1 Corinthians 3:10-17 (The Message)
9-15Or, to put it another way, you are God's house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you'll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won't get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn't, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But you won't be torn out; you'll survive—but just barely.
16-17You realize, don't you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God's temple, you can be sure of that. God's temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.
Matthew 5:43-48 (The Message)
43-47"You're familiar with the old written law, 'Love your friend,' and its unwritten companion, 'Hate your enemy.' I'm challenging that. I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that.
48"In a word, what I'm saying is, Grow up. You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you."
God, You continue to take us down paths of learning and growth. We thank You. Lead us in Your ways this day. Amen
In the passages from last week, this week, and next, I inadvertently stumbled into a profoundly important place in our spiritual journeys—certainly for my spiritual journey, and I believe for those of you who are open to letting God work in new and challenging ways. Last week, I talked about congruence--allowing the alignment of our inner and outer lives so that they are the same; our inner hearts speak what our outer lives show in the world. I spoke about integrity and authenticity. This week, I believe that our passages take us deeper into that conversation—into the understanding or at least a glimpse of understanding into our unity with our creator. And it is a place of great comfort, great fear, and a place that requires us to do hard work. As always, when lead in ways such as these, I argued with God. In the end, I am convinced that sharing my thoughts and struggles with these passages may have some meaning beyond the words on a page or the echoes in this room.
Interesting thing—our passages this week have often been used in negative, blaming ways—not a surprise here! The Corinthians passage has been used to proof text everything from prohibition to so-called moral decency laws and I believe that misses Paul’s point completely. Matthew’s Jesus seems to point us in a legalistic way, and we miss the call to live out our true identities.
And so, as I sometimes am, find myself with a blank slate—asking God to point me in a deeper, more meaningful direction. I have much help along the way. This week I have found myself drawn deeper and deeper into the work of Parker Palmer. His book Let Your Life Speak is a foundational work on the topic at hand which has inspired me. There are many others, but Palmer’s work is freshest in my mind. Palmer is a Quaker, one of those calm, peaceful spirits, who seems as if he has been forever comfortable in his own skin. Not so, as he courageously assures us. He begins his book with a quote from May Sarton,
Now I become myself.
It's taken time, many years and places.
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces. ...
May Sarton was a giant among us—She lived into her 80’s and died in the mid-1990’s. And she calls us in this brief passage to question who we have allowed ourselves to be over years. Whose faces have we worn—whose expectations have we met rather than look to our own inner truth—our God-gift? One of the many delusions of youth is that as you age, you figure it all out—that somehow, magically, the aging process brings with it a certainty of not only who we are, but who we were and are intended, born—if you will—to be. This, my friends is false. There is nothing about aging that teaches us who we truly are—our God nature. Aging is a process that brings with it certain adaptive skills—but allowing one’s true self to become mature can happen at any age and, quite frankly, continues throughout one’s entire earthly life.
February is a celebration of African-American history. One of my heroes is Rosa Parks. Parker Palmer calls us to the why and what of Rosa’s historic actions in his exploration of this journey to our God nature. He tells the story in words similar to this:
At the moment that Rosa Parks sat down at the front of the bus, it was a moment of reclaiming who she knew herself to be—a person as worthy as any other to ride on any bus—front, back or in the middle. For all the world to see, this courageous woman showed us what it looks like when what we know about ourselves on the inside—that is our God-gift—is reflected in our outer life. Rosa Parks sat down because it became essential for her to be who she really was—not a second-class, unworthy person, but a whole, beautiful, child of God, who chose to act congruently with that truth. You may remember that last week, Sr. Thea Bowman called us to reject the enslavement of our inner selves—the enslavement that keeps us from reaching out as we really are to be who God made us to be and change the world for ourselves and for others. Rosa Parks, in that one, ultimately society-changing act, threw off the enslavement of which Sr. Thea spoke.
Palmer called this decision the decision to live an undivided life. He also asks the question “Where do people find the courage to live divided no more when they know they will be punished for it?” His answer: “these people have transformed the notion of punishment itself. They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.” Or in words slightly more resonate with some of our own experiences: “What you can do to me for being who I truly am cannot come close to what I do to myself when I am less than who and what I know myself to be.” Our gifts, whatever they may be, may bring risks with them, our essential God-ness may lead us into unpopular or mis-understood paths, but to allow fear to keep us estranged from that God-ness is a far more deadly punishment.
You may well not be called to act on a global stage like Rosa Parks—probably you are not, but this decision to live with the integrity we talked about last week—what Palmer calls the “undivided life” is part and parcel an integral piece of the scripture passage today. After Paul calls the Corinthians to use no other foundation other than Christ Jesus, he adds this: “You realize, don't you, that you are the temple of God, and God is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God's temple, you can be sure of that. God's temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.” Is not this inability, this fear of allowing God’s gifts to flourish in us—no matter our age or self- or other- imposed denial of our truest self—a vandalizing of God’s temple? This living “less than” God intended for us robs God’s temple indeed. And along comes Jesus, no less demanding: “You're kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you." Our God-created identity defined in only one way—to live towards others the way God lives towards us.
I am hopeful that I still have your attention, because I am convinced of the great value of this call to integrity and undividedness. And I am honestly standing here before you inviting you to join me in this process. I used to think that I had to seek to find out all that God intended me to be—and I’ve spent thousands of dollars looking for just the right book guide, travelled many different spiritual paths seeking just the right feeling, and engaged in hours of talk, private and communal, trying to string together just the right phrasing of who I view myself to be. I imagine that some of you have done the same—but today we are called to a different path.
Palmer has one more important truth about Rosa Parks. He notes that the Rosa Parks story can help us to discern our own truths, but if it is to do so, we must see her as the “ordinary person” that she is. We have put her into a museum—set her apart—made her into something that we believe ourselves unable to be. He says that we set our heroes apart to protect ourselves from the truth that we all have the gift of God inside us. It is not that we shouldn’t praise her and appreciate what she has done, but we must also let her story challenge our own—shake us into our own essential moment.
May Sarton reminds us that the pilgrimage to become ourselves takes "time, many years and places." My friends, our world is calling for people who care enough to spend the time and energy to journey to our own—your own truth. We are created in the image of God—formed to be who and what God intended for us to be. Living out into that truth is the vocation and call of every one of God’s children. Today I may no little else but this I know: God, I am Your Temple! Amen and Amen!
Welcome!
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
We Have Heard and We HAve Answered--Come and Offer Your Gift 2-13-11
Our Readings for Today
1 Corinthians 3:3b-9
When you are jealous and quarrel among yourselves, aren’t you influenced by your corrupt nature and living by human standards? When some of you say, “I follow Paul” and others say, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting like sinful humans? Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? They are servants who helped you come to faith. Each did what the Lord gave him to do. I planted, and Apollos watered, but God made it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is important because only God makes it grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have the same goal, and each will receive a reward for his own work. We are God’s coworkers. You are God’s field. You are God’s building.
Matthew 5:21-24
“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Never murder. Whoever murders will answer for it in court.’ But I can guarantee that whoever is angry with another believer will answer for it in court. Whoever calls another believer an insulting name will answer for it in the highest court. Whoever calls another believer a fool will answer for it in hellfire.
“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and remember there that another believer has something against you, leave your gift at the altar. First go away and make peace with that person. Then come back and offer your gift.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God, you are calling us in new and exciting ways. Help us to discern your voice in the glorious busyness of the day. Teach us to be still and to know that you are God. Amen
I’ll bet some of you saw the sermon title and thought “oh, no, the rev is just going to ask me to do something AGAIN!” Not so much—well, not in the way you may think. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and it’s a perfect day to talk about our hearts—not so much the physical status of our hearts, but the emotional and spiritual nature of our hearts in our souls—these are the hearts of which both Paul and Jesus speak in our passages for today. I imagine that most of you remember Valentine’s Day in elementary school—the angst—what if I don’t get as many valentines as other people do? What if my dimestore valentines don’t measure up against everyone else’s? What if I get a valentine I don’t really want? What if that pesky nerdy little kid gives me a valentine and people SEE it? What will people think? And so for some of us, at least, Valentine’s day became yet another day at school to succeed in or fail. It wasn’t until much later that Valentine’s day took on that more wonderful quiet heart to heart exchange that only comes when life teaches us what it means to really love another. We talk about giving our heart to another and Jesus talks about giving our heart to God—HMMM…What is there to learn here?
I think what these two “gifts of heart” have in common is that we must truly know our own hearts before we can give them to another, be it friend or child, or lover, or God, for that matter. And so, our scripture passages take us down a path—strange though it may seem—of learning our own hearts.
This passage from Matthew is still from the Sermon on the Mount, but the nice, pastoral, kindly teacher is gone. Here we have threats of divine judgment and trips to hellfire. Most of us would agree that we liked the other Jesus better. But this is the Jesus who leads us to the serious discussion relating to knowing ourselves and knowing our hearts. This is the Jesus who says, God can only use you, that is accept your gift—whatever that gift may be—if you are in right relationship with your brothers and sisters. There is no easy out here, no exceptions, no excuses to let us talk ourselves into believing that we need be less than brutally honest with ourselves in this equation.
And then comes Paul, frustrated with the Corinthians, AGAIN, this time because they are saying things like “We are Methodists, we are Charismatics, we are Catholics, we are Baptists!” Oops, just trying to make a point, Paul calls us to be Christians first, as the building built by God—we are the ones who get caught up in how we got here. As God’s coworkers it doesn’t matter who we were or used to me—what matters is what God is doing all along—building us up—building up the church—the body of Christ.
Interestingly, Matthew uses a conversation about anger to introduce this passage that focuses on reconciliation and “right-heartedness”. Anger, he suggests keeps us from loving rightly, from putting the needs and concerns of our brothers and sisters in perspective. This lack of reconciliation is what makes us unable to leave our gifts at God’s altar. This is a tough one for me and I imagine for some of you as well. I have heard myself say many times throughout my life, “what I have most to give is my integrity” and, giving myself a break, I believe that most, if not all of the times that I say it, I am in right relationship with others at least as I understand it to be at the moment. That’s the trouble with insight, with Ephipany, as it were. Just when we think we are where we need to be, along come God’s gift of insight and we see the steeper path in front of us.
Matthew talks of a way to approach personal integrity that makes the inner and outer life congruent—that is what we see on the outside is what we feel on the inside and vice versa. In other words, that which we feel on the inside shapes and controls what we do on the outside. Anger, at others, or even at ourselves, hinders our integrity from shining through. Now Jesus speaks of a broad spectrum of anger—everything from murder to calling people names. I grant you that very few of us are guilty of murder, but nagging anger can keep us from embracing reconciliation, a condition which Jesus takes very seriously. When, instead, we live in alienation from ourselves and others, our gifts to God are tarnished and, in many cases, not even available to bring to the altar.
This week I’ve been reading and watching a little about Sister Thea Bowman, an African-American Franciscan nun who was famous for her ability to be true to herself and to her God in every circumstance. She was a “Diversity pioneer”—calling the church to embrace all as children of God. As I watched some of the videos relating to her life, I thought, she would love it at Open Circle. I hope we are worthy of her spirit. This is what she said about all God’s children: “When all God’s children get together,, what a time, what a time, what a time…If we come together, brining our history, our experiences, our survival and coping mechanisms, our rituals of celebration, our unique ways of thinking and planning and relaxing and walking and talking and working, and praying and paying and being, what a gift we can be to one another and to our churches and to our world…
My grandfather was a slave. And he used to talk about slavery, because he said if we understood about slavery we might be able to understand about freedom. My granddaddy said the worst kind of slavery is not the slavery that come from outside with bonds and chains and forced labor. The worst slavery is slavery that comes in your own heart and your own mind and your own home and in your own church and in your own community. Let’s get in touch with the enslavement that keep us from reaching out to one another and being to one another the cause of freedom and the cause of strength and the cause of life.” Thank you, Thea for your call…
And so Jesus speaks a radical message—calling us to understand that the law is not just a legal code, but one which requires us, just as Thea’s message, to protect all as God’s people…to guarantee the dignity of all, to refrain from calling another a fool, to protect the physical and spiritual needs of all of our fellow and sister travelers on this earth—to do no harm, to “kill” no one whether by actual physical killing or by destroying the spirit, the wholeness of another by treating them as less than God’s child. Rather, Jesus calls us to work for reconciliation and Paul calls us to grasp the one-ness that makes us the building of God.
Jesus calls us to end the enslavement to anger by reconciling ourselves to our neighbor, those things which in Thea’s words, “keep us from reaching out to one another”. Is this not the greatest gift that we have to lay at the altar of God—that reconciliation of our inner heart with our outer circumstance? Not only with each other but with ourselves?
And how, does this affect us here in our own little worlds, in our own little church. I believe that it affects us in ways that we may not even understand yet—but I know that it calls us to a place of respect and gratitude for each one of us, wherever we come from and wherever we are bound. We are, many of us, hurt and hurting people. Hurt and hurting people often make for a messy soup of needs, thoughts, responses, and ideas.
Paul’s words speak to us, call us to move beyond our differences, and love each other into becoming the building of God. Jesus calls us to radical reconciliation—reconciliation to neighbor, to stranger and to self. Thea’s words call us to this same reconciliation, this radical notion of respect for each and every one as a child of God.
This Valentine’s Day I invite you to think about your heart—to ponder with me the wondrous things God is showing us about integrity and loving your neighbor and yourself. Come and offer your gift. Amen and amen.
1 Corinthians 3:3b-9
When you are jealous and quarrel among yourselves, aren’t you influenced by your corrupt nature and living by human standards? When some of you say, “I follow Paul” and others say, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting like sinful humans? Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? They are servants who helped you come to faith. Each did what the Lord gave him to do. I planted, and Apollos watered, but God made it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is important because only God makes it grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have the same goal, and each will receive a reward for his own work. We are God’s coworkers. You are God’s field. You are God’s building.
Matthew 5:21-24
“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, ‘Never murder. Whoever murders will answer for it in court.’ But I can guarantee that whoever is angry with another believer will answer for it in court. Whoever calls another believer an insulting name will answer for it in the highest court. Whoever calls another believer a fool will answer for it in hellfire.
“So if you are offering your gift at the altar and remember there that another believer has something against you, leave your gift at the altar. First go away and make peace with that person. Then come back and offer your gift.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
God, you are calling us in new and exciting ways. Help us to discern your voice in the glorious busyness of the day. Teach us to be still and to know that you are God. Amen
I’ll bet some of you saw the sermon title and thought “oh, no, the rev is just going to ask me to do something AGAIN!” Not so much—well, not in the way you may think. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and it’s a perfect day to talk about our hearts—not so much the physical status of our hearts, but the emotional and spiritual nature of our hearts in our souls—these are the hearts of which both Paul and Jesus speak in our passages for today. I imagine that most of you remember Valentine’s Day in elementary school—the angst—what if I don’t get as many valentines as other people do? What if my dimestore valentines don’t measure up against everyone else’s? What if I get a valentine I don’t really want? What if that pesky nerdy little kid gives me a valentine and people SEE it? What will people think? And so for some of us, at least, Valentine’s day became yet another day at school to succeed in or fail. It wasn’t until much later that Valentine’s day took on that more wonderful quiet heart to heart exchange that only comes when life teaches us what it means to really love another. We talk about giving our heart to another and Jesus talks about giving our heart to God—HMMM…What is there to learn here?
I think what these two “gifts of heart” have in common is that we must truly know our own hearts before we can give them to another, be it friend or child, or lover, or God, for that matter. And so, our scripture passages take us down a path—strange though it may seem—of learning our own hearts.
This passage from Matthew is still from the Sermon on the Mount, but the nice, pastoral, kindly teacher is gone. Here we have threats of divine judgment and trips to hellfire. Most of us would agree that we liked the other Jesus better. But this is the Jesus who leads us to the serious discussion relating to knowing ourselves and knowing our hearts. This is the Jesus who says, God can only use you, that is accept your gift—whatever that gift may be—if you are in right relationship with your brothers and sisters. There is no easy out here, no exceptions, no excuses to let us talk ourselves into believing that we need be less than brutally honest with ourselves in this equation.
And then comes Paul, frustrated with the Corinthians, AGAIN, this time because they are saying things like “We are Methodists, we are Charismatics, we are Catholics, we are Baptists!” Oops, just trying to make a point, Paul calls us to be Christians first, as the building built by God—we are the ones who get caught up in how we got here. As God’s coworkers it doesn’t matter who we were or used to me—what matters is what God is doing all along—building us up—building up the church—the body of Christ.
Interestingly, Matthew uses a conversation about anger to introduce this passage that focuses on reconciliation and “right-heartedness”. Anger, he suggests keeps us from loving rightly, from putting the needs and concerns of our brothers and sisters in perspective. This lack of reconciliation is what makes us unable to leave our gifts at God’s altar. This is a tough one for me and I imagine for some of you as well. I have heard myself say many times throughout my life, “what I have most to give is my integrity” and, giving myself a break, I believe that most, if not all of the times that I say it, I am in right relationship with others at least as I understand it to be at the moment. That’s the trouble with insight, with Ephipany, as it were. Just when we think we are where we need to be, along come God’s gift of insight and we see the steeper path in front of us.
Matthew talks of a way to approach personal integrity that makes the inner and outer life congruent—that is what we see on the outside is what we feel on the inside and vice versa. In other words, that which we feel on the inside shapes and controls what we do on the outside. Anger, at others, or even at ourselves, hinders our integrity from shining through. Now Jesus speaks of a broad spectrum of anger—everything from murder to calling people names. I grant you that very few of us are guilty of murder, but nagging anger can keep us from embracing reconciliation, a condition which Jesus takes very seriously. When, instead, we live in alienation from ourselves and others, our gifts to God are tarnished and, in many cases, not even available to bring to the altar.
This week I’ve been reading and watching a little about Sister Thea Bowman, an African-American Franciscan nun who was famous for her ability to be true to herself and to her God in every circumstance. She was a “Diversity pioneer”—calling the church to embrace all as children of God. As I watched some of the videos relating to her life, I thought, she would love it at Open Circle. I hope we are worthy of her spirit. This is what she said about all God’s children: “When all God’s children get together,, what a time, what a time, what a time…If we come together, brining our history, our experiences, our survival and coping mechanisms, our rituals of celebration, our unique ways of thinking and planning and relaxing and walking and talking and working, and praying and paying and being, what a gift we can be to one another and to our churches and to our world…
My grandfather was a slave. And he used to talk about slavery, because he said if we understood about slavery we might be able to understand about freedom. My granddaddy said the worst kind of slavery is not the slavery that come from outside with bonds and chains and forced labor. The worst slavery is slavery that comes in your own heart and your own mind and your own home and in your own church and in your own community. Let’s get in touch with the enslavement that keep us from reaching out to one another and being to one another the cause of freedom and the cause of strength and the cause of life.” Thank you, Thea for your call…
And so Jesus speaks a radical message—calling us to understand that the law is not just a legal code, but one which requires us, just as Thea’s message, to protect all as God’s people…to guarantee the dignity of all, to refrain from calling another a fool, to protect the physical and spiritual needs of all of our fellow and sister travelers on this earth—to do no harm, to “kill” no one whether by actual physical killing or by destroying the spirit, the wholeness of another by treating them as less than God’s child. Rather, Jesus calls us to work for reconciliation and Paul calls us to grasp the one-ness that makes us the building of God.
Jesus calls us to end the enslavement to anger by reconciling ourselves to our neighbor, those things which in Thea’s words, “keep us from reaching out to one another”. Is this not the greatest gift that we have to lay at the altar of God—that reconciliation of our inner heart with our outer circumstance? Not only with each other but with ourselves?
And how, does this affect us here in our own little worlds, in our own little church. I believe that it affects us in ways that we may not even understand yet—but I know that it calls us to a place of respect and gratitude for each one of us, wherever we come from and wherever we are bound. We are, many of us, hurt and hurting people. Hurt and hurting people often make for a messy soup of needs, thoughts, responses, and ideas.
Paul’s words speak to us, call us to move beyond our differences, and love each other into becoming the building of God. Jesus calls us to radical reconciliation—reconciliation to neighbor, to stranger and to self. Thea’s words call us to this same reconciliation, this radical notion of respect for each and every one as a child of God.
This Valentine’s Day I invite you to think about your heart—to ponder with me the wondrous things God is showing us about integrity and loving your neighbor and yourself. Come and offer your gift. Amen and amen.
Monday, February 7, 2011
We Have Called and We Have Answered: We Have the Mind of Christ 2-6-11
First Reading: I Corinthians 2: 1-16 (portions) (TNIV, ©2005)
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age,… No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”But we have the mind of Christ.
Matthew 5:13-16 (Today’s New International Version, ©2005)
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your God in heaven.
God, sometimes you call us to understand things that are hard for us to understand and we struggle, but we know that we struggle with your help, with the guidance of your Holy Spirit. Keep us true to the path you have laid out for our journeys. Remind us that we are your people and the sheep of your pasture. Amen
There are times when God calls us to deeper places—those deeper places that, when understanding comes, transform our lives. Salt and light—two everyday substances—that we take for granted, rarely thinking about what our lives would look like without them—these are the simple, and oh so profound, items so central to our journey on this day. We may struggle to understand what Jesus means, feeling a tug-of-war in our heads—straining against the truth that threatens to shake up our fairly predictable worlds. And here comes Paul, eloquent in his simplicity—telling us that he is neither wise nor persuasive but speaks only in the power of God’s Spirit and calling us to do the same. Before I start to lose some of you, let me tell you what I think that this means in our everyday, central Florida lives.
As much as we preacher types are tempted to come up with complex and impressive theories regarding intricate theological constructs, we don’t get much support for that in these passages. Jesus says You and He means “we”—the folks he is talking to—are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. I want to tell you a story: Once after hearing a sermon on this very topic by one of the powerful preachers of the day, a simple farmer came up to the speaker and said, “I think I know what Jesus meant.” The preacher tolerantly listened to this hard-working man who said: “Last week I got my flashlight and went into our basement where we store the potatoes all winter. The potatoes are in the very darkest corner of the basement so they don’t sprout and start to grow. I went over to the potatoes and could not believe what I saw. There on one side was a small section of potatoes that had started to sprout. I looked around, wondering where the light had come from as it is pitch black in the basement. I discovered that my wife had hung a brightly polished copper kettle at just the right angle to reflect a small ray of light from the only window in the basement. She kept it so brightly polished that it reflected the rays of the sun onto the potatoes.” So, the farmer said to the preacher, "When I saw that, I thought, I may not be a preacher or a teacher with ability to win large numbers of people to Christ, and I may not have all the education in the world; but at least I can be a copper kettle catching the rays of the Son (spelled s-o-n) and reflect His light to someone in a dark corner."
Jesus calls us to be a light to the world. Paul calls us to let the light into our very selves—to have the mind of Christ. During Advent this year, I rediscovered the word “ponder”. It’s not a word that I used to use much; I doubt that many of you did either. But I have begun to ponder things—it’s a simple word for meditate upon, I guess, but I prefer the concept of pondering. And so, this week, I have pondered a lot about what it means to be salt and light and to have the mind of Christ. God gives us the very gift that we need—access to the mind of Christ—that enables us to be the salt and light to the world. This is an important distinction that we must make—it is not that we have access to the mind of Christ so that we can sit on a high hill and pretend to be God. No, it is for a far more important reason. We have the mind of Christ so that we can think and act and be like Christ. The question “What would Jesus do?” can lead us astray if we have not taken hold of the truth that having the mind of Christ means that we have the ability to think and, therefore, act like Jesus. “What would Jesus do?” implies that we have to guess, to make a stab at discovering the answer to the question. Having the mind of Christ, living in the presence of God, takes us to a place of being the salt and light that God calls us to be. You are the salt of the earth—you are the light of the world. Let me illustrate my point in a sports analogy: Years ago, Don Sutton was the pitcher for the LA Dodgers, and he hadn’t won a game in 8 weeks. The press was saying “dump him”. The future looked bleak, and Sutton was despondent. Before a critical game, the Dodgers manager, Walter Alston asked to speak with him privately. Sutton braced himself for what was coming.
"Don," said Alston, "I know how the past couple of months have been for you. Everyone's wondering whether we can make it to the play-offs . . . You know there's a lot of pressure . . . I've had to make a decision." Sutton closed his eyes, mentally preparing to sit out the next crucial games. Then Alston continued. "If the Dodgers are going to win this year," he said, looking Sutton in the eye, "they're going to win with Don Sutton pitching. Come what may, you're staying in the starting job. That's all I wanted to say."
It took Sutton two more weeks to completely turn around his losing streak, but he started right then and there. He pitched his best balls ever and in the National League pennant drive, he won 13 games out of 14.
Walter Alston could have tried all kinds of methods to motivate Sutton—guilt, fear, shame, but he chose the higher way—motivation through encouragement and belief in another. Is this not what Jesus is doing in our passage? Is this not what Paul is doing as well? Jesus says to his followers, "You are the light of the world. . . ." Can you get a picture of that scene in your mind? Here was a ragtag group of famers and fisherfolk, tax collectors, women of ill repute, and losers of all form. They lived in a remote, poverty-stricken village in a little known part of the world. Up steps Jesus and proclaims: "You are the light of the world."
And here comes Paul, stating that the folks in Corinth, have not received the spirit of the world, but rather the Spirit of God—that they—and we—have access to the mind of Christ, to understand all that God has for us to understand as we hang like brightly polished copper kettles shining light into the darkest corners of our world.
How do we take these proclamations of faith in us into our very selves? How do we let go of all that dims our light and dilutes our salt and step into this place of power—this constant presence of God, and so consistent in us, that Paul says we literally have the mind of Christ? We have heard the quote from Marianne Williamson that I utilized as today’s centering mediation so often that we may fail to hear its truth. Perhaps we have heard it anew this day. Williamson also says: “As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. [We are] not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be. “
Take a moment to consider what God has done in us. We are the salt of the earth; we are the light of the world – because of God’s work in us. We are full of the power to envision a new world—not just a new political or social order, but a new world in and for ourselves. With the in-breaking of God’s reign of justice, we can choose this day to reflect the light so freely and wondrously given. And when we choose, two things will happen, we will move more freely into the warm loving embrace of a God who loves us so much that we are invited to share the same thoughts, the same mind. And, others will see the light in and through us and find new ways to love themselves, their God, and their world.
Where ever you are this day, I invite you to take in the light reflected around you and shine, shine, shine. Amen and amen.
And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age,… No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit within? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”But we have the mind of Christ.
Matthew 5:13-16 (Today’s New International Version, ©2005)
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your God in heaven.
God, sometimes you call us to understand things that are hard for us to understand and we struggle, but we know that we struggle with your help, with the guidance of your Holy Spirit. Keep us true to the path you have laid out for our journeys. Remind us that we are your people and the sheep of your pasture. Amen
There are times when God calls us to deeper places—those deeper places that, when understanding comes, transform our lives. Salt and light—two everyday substances—that we take for granted, rarely thinking about what our lives would look like without them—these are the simple, and oh so profound, items so central to our journey on this day. We may struggle to understand what Jesus means, feeling a tug-of-war in our heads—straining against the truth that threatens to shake up our fairly predictable worlds. And here comes Paul, eloquent in his simplicity—telling us that he is neither wise nor persuasive but speaks only in the power of God’s Spirit and calling us to do the same. Before I start to lose some of you, let me tell you what I think that this means in our everyday, central Florida lives.
As much as we preacher types are tempted to come up with complex and impressive theories regarding intricate theological constructs, we don’t get much support for that in these passages. Jesus says You and He means “we”—the folks he is talking to—are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. I want to tell you a story: Once after hearing a sermon on this very topic by one of the powerful preachers of the day, a simple farmer came up to the speaker and said, “I think I know what Jesus meant.” The preacher tolerantly listened to this hard-working man who said: “Last week I got my flashlight and went into our basement where we store the potatoes all winter. The potatoes are in the very darkest corner of the basement so they don’t sprout and start to grow. I went over to the potatoes and could not believe what I saw. There on one side was a small section of potatoes that had started to sprout. I looked around, wondering where the light had come from as it is pitch black in the basement. I discovered that my wife had hung a brightly polished copper kettle at just the right angle to reflect a small ray of light from the only window in the basement. She kept it so brightly polished that it reflected the rays of the sun onto the potatoes.” So, the farmer said to the preacher, "When I saw that, I thought, I may not be a preacher or a teacher with ability to win large numbers of people to Christ, and I may not have all the education in the world; but at least I can be a copper kettle catching the rays of the Son (spelled s-o-n) and reflect His light to someone in a dark corner."
Jesus calls us to be a light to the world. Paul calls us to let the light into our very selves—to have the mind of Christ. During Advent this year, I rediscovered the word “ponder”. It’s not a word that I used to use much; I doubt that many of you did either. But I have begun to ponder things—it’s a simple word for meditate upon, I guess, but I prefer the concept of pondering. And so, this week, I have pondered a lot about what it means to be salt and light and to have the mind of Christ. God gives us the very gift that we need—access to the mind of Christ—that enables us to be the salt and light to the world. This is an important distinction that we must make—it is not that we have access to the mind of Christ so that we can sit on a high hill and pretend to be God. No, it is for a far more important reason. We have the mind of Christ so that we can think and act and be like Christ. The question “What would Jesus do?” can lead us astray if we have not taken hold of the truth that having the mind of Christ means that we have the ability to think and, therefore, act like Jesus. “What would Jesus do?” implies that we have to guess, to make a stab at discovering the answer to the question. Having the mind of Christ, living in the presence of God, takes us to a place of being the salt and light that God calls us to be. You are the salt of the earth—you are the light of the world. Let me illustrate my point in a sports analogy: Years ago, Don Sutton was the pitcher for the LA Dodgers, and he hadn’t won a game in 8 weeks. The press was saying “dump him”. The future looked bleak, and Sutton was despondent. Before a critical game, the Dodgers manager, Walter Alston asked to speak with him privately. Sutton braced himself for what was coming.
"Don," said Alston, "I know how the past couple of months have been for you. Everyone's wondering whether we can make it to the play-offs . . . You know there's a lot of pressure . . . I've had to make a decision." Sutton closed his eyes, mentally preparing to sit out the next crucial games. Then Alston continued. "If the Dodgers are going to win this year," he said, looking Sutton in the eye, "they're going to win with Don Sutton pitching. Come what may, you're staying in the starting job. That's all I wanted to say."
It took Sutton two more weeks to completely turn around his losing streak, but he started right then and there. He pitched his best balls ever and in the National League pennant drive, he won 13 games out of 14.
Walter Alston could have tried all kinds of methods to motivate Sutton—guilt, fear, shame, but he chose the higher way—motivation through encouragement and belief in another. Is this not what Jesus is doing in our passage? Is this not what Paul is doing as well? Jesus says to his followers, "You are the light of the world. . . ." Can you get a picture of that scene in your mind? Here was a ragtag group of famers and fisherfolk, tax collectors, women of ill repute, and losers of all form. They lived in a remote, poverty-stricken village in a little known part of the world. Up steps Jesus and proclaims: "You are the light of the world."
And here comes Paul, stating that the folks in Corinth, have not received the spirit of the world, but rather the Spirit of God—that they—and we—have access to the mind of Christ, to understand all that God has for us to understand as we hang like brightly polished copper kettles shining light into the darkest corners of our world.
How do we take these proclamations of faith in us into our very selves? How do we let go of all that dims our light and dilutes our salt and step into this place of power—this constant presence of God, and so consistent in us, that Paul says we literally have the mind of Christ? We have heard the quote from Marianne Williamson that I utilized as today’s centering mediation so often that we may fail to hear its truth. Perhaps we have heard it anew this day. Williamson also says: “As we become purer channels for God's light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. [We are] not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be. “
Take a moment to consider what God has done in us. We are the salt of the earth; we are the light of the world – because of God’s work in us. We are full of the power to envision a new world—not just a new political or social order, but a new world in and for ourselves. With the in-breaking of God’s reign of justice, we can choose this day to reflect the light so freely and wondrously given. And when we choose, two things will happen, we will move more freely into the warm loving embrace of a God who loves us so much that we are invited to share the same thoughts, the same mind. And, others will see the light in and through us and find new ways to love themselves, their God, and their world.
Where ever you are this day, I invite you to take in the light reflected around you and shine, shine, shine. Amen and amen.
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