Thompson's Blog

Prepping For Jesus
Matthew 11:2-11

2 When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” 4 Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6 And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” 7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ 11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

What I’m about to say may fall in to the category of TMI – too much information. Which I’m thinking is an interesting way to start a sermon. I’m guessing some of you are suddenly wishing you had in fact done that other thing you thought about doing this morning instead of coming to church. But TMI is what get’s the attention of other people. The possibility of me sharing too much information will keep some of you from checking your smartphones for a moment. So I’ll try to provide just enough information to keep some of you listening and others from moaning and heading for the door. But the truth is I can’t read this word, prepare, without thinking about the 64oz bottle of medicated Gatorade I had to drink last Wednesday evening in preparation for my first colonoscopy.

Now there’s a line for you tweeters out there. Preacher is moved to reflect on his recent colonoscopy.

I know this is probably not a subject I should address from the pulpit, but I don’t think I can speak for 10 minutes without bringing it up. I was asleep when the doctor actually did the deal, so that was no big deal at all, but preparing for this test had me occupied for a day and a half and preoccupied for several more days. I know I’m not the first person in the room to have undergone this experience, and several people have told me how lucky I am to have gotten to drink the Gatorade cocktail as opposed to the horrible potion of yesteryear, but this was some new territory for me.

I’ll quit talking about it before I really do provide you with too much information, but this was an experience that put me in touch with the concept of preparation. And this is the season of the year we in the church do a lot of talking about getting ourselves prepared. And most of us do engage in a good amount of preparation. We go up in the attic and pull down all sorts of boxes. Many of us spend an inordinate amount of time decorating our houses – inside and out! And I love that kind of stuff. I don’t like the trips to the attic, and I’m not the primary decorator in my house, nor am I in competition to see who can add the most light to the universe, but I like the decorations. I like the festive nature of this season.

I don’t care to see Christmas decorations going up the day after Halloween, but I’m not offended by the shops and restaurants and banks and malls getting all done up during this time of the year. I’m not a Black Friday shopping contestant, but I don’t mind a trip to a shopping center during these days. I’m not sure how we’ve come to connect the birth of Jesus at a homeless shelter with material indulgence, but this has become our national tradition, and I’m not one to rail against this. I don’t think it’s so bad to engage in some recreational gift-giving during this time of the year, but I’m sure there are some bad messages in the air.

I must say I am a little put off by the commercial where a boy who looks to be about 10 years old asks Santa for a Ford F-150 Pickup – and not the toy version. Clearly that commercial was designed to be over-the-top, but I’m afraid it’s not very far over the top of our reality. We are a society that is consumed with desire for stuff – big stuff. Maybe I should be railing against this tendency we have to want more and more of the things that money can buy – the things that don’t really matter, but I’m more inclined to try to focus on what it is that really does matter.

And what really matters is a question that we all must answer for ourselves. It’s striking that John the Baptist sent his followers to ask Jesus if he was the One who had been sent from God, or should they be looking for another. This is the same John who so clearly announced who Jesus was when he presented himself for baptism. John had no doubt at that point, but the scene had changed. He had been arrested and imprisoned by Herod, this man who had behaved in all sorts of horrible ways, and this seems to have left John the Baptist wondering what was going on. I think John’s expectation was that Jesus was going to take charge of the world and people like Herod would be the ones behind bars.

This is an interesting situation. What we see here is that Jesus didn’t just disrupt the expectations of the Pharisees and high priests and the other people who were clueless as to the actual nature of God – Jesus didn’t even meet the expectation of the most spiritually authentic man of the day. The greatest prophet of Israel didn’t quite get it.

This is an amazing thing, and actually a somewhat comforting thing to me. Everybody has trouble recognizing Jesus for who he is. John didn’t resist what he came to understand about Jesus, but Jesus didn’t turn out to be the person John expected him to be. Jesus didn’t give the followers of John the Baptist a direct answer, but he told them to tell John what was happening. The lame were being healed, the blind were gaining sight, lepers were being cleansed,good news was being provided for the poor, and those who took no offense at this were being blessed. And with this he left John and the rest of us to draw our own conclusions.

Coming to understand and to embrace Jesus as the one to whom we want to trust is a process for all of us. We can’t make it happen, but I do believe there are some things we can do to prepare ourselves.

Jesus was very clear about the work he was doing. He was touching and healing and providing for those who were in the most desperate circumstances. Unfortunately most of us don’t have the power to do the kinds of things that Jesus did. I’m not here to declare that miraculous healings don’t take place, but these are rare events. Most of us count on the discoveries of modern science to treat our infirmities, but we can be in touch with people who are hurting, and I think this can help us be more prepared to receive Jesus in our own hearts

Being poor in our society is a hard place to be and it seems to be getting harder. We don’t have an economy that is providing much opportunity for people to get out of poverty, and our government is cutting back on the services it provides for poor people. There is a growing sense of need in our nation and in our city, and to look away from this problem is to avoid seeing the kind of people Jesus chose to be near. Serving people who are in need is not an automatic ticket to salvation, but it’s about the best thing we can do to prepare ourselves for it.

Jesus didn’t clear the threshing floor and throw the chaff in to the fire as quickly and as clearly as John the Baptist had hoped he would do. The rise of Jesus didn’t mark the demise of the most evil and greedy and violent people, and I think that came as a disappointment to John the Baptist, but this isn’t all bad news. There are few of us who are as prepared for the arrival of the Holy One of God as John the Baptist was. I think most of us are trying to avoid evil and to do some good, but I don’t think any of us are qualified for membership in the kingdom of heaven

We don’t find our way in to the kingdom of God because we have proven ourselves to be worthy of admission. The only reason we are welcomed in to God’s Holy Kingdom is because Jesus has love in his heart for people who aren’t perfect. And while I believe the welcome is universal, we aren’t all prepared for the experience. And the thing that keeps us from being prepared is our unwillingness to believe that God operates in this purely gracious way.

I don’t believe we can prepare ourselves to receive and to experience the unfathomable love of God by becoming more perfect, but I believe that when we exercise compassion toward others we are more able to understand the compassion God has for us.

Jesus exercised compassion for those who weren’t regarded as eligible for membership in the community of faith, and by doing that he showed us who is in need of our own attention.

I have been reminded of how important it is to be prepared for significant events, and good it is to feel prepared. There are parties and meals and medical procedures and other such events that have their own set of exercises that enable us to be prepared. And while there is a way to get ourselves prepared to encounter God it’s not the kind of preparation that we generally exercise. Preparing ourselves for the grace of God is an exercise in letting go of the illusions we have about ourselves and others. Preparing for the arrival of Christ calls for us to let go of our judgments and to embrace the miracle of God’s love for all of us.

Not even John the Baptist was ready for Jesus, but none of us are excluded from the very same relationship that this perfectly obedient man had with the savior of the world. None of us will ever be ready, but ready or not, Jesus comes to us in ways that we would never expect. And by the grace of God our eyes will be open and our hearts will understand that there isn’t anything that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And thanks be to God for that.
Amen.

Uncle John’s Wilderness Experience
Matthew 3:1-12

1 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'” 4 Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

I’ve been blessed with good uncles in my life. My Uncle Jack is my one blood relative uncle – my mother’s brother, is actually a member of our church here and he is someone I genuinely cherish. He is in my corner and helps me and my family in whatever way he can. He gives me honest feedback on my sermons – which I welcome even when it’s not all positive. Jack knows how to enjoy life and to connect with other people and I love that about him. He’s in Florida right now, which is pretty good timing on his part, so I could go on about Uncle Jack this morning without any fear of him interrupting me, but I won’t. My point is that I am the beneficiary of a good uncle. He loves me well and I am grateful to have him in my life.

I’ve had other good uncles as well. My mother’s sister’s husband was a great man. Uncle Rodney passed away a few years ago, but he was a good influence in my life. He and my Aunt Helen invited me to join them on a trip to Montana during the summer after I finished the 9th grade. I had never been to the Rocky Mountains, and that was an amazing trip. He showed me how to catch the wild trout that live in those Rocky Mountain rushing rivers. He was a large man who had big ideas and who knew how to carry them out. He was a man of great faith. He lived a highly principled life, and he was also a lot of fun to be around. He always found a way to make me laugh. My life was well nourished by my Uncle Rodney.

My other uncle was the husband of my father’s sister. Aunt Jane and Uncle Maurice Jr., lived in Birdeye, AR, which is about as small of a town as there is in Arkansas, but Maurice Jr., was no small player in Arkansas politics. I didn’t spend a lot of time around Maurice Jr., but the people who were close to him thought the world of him. One of those people was Bill Clinton. In fact when my uncle died, my cousin called to see if I would conduct the service. I was happy to do it, and when I called one of his friends to say I wanted to visit with her about Maurice Jr., she said, We do need to talk, you know the president is coming… And he did. President Clinton and I conducted the funeral for Maurice Jr., and that was an amazing experience for me and my family. I am still proud to be connected to a person who helped shape the history of our state and nation.

I’ve been blessed with good aunts and uncles. I am the beneficiary of many good relatives who have helped shape my life, but all of us also have these other people in our lives who aren’t our actual relatives, but who function as aunts and uncles. These are the people to whom we choose to be related. It’s not unusual to refer to a beloved person who is a bit older than we are as an aunt or an uncle – it’s a title we sometimes give go the people we revere for the guidance they provide.

Of course we educated people have become much more sophisticated in the way we define relationships, so we now call those people our mentors, but to call someone a mentor doesn’t capture the affection you have for an aunt or an uncle. You don’t love a mentor like you love a brother or a sister or an aunt or an uncle.

And some of these people who function as our beloved aunts and uncles don’t live in our own century or even in our own country. And as I’m sure you’ve already figured out, I’m suggesting we think of John the Baptist as our own Uncle John. Some might say he was our crazy Uncle John, and he was unusual, but he wasn’t out of his mind in a bad way. He was driven to live in an extremely unusual way, but he wasn’t afflicted with a mental illness. He was consumed by the truth, and he was uncompromising in his appeal for people to hear and to embrace the truth.

John the Baptist isn’t someone I would necessarily choose to have as a relative. I’m not particularly drawn to people who have the personality of an inferno, but all of the writers of the gospels point to John the Baptist as the one who could see the impact Jesus Christ was going to have on the world. In the same way that we don’t really get to choose our actual relatives, we don’t get to choose who our spiritual relatives are as well. We can choose to ignore them, but all of the gospels point to John the Baptist as someone worthy of our Christian attention.

Uncle John was out there, but we don’t need to ignore what he was doing. The truth is that he was pretty un-ignorable to the people of his day. John was not easily accessible to the people of Jerusalem. You had to go on a journey through rough terrain to get to him, but people were driven to find him.

It’s interesting to think of the contrast between the way we do church today and the way that John the Baptist operated. He established his operation in about as in-accessible of a place as he could find – you had to go out of your way to find him, and when you did get to him you weren’t likely to be stroked in a warm and fuzzy manner. While we are inclined to do all we can to lure people in to our houses of worship. There have been occasions when there has been some leftover coffee from our weekly free Community Breakfast for us to use for the coffee we provide in the narthex for our worshipping guests, but I’m insistent that we have fresh and high quality coffee for our worship service. I pander to people to come to church.

And I do my best not to scare people away with the message – in spite of how scary the scripture may be. Jesus wanted us to pick up our cross and follow him to the place of crucifixion. I generally invite people to look at what unusual things Jesus said and did and to consider what that could possibly mean for us. When some really important people came out to the Jordan River to see what John the Baptist was doing he called them bad names and asked them who invited them to get involved in what he was doing. You won’t hear such language from me. I’d love to see a few generous corporate executives who have a passing interest in what we are doing show up here on a Sunday morning.

I hope I’m not as mercenary as I may be implying, but the truth is that what happens in church is a far cry from what John was doing in the wilderness. And the other truth is that we all know there are these moments in history and in our own lives where what needs to happen is far from the ordinary way that life generally operates.

The death of Nelson Mandela has been widely covered lately. I wasn’t unconscious of the anti-apartheid movement that he was associated with and imprisoned for, but I’ve heard and thought and read more about him over the last few days than I ever have before, and I’ve come to recognize what a compelling figure he was. He is certainly a person who had an extended wilderness experience, and a person who people wanted to be near. He was in prison for 27 years, which is about as long as I’ve been in full-time ministry. I’m not saying there is any relation between those two experiences, but it does give me some perspective on how long 27 years is.

Nelson Mandela gave himself to a cause in much the same way John the Baptist responded to the call of his day, and these are our spiritual relatives – our uncles so to speak. We don’t know so much about the early childhood of John the Baptist, but there’s a pretty good article about Nelson Mandela on Wikipedia, and it was interesting to read that Nelson Mandela’s parents were both illiterate, but his mother was a Christian, and she found a way to send him to a Methodist school when he was a child, and the first college he attended was established by the Methodists.

Nelson Mandela didn’t set out to change his country, but he was sensitive to the injustice of his day, and he didn’t back away from getting involved in the promotion of racial equality. He was primarily a person who wanted to live a good and decent life, but he didn’t avoid getting involved in the large drama that was unfolding in the midst of his country, and it played out in an amazing way. He was willing to go in to the wilderness, and when he came out of it he became the president of the country that had sent him to prison. It is an amazing story, and the most amazing part of it is the way he conducted himself as president. He remained focused on trying to create racial harmony in his country, and it’s truly remarkable that he was able to guide the country in a way that avoided what could have been one of the ugliest civil wars ever.

Our Uncle Nelson had God’s wisdom in his heart, and you might say that his life was dramatically shaped by our Uncle John Wesley, who inspired people to go to places like South Africa to establish schools for the children who weren’t going to be educated by the government.

And our Uncle John Wesley was powerfully moved by what Uncle John the Baptist had done in the wilderness. When John Wesley established the classes of people who came together to hold one another accountable to their faith the only thing he required of those participants was to have the desire to flee the wrath to come – which originally came from the mouth of John the Baptist.

I’m not exactly sure what to say about having this desire to flee the wrath to come. I’m guessing that isn’t exactly the language most of us would use to describe what draws us together, but why we are here isn’t far from that. I’m guessing most of us show up for worship because we want to be a part of the abundant life that God wills for us all to experience. Finding that life can be a treacherous journey, and it generally happens outside of the sanctuary, but we are fortunate to have had some good people in our lives to help us find it. We have these aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters who have gone before us and who are here with us to help us find our way through the complexities of our own personal lives and in to the timeless family of God.

And thanks be to God for that! Amen.

Seized By Grace
Matthew 24:36-44
36 “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

I’m a pretty careful person. That may not be obvious in everything I do, but I’m a little bit of a control freak. I do take on some random projects, but I operate in very particular ways. Some of you understand what I’m talking about. I know I’m not the only member of the Control Freak Club around here.

I was reminded of my tendency to want to control things last Sunday afternoon as we were decorating the sanctuary. One of the men who was helping decorate the Christmon Tree allowed the children to string the lights along the bottom of the tree and to go up as high as they could reach – which is not something I would have ever done. It’s so good that I had gone to get an extension cord when they were doing that, because I would have taken total control of that undertaking. I take light-stringinging very seriously. I never would have delegated that to children, but I discovered that they did a good job. They were spaced really well, and it was done with so little anxiety.

Every once in while it occurs to me that I don’t need to be in charge of everything. I know some of you may wonder if I’m in charge of anything, and there’s some truth to that as well. I am so happy that I don’t know how many things around here operate and are accomplished, but I do have my areas of understanding, and I think I know how some things are to be best done. But I’m not totally obstinate. I see that there are other people who know how to hang lights on a tree, and I’m happy to acknowledge that. I have also come to see that I don’t know everything about those areas I consider to be within my expertise.

Like when I dropped an air conditioner out of our bedroom window last week. That came as quite a surprise to me in a number of ways. I don’t usually do things like that. I build stuff all of the time. I handle a lot of materials. I use power tools. I’m the one who installed that air conditioner in our window last spring. I put it in because I’m adding a bathroom on our house and the central unit that heats and cools our bedroom was going to be cut off for several months. We got all of that reconnected not long ago, and that window unit was letting cold air in so I went to take it out – and it came out a lot quicker than I had anticipated.

I’ll spare you the details of my mistake, but the bottom line is that I created a circumstance that allowed gravity to take control of the situation. That gravity is powerful stuff. I don’t think we are always conscious of the force of gravity, but gravity doesn’t let up, and every once in a while there are these moments when the force of gravity becomes really obvious.

My friend Charles Zook, who navigates the world in an electric wheelchair because of a nasty fall, was working with some kids at Camp Aldersgate one summer and one child asked him what happened to him. Charles responded to him by saying that gravity got him. I don’t know how that child processed that information, but I thought that was a profound answer. There are a lot of us who understand the need to maintain awareness of gravity.

As I’ve contemplated my failure to remember what happens when you forget how powerful and relentless the force of gravity really is, it has occurred to me that there are these other forces and materials out there that are perpetually surrounding us that we don’t often recognize. I don’t generally think about oxygen, but if it were to be removed from me I would become immediately alarmed.

I try not to take my food and shelter for granted, but I think I probably do. I would have hated to be without either of them this last week. I know there are people who scramble for these essential elements on a daily basis, and I hate that this is the case. I’m grateful not to be in that circumstance, and I hope to always be conscious and compassionate toward those who do. I’m proud to be a part of a church that stays in touch with people who live on the margin of life. There is a sense in which this church maintains awareness of how close some people live to the edge of life, and I’m regularly touched by the compassion I see at work here.

We have these powerful forces bearing down on us. We take for granted most of the things that enable us to maintain our lives as they are. We aren’t aware of many of the physical forces that have bearing on our lives, and it’s even harder to develop awareness of the spiritual forces that surround us.

I don’t know how to elaborate on the dark forces that may well be swirling in our midst, but what Jesus came to make clear to us is the nature of God’s powerful presence within our world. God’s Holy Spirit is not as obvious as gravity or oxygen or many of the other invisible elements that define our lives as they are, but Jesus didn’t want us to live without awareness of this life-giving reality. God’s presence is more powerful and consistent than the force of gravity, but it’s not as easily identified or exposed. As clearly as gravity is on hand to hold us down to the ground, the spirit of God is here to lift us up, but we don’t always make ourselves available to it’s power.

Unlike gravity, we can choose to ignore the force of God, and by doing so we live really flat lives. We are not required to take note of the ways the Holy Spirit is prompting us to wake up and live by the light of the Kingdom of God, but just because we don’t know what God is doing doesn’t mean that God is unconscious of who we are and what we need.

What we have in this passage of scripture is an assurance that we aren’t living in a world that is apart from the attention of God. While there is this instruction to not be focused on when God will step in to our world in an un-ignorable manner, there is also this assertion that it will happen. There is reason to think that this mysterious presence of God will some day be made manifest in a perfectly obvious way, but it isn’t our job to figure out when this will happen. The message for us is to go on each day with our perfectly ordinary lives with an extraordinary awareness of how near God is to us all.

There is an element of warning in this passage. The message is that we can live with ignorance of the role God currently plays and will ultimately carry out. By living in a spiritually unconscious manner we are missing out on the true richness of life, and as surely as you can end up doing some boneheaded things if you forget to take gravity in to account, we can behave in spiritually boneheaded ways if we fail to take God’s ongoing presence in to account.

If we live without awareness of God’s presence in this world we won’t pay proper attention to the things and the people that God’s spirit would have us see. The imagery is of two people doing the same thing but one is taken away while the other is left behind. What this says to me is that it doesn’t matter so much what we engage in doing in this world but it makes all the difference what we are most concerned about. What we all know is that we can fill our hearts with the concerns of our selves. Or we can seek to be sensitive to the needs of others, the advancement of justice, and the source of true life.

I know we aren’t in total control of the concerns of our hearts. I don’t think any of us are capable of rooting out all of the selfish impulses of our hearts and minds, but occasionally we have the good fortune of having our lives seized by the grace of God. I dare say most of us have had those moments when the world has been redefined in a powerfully new way by the spirit of the living God.

John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, spoke of having his heart strangely warmed, and I’m guessing most of us can relate to what he was saying. There wasn’t anything particularly dramatic happening on that day on Aldersgate Rd. in London. Like everyone else, Wesley was struggling with what he was doing with his life, and he wasn’t confident that he was doing the right thing. But he felt this sense of assurance that his life was in God’s hands and it set him on a course that we United Methodists continue to this day.

I often wish God would seize my heart and provide me with a greater degree of direction and understanding, but I know that I have already been provided with more than I need. I know to pay attention to what God is doing in this world, and I know to trust that God’s love is the most powerful force that exists in the universe. I don’t always remember this or act on that trust, but todays passage serves to remind me of the imminence of this truth.

This First Sunday in Advent is an invitation for us all to renew our trust in the invisible but ever-present force of God’s spirit in this world. This is the force that has the power to renew our lives, give us direction, and bring us hope. The Spirit of God isn’t easy to discern, but it’s worthy of our attention, and you can’t just can’t call it up when you need it. It can seize us in an instant, but in spite of the efforts of many of us to be in control of this world – God doesn’t act upon our demand, and I suppose that’s good news.

God’s love is more consistent than gravity, but we can’t really fathom the range of it’s operations. Not even the angels in heaven know what it will do, but we can trust it, and we can be carried away by it if we will make ourselves available to it. Expect God’s good presence to be there for you, work to understand it, and you won’t be badly surprised by where it takes you.

Thanks be to God for the grace we have already received and for the glory that will be. Amen

The Royal Treatment
Luke 23:33-43
33 When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. 35 And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, 37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” 39 One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

It’s on Christ the King Sunday that I often feel compelled to point out the difference between the secular calendar and the liturgical calendar because in the church world, today is the last day of the year. I’ve never known of any large new liturgical year’s parties happening, but tomorrow will be the first day of year a in the three year cycle. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of Advent – which is when we begin a new examination of the life, the teachings, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Clearly there is an element of dissonance between these two calendars. What we generally think of as the holiday season comes at the end of the calendar year, but the events that gave rise to those same holidays are rooted in the story that comes at the beginning of the religious year.

And I know many of you are wondering why we have read the story of the crucifixion on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Many of us have our turkeys thawing in the refrigerator and here we’re confronted with an incredibly unappetizing story. I’m not unaware of the distasteful nature of our story, and I suppose I could have found a more pleasing text, but I decided to go with the suggested reading for today because of this shocking contrast. I’m sorry to be holding up a portrayal of pain and suffering as we prepare for our ritual feasts, but that’s the nature of the beast we call discipleship.

There is disharmony between the way our society is organized and the way God’s kingdom is and will be. And while the image of a Thanksgiving feast is more appealing than Jesus dying on a cross, I dare say there is more to nourishment in the crucifixion story than there is in a Butterball Turkey. I don’t believe there is anything wrong with enjoying the opportunity to eat, drink, and be merry with friends and family. I enjoy reverie as much as anyone, but I crave paradise, and that’s what I hear Jesus talking about as he is hanging on the cross.

We’re dealing with some incredible contrasts today. The timing of the church calendar is off, and the image of the suffering Christ is the opposite of the images on the advertisements that are coming at us from every direction and device. Being a follower of Christ is a tough journey – make no mistake about that.

You notice that we baptized Michael before we read the scripture this morning. That was no accident. He probably would have proceeded with the sacrament after this sermon, but I didn’t really want to take a chance on that. Following Christ is a brutal journey if you take it seriously, but it’s hard to turn your back on the offer of Paradise.

So bear with me as we take a closer look at the way this world tends to deal with the bearers of truth. There’s a lot of pain in this story, but we won’t dwell on it too long, and then we can go enjoy our potluck dinner. That’s not exactly a journey in to paradise, but it’s a bit of an appetizer.

This world is generally ruled in a way that doesn’t take in to account the will of God, and this is so clearly revealed in the story of the crucifixion. The One who most clearly revealed the true nature of God’s will, ended up tortured, taunted, and killed, and he wasn’t just a victim of the political establishment of the day. The leaders of his own faith community were a part of the conspiracy to have him killed. There is a clear tension between the way power is generally used in this world and the way Jesus used his own power.

Jesus was taunted by individuals from three different directions to use his power to get himself down from the cross. First the religious leaders suggested that he could get himself down if he truly was the messiah. The soldiers then taunt him by telling him to get himself down if he truly is the King of the Jews, and finally one of the criminals derides him for not saving all of them if he was the messiah. Jesus would change the world, but he wouldn’t do it in the usual way. His power would be revealed through love and not through force. This king of ours didn’t function as an ordinary king. This is both good and bad news for us.

The good news is that Jesus did overcome the power of death. Those that sought to squelch his message and eliminate his presence were ultimately unsuccessful. The truth that Jesus spoke and embodied was not destroyed by the efforts of those who were out to protect their own designs and agendas. Jesus was not only the king of the Jews – he would become the king of all creation, but this status would only come about after his death. And the bad news is that the enemies of our King are still intact.

I think it’s probably only in the church that we talk about having a king, and there’s a reason for that. The people who originally organized the United States were intent upon not having a King. They had not had a good experience with the King of England, so we don’t have a king, but I think we all have a sense of what it means to treat someone in a royal fashion – even though it can mean very opposite things. It can be a good thing to be treated in a royal manner, but it can also be a bad thing. Someone who is treated to a royal amount of something is not necessarily the beneficiary of something good. The word royal has come to mean an excessive amount of something, and that was certainly the case with Jesus.

We may not know what it would have meant for the Jews to have had an actual king, but we do understand that Jesus was subjected to a royal amount of pain. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to experience some of that royal trouble if we follow the call of our king.

Many of you have heard about the United Methodist pastor in Pennsylvania who was charged with violating the statute in our Book of Discipline that prohibits pastors from presiding over the marriage of a same-sex couple. Over six years ago, Rev. Frank Schaeffer was asked by his son to conduct his wedding. Just prior to the statute of limitations running out on that disciplinary violation charges were filed against Rev. Shaeffer by the son of the former music minister of Rev. Shaeffer’s church. You might say the charges were filed in retaliation to the dismissal of the music minister, and in the course of the trial the pastor was found guilty of the charge.

Rev. Shaeffer didn’t deny that he had conducted the wedding, nor did he express regret over the act. He didn’t want this trial, but he has embraced it as an opportunity to express his conviction that our denominational policy is unjust. He has been suspended for 30 days, but he will have his credentials removed if he decides to further violate the rules. Harold Hughes has created some fact sheets about the trial if you want to know more details and how you might get involved or be in support. You’ll find them in the Narthex or grab Harold and ask him about it.

I don’t know how this particular situation is going to play out, but you can anticipate hearing about more such trials. Unfortunately we have this policy within our rules that doesn’t recognize the equality of all people, and it’s not going to get fixed easily or quickly. I hate that there will be more people tried, found guilty, and defrocked before this policy will be reversed, but I know that this will be the case.

I don’t plan to be one of those people. It would make some news if I were to resist this policy in that fashion, I think I would feel some solidarity with Christ to be brought to trial for a just cause, but at this point I believe I can be a better advocate for justice with my credential in tact. This may be some rationalization on my part, but this is how I feel.

I’m also not unaware of what it means when Jesus asks us to pick up our cross and follow him. My study group is currently reading The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was pretty clear to him what it meant for him to follow Christ during the period of Nazi Germany. He didn’t spell out the details of his calling in that book, but one of the most striking lines I’ve read in that book is where he says, When Christ calls a person, he bids them to come and die. Bonhoeffer did in fact lose his life in resistance to Hitler’s policies. And while I don’t think he meant that we are all to die in a perfectly literal sense, I think Christ calls us to live with more concern for the kingdom of God than we do for our own little empires. And this is a radical departure from what we are lured to do by the lesser gods of this world.

I wish I could say Christ has called for us to take care of ourselves without concern for the truth or anyone else, but I know you know better than this. There are these powerful struggles that go on within our church, within our families, within our cities, and within our world that call for us to be advocates of truth and practitioners of love. I don’t think Jesus would call for any of us to uncritically give ourselves to any cause or action without understanding why or to what end it will produce, but we don’t need to think this path of discipleship is painless or easy. People who stand up for truth and resist evil will almost always experience some of that same royal treatment that Jesus received. But it is the avenue to paradise.

It’s hard to know what to say about this reality Jesus called paradise. But I see that it doesn’t exclude honest criminals, and I’m happy to know that. I know that I fall short of living with perfect obedience to the call of Christ, but I also know better than to give Christ a hard time for not giving me what I want, which is what that other criminal chose to do, and we really don’t know what came of him. I also know that Christ continues to be present in the lives of people of faith who suffer because of their convictions. And when we suffer with Christ in this world I believe we are already taking a step in to paradise. To abide with Christ is to abide in Paradise, and we have all been invited to join that holy community that resists evil and oppression in whatever forms it presents itself, and to embrace love in the manner that Jesus so graciously and sacrificially showed us to do.

Thanks be to God for this invitation and opportunity to join with him in Paradise.
Amen.

The Beginning Is Near!
Luke 21:5-19

21:5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” 7 They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” 8 And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. 9 “When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” 10 Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. 12 “But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. 13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls.

The world shifted last week, and it was well covered on television. At least on local television. I don’t know if you saw it or not – maybe you were on hand to witness it in person. It was a sad day for some people, but for others it was phenomenal – who would ever have thought that we would land a Bass Pro Shop in Pulaski County!!?

I feel bad for Gene Lockwood’s Sportsmart, it’s hard to imagine the pain that Academy Sports must be feeling, and I can’t help but to think there is great dread in the heart of Gander Mt., but for the masses of people who love a great deal on cool outdoor equipment there has never been a better day to be a resident of central Arkansas. I’m not worried about Ft. Thompson. For some people, loyalty means something and they wouldn’t think of wearing waders without the Ft. Thompson duck foot logo on the front.

I guess I’m just a little struck by the contrast that I find between the world that I occupy and the message I find in this morning’s scripture. The setting for today’s passage is one of extreme adversity. Jesus was speaking in the context of facing an imminent death in a horrible manner. Luke was writing to a community that was experiencing extreme persecution from the government and rejection from their families, and I’m living in place where the big news of the week is a new shopping opportunity.

I’m not complaining. Any time you offer me the choice between living in a world that’s characterized by shallow comfort or of meaningful suffering I will probably take the comfort option. I’m not proud of that, but I’m just saying I know myself pretty well, and I like living in a calm neighborhood in a comfortable house. I try to be grateful for the comfort and security I have, and I also know that I’m a fortunate person in this regard. I didn’t choose to be born in to relative privilege – I just was. And I try to remember that.

Nor am I under the illusion that having comfort and security are the essentials for a good life or a sign of God’s favor. In fact I’m very conscious of the way in which shallow comforts are impediments to the development of a rich spiritual life, but I don’t want to romanticize suffering. Our scripture lesson addresses the great opportunity that emerges when disaster and hardship break in to our lives, and this is great news, but this is not easy to hear. I take great comfort in knowing that people who face persecution are provided with the clearest understanding of how God’s kingdom prevails, but I am under no illusion of how costly that understanding really is.

The opening of the new Bass Pro Shop wasn’t the only headline of last week. The typhoon that hit the Phillipines was a storm of an apocalyptic scale. It’s hard to imagine the extent of death and destruction that swept across that island nation. I can’t fathom the suffering that the survivors of that storm are enduring right now. And I know there are people who are wondering how God could have allowed such a thing to occur. I also imagine there are people who are explaining what role God has played in all of that. I’m sure it would be hard not to give God the blame for taking some loved ones or the credit for saving others, but I think the simple truth is that God was not behind that storm.

I think one of the messages in this morning’s text is not to over-interpret the cataclysmic events that occur on this planet, and there are always people around who claim to have such special knowledge. But it’s also a mistake to think God is absent when disaster erupts. God isn’t behind natural disasters nor does God disrupt the violent designs of twisted humans, but God is available when horror befalls. In fact, the message is that our souls can actually flourish when our lives are in peril. It’s subtle truth, and it’s easy to miss, but this is the bedrock of Christianity. When hard times happen, our souls can become very anchored in the source of true life.

This song that Lucas and John provided for us, “Precious Lord”, was born out of tragedy. It was written by Thomas Dorsey, who was an African American musician and songwriter in the early 1900s. As a young man he had a career as a house musician in some of the great nightclubs in Chicago. But he gravitated toward gospel music, and is actually known as the Father of Gospel music as we know it. But it didn’t come easy.

People didn’t like the way he turned the rhythms of nightlife in to songs for Sunday morning. He was slow to be accepted in to many churches, but it did catch on and he was helping with a large revival in St. Louis when he got a telegram that his wife had died in childbirth. They were living in Chicago, and he immediately went home. She had given birth to a son, but the child died the next day, and as you can imagine this threw him in to a deep despair.

He was inconsolable for a period of time, but as he was sitting near a piano at a friend’s house he found the tune and the words to “Precious Lord” playing in his mind, and it became the avenue for his recovery. And it’s a song that has spoken deeply to many people who have found themselves in difficult places.

And while it’s true that we are living in a seemingly calm spot on the planet, we all know that none of us are far from calamity. We aren’t generally threatened by apocalyptic weather, geologic turmoil, or a dictatorial government, but our personal worlds can get turned upside down pretty quickly. We are all fragile creatures living in precarious circumstances. Randomness is alive and well, and it can land on any of us any time. So is foolishness – whether it’s our own or somebody else’s. Any of us can find ourselves facing extremely difficult situations and it’s easy to want to know why God has done this or that.

I don’t think it’s wrong to think that God is involved in our lives, but I don’t believe it’s God who moves us in or out of harm’s way. I believe God is with us wherever we are, but I think the primary work God does is to move within our souls.

A soul is a mysterious thing. You can go on the internet and find a diagram of every organ in your body, and you can probably find someone who has created a diagram of a soul, but it’s not so easy to know what a soul really is. It’s the mysterious part of who we are, but Jesus considered it to be the most essential part of who we are, and he wanted us to understand the way in which our external circumstances affects the eternal aspect of our selves.

He wanted us to understand that the times that are the most trying to us on the surface of life can be the most fertile periods of time for our souls. I think we’ve all heard that the things that don’t kill you will make you stronger. I don’t know that this is always true. Sometimes terrible experiences simply leave people wounded on deeper levels, but our message today is that God is with us in our trials and if our trust in God can endure we can come out of those hard times with nourished souls.

As I said earlier, I don’t want to romanticize suffering. I don’t know about you, but I find suffering to be very painful. I don’t wish to suffer and when I’m at my best I don’t wish it upon anyone else, but what I believe is that Jesus didn’t want us to confuse the good times or the bad times with God’s favor or punishment.

The passage begins with someone pointing out to Jesus how beautiful the rockwork of the Temple was, and he responded by telling them not to confuse godly looking things with the actual work of God. The spiritually richest places are not the official buildings of religious organizations. Jesus was very clear about this. He didn’t avoid stepping in to local synagogues and he even went to the Temple on occasion, but he knew how easy it is for us to confuse the illusion of spiritual truth with the reality of God’s ways.

The reality is that God doesn’t reward us with easy lives, but God pays particular attention to us in our hardest times. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be grateful when the living is easy, but I don’t think we should mistake good fortune for God’s favor. Horrible things happen to good people, and faithful people emerge from hard times with renewed faith in the living God.

It’s not easy to think of the arrival of disaster as an opportunity, but I think Jesus would encourage us to think of such moments as the beginning of a new relationship with God. Jesus didn’t think any of us had the capacity to predict the end of the world, but we all know that our own personal worlds can become totally disrupted in an instant. Cataclysmic events aren’t welcome in the least, but along with the loss of those things we cherish can come the renewal of our souls.

Certainly people who are in the midst of disaster need the compassion and love of their human neighbors as well, and any time we have the capacity to help a neighbor in need we are functioning as agents of God. The loving hand of another human being can feel a lot like a hand from God, and it may well be one of the ways God touches and nourishes our souls. But even when people are abandoned by friends and family God never turns away, and this the heart of the good news that Jesus taught and gave his life to reveal.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Some Things Do Change
Luke 20:27-38

27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28 and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” 34 Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.”

Barbara Brown Taylor is a gifted Episcopalian preacher, writer and educator. She tells the story of a parishioner she once knew who had been diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer. While this woman only had months to live her husband died very suddenly from a massive heart attack. While at the graveside, a well-meaning friend attempted to console her by saying, at least you’ll be together again soon. After the service, Rev. Taylor dropped by her house where the woman broke down in tears and said, I’m never going to get away from him, am I?

I don’t know what Barbara Brown Taylor said in response to her despair, but I’m sure it was some reassurance that she would not continue to endure whatever pain that relationship brought into her life. I don’t understand much about the resurrection, but if there is any truth to it – which I believe there is – I don’t believe we will suffer the same pains in the world to come that we experience in this one. Some things will change!

Jesus had enough to say about the resurrection to keep the Sadducees from asking him any more questions, but I wish he would have said a little bit more about it. Jesus didn’t shy away from this question that was generated in an attempt to make him look foolish. He didn’t back away from his clear belief that our relationship with God continues after death, but he didn’t define it as clearly as I wish he had.

Of course a lack of understanding can be a good thing. If we knew too much we might bypass some of the places we go in life that aren’t necessarily easy or pleasant, but that contribute to the process of refining our souls and softening our hearts. If we knew too much we might avoid stepping in to situations that cause us to exercise creativity and to make new friends.

I can tell you I really didn’t know what I was stepping in to when I agreed to help build a life-size model of an isolation cell. You probably have no idea what an isolation cell is, but there are nearly 600 of them at the Super-Max prison complex down at Varner, and it’s a cell that many prisoners spend years within. Some students at Philander Smith College are trying to bring attention to the cruel and inhuman nature of these cells, and to do that they decided to build a life-size model of one. They needed some help on the project, and my name came up as a person who has been known to build unusual things.

We haven’t finished this project, but it’s due to be unveiled on Nov. 21st, and I’m committed to making that happen. As I say, I don’t know that I would have done this if I had known how little I understood about how to do this, but it has put me in touch with some great young people, and it has also been an interesting engineering project. We’ve all learned a few things in the process, and I hope it will bring some good attention to a bad problem.

I think the Sadducees represent people who are much too comfortable with their understanding and their position in life. They had an enterprise that adequately provided for their self-serving needs, and they had an understanding of ultimate reality that justified their self-absorbed lives. The Sadducees were the priests who ran the Temple in Jerusalem, and they ran it like a business. It was their tables that Jesus would later turn over, and you might say he did it because he was more comfortable with the life to come than he was with life as it was currently operated.

Believing in the resurrection can cause great disruption to life as we know it. Jesus didn’t go in to detail in regard to what it will look like, but I don’t think we should let that get in the way of our actions to support what we hope it will be. I’m not saying we should turn the concept of the resurrection in to anything we want it to be. Just because you believe something doesn’t make it real, but I think Jesus wanted us to live with trust in the power of God to extend our lives beyond death, and I think that has a lot of bearing on how we live our lives now.

I don’t think we should use our trust in the resurrection to keep us from searching for as much meaning and joy and satisfaction as we can in this world, but our belief in the resurrecting power of God should inform all of the ways in which we pursue those experiences in this world. Of course I’m not willing to define what I mean by this very clearly. I can tell you, I struggle to find meaning, joy, and satisfaction in this life and my belief in the resurrection doesn’t give me a whole lot of guidance.

If I truly trust in the resurrection of life how much attention do I need to give to this body I currently occupy – and more-so to my house and my career. What does it look like to live with trust in the resurrection of life? The most immediate answer I have to that is that I don’t know, but I think it has something to do with embracing all the ways in which we see life emerging in this world. It isn’t easy to define the life-giving realities of this world, but we often know them when we encounter them.

I think we know when we are serving life and when we are doing damage to life. But we don’t always know. I was feeling so calm and well rested when I arrived at work last Monday morning. That fall time change makes it so much easier to get up for a day or two. I had gotten our stewardship letters out on the previous Friday. I had taken last Sunday off, and as I say, I was feeling pretty good when I got to the church last Monday. I poured some hot water in my coffee cup to get last week’s stain off of it. I went to the door that opens in to the alley behind the church to toss it out, and I encountered a man laying on a blanket smoking a cigarette surrounded by a weekend’s worth of junk food trash and cigarette butts and I exploded.

I didn’t treat him with what you generally think of as pastoral care. Honestly, I don’t know what I should have done. I had told him on the previous Friday he couldn’t sleep at the top of our steps near our office door, and he had taken that to mean he could stay on our back steps. I feel bad that he didn’t have a better place to stay than our steps, but I felt like I had been very clear that sleeping on our steps was not acceptable. It may well be that my passionate display of displeasure with the mess he had created was a message he needed to get and a bit of a wakeup call to move in a better direction. But it could also be that I screamed at a child of God who really doesn’t understand how to navigate this world and who runs in to inhospitality everywhere he goes.

This world is a messy place. And in many ways it’s hard to find ways to serve life. It’s always a good thing to be kind to children, but after that it’s hard to know what the rules really are for people who seek to serve life. We often stumble in to doing the right things, and we can do the wrong thing while seeking to do something right. The person who tried to comfort the terminally ill woman who’s husband just died with the assurance they would be together again soon had no idea what kind of terror that generated in her heart.

The good news is that the resurrection is not in our hands to botch or to stifle. We can get in the way of life being served in this world, but we can’t stop God from doing what God wills to do for all of us in the life to come. Some things never seem to change in this world. Institutions expand in bad ways and support for vulnerable people shrinks. I can find a lot of fault in the people I know who are in leadership positions, but I also know that I struggle to know how best to seek and serve the fragments of life that are available to me.

Gratefully, we have these stories of Jesus to help guide us in the direction of life, and we have the Holy Spirit to help us understand how we can best serve in God’s life giving ways. This world is not entirely ordered by God, and unfortunately there are these things that never seem to change – within our own lives and within this world, but those things do not have control over God’s ultimate design for life.

Some things do change. The forces of death and destruction do not have the last say. The people who are in charge of this world are not in charge of the next one. The things that are most valued in this world are not in the next. The failures that haunt us in this world will not be there in the next. The people who torment us in this world will not play that role in the next, but I trust that the people who love us now will continue to love us in the world to come..

The message is good. Jesus didn’t just tell us to trust in the resurrection. He actually did trust in it. He didn’t step away from losing his life, and we continue to be touched by the way in which the resurrected Christ is alive and in our midst.
And thanks be to God for that!
Amen.

Reconciled By Grace
Luke 18:9-14
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Personal exaltation has never been a big issue for me. It’s not that I’m actually humble, but self-promotion isn’t my style of sin. I certainly harbor an inordinate amount of pride, but I’d rather hear other people expound on my virtues than to enumerate them myself. Of course if I was as meticulous as this Pharisee about fasting and contributing I might be more inclined to lift myself up as an example of righteousness, but I’m not so disciplined. So I’d rather not call attention to the actual details of the spiritual disciplines I practice – you’re more likely to be impressed by the illusion than the reality.

Of course humility isn’t a foreign concept for me. If you looked through my school pictures you would see that I was well acquainted with the need for humility at an early age and for an extended period of time. And I have been equipped with an ample supply of self-incrimination throughout my life. In fact I heard a term the other day that I understand very well. It’s a condition that was identified by Catholic priests many centuries ago – it’s called scrupulosity. These priests discovered that some of their parishioners had an inclination to confess far more than was necessary.

People who have scrupulosity are compelled to be overly judgmental of themselves. Of course people can be saddled with various degrees of scrupulosity. Some people are marginally troubled by nagging thoughts of perpetual misdeeds while those who have a strong case of scrupulosity have a hard time making any kind of decision in fear of committing a sin. What those early Catholic priests identified as scrupulosity is what psychologists now call Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I’m not sure how far on to the OCD spectrum that I make it, but I would identify myself as having a degree of scrupulosity. I don’t have enough of it to actually keep me on that proverbially straight and narrow path, but I’ve got this internal meter that reminds me of how far off of the path I am at any given moment. A little bit of scrupulosity can keep you from being overly proud of yourself. People who harbor some scrupulosity understand what this poor tax collector was feeling about himself. We know we aren’t good enough. But a little bit of scrupulosity can put you in touch with some Pharisaism as well. A person who is overly self-judging can identify the shortcomings of other people pretty easily as well. I know I’m not doing everything within my power to glorify God and ease the burdens of my neighbors, but at least I’m not as self-serving and conniving as some other people I know. I don’t know how some of those people sleep at night.

Yes, I can hear myself speaking the repentant words of a tax collector one day and the judgmental words of a Pharisee the next day – maybe even later the same day. I’m not really qualified to identify the psychological profile of myself or anyone else in regard to this issue of scrupulosity or OCD or whatever it is we all suffer from to some extent, but we have these two really distinct characters in our scripture lesson this morning, and I’m guessing that most of us can identify with either of them on one occasion or another – maybe even both of them on a daily basis.

It’s interesting for me to think of how these two psychological profiles match up. We’ve got this one man who has no sense that he is deserving of any form of kindness from God, and we have this other man who is so impressed with his spiritual prowess that he expresses his gratitude to God for enabling him to be such an exemplary human being.

While we don’t often see that degree of personal spiritual exaltation, it’s not unusual for people to confess their frailties and failures with others. Of course the Catholic Church turned confession in to a sacrament, and before you can take communion for the first time you have to make your confession to the Priest. I understand one of the family jokes of my son-in-law is how long he spent in the confession booth before he took his first communion when he was in grade-school. I can’t really imagine how long it would take him to get through that process now.

We Methodists have just built confession in to our communion liturgy. I think we basically want to remind ourselves that we aren’t supposed to exhibit the self-satisfaction of a Pharisee. But Jesus didn’t make up this character. Most self-righteous people are smart enough to keep from actually speaking of themselves as this Pharisee did, but this is an attitude that exists in real life. And we need to be careful not to allow that attitude to gain a foothold in our lives.

Jesus clearly identifies the behavior of the tax collector to be the more spiritually desirable way to live, and this is good information for us to have. It’s not hard for us to understand that it’s better to be self-critical than to be self-satisfied, but that form of spiritual pathology is an insidious invader of our souls. We have the good sense not to behave like a Pharisee, and we can be so proud of ourselves for not being that way.

Now the truth is that this congregation has a good reason to be proud of ourselves. We took the bold step three years ago to be the first UMC in Arkansas to obtain the status of a church that is affiliated with the Reconciling Ministries Network – which as most of you know is an advocacy group that is seeking to eliminate the barriers that exist within the United Methodist Church and other Christian denominations for people who are not heterosexual. There is this language within our United Methodist Book of Discipline that prohibits non-heterosexual people from ordination. Also, I, as a pastor, am prohibited from presiding over a same-sex marriage, and we as a church are prohibited from allowing any kind of same-sex ceremony to take place in this facility.

These are unrighteous statutes. They need to be eliminated, and I’m really proud that we have affiliated ourselves with the right people on this issue. There is a sense in which I feel like we are playing the role of Jesus in this situation. Our church, along with other churches and individuals and Sunday School classes are pointing out the way in which our denomination is harboring the attitude of a Pharisee in this situation. Pharisees weren’t all bad, but they had a tendency to define righteous behavior too narrowly, and because they were so focused on what they considered to be righteous behavior – they didn’t understand Jesus. They just didn’t get him, but he got them, and he considered this tax collector to be more righteous than they were.

We don’t really have a position in our society that is equivalent to a Palestinian tax collector. I mean nobody really likes to pay taxes, but the tax collectors of Jesus’ day were considered to be dirty people – impure people. The tax collectors of Jesus’ day were despised people, and they often earned their reputations. They could be very heavy handed in the way they extracted the tax that the Romans required, but you had to have these people. The Romans were going to extract revenue from the Jews in some way, and it’s hard to imagine that they could have created a payment method that the Jews would have liked, but the tax collectors were despised for doing this essential job. And Jesus identified the attitude of the self-critical tax collector to be far superior than the attitude of the self-satisfied Pharisee.

So while I feel like we are doing the righteous work of identifying the way in which our denomination is behaving like a Pharisee – I also have to say that we’ve got to be careful. I don’t know if the tax collector in our parable ever felt anything other than his need to repent, but there’s some chance he came to develop some pride in not being like that Pharisee who was so clueless in regard to the things that really matter. I’m not saying our tax collector was ever anything other than authentically grateful to Jesus for recognizing his pain and his desire to repent and to please God. But I am saying that we human beings are never far from that slippery slope of self-satisfaction. It’s never very hard to fall away from the quest for true righteousness – regardless of the rightness of our work.

My belief is that it’s always a gift from God to be reconciled with God. It was interesting for me to read this week that what is commonly referred to as the Sacrament of Confession in the Catholic Church is technically called the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament is practiced by making confession, and what strikes me about this is the importance of identifying a problem in order for that problem to away. I think there is some wisdom here. It’s God that does the healing, but we have a role to play in the holy work of reconciliation.

I think our affiliation with Reconciling Ministry Network is an effort to bring attention to a problem within the UMC. We need to keep attention on this problem, but we must always remember who actually does the work of reconciliation. It’s by the grace of God that we ever do holy work. It’s by remembering this that we avoid the nasty attitude of the Pharisee, and embrace the redeeming spirit of the tax collector, who knew in Whom to trust.

There are so many ways that we get distracted from the path to wholeness and reconciliation with God. We all have our demons with which to do battle, but there is no personal condition or institutional policy that is beyond the reach of the grace of God, and I give thanks to God for that. Amen.

Highest Level Negotiations
Luke 18:1-8

18:1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'” 6 And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

I don’t know, but I’m guessing that more people watched, read, or listened to the news over the past two weeks than is normally the case. We’ve had some intense political drama in Washington, and checking in on the news has been a little bit like tuning in to a mini-series with elements of the Jerry Springer Show. Each side of the political aisle has done it’s best to characterize the other side as unreasonable and unconcerned with the welfare of the nation, and many of the American people have come away from this bad show convinced that there isn’t enough concern for the welfare of the nation by either side. I’m trying to be fair and balanced here, but I wasn’t an impartial watcher of this painful drama.

My problem with our new healthcare system is that it doesn’t go far enough to provide adequate and affordable healthcare for all Americans. The fact that we have anything in place to provide for the most marginalized people in the nation is a testimony to the power of a poor badgering widow. I think there are some parallels between the dishonest judge in our text this morning and some powerful interest groups who have done everything they can to keep resources flowing to the top. It took a lot of badgering to get what we’ve got, and apparently it’s going to take a lot more badgering on behalf of poor people to keep it in place.

This world is a messy place, and this morning’s parable is a good illustration of how this world functions – on a good day. The power-brokers of this world don’t generally wake up and try to figure out how to make life more bearable for people who don’t have access to adequate resources and basic necessities. And it’s a rare day when the dishonest judges of this world give in to the demands of poor people for justice.

For some reason Jesus was speaking up for the dishonest judges of the world. The judge in this parable doesn’t exactly come across as the hero of this story, but he reacted to this badgering widow in an uncommonly good way. It would have been easier for me to imagine this dishonest judge telling one of his minions to do whatever they needed to do to get rid of her.

In fact that is what I consider to be the surprise in this parable. This dishonest judge didn’t do what would be expected of a judge who had no regard for God or for other humans. I would have expected such a judge to silence her in a more permanent fashion.

But Jesus told this parable to illustrate the power of communication. The truth this woman spoke was so strong it moved this dishonest judge to go against his nature and to grant her justice. And Jesus goes on to make the point that if a dishonest judge can be so moved by persistent appeal for justice then how much more responsive God is to our earnest appeals. And that’s a fine thing to hear. I guess I’m comforted to hear Jesus say that God is more responsive to our pleas for justice than is a dishonest judge.

But honestly I don’t find that to be very comforting. Being more responsive than a dishonest judge is not a very high bar. Most people are more responsive to the plea of a poor widow than is a dishonest judge. And when I think of people who have been pleading for years with God and everyone else to grant them justice it makes me wonder what Jesus was really wanting us to know when he told this parable.

Because this parable doesn’t really answer the question that gives me trouble. If God is so much more responsive than a dishonest judge to those who earnestly badger for justice, why is there so much injustice remaining in the world?

I wish Jesus was providing us with a dependable formula for generating justice on earth, but I don’t think that’s what he was doing for us in this parable. I think he is providing some good advice in regard to the way we deal with dishonest judges in this world – I think it’s good policy to hound the leaders of this world to grant justice. And it’s equally important to go to God with all of our troubles and concerns, but if you only do it to get the results you think you deserve you are going to be disappointed.

In this parable Jesus is clearly addressing the importance of prayer, and he indicates there is power in prayer, but this passage ends with a piercing question – And yet, when the Son of Man returns will he find faith on earth?

And with that question I think he is identifying the location where prayer has the most power and influence. Prayer changes the outcome of the struggles that occur within our own hearts. Prayer is the exercise of faith. It’s what we do when we are worn out from badgering self-serving politicians and inhuman corporations.
It’s what people of faith can’t help but do when justice is denied, and hopes are dashed.

I’ve mentioned in previous sermons about my involvement in the Tuesday Morning Men’s Study Group, that meets at 1st UMC here in Little Rock. I’ve also made reference to the book we are currently reading, The Case For God, by Karen Armstrong. We’ve been reading this book for a long time because it is a very dense book. I never would have read this book if I didn’t feel the need to actually read the material before I share my opinions about it. But I’m glad I’ve had this discipline imposed upon me because it has been an education for me. This book has given me better insight in to the various ways God has been understood and portrayed throughout the centuries.

One of the large themes within the book is the way in which scientific discovery has interacted with theological concepts. And of course that hasn’t always gone so well. Sometimes people try to use science to try to prove things about God – other groups try to define God in ways that defy scientific logic and discovery. And of course a lot of people have been punished, tortured, and killed along the historical theological path.

This book is somewhat chronological, and we just finished reading the next to the last chapter which brough us in to the 20th Century, and of course you can’t talk about the case for God without looking at what happened to the Jews in Germany in the early half of the 20th century. While Hitler did a good job of coopting the national church in Germany for his purposes, the truth is his movement wasn’t really built around an image of God. He pretty much used the idol of German nationalism to galvanize the masses to give him the power he needed to carry out his godless agenda. Armstrong pointed out that one historic understanding of hell is as a place where God is absent, and in some ways the German death camps were the very embodiment of what life is like when regard for God is eliminated.

But many of the people who were imprisoned in those hellish camps were very Godly people. And of course it was nearly impossible for them to reconcile what they believed about God with what they were experiencing in life. How could God allow this to happen? Armstrong shared an anecdote about some Jews who gathered to put God on trial for the great tragedy that was occurring in Germany. They concluded that if God was omnipotent God could have prevented the holocaust. If God was unable to stop the evil agenda of the Nazi’s God must be impotent. And if God could have stopped the Nazi’s and chose not to God is a monster.

The rabbi who was presiding over the mock trial found God guilty and sentenced God to death. Immediately after announcing the verdict he dismissed the trial and then calmly said it was time for evening prayers.

Prayer isn’t logical. It’s not the language of the mind – it’s the language of the heart. It’s the exercise of faith, and it’s what we do when we can’t do anything else. It’s also what can guide our actions if we will be diligent in our practice of this spiritual exercise. Prayer enables us to become sensitive to the promptings of God’s holy spirit. And it’s this Holy Spirit that sustains us when we are in impossibly difficult places and propels us when opportunity arises.

God is more responsive than a dishonest judge, but God doesn’t operate with the same tools that are available to people. Through prayer, God is able to work on our hearts, and stir our souls. I give thanks to God that our wellbeing isn’t dependent upon the negotiations that take place between officials in Washington. Our hope rests with God and the peace that God can place in our hearts regardless of what may develop on Earth.

We don’t need to stop badgering the dishonest judges of our day to grant justice and to do it now, but thank God we have a more sensitive ear in which to speak. It is to God that we can go with all of our concerns, failures, fears, and desires, and it is from God that we can receive the most profound sense of relief, reassurance, courage, and hope.

And thanks be to God for that.

Let us pray.

The Power of One
Luke 17:11-19

11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” 14 When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

I don’t know what was wrong with this group of people who were miraculously and graciously healed when they made their appeal to Jesus. According to the Pareto Principle, there should have been 2 people to return to praise God and give thanks to Jesus. The Pareto Principle is also known as the 80-20 rule or the law of the vital few, and it identifies this remarkably predictable pattern that occurs within many events where 20% of the people account for 80% of the outcome. The Pareto Principle is named after Vilfredo Pareto, who made the observation in 1906 of how influential 20% of any given population is to the outcome of any situation.

He took note of the fact that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the people and he knew he was on to something when he realized that 20% of his pea pods were responsible for producing 80% of his peas.

This 80-20 distribution of cause and effect has been reinforced by a number of different statistics. Many businesses report that:
• 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers
• 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products
• And 80% of a company’s sales are made by 20% of its sales staff[9]
In addition to these business statistics, criminologists report that 80% of crimes are committed by 20% of criminals. A sociologist created a study that showed how 20% of rats in a given population will dominate 80% of the rest. And I don’t know if our Treasurer, Ryman Johnson, has acutally done the math on this, but I’ve heard him speculate that 80% of our budget is supported by 20% of our constituents.
There seems to be something true about this Pareto Principle. And if statistics ruled in matters of faith, there should have been two of these ten healed lepers to return to Jesus to praise God and to give their thanks. But statistics go out the window when it comes to faith. And as Jesus identified in the mustard seed story last week, the smallest amount of faith can go a long way. It doesn’t take 20% of the people to change everything. One person with genuine faith can do the work of a thousand people.
On one hand, this morning’s story is sort of dismal. Only one person out of ten understood the magnitude of the situation and returned to Jesus to acknowledge this great gift. You would think this amazing transformation would have moved these men to exceed the standard Pareto parameters. You would think at least three of the men would have thought to return to the One who had changed their lives so thoroughly.
But the Pareto Principle isn’t the only predictor of human behavior. There is also the Herd Mentality to take in to account. It’s not easy to go against what everyone else is doing. And while we don’t know if this Samaritan man who returned to Jesus was the only Samaritan in the group, but if he had been, it’s easy to see why nobody else came back with him – good Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans – unless they were lepers. Leprosy was a very leveling condition.

It didn’t matter who you were if your skin was infected – you weren’t welcome. The only people you could associate with were other lepers and Jesus, but the bonds that existed between fellow lepers weren’t so strong. Nine of out ten of these men who were healed of their leprosy didn’t look back – they got their clean bill of health stamped by the priest and they were ready to forget their former associates and to reestablish their place in society.
I can imagine myself doing the same thing. Nobody wants to be cast outside of the standard group. Nobody wants to be seen as different. I know a little bit about that. I had a face full of freckles when I was a child. I guess I still have them, but wrinkles, whiskers, and decades of weathering have pretty much masked my natural spots, but I was really self-conscious of my freckles when I was a child. Grandmothers thought they were cute, but I wanted to fit in with 4th graders. I hated my freckles. I felt different, and that was a terrible feeling.
Of course that was a small burden compared to what many people endure as children and as adults. I don’t know if there is anything more painful than being considered different – or even worse – to be considered unacceptable. I don’t really know what moved my gradeschool and highschool classmate, Lyndon, to take his own life soon after we graduated from High School. I’m sorry to say I don’t really know what happened to him because I didn’t know him very well. In fact, I didn’t know anyone who knew him very well. But what I do know is that Lyndon was very quiet. He was shy. He was sensitive. And now he is gone.

This world can be a terrible place for people who don’t fit in. Being labeled as a leper in the region of Galilee and Samaria in the 1st century was an unbearable condition. It meant you weren’t welcome in anyone’s house. I don’t know, but I’m guessing that this is how my classmate might have felt. I don’t know if Lyndon was gay, but I suspect that he was, and I know how unacceptable that was among the righteous people of Small Town, Arkansas in the 1970’s. And I don’t know, but I suspect that could have been a factor in his death.

What I do know, is that this is a scenario that has played out in many ways in many different communities. And there continue to be young people who take their own lives because they are bullied by classmates who somehow see them is as different. And what I also know is that anyone who feels so alienated from their peers can be touched in a powerful way by the hospitality of one person. It’s not easy to step out of the herd and to risk respectability in order to reach out to people who have been pushed aside, but that’s what Jesus did.

It was a huge thing for Jesus to respond to the plea of this group of lepers to have mercy on them because they were the object of scorn by everyone else. What Jesus did for them was nothing a respectable person would ever have done. The American version of Christianity has gained a highly respectable place in our society. You can’t be elected in this country if you aren’t someow associated with a church, but maintaining respectability is often very counter to living a life of faith. The nine men who chose not to return to Jesus had regained their respectability, and that was all they wanted. It was just the one man who wanted to express his faith in Jesus, and Jesus told him he was well. The others were cleansed – this man was saved.

Nine of those lepers were able to reenter society, but this one man became reconciled with God, and my sense is that it wouldn’t even have mattered if he contracted leprosy again. He had let go of his old identity as a Samaritan. He had become a man of faith in the living God, and that wasn’t an identity that could be taken away from him by a priest or anyone else.

It’s easy to want to stay with the herd. And honestly, I often long to feel the comfort of the herd. I have to confess, I can find myself wishing I was the pastor of a church that was more successful than we seem to be. It’s painful to be the Sr. Pastor of a church that wears the label of unsustainability, which is our current status in the eyes of the conference. And my pain moves me to try to lay blame. I can find myself trying to figure out what’s wrong with you people. And I often find myself dwelling on those things that I know to be wrong with me.

It’s not easy to be a leper, and in some significant ways that’s who we are as a church – that’s who we are as individuals. And that’s our gift. Because if we didn’t have some form of leprosy we wouldn’t be crying out to Jesus for help. That’s where I am right now, and that’s not a bad place to be. That is a place from which there’s some real opportunity for God’s grace to abound.

I often find myself longing for respectability. I desperately want us to be one of those churches that pays 100% of what’s expected of us. I want to be seen as a success by my peers. And I don’t feel bad about that, but what I also know is that there’s something far more important than the labels of respectability and success. We are primarily called to be people of faith who know that there is nothing more important than to praise God for the love and the healing we have already received, and to give thanks to Jesus for showing us where to find it.

I am reminded by this passage of scripture that our challenge is to obtain something far greater than respectability. We are challenged to step out of the herd, and to be like this one man who truly had faith. We are called to be people of faith – people who aren’t just healed and restored to life as usual, but people who are truly made well and who abide in the kingdom of heaven regardless of what happens on earth.

The Pareto Principle doesn’t apply here. It doesn’t appear that 20% of the population ever arrives at this place we call faith, but we’re all invited, and we are well positioned to get there.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Landscape of Faith
Luke 17:5-10

5 The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6 The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7 “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? 8 Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'”

I attended a banquet last week that was put on by the UALR Business Department that honored two successful graduates of their MBA program. One of the honorees was one of our church members. He was actually one of the 5 members of the first class that graduated from that program. I won’t say who he is. It’s not that he would be embarrassed to hear me call attention to him. He might be embarrassed if he was here, but the truth is he rarely shows up for worship, so I feel free to talk about him. He is someone I’ve known for several years. I consider him to be a friend, and I think of him as one of our good members because I do see an envelope coming to us in the mail from he and his wife on a regular basis. He may be writing to complain about the quality of the preaching, but no one has said anything to me, so I don’t think that’s what he’s doing.

I hope you know how grateful I am to those of you who make the effort to show up on Sunday mornings. Those of you who actually show up for church are like the Marines who actually storm the beach. But I’m grateful for our silent supporters and everyone else who works in some way to support this church. We need all the support we can get in whatever form it comes.

My friend gave a really nice speech at this banquet. His talk was the highlight of the event, but another nice thing for me was to be seated at a table beside a really interesting man. His name was George Simon, and he holds a Doctor of Psychology. Dr. Simon has written a few books, and his latest book is entitled, The Judas Syndrome. I found that to be a compelling title, and I asked him to describe in a nutshell what it’s about.

What he said was that like Judas, people often betray what they actually say they believe – that people proclaim to have faith, but then behave in ways don’t actually reflect their faith. Then I asked him how he would define faith, and he responded by giving me an example. He said, suppose my neighbor is a financial planner, and suppose I come to believe that she is the best financial planner in the world. If this person, who I believe has the best understanding of financial matters and who has my best financial interest in mind, if that person told me to sell all of my financial assetts and to buy one particular stock, the issue of faith would come in to play. If I truly had faith in her judgement I would do as she advised.

I thought that was a pretty good portrayal of faith, and I think it brings in to focus what we are saying when we proclaim to have faith in Jesus. When we United Methodists are baptized, we announce that we put our whole trust in the grace of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, but I think the jury is still out for most of us in terms of how fully we put our faith in what he taught. Do we fully invest ourselves in the way of living that he revealed?

Honestly – it’s not an easy question to answer. If as Dr. Simon described, having faith is largely equivalent to putting our whole trust in something and acting on that trust. Do we fully trust that we will find true life by giving away our lives – as Jesus instructed us to do. When he said to follow him he was headed in to trouble. He was not on his way to a party when he set his face to go to Jerusalem. Following Jesus is riskier than any financial transaction. He asks us to put our actual skin on the line.

But we aren’t the first generation to wrestle with this issue of having faith. Clearly the very first generation of disciples was trying to figure out what it meant to have faith in Jesus. And maybe I watched too many episodes of Gilligan’s Island when I was a child, but when I read this morning’s text it’s not hard for me to hear this interaction between Jesus and his disciples as being a little bit like an exchange between Gilligan and the Skipper. I’m hearing Gilligan asking the Skipper to increase his faith, and I’m hearing an exhasperated Skipper responding by saying what Gilligan could do if he had any faith at all. It’s a stretch, but I’m hearing some exhasperation in the voice of Jesus. The disciples were asking for more faith and Jesus responded by saying that if their faith was increased it might then become the size of the smallest seed in the world.

Jesus wasn’t anything like the Skipper, nor was he trying to be funny in this situation, but I do think the disciples could be as dense as Gilligan when it came to matters of faith. I think there was an edge to his response by implying that their faith was smaller than the smallest seed known to exist, but in this same response Jesus lifts up a compelling image. While he didn’t encourage them to overestimate the extent of their faith, he revealed to them the tremendous possibility that could come from the smallest act of faith. He was holding out for them the vast opportunity for transformation that genuine faith could provide. He spoke of how giant trees would obey their commands if they had a speck of faith.

Jesus wanted his disciples to know that they were involved in something more powerful than anything they had ever encountered before. But he didn’t want them to get caught up in some sort of power trip. Immediately after telling them how the smallest amount of faith could enable them to speak with unimaginable authority – he went on to tell them how subservient they were to remain.

What a contrast! In one breath Jesus told his disciples that their faith would provide them with the authority to speak in ways that would change the face of the earth. And in the next breath, he tells them that they are to see themselves as servants who are only doing what is expected of them when they work endlessly for nothing.

This endeavor of living with faith is tricky business. It is an undertaking that puts us in touch with the root source of true power. The smallest amount of faith is incredibly empowering – world changing. But we are never to assume we have any authority whatsoever.

I think the distortion of Jesus’ first generation disciples was to equate faith with power. I think Jesus understood that behind this request for an increase in their faith was the subtle and probably unconscious desire to have their personal authority increased, and the desire for personal power is what generally causes people to be blind to the power of God. The more we trust in our own power the less we look to the power of God’s Holy Spirit to do the transforming work that needs to be done.

There is a tricky balance to obtain here, for I believe that God wants us to be on board in the struggle for global peace and sustainability. I believe that there is significant work for us to do to bring about a more just world. There are opportunities for each one of us to make this world a more civil and hospitable place. We can all contribute in significant ways to improve the landscape of this world.

But we don’t need to think to highly of ourselves and our capacity to get things done. God isn’t held hostage by our unwillingness to fix anything. God doesn’t depend on the level of our faith to bring about redemption in the world, and it’s not hard for us to lose sight of this. It’s easy for us to think God does depend on the power we are able to assemble on earth. It’s hard not to think God is out to overcome God’s adversaries like every other dictator or king or president or CEO or member of congress who only understand conventional forms of power. But God’s kingdom doesn’t operate in a conventional manner.

God is able to transform life in a powerful way without money or weapons or propaganda. In fact, these conventional means of power get in the way of God’s transforming power.

When we have more than we need it’s hard to have faith, but as this passage indicates, a little faith in the source of true life is the most powerful thing any of us can have.

We are presented with a tremendous challenge. In order to navigate the landscape of faith we are to live as if our lives depend on nothing but the grace of God and yet to work like God is counting on us to repair the earth. It’s an unusual challenge – to believe that we have access to the source of true power and to assume we have no authority at all.

In my opinion the life of faith in Jesus Christ isn’t very easy to define, but it’s the best offer we ever get. To live with faith in Jesus Christ is to be in touch with the source of eternal richness, and to have a lifetime of work ahead of you.

Thanks be to God for this remarkable investment opportunity!
Amen