready and eager to encounter God here, God now!

Know that God is God alone.   We are made by God—we certainly did not make ourselves!   We are the people of God, the sheep of the pasture of God.  Rienstra’s next two characteristics fit well here.  Reverence—we know that God is God and we are God’s creations—now some worship leaders I have encountered want to talk about how we need to know our “place” before God, and by that they mean our “unworthy, undeserving place”.  To that I say, not here, not now!  We are made by God and we are made for God.  We are the people of God, we belong to God as sheep belong to their shepherd.  And we worship as whole people—Holistic worship is what Rienstra calls it—worshipping by bringing all of ourselves to worship—our bodies, including our sexuality, our past and present, our heart, soul, and mind—we bring our fears and dreams, and our doubt and belief—for we—all of us—are made by God exactly according to plan—our worship must embrace and celebrate not only who God is but who God made us to be!

Here, we come into this place with thanksgiving-- and we flood God’s place of worship with honor;  saying “thank you” and giving God praise.   Rienstra’s sixth characteristic is expansive.  He says, and this time I’m quoting him, “ We make creative use of words, music—and more!—from many times, places, peoples, and cultures to enlarge our vision of God’s kingdom and situate ourselves properly within it.”  And I say, we are called by the psalmist to come with thanksgiving—to literally flood this place of worship with honor and praise.  We do this in the many ways we both bring to this place and discover along the way.  God is not limited by our limitations and we are encouraged by the very God who made us to discover more ways to bring praise and celebrate—both God and ourselves.  This is why we focus on the grace-full and loving working of God in our midst and the joy that we experience as God’s people gathered together to praise and worship.  This does not always mean that we will agree.  As one pastor told me about her church—the congregation decided that it had so many differences that one worship service just wouldn’t do, so they decided to have four worship services each Sunday.  There was one for those new to the faith.  Another for those who liked traditional worship.  One for those who had lost their faith and would like to get it back.  And another for those who had a bad experience with church and were complaining about it.  They have names for each of the services: FINDERS, KEEPERS, LOSERS, WEEPERS.   Think about it!!!

 And finally, For God is good with a love that endures forever;   God is faithful to all generations.  Rienstra calls this final characteristic covenantal. This implies that worship is both a part of and a celebration of the covenant that exists between us and God.  When we celebrate communion we often talk about the cup as representation of the new covenant—the covenant that God made with us through the sacrifice of Jesus—that we have no barriers between us and God.  Jesus is the bridge that makes that covenant possible for all of us.  Worship then is conversation without barriers between God and us and us and God—our praise, our petitions, and our celebrations!

These 7 characteristics lead us to one very important conclusion—genuine  worship of God—free from  the barriers that have been erected between us and God or that we have built ourselves—this  kind of worship will change our lives—your lives and mine.  And it is changing the life of this church.   God calls us to this place of worship and we answer with our whole selves—with our whole lives—with all that we are singing songs of joy—going forward, now and forever.  Amen and amen. 

What Is this Blessing Called "Faith"? 8-8-2010

Reading:  Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

What in the world is “faith”?  When I was a young adult in First Baptist Church, Apopka, there was an elderly gentleman who had a saying about faith—when you would ask him about what he should do or what the church should do, he would always say “keep on keepin’ on”.  I hope that when he died his children thought to engrave that on his tombstone because it summed up his feelings on God, on life, and on the church.  No matter what—whether we live to see the promises of God fulfilled or not—we’re to keep on keepin’ on.  This is, in fact, exactly what the writer of this letter to the Hebrews is telling us.  The verses in between the passages that we read today list the heroes of the faith—both men and women—a long list of folks who lived in faith believing the various promises that God gave to them throughout their lives.  This list simply illustrates, for the author, the truth of the first statement:  “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.” 

                When Christians and Jewish people talk about being sure, we often use the word faith.  The problem with that is that there are so many subtleties to the common meaning of the word faith that I am not so sure that we truly know what we mean when we use it.  “Keep the faith”, “have faith”, “walk by faith”, are just a few examples.  Here’s a recent example from numerous conversations in my own life.  Let’s talk about roundabouts—more specifically let’s talk about the kind of roundabouts found here in The Villages.  Unlike the roundabouts I painlessly navigated for 25 years in New York and Massachusetts  where the rules are obeyed by all and enforced by vigilant law enforcement officers—the roundabouts in this lazy, dazy, kick-back community are just a little bit different.  When we first arrived in The Villages, I expressed my concern about these wild and crazy intersections and was told on more than one occasion, by more than one of you, that I just had to pull into the roundabout and have “faith” that no one would hit me.  You meant well, knowing that crawling around the roundabout as you had seen me do, was certainly no safer.  Going to the “welcome home” event for newbies, I came home with the prize I had been looking for.  (Holds up a Roundabout Brochure).  Who knew—there’s a brochure—fairly plainly written—followed by almost no one.  Having “faith” that no one would hit me has been replaced with an ability to twirl my head around in almost all directions as I now navigate the roundabouts with appropriate speed and expertise.  Faith, in this case, might not have been what was called for.

If you are familiar with Oprah’s magazine, you may know that the last article in every single issue is called “What I know for sure”.  Now I will admit that this short article is the first thing I read in every single issue that I look at.  Why—I think we may all be just a little fascinated with what folks say they know for sure—certainty being something that most of us wish we had more of.  Sometimes for Oprah, it feels a little trivial as in the issue where she acknowledges that she more than likely owns too many shoes (and to be fair to her, her conclusion about living responsibly was far more significant) or it may have great consequence as in the article where she discusses turning away from anything that encourages her to feel badly about who she is as a person.  Whatever, the case, she ‘knows it for sure’ and we are drawn to it. Oprah says that she includes this article every month because some 12 years ago, film critic Gene Siskell asked her in an interview what she knew for sure and she couldn’t answer him.  She set out that very week to identify what she knew for sure. 

                We, living out the assurance of the first sentence in our passage today, have many examples to follow as we identify what we know for sure.  Although I shortened our passage for today, the full passage lists Abel, Noah,  Jacob, Issac, Essau, Abraham and Sarah and others.  In this passage, faith is presented as something that is lived and lived longly—not a rash or heroic one-time act, but a history of living into the promises of God.   Faith, for these ancestors of ours, undergirded their lives as people individually, and as “a people” of God—a series of actions, if you will, taken together over decades which totally and truly changes who we are and how we live.  It might seem as if living a life of faith needs a good PR makeover—televangelists of today and some of the circuit revivalists of the past have made “faith” into one time “believe in my ability to heal and you will be healed” events.  Now, please don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that those sudden and isolated acts of faith never come true, but the kind of faith that this passage calls us to cannot be lived in a televised instant, it can only be lived out over time in real life.  Faith then, lived out over time, becomes a part of the fabric of who we are, not something we experience every once in a while. 

                Throughout my ministerial and theological journey, I have been required several times to write out my so-called “statement of faith”.  Wanting to say first of all, “is this a trick question?”  I have made peace with the process primarily through some concepts which I believe describe my personal faith.  First of all, and I am gratified to find my thoughts aligned with this scripture—is my adherence to the word steadfast.  I believe that God is a steadfast God, sure for all time—even those times we are just barely hanging in with our relationship with God.  But the steadfastness works both ways, and I believe that I have walked a life of steadfastly believing that the promises God made to me and to all of us as children in the faith would someday come to fruition.  What has changed is my knowledge that, just as Abraham and others “only saw the promises from a distance”, that I may have only glimpses of the “promised land;” but I will know, nevertheless, that God is steadfastly working the divine purpose out in my life and in the life of this church.

                Several of you, maybe even many of you, have spoken with me about all that you want for this church and for this church to be.  And I have often reminded you that we are on a journey, a journey full of ups and downs, trials and successes, and that, in fact, we are a new (dare I say it?  “baby”) church just learning to walk.  We have come so far, so fast that we may sometimes forget that we are only a little over six months into this journey.  We must remember, even as we celebrate what God has so richly given us right now, right here—and I invite you to look around and sit for just a brief moment in silence in this beautiful space that God has given to us in which to worship!  (PAUSE) We are indeed blessed beyond measure, but we must never forget that we are in Abraham’s tents, singing songs in a land that is still strange for us.  We ask ourselves to focus not on our “homeland” that we have left behind, but on what lies ahead for this people of God.  I invite you to become an integral and faithful part of this journey—becoming familiar with all the struggles and joys.  We do not often remember that building a church community—a faith community—if you will, requires steadfastness, patience, and hope.  We have been given these blessings in abundance—it is up to us to remain faithfully focused on the  “land” promised to us when the first tiny little group of people sat down and said, “we believe that God is calling us on a journey—a journey to build an MCC church, right here—right now.”  And so, I prayerfully and lovingly say to you and to me, on this day when we sit in a beautiful and large room surrounded by sunlight and God’s presence, when you experience frustrations (and you will), remember that our faith comes from the knowledge that God has called us to this journey and that we follow in the footsteps of the faithful of all time.  And when you experience great joys, remember that God is calling us to more, and that those joys are markers along the way that we are on the right path.  Let us go forward in faith with God and with each other.  Amen and amen.

The Blessing of (In)sight 8-1-2010

God, bless us with the willingness to hear and the courage to do.  Amen

As I did my usual preparation for the sermon this week, I could not find a single example of anyone approaching these scriptures from a positive perspective.  Commentators seemed to relish the idea that Jesus was being critical, even sarcastic, in his teaching in this passage made of three different, yet absolutely connected thoughts.  Seeing the challenge this presented to me, I prayerfully conversed with the passage most of the week along completely different lines and, quite frankly, decided to set aside all that I thought I knew about this passage and so today I believe that these passages do not necessarily depict Jesus giving us the scathing condemnation many commentators see.  I believe that Jesus is calling us, as Jesus is ALWAYS calling us to discover and be all that God created us to be—complete in God’s spirit following the example of Jesus Himself.

          Jesus calls us to live our lives openly, seeing fully, all the potential for lives lived in the gracious reign of God’s justice and love here on this earth.  Is it not possible that the blindness that Jesus speaks of is our failure to know that we are to live as He lived and, more importantly, love as He loved?  If we are the students and he is the teacher, when we are “fully trained” we will be like Him.  We will know that we are children of God.  We will trust that God’s purpose is being played out in our lives just as He trusted.  Instead, we often see ourselves as less than, not as good as, unable to fulfill our calling in God.

          There is an old fable from India that illustrates my point.   There was once a water carrier who lived quite a distance from the spring which supplied water to the town.  He used two large pots suspended on a pole across his neck to carry the water.  One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect.  Every day this man would walk from the spring to the house of the man for whom he worked and every day the perfect pot would be perfectly full when the man reached the house and the pot with the crack—well, it usually only held half the amount of water.  The cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfection and so one day, the pot spoke to the water carrier about how badly he felt about being cracked and broken.  The pot said, “I’m sorry that the crack in my side makes me unable to do all that you need me to do.  I can only carry half the water that the perfect pot carries.”  Then the water carrier said to the pot, “Today when we walk back to town I want you to open your eyes and look around.”  And so the pot did.  When their task was completed, the water carrier asked the pot, “Did you notice that there are flowers only on one side of the road?  That’s because I planted seeds on that side and every day you watered those flowers as we made our trek.  Now, for two years I have been able to pick beautiful flowers and give them to many people.  If you were not exactly who you are I would not have the beauty of the flowers to grace the homes of so many.” 

          Isn’t this just the way we are, we focus on our shortcomings, our fears, our imperfections and fail to see what God is doing with and through us.  We do not see the influence we have on our world or on each other.  This leads us to our second brief passage—the really famous one about acknowledging the plank in your eye before you go with gusto after the speck in your neighbor’s eye.  Instead of thinking about this passage from a judgmental, critical point of view, what if we see that God might be calling us, just as in the first passage, to remove the huge plank of self-doubt and our dissatisfaction with what we believe to be our imperfections before we try to lead others into right relationship with God.  Many of us are champions in the field of putting ourselves down and these “put-downs” which we heap on ourselves keep us from being all that God calls us to be in the work of God’s reign on earth.  For if the Gospel calls us to take the good news of God’s acceptance and love to all, do we not first have to experience it for ourselves?  To let it in and see with new eyes what God wants us to be.  And where do we do this?  We do it in our relationships.  Our relationships with others, with God’s creation and with each other, reveal, when we see them with new eyes, who we really are inside and out.  By examining our relationship with others (and, indeed, this passage is about right relationship) we see places in our hearts that we would not see otherwise.  Inviting ourselves to look closely at who we are with other people opens us up for change within ourselves.  Ask yourselves this:  are not my relationships—with both their possibility for joy and hurt, the places where I find out who I really am?  Our relationships give us insight into who we really are—people who are both vulnerable and strong, needy and influential.  So perhaps, just perhaps, the plank that Jesus is calling us to remove is this doubting, negative plank...This plank that tells you that you can’t make new friends, or succeed in golf, or sing in the choir…this plank that tells you that you can’t take up a new sport, or learn to paint, or get your body in shape—once and for all…this plank that tells you that you are not good enough or strong enough or wise enough to allow God to work a miracle in your life. 

          We live in a society that tells us we are not ok, and we believe it—even those of us who have “worked through” who we are—most of us—deep down, still have doubts—Jesus says, “get the plank out of your own eye” and then get on with helping others see who they really are through their relationships with you.  Good relationships are based on seeing ourselves clearly for who we are and who we are capable of becoming and THEN helping others do the same. 

          And so finally, we come to our final section of this passage—the one about our relationship with God—the foundation on which we base everything else—we all know the difference between a good foundation and a poor one.  And it’s Florida, so we all know about sand.  Kind of reminds me of a time when I took my dog, Jonathan, to the beach.  I had him tied securely to my waist and I was sitting in my folding chair peacefully reading my book or, perhaps, dozing in the sun.  I thought he was sleeping beside me.  All of a sudden, my chair toppled sideways and I found myself in a heap with Jonathan who had been steadily digging a now very deep hole under the left front leg of my chair—of course, I fell over, book flying, chair going out from under me—altogether not a pretty sight. Had we been sitting on concrete—different picture all together—never underestimate what a dog can do when you think he is sleeping…

          And so, Jesus calls us to hear His words AND practice them—is this not indeed what the first two sections of this passage are about? And by so doing we dig our foundation deep into the earth and place our foundation on Christ, our solid rock.  To practice the teachings of Jesus, is to live in right relationship with ourselves, our neighbors and God.  To practice the teachings of Jesus will set us in the place where the storms of life—our life personal and our life communal will not tumble us down.  To practice the teachings of Jesus is to be in the presence of God.  

God uses all of you to speak special words to me.  An example happened yesterday.  I opened my email and there was an email from Linda, one of the members of our new choir.  It is so perfect that I added it to this sermon.  Thank you, Linda.  Here is the quote—it’s from Guillaume Apollinaire, a very early 20^th Century poet:   “Come to the edge....we can't, we are afraid....come to the edge....we can't, we will fall ....and they came to the edge....and he pushed them....and they flew...”  God, give us the grace and courage to come to the edge and when You push, may we fly high on the very wings you have blessed us with…as high as You would have us fly.  Amen and amen.