Thompson's Blog

Nard Times
John 12:1-8

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

I don’t guess dinner was ever ordinary when Jesus was on hand, but this dinner party was particularly poised for drama. We don’t know everyone that was there. It implies that there were several people on hand, but we know that it included Lazarus – who had recently been called back from the dead and out of the tomb by Jesus. And there was Judas – the disciple who was involved in the plot to send Jesus to his death. Martha was there to serve the dinner. And Mary was on hand to do the thing she seemed to understand better than anyone else – which was how to respond to Jesus in the most appropriate way possible.

Mary came forward with a pound of nard. Now I’ve never had any personal experience with nard, but those who have done the math on this would estimate that the value of that amount of nard was about a year’s worth of a laborer’s wage. If you think of that in our terms it would come to about $18,000.

Mary’s sister, Martha, was known for speaking her mind, and I think it’s worth noting that it wasn’t Martha who gave Mary a hard time for this unfathomably extravagant act. Along with her sister, Martha had come to understand the priceless value of the presence of Jesus. Jesus had brought her brother back to life, and she didn’t care how much nard her sister poured on Jesus’ feet. Martha got it. The presence of Jesus was worth everything. Mary and Martha both got it, but Judas didn’t.

Judas didn’t spare his thoughts about what Mary did, and he wasn’t happy about what she had chosen to do. According to John, Judas was disingenuous about his expressed concern for the way this valuable resource had been used. And this exchange highlights the extreme difference between the response of someone who loved Jesus and a person who was selfish and self-deceived.

Of course the last word came from Jesus, who identified what Mary had done as an act of great insight and devotion. But Jesus didn’t scold Judas as harshly as he could have. He didn’t expose Judas as the greedy traitor he would soon expose himself to be. He rather simply pointed out to him that he would have plenty of time to serve poor people after he was gone.

And he would be gone soon. According to this Gospel writer, the act of raising Lazarus from the dead was the last straw. The raising of Lazarus from death is what moved the chief priests and the Pharisees to plot his death. It’s not so easy for us to understand why this was such a scandal, but I think we do understand the way some people can become more attached to the way they want the world to operate than they are to the truth. The chief priests and the Pharisees and Judas chose to kill the very own Son of God because they didn’t want to hear what he had to say about the Kingdom of God. They were more interested in maintaining their own little kingdoms than in understanding what it meant to abide in God’s kingdom.

When these religious authorities realized that Jesus had come to redefine how people understood and related to God they were more intimidated by the consequences of what he was saying than captivated by the new possibilities that his words revealed. They could see what this was going to do to their carefully managed arrangement with the Roman empire, and that was what they were most interested in preserving.

In spite of all that Jesus had done to reveal his oneness with God they refused to trust that God was at work in his life. They had more concern about their own little empires than they had love for God, and this prevented them from being transformed by his miraculous work. They didn’t want dead things to come to life – it would ruin their operation.

I probably shouldn’t wade in to the toxic political environment that we are currently experiencing, but it probably serves as a good example of how ugly power-struggles can be. I’ll spare you my opinions about how we have arrived at this unfortunate place, but I just think it’s worth noting how ruthless people can get when the stakes seem to be so high. Candidates will say or do almost anything to win. And there’s no limit to how much some people will give in order for their candidate to get in to office. It’s not a pretty picture.

And what we’re witnessing helps me understand what was going on during those days leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus. Powerful forces were coming up against each other. Some people were wanting to win at all costs. Some people were feeling like the world was spinning out of control. Somebody was going to die. The struggle was ugly, and Mary was moved to do something beautiful.

Has someone ever reached out to you with just the right thing at just the right time? Have you ever given a beautiful gift to someone who was ready to receive it? I’m guessing that none of us have ever had anyone rub $18,000 worth of nard on our feet. I doubt if any of us would list that as something we would one day hope to receive, but even small gestures can feel like such an outpouring of nard when they come to us at the right time and when they come with love. It’s not just the value of a gift that can make something so powerfully good – it’s the motivation, and the timing, and the context that blend together to turn our plain offerings in to invaluable quantities of nard.
One of the things that amazes me about what Mary did was her ability to not be drawn in and controlled by the expectations of the people who had gathered for that dinner. In some ways, what she did was absurd. Jesus certainly didn’t need that much nard to be poured on his road-worn feet, but in another way it made perfect sense. Mary wasn’t guided by the expectations of the people who were caught up in their own little agendas. Mary was living with nothing but sensitivity to the life of Jesus Christ, and it had become clear to her that Jesus probably wasn’t going to be coming back for dinner. There wasn’t any reason to withhold any nard.

But it takes effort to be a Mary in a world that rewards Judas’. Mary wasn’t particularly invested in the way things were going in Israel, but she wasn’t oblivious to the risk involved in being a true follower of Jesus Christ. Judas had clear words of condemnation for what she did, but she wasn’t distracted by the foolishness that surrounded her – she was focused on what was going on with the most important person in the room.

It may be that our biggest problem isn’t our unwillingness to be absurdly gracious in the most appropriate way. I like to think most of us are people who are more aligned with Mary and Martha than we are with Judas and the Pharisees. We aren’t advocates of agendas that are counter to the cause of Christ, but it’s pretty easy to be distracted from the most essential matters of our day.

My capacity to be oblivious to the most essential matter of the day became really clear to me several years ago when we took our daughter to college. Liza is our firstborn child, and she had decided to go to Colorado College in Colorado Springs, CO. We got her all loaded up and we drove out there. We had made arrangements to stay in a hotel the night before we moved her in to her dorm. I remember sitting in that room watching some mindless tv before we went to bed that night. I was treating the situation like any other night until Sharla pointed out that it was the last night of our current living arrangement.

I wouldn’t have been much more startled if Sharla had hit me in the back of the head with a board. I went from being perfectly happy watching an Andy Griffith rerun to being in inconsolable grief. On some level I already knew what was going on, but I had allowed myself to maintain a safe amount of unawareness of what was about to happen. My awakening was painful, but I was so glad Sharla said something. I hate to think how I would have felt if I had remained unconscious of the significance of that moment.

I’m thinking it’s pretty easy for a lot of us to maintain unawareness about essential matters and significant moments. It’s not always fun to live with a lot of consciousness about important developments within our families, among our neighbors, and in this world. The truth is that it’s easy remain blissfully distracted. I think it’s always been possible to remain ignorant of the most important matters of the day, but these days we have so many ways to keep ourselves blissfully unaware.

I must admit I love being able to dial up an episode of Seinfeld whenever I don’t want to think about what might be going on in the world, but the devil is probably thrilled with our perpetual access to mindless entertainment. Of course even the act of staying informed can be an exercise in confirming what you already want to believe about what’s going on in the world. It’s not easy to be a person who really knows what’s going on and who responds in the most appropriate way. It’s not easy to be a Mary in a world that’s manipulated by Judas’ – people who have no interest in the truth and who seek to twist the most beautiful acts of generous love into foolish and wasteful gestures.

It’s not easy to be aware in a world that encourages us to remain ignorant and compliant. And it’s hard not to accept the easy answers that self-serving leaders are known to provide.

I’m not saying I know the tough answers or who the authentic leaders of our day really are, but those of us who claim to follow Jesus have a responsibility to seek the truth. Mary knew what to do when Jesus came to dinner because she wasn’t duped by the pseudo-religious leaders of her day. She was sensitive to the truth, and she knew to give all she had to the one she knew she could trust.

We don’t get endless opportunities to get fully caught up in holy moments. In fact it’s a rare gift to be positioned to act in a way that will fully reveal your love for God, for truth, or even for a neighbor. Those occasions are rare, but they happen, and when they do – don’t skimp on the nard!

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

The Illogical Love of God
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

15:1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 3 So he told them this parable: 11b “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”‘ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe–the best one–and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. 25 “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'”

Of all the stories that Jesus told, this may be the story that is the most familiar to the most people. The funny thing about this is that Luke is the only one who included this story in his gospel. Why is this? It’s such a good story!

I’m pretty mystified by this. This is probably the most recognized story in all of the gospels, and you only find it in Luke. Could the other gospel writers not see the value of this story? Or was it too scandalous? Was this story simply too revealing of the unconditional nature of God’s love. Maybe they were afraid this story would give other young people bad ideas. It just might be that the other gospel writers felt that it would be irresponsible to include this story – the extent of God’s love was simply too graphic.

Unfortunately, this story utilizes some unfortunately familiar family dynamics to make a good point. Sibling rivalry, jealousy, and irresponsibility are familiar themes within families, and Jesus used these familiar dynamics to make a surprising and unsettling point.

I’ve got a friend who likes to say that a dysfunctional family is one that has more than one person in it. But this story takes dysfunction in a new direction, and by doing so it challenges the established understanding of how God’s family actually functioned. The father – who clearly represents God in this story, allowed love to be the guiding factor behind his actions, and that totally disrupted proper order.

This morning’s reading began by pointing out that the Pharisees and scribes were very suspicious of what Jesus was doing, and you might say Jesus told this story in order to confirm their suspicions. Jesus was very conscious of the way he was seen by people in positions of authority, so he responded to their concern with this story that totally challenged the value of proper behavior and replaced it with the value of love.

Jesus used familiar family dynamics to illustrate the extra-ordinary nature of God’s love. He told this story to break our stereotypical thinking about the nature of sin and the extent of God’s love. I think we’re looking at an age-old problem. There is this tendency to think that sin can be easily defined, and that love is earned. This parable challenges both of these assumptions.

I’m reminded of a situation I witnessed when I was helping at a homeless shelter in Durham, NC. I was in seminary at the time and I came to experience that homeless shelter as a form of lab for the class-work I was doing. It wasn’t that I was taking the fine Christian education I was learning in class and imparting my new wisdom on the soiled souls that were showing up each evening for a place to sleep. It’s more like I would take what I learned at the shelter and compare it to what I was supposed to be studying in class. I don’t think I was exposed to as much raw faith and theological discourse in class as I was with those guys who were living on the street.

I continue to see the love of God expressed in powerful ways by people who live in really difficult circumstances, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the message of Jesus Christ explained as clearly as it was one night at that shelter in Durham.

There were eight or ten homeless men sitting around this small room waiting for the bedtime cheese sandwiches to arrive, and this one man who’s life had been ravaged by alcoholism began shaking his head and moaning about the state of his life. He was about to tell us the latest tragic twist of his life, and he prefaced it by saying, I know it says in the Bible that God helps those who help themselves…, but before he could say anything else he was cut-off by this other man who said, where does it say that in the Bible? The first man was unable to produce any chapters or verses – nor were any of the rest of us. And this second man went on to preach a wonderful sermon to the man who was moaning about his pattern of failure – with the point of the sermon being that if the Bible says anything consistently it is that God helps us when we aren’t capable of helping ourselves. He told that man that the love of Jesus Christ is available to us when we least deserve it.

I don’t know how that sermon played out in that desperate man’s life, but it had a powerful impact on me. I don’t think I had ever heard this truth delivered so clearly.

I don’t know — there may be something in Proverbs that indicates God is more responsive to people who behave responsibly, but that homeless preacher was right about the primary narrative of the Bible. The primary message that you find in the Bible is that God loves us in an illogical way. God doesn’t love us because we’ve done all the right things. God loves us regardless of how poorly we’ve managed the lives we’ve been given.

Unfortunately, most people think the false claim is true, that God helps those who do the right thing. I believe God does help us to do the right things, but God doesn’t withhold love until we do the right thing. It was that kind of gross misrepresentation of God that motivated Jesus to tell this story of the father who celebrated so extravagantly when his wayward son returned home.

It’s hard for us not to believe that God’s love is as conditional as human love generally is, and that’s why Jesus told this story of the father who had nothing but love for each of his sons – in spite of the errors of both their ways. And yes, this older son had some issues as well.

This parable doesn’t deny that there is such a thing as sinful behavior and that there are painful consequences to sin, but our godless behavior doesn’t disqualify us from being worthy of the love of God. In fact it is often our sins that enable us to experience the unconditional nature of God’s love.

I’m happy to say, and I’m sure you are happy to hear that the statute of limitations has run out on any crimes I may have inadvertently committed over the course of my life. And I like to think I don’t do anything that I wouldn’t want to have published in the newspaper, but when you are in the religion business it’s easy for your words or actions to be scrutinized by people who draw lines in different places, and I understand how it feels to be considered outside of proper religious behavior – which is a terrible feeling.

It’s terrible to feel judged by other people, and unfortunately this is what many people think the church does best. I don’t know if this is as true as it once was. The church isn’t as strong as it once was, and we church people don’t speak with as loud of a voice as we once had. Being in a position of strength often leads to the attitude that was harbored by the Pharisees and scribes, and Jesus found their behavior to be much more problematic than the behavior of the official sinners of his day. Maybe the decline of the power of the church is a good thing for our institutional soul.

I had the good fortune of being invited to an Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting when my friend was going to receive his one-year sobriety coin. It was the first time I had ever been to such a meeting, and I was inspired by the spirit of mutual support and love that I witnessed there. That room was populated by people who had made official messes of their lives. It was an official failure that had brought them together, and it was one of the most spiritually vibrant meetings I had ever experienced. That was a community that truly understood the nature of repentance and the value of unconditional love.

Repentance is not about groveling in sorrow. Repentance is about recognizing the need for change and taking steps to go in a new direction. Jesus often spoke of the need to repent, and he associated repentance with the ability to enter the Kingdom of God. People who no longer trust in their own righteousness are the people who are the most open to taking those powerful steps.

It was much easier for the people who were labeled as sinners to hear what Jesus was saying because they weren’t so invested in maintaining their own little empires. Those who considered themselves to be righteous reacted to Jesus like the older brother reacted to his father when his younger brother returned home after squandering his inheritance. I think we can all understand the righteous indignation that the older brother expressed, but I think his behavior reveals the problem that often afflicts people who live righteous lives. Being right isn’t as important as being loving. And I think Jesus told this story to illustrate this truth. It’s possible to be obedient without being filled with desire to do the right thing.

The younger son needed to change his ways, but so did the older brother. He needed to have a change in his heart, and I think it was harder for him to do that. This is the problem with people who don’t sin in official ways. They have a tendency to think that it’s just those other people who need to make changes in their lives.

Jesus told this story to show what it is that brings joy to God.

God celebrates when reconciliation occurs. The failure of the older son to enter into the homecoming festivity illustrates the fact that sometimes it is the most right-living people who have the hardest time pleasing God, but there’s good news here for the judgers as well.

In this story the father continued to love the older son also – in spite of his hesitancy to celebrate the return of his brother. God not only loves the bold sinners of the world. God loves the self-righteous sinners as well. God’s love is inescapable – it’s illogical. This is not to say that there’s no need to try to change anything about the way we are living, but it is to say — there’s hope for us all.

Thanks be to God!
Amen

To Be Continued
Luke 13:1-9

1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them–do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” 6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'”

I’m not a television junkie. The most important people in my life don’t live or work at Downton Abbey, but I do like a good television show. I have some anxiety about the upcoming finale of that epic series on Masterpiece Theater. There’s going to be a gap in my life when that show comes to an end, but with the help of my friends on NCIS, and the return of Scandal I’ll get over it.

For those of you actually have a life and don’t spend much time watching television, what you need to understand is that there are basically two different kinds of series. You’ve got shows like NCIS, which has the same main characters each week who are faced with new situations that have little to do with what happened the previous week. Now it helps to have seen the previous twelve seasons of the show so you know the complete backstory behind each character and you can pick up on the subtle comments their coworkers make to them about former spouses or unresolved cases, but it’s basically a new plot each week that they encounter and solve. Occasionally there will be an episode that is continued in to the next week or the following show, but most world-threatening situations get resolved within the hour.

But you also have these shows like Downton Abbey or Scandal, where you really need to know what went on over the past few years of these people’s lives. Otherwise you’ll never know what’s going on when they give each other these long gazes without any dialogue.

And I don’t know how anyone lives without a Digital Video Recorder anymore. I never watch shows when they’re actually being run. We record them and watch them at our convenience, and for me, it’s often a big decision. Do I want to watch a show like NCIS that will be neatly resolved at the end of the hour? Or do I want to see what will happen next for the long-suffering Lady Edith on Downton Abbey. And what will come of poor Barrow the Under-Butler?

Sometimes I’m in the mood to watch a show with some clean resolution. Sometimes I want to see the diabolical plots of cruel and greedy people get smashed by the creative thinking and brave acts of the good guys. But there are other times when I want to have my emotional strings plucked and tugged and left to wonder what will happen next. Downton Abbey doesn’t reflect real life as I know it, but it’s probably more realistic than an episode of NCIS. Occasionally situations get resolved in real life, but it always takes more than an hour, and there’s always something more that needs to be addressed.

Sometimes we get a little something behind us, but we usually have some residual issues that carry over from one day to the next. And if you are looking for a way to get away from this you don’t need to go looking for relief in the Bible. Anyone who ever went to Jesus in hope of getting an easy answer to life’s persistent problems didn’t get much satisfaction from Jesus. People who came to him with simple questions weren’t given easy answers – they generally departed with questions that were even more perplexing.

I hate to say it, but as Luke tells the story of Jesus, we are presented with a series of stories that are far more perplexing than resolving. The illustrations Jesus uses to respond to the situations the Galileans presented to him don’t provide easy solutions to the ongoing tensions of life. In fact, these stories may even serve to create more confusion than resolution. Because what these stories reveal is the way in which faith in God is often at odds with the simple solutions and understandings we often latch on to about the way God interacts with this world operates.

I’m not saying that there’s not some profoundly good news wrapped up in these illustrations and questions that Jesus provided, but if you are looking for easy answers and fairy-tale endings you need to close your Bible, turn on the television, and find an episode of NCIS.

This morning’s passage of scripture is another case where Jesus simply didn’t give people the reassurance they were looking for. It appears that these Galileans came to Jesus in hope of hearing him rail against those evil Romans. Apparently Pilate had sent soldiers in to the Temple and they had slaughtered some people from Galilee who were in the process of bringing their sacrifices to God. It sounds like a truly horrific event, and there was no doubt a lot of outrage within the Jewish community about that event. I’m guessing these Galileans expected Jesus to join them in ramping up their righteous anger against their Roman occupiers, but that’s not what he did.

He asked them if they thought that happened because they were worse sinners than most other people — which is what people generally believed when something bad happened to someone. Jesus didn’t join them in judging the action of Pilate, Jesus challenged them to reexamine their way of seeing the world.

The popular way of interpreting a bad situation was to think that people got what they deserved. If you’re familiar with the story of Job you’ll recall that his so-called friends kept trying to tell him that he had surely done something to bring about his terrible calamities. They were trying to make sense of what had happened to him, and the only thing that made sense to them was that he had offended God and he needed to repent from his evil ways.

Certainly there are occasions where people suffer the consequences of their own choices, but this is not always where suffering originates. And the result of this type of theology is often very devastating to people who are the most vulnerable. Anyone with any infirmity was tormented by their disease and stigmatized by the belief that their condition was the result of their sin.

But of course you make exceptions to this popular theology when a situation involves the action of a sworn enemy, so these righteous religious people weren’t blaming the victims for their own slaughter, they had an enemy to hate, and they must have been disappointed when Jesus refused to join them in their rage and reminded them of their usual way of interpreting tragedy. He asked them if they thought they were worse sinners than everyone else. And he answered his own question by saying they weren’t, but then he pointed out to his hearers that they needed to repent or suffer the same fate.

Clearly Jesus didn’t provide a clean resolution to that episode. And he brought up another current situation where some men were killed when a tower collapsed. He asked the same question about whether these people were killed because they were worse sinners than everyone else. And he once again answered his own question and said, “No”, they weren’t worse sinners than everyone else, but then he went on to suggest that his hearers were worse than those who had died and they would suffer the same consequence if they didn’t repent.

It’s some odd logic, but I think what Jesus was saying was that they needed to change their way of thinking and become less judgmental if they didn’t want to suffer from some harsh judgment.

And I would be interested in hearing from anyone who thinks there’s an obvious and indisputable lesson in this parable that Jesus told. You don’t have to stand up and give it to us now. In fact I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t explain it to me in public, but this parable generates more questions than it answers. It’s not exactly clear to me who is playing what role in this parable.

Is God the man who owned the vineyard, or is Jesus wanting us to think that the man who owned the vineyard represents the attitude of the people who are impatient for the messiah to turn things around in Israel. Maybe we are to see God in the role of the gardener, who continues to nurture the fig tree, and who desires for Israel to bear new fruit. There are a number of ways to look at this parable, but I there’s one nice detail at the end of the parable – life isn’t over. There’s still time to change and to grow.

Following Jesus presents us with an ongoing set of challenges. Like the Israelites who harbored bad concepts of how God functions in our world, we can hold fast to our own distortions of who God is and how God operates. It’s natural to have opinions about how God functions in our world. In fact if you have any interest in God you can’t help but to have such thoughts. It’s not bad to have strong beliefs about God, but you also have to know that God can’t be fully understood by any of us, and God never fits neatly in to the boxes we want God to occupy.

It’s not unusual or unheard-of to have moments of clarity about the presence of God in our lives and in our world, but the series isn’t over, and what you understand to be true today may become a bit more complex tomorrow. I think the best any of us can do is to be diligent in trying to nurture our relationship with the One who does know the truth about God, and who seeks to help us understand.

So if you want to see a problem solved in a clean way go find an NCIS rerun. But if you know that life isn’t made up of clear answers and obvious solutions you have the makings of a good disciple of Jesus Christ. The path is narrow that leads to abundant life. Jesus didn’t provide easy answers nor did he ask easy questions. It’s a challenge to get to know the living Christ.

And as the gardener indicates in today’s parable, the nurturing process can be a bit messy, but everything Jesus did was done with the desire to nourish our spiritual roots, and to lead us in to communion with the eternal truth and grace of our loving God.

I wish it were easier, but I’m primarily glad that this series hasn’t come to an end. So stay tuned in – the story is to be continued.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Barnyard Faith
Luke 13:31-35

31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

There have been moments in my life when I’ve been crossed up with other people, but I don’t think anyone has ever really wanted to kill me. I’ve never been engaged in warfare, so I’ve never faced an anonymous enemy that was out to kill me, nor have I ever had a personal enemy that sought to end my life. As far as I know, if anyone has actually wanted me dead they were kind enough to not let me know or to act on their feelings.

I know we’ve got some veterans in the church who have encountered hostile forces. Others of you may have actually encountered homicidal acquaintances as well. And people who’ve been in such situations can better understand what Jesus was experiencing at this point in his ministry. I’m sure this is an experience that sticks with you for a lifetime, and I’m guessing that’s a situation that would be hard to deal with as graciously as Jesus did.

Of course it isn’t just war, terrorism, or murder that that threaten people’s lives. Accidents and disease are threats that we all face, and I’m sure many of us have had brushes with situations that have felt life threatening. But I doubt that there have been many of us who have faced threats as personal as the one that Jesus was issued by Herod.

I can’t really imagine how it would feel to know that there was someone wanting to kill me. I’m not exactly sure how I would respond to the threat of murder, but I’m sure I would spend more time considering my options that Jesus did. Actually I would probably have spent less time thinking about my response. I’m sure I wouldn’t have referred to him as any kind of animal, and I likely would have told the Pharisees to thank Mr. Herod for the warning and to let him know I would seek to be much more considerate of his feelings. Maybe I wouldn’t have buckled under the pressure, but I know how intimidating it can be to face professional scrutiny. I’m guessing I would have been trying to find a way for everyone to get along.

There’s an unusual twist in this story as well. It’s a group of Pharisees that bring this warning to Jesus – which is not the role that we usually see the Pharisees playing in the gospels. We don’t know what motivated their expression of concern for Jesus’ wellbeing. We know that they would later be instrumental in plotting for his death, so it’s hard to say what was behind this warning, but it wasn’t information Jesus chose to act on. If anything, this warning served to fortify his resolve to continue his work and to press on to Jerusalem.

I don’t want to make too much of the fact that the Pharisees were the ones to show concern for Jesus, but on some level what this passage seems to identify is both the predictable lines of conflict that occur among people and the possibility of new relationships between former enemies.

There’s nothing surprising about the conflict between Jesus and Herod. Herod represented the politics of earthly power. Herod was the representative of Roman rule, and he had no tolerance for anyone who didn’t have absolute allegiance to the Emperor. If you think of the world as a barnyard, the Emperor was the bull – threatened by no one and capable of crushing anyone. And as Jesus pointed out, Herod was the fox. Not really that powerful in the grand scheme of things, but certainly capable of harassing and feeding upon smaller animals. Nothing surprising about Roman power dynamics, but when you consider the way in which the religious community interacted with the other animals in the barnyard it gets complicated.

Jesus made this reference to Jersusalem as the place that killed the prophets, but he also had this affection for it. He had this desire to gather it in as a hen gathers her chicks under her wing. There’s the bull, there’s the fox, there’s the hen, and there are chicks. How the animals interact in the barnyard is something for us to consider.

The Roman Emperor was perfectly predictable. Nothing but absolute allegiance was expected or tolerated. Herod was nothing but the local agent of the Emperor, and he had his own cadre of toadies who would carry out his proclamations. It was a system based on intimidation, and what we see is the way in which they sought to intimidate Jesus. Certainly the people of Israel were intimidated by the soldiers of Herod, and this caused the faith of Israel to become distorted in many ways, but it wasn’t just Herod who caused Israel to go astray. As Jesus pointed out, Jerusalem had been a place of religious distortion for a long time. It had a long history of exchanging the truth for lesser agendas. The leaders of Israel had often exchanged the fruit of the spirit for the treasures of this world.

Jesus expresses both sympathy and disgust for the city of Jerusalem. He had these feelings for Jerusalem that he compared to the feelings of a mother hen for her chicks, but he also knew of the ways in which Jerusalem was the sight of great travesty – it was a place with a history of rejecting Israel’s spiritual giants.

Jesus was told by the Pharisees to stop doing what he was doing, but Jesus wasn’t intimidated by what Herod could do to him. Jesus was empowered by the Holy Spirit, and while he had no illusion about what would happen when he got to Jerusalem, he knew that this course he was on would conclude with his death, but he had full confidence that his mission would be successful. He knew he would be killed, but he also knew that by doing what he was doing the dynamics of power would forever be changed.

This is a passage of scripture that reveals the nature of the power struggles that generally occur in this world. It reveals the fact that we often allow ourselves to be threatened by those who appear to have power, and we remain oblivious to the source of real power. Jesus wasn’t caught up the pettiness of unholy power struggles, and he revealed the way to live in this world without being destroyed by the ever-present demands of power-hungry people.

It’s important for us to understand who it is that we seek to serve and what it is that we need to resist – otherwise we will become both victims and collaborators with the ugliest forms of power and the worst agendas imaginable. The power of God is not the most obvious manifestation of power in this world, and it’s easy to live in response to the claims of more immediate forms of power. Jesus didn’t live in response to the agenda of Herod or even of the Pharisees – Jesus lived in a relationship with God. It would be the cause of his death, and it would be the source of his resurrected life.

We all are faced with this temptation to heed the warnings of the Pharisees not to offend the Herods of the world. And it’s hard not to do this. As I mentioned earlier, I know how stressful it is to feel pressure from powerful people, and I know how intimidating that can be. I’m certain there are situations where I have caved in to the demands of people who have no love for the truth. I don’t want to get in to the specifics on this, but trust me – it has happened. On the other hand, I also know that there is a tremendous reward that awaits us when we live with allegiance to God and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I’m happy to say I’ve had a taste of this as well.

Living as a true follower of Jesus Christ certainly has an eternal reward, but I also believe it has rewards on earth. I believe people who live on earth as if they are in heaven create a new community on earth that is truly a reflection of heaven. To live like this is to disrupt the usual patterns of behavior and expectations and create new possibilities that make this world a better place for all people.

It’s very likely that the Pharisees came to Jesus because they were in touch with Herod’s people, and they were told to give Jesus that message, but I also think it points to the possibility that we can all step out of our familiar identities and roles and to step in to new places and make contact with new people. The fact that the Pharisees gave this warning to Jesus indicates that they might not have wanted any harm to come to him. They had a lot to learn about who he was, and what he sought to do, but maybe some of them came to see he was not who they thought he was.

I think this passage of scripture points to the nature of the power struggles that we all face in some way. Some of us are the Pharisees of this world – unwittingly carrying out the agendas of little Herods. Sometimes we know when we are being used to do ugly work, but unholy agendas are often well masked, and it’s a gift of the Holy Spirit to become aware of what we are doing and how we can change.

It is a gift to be able to live with more allegiance to the Kingdom of God than to the bullies of the barnyard, but it’s also our work. There is some cooperation that needs to take place between us and the Holy Spirit as we seek to develop this relationship with the source of real power. This work requires us to resist the claims of some people and to embrace the claims of others. It requires the courage to stay on a given course when other avenues would be easier. It means having more regard for the victims of powerful people than for the concerns of those powerful people.

This barnyard that we live in is a tumultuous place. We all come in to this place with different skills and abilities and power and expectation. The natural thing is for us to try to carve out the most advantageous situation for ourselves, but Jesus challenges us to let go of our natural rivalries and selfish ambitions. The call of Christ is to live in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, who guides us out of the barnyard and in to the kingdom of God.

This offer comes to us as a gift, and it provides for us our work.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Frustrate the Devil
Luke 4:1-13

1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.'” 5 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'” 9 Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ 11 and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'” 12 Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'” 13 When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

I like this story of Jesus in the wilderness. It’s a unique story. Most of the stories that we find in the Gospels portray interactions between Jesus and other people, but this story is different. This story isn’t about the way Jesus related to other people or what he taught in public places. This is a drama that played out within Jesus’ heart, mind and soul. There is only one person on hand in this story and it’s Jesus. It’s a powerful portrayal of Jesus coming to understand himself, and deciding what he was going to do with his life. We may not all have experiences as vivid as Jesus – probably because we don’t spend forty days fasting in the wilderness, but we all make decisions about what we will do with our lives and who we seek to serve, and it’s good to see how Jesus navigated that territory.

This story serves as an introduction into the spiritual life of Jesus. It strikes me as being very instructional. And one thing it points to is how valuable it can be for our souls when our bodies get put in difficult places. This wilderness experience Jesus had was not like a backpacking trip in a national park. This experience was a trial – not an adventure. I think it’s worth noting that Jesus didn’t just step in to the wilderness – he was led in to the wilderness by the Spirit. It was a hard place to be and he was there for a long time. God’s Spirit remained with him while he was there, and that Holy Spirit enabled him to emerge from the wilderness with a powerful sense of clarity and resolve, but God’s Spirit wasn’t the only spirit out there.

I think this story of Jesus being tested in the wilderness can serve as an enduring source of encouragement to all people who are living in harsh circumstances. Being in the wilderness is hard, but it can be spiritually enriching, and we should claim it when we’re in it. If you’ve got chronic pain – you are living in the wilderness. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills – you are living in the wilderness. If you’ve got cancer – you are living in the wilderness. If you or a loved one is battling with substance abuse – you are living in the wilderness. If you struggle with depression and despair – you are living in the wilderness. The wilderness takes on a lot of different forms in our lives, and it’s a hard place to be, but it’s also the place where we make monumental discoveries and decisions.

I don’t want to water down this concept too much, but the truth is we have all had the wilderness experience. We all know what it’s like to be in a hard place for too long. We haven’t all been equally tested, but we all know what it’s like to be in a difficult circumstance for what seems like a long time.

And we all know what it’s like to run in to the devil. At least we sort of know what it’s like to deal with the devil. Actually I have highly conflicting ideas about the devil. I made it through seminary without having to define my thoughts about the devil. Being the moderate United Methodist that I am I’m not inclined to identify the work of the devil as quickly as some of my Christian brothers and sisters in other denominations, but I’m not dismissive of the concept of the devil.

We have in our scripture lesson a very clear reference to the devil – which is reason enough to hang on to the concept. But I’ve also encountered people and situations that provide evidence for the work of the devil. Unfortunately, Jesus never gave us a nice clear lecture on the problem and presence of evil in this world, but we know it’s with us. The presence of the devil isn’t exactly clear to me, but I do believe that the sales rep. for evil is showing up for work every day.

I love the way the author and theologian, C. S. Lewis, portrays the devil in his book, The Screwtape Letters. This book is put together as a series of letters from a character named, Screwtape, to his nephew, Wormwood, and they are what you might call minions of the devil. This book portrays hell as having an elaborate bureaucracy – which makes great sense to me. I think we’ve all gotten caught up in forms of bureaucracy that are absolutely hellish. Hell isn’t just hot – there are long lines and lots of forms to fill out. Honestly, the thought that hell is an eternity of having to navigate layers of horrible administration and supervision scares me to death.

The letters in this book contain advice from Screwtape to his nephew, Wormwood, on how he could be more effective in leading his assigned human away from God. The letters are characteristically demeaning and critical of Wormwood – as you would expect from a supervisor from hell.

Screwtape is very eloquent in describing the many ways that humans can be led astray, and it’s easy to recognize those various paths we get on that lead us away from trusting in God. It’s an entertaining book, and it’s got a lot of truth in it. It plays with this idea of how the devil operates in our world, and I like what C.S. Lewis says in the preface to the book. He writes:

I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell in to my hands.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors …

He goes on, but the point he makes that makes great sense to me is that we can make too much or too little of the forces of evil that are present in this world. We can give the devil too much credit, or we can fail to guard our souls against the ever-present forces of evil.

The story of the temptation of Jesus doesn’t end with Jesus defeating the devil forever. You might say Jesus won that battle, but the war wasn’t over, and still isn’t over. As the scripture says, the devil departed from Jesus until a more opportune time.

I think it’s good for us to understand that the best we can expect to do is to put up resistance to the presence of evil in our day. And while it would be nice to think we could live such holy lives that the devil wouldn’t even want to get near us, that isn’t how it works. The very own son of God wasn’t immune from the voice of the devil. And those offers were even sprinkled with some Holy Scripture, but Jesus didn’t buy it, and I love to think of how annoying that must have been to the devil.

Luke doesn’t invite us in to the mind of the devil, but C.S. Lewis opened that door for me, and it’s really satisfying for me to think of how this devil who visited Jesus must have been harassed by his peers in hell. It’s actually pretty motivating for me to want be as frustrating as the devil – to the devil. Maybe it’s the devil in me, but I like the idea of creating problems for the devil.

I wish I could claim that I’ve caused some kind of terrible turmoil for some poor devil in a small cubicle in a corner of hell, but as surely as I may have done that, I fear I’ve probably allowed some other devil to claim a corner office. I could really get in to this way of thinking that I’m either providing my assigned devil with advancements or demotions, but I’m actually more inclined to be dismissive of the presence of the devil. I don’t really stay on the lookout for the ways in which I’m vulnerable to the devil, and as C.S. Lewis noted, we Christians can err in both directions.

I’m mindful of the vows we United Methodists make when we present ourselves or our children for baptism. Here are the first two questions we ask people who come for baptism: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin? And, Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?

These are good questions for us all to continue to ask ourselves. Are we fully exercising our power to renounce and resist and reject evil in our world?

The funny thing about wilderness experiences is that while they are difficult and draining – they are also the places where we truly come to understand the power that we have to be strong witnesses to the presence of God in this world. It’s in the wilderness that we often make the decision to give ourselves more fully to God. It’s in the wilderness that we can grow less attached to the materials of this world and we learn to trust in the grace of God.

Jesus was famished after forty days, and it’s easy to make bad decisions when you are thoroughly stressed, but the devil didn’t tempt him then because he was weak. The devil tempted Jesus at that point because Jesus was in touch with a new sense of power. Jesus had gained something in the wilderness that he didn’t previously have, and he had to decide how he was going to use it.

Jesus chose to serve God and that must have been terribly frustrating to the devil, and this is the same option we all have. It’s not easy to turn our various difficulties and challenges in to opportunities for spiritual growth, but it can happen. The Holy Spirit doesn’t always lead us in to the wildernesses we find ourselves in, but the Holy Spirit is always on hand to help us navigate whatever territory we are in, and to turn our trials in to triumphs. The Holy Spirit is there to help us see through the shiny offers the devil is inclined to make.

Throughout our lives we come to decision points, and through them we are either giving God something to celebrate or we are helping some wretched devil get a promotion. We don’t always see what we are doing, and that’s a problem, but it becomes less of a problem the more we give ourselves to the things we know that God desires. The more we serve God through acts of mercy, kindness, compassion, and justice the more sensitive we become to the work of God to redeem the world. The more we make ourselves available to God through prayer, Bible study, worship and acts of devotion the more conscious we become of God’s loving presence in this world.

We can make too much or too little of the work of the devil, but we can never pay too much attention to the life of Jesus Christ and his claim upon our lives. He’s not easy to follow, but with some effort and some openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives we can bring some joy to heaven and generate some frustration in hell. And what a happy thought that is!

Thanks be to God – Amen.

“If You Would Just Listen!”
Luke 9:28-36

28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” — not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

It’s never easy to describe profound spiritual experiences. I’m guessing we have all had moments in our lives when the veil between the physical world as we know it and the spiritual reality that we trust to exist seems to become thin, and we get a glimpse of eternity here in the temporal world, but those experiences are fleeting and they’re nearly impossible to describe. It’s hard to find language that adequately portrays close encounters with the kingdom of God, but I believe it happens. I believe it happens to us, and I believe it happened to Peter, James, and John.

I have no doubt that these three men who had the good fortune of spending many days actually walking the roads of ancient Palestine with Jesus had more than one extra-ordinary experience with him, but today’s passage of scripture recalls a particularly unusual experience. In some ways I don’t really know what to think of this story. Why did Jesus turn dazzling white? Why did Moses and Elijah appear for a moment? And why did they disappear so quickly? Significant parts of this story are hard for me to immediately comprehend, but I take comfort in knowing that these disciples didn’t know what to think either. Peter went from being groggily inattentive to what was going on springing in to action in an inappropriate way, and this makes me feel better about not really knowing how I should respond to this story.

Peter, James, and John had a remarkably close encounter with the living God, and it left them speechless. They didn’t know what to say or do and that largely leaves us without an explanation of what this was all about. This is a story that requires us to develop our own interpretation of what this all means. The apparent cluelessness of the disciples is really pretty endearing, and it sort of takes the pressure off of us to know what this is all about. What we know is that these disciples had a mysterious encounter with Jesus on the mountaintop, but it did seal in their minds the deep connection Jesus had with Moses and Elijah – the two spiritual giants of the Jewish community.

While it’s hard for me to imagine what they saw, it’s very believable that these disciples experienced something that enabled them to see how connected Jesus was to all that God had been doing for the people of Israel. This story relates the absolute purity of Jesus’ relationship with God and with the history of Israel, and it points to the way in which this story was about to change. The voice from the cloud didn’t tell them to remember what Moses and Elijah had said and done. The voice from the cloud told them to listen to Jesus.

And you would think that they would have known to do that, but listening is always hard. I can’t read this story without being reminded of a conversation I had with my father about six months after my mother died. We were driving back from a trip to a cousin’s wedding in Dallas, and he told me that he was having trouble remembering the sound of my mother’s voice. He then asked me if I could remember it.

This was a remarkable thing to hear from my father because he wasn’t one to share his inner thoughts freely. He loved to ask accounting type questions. How many people were in attendance? What time did you get there? How much rain did we get? How long did it last? My father could ask a lot of questions, but you could usually answer his questions with a number or a yes or no. But on this occasion he asked me a question I had to ponder for a moment.

I guess in a sense that was a yes or no question, but it required some commentary as well, and after thinking about it I said yes, there were two things I could remember. I told him I could remember the sound of her laugh. She had a distinct short chuckle that I frequently heard and I can still conjure it up in my mind, but there was something else I could still hear her say. I told him I could also remember her saying, Buddy, if you would just listen! Buddy was my father’s name, and my mother was often exasperated with his inability to remember something she was pretty sure she had told him. Over the last few years of her life I think I heard her say that one line more than I ever heard her say anything else.

Now my father was deaf in one ear, and there is a good chance that he didn’t hear much of what my mother said to him, but she also felt like there was some willful deafness on his part. My father dearly missed the sound of my mother’s voice after she was gone. He didn’t ignore what she had to say while she was around, but her voice became much more precious to him after she was gone.

This morning’s scripture lesson portrays a situation that would be seemingly unforgettable, but I’m thinking that whatever these disciples experienced with Jesus on the mountain became much more precious to them after he was gone. We don’t really know what happened on that mountain. They don’t even seem to have known exactly what went on up on that mountain, but I have no doubt that their memories of Jesus took on new meaning after his crucifixion and resurrection. Everything they had experienced with Jesus would have become more precious to them, and I have no doubt that they wished they had listened more closely to what he said while he was with them in the flesh.

Now I don’t blame the disciples for not understanding much of what Jesus was saying to them as they journeyed from place to place. They couldn’t imagine that Jesus was going to change the world in the way that he did. As we all can testify, the words of a loved one become so much more valuable when they’re gone. It’s easy to have regret about not listening as carefully as we could have to a dear one when they aren’t around anymore.

The point of this story is not to illustrate what a wonderful occasion Peter, James, and John were invited to experience. The point of this story is to remind us of the very thing the disciples undoubtedly wished they had done with more diligence. We are all to heed the message from the cloud and listen to Jesus.

Had they listened more closely to what Jesus had to say they wouldn’t have been surprised by the direction that Jesus chose to go when they came down from the mountain. The dramatic change that was about to occur within the history of Israel was the radical way in which God had chosen to be revealed. You might say that God was coming off the top of the mountain.

In the story of Moses, you might say that God lived at the top of the mountain. Moses went up the mountain to encounter God, and while he never had a face to face with God, he came closer to God than anyone else, and he was largely unaccompanied on his trips up the mountain to hear what God had to say. God allowed Joshua to go with him on occasion, but anyone else would die if they followed him. You might say God kept some distance from the people in the early days.

And the prophet Elijah was cherished by the people of Israel. He was considered to have been their most spiritually refined leader. He was bold, and pure, and powerful, and as the story goes he didn’t even have to die. He got whooshed away into the clouds when it was time for him to go.

But God was doing a new thing in Jesus, and it wasn’t going to be played out on the mountaintop or in the clouds. God was going to be in Jesus as he came down the mountain and into the mess of life. Peter was ready to commemorate Jesus and Moses and Elijah on top of the mountain by building something, but that isn’t how God wanted to be revered. God wanted to come off the mountain and into the streets. Jesus would enable us to understand that God wasn’t just with us when we were on top of things. Jesus was going to show us that God is with us in the lowest possible places.

God isn’t stuck on the mountain, God is with us in the messiness of life.

I had a brief conversation with Mark Ballard the other day. His ability to speak was very labored, but he was alert, and the one thing he was intent on saying was how much God had taught him during this mysterious ailment that he was enduring. He had a greater sense of gratitude for what had transpired than he was distressed by the situation. I’m not saying he was happy about the way things had gone, but he was testifying to the way in which he seems to have been blessed in the midst of this bad situation.

Hard times are hard, but they are also rich times. Important things don’t just happen on the top of mountains. The voice from the cloud didn’t congratulate Peter, James, and John for being there at such a remarkable moment. The voice told them to listen to Jesus, and what Jesus had to say was that God loves us all at all times and at all places, but this love doesn’t necessarily translate in to an easy life. Jesus didn’t come down the mountain and in to the loving arms of a benevolent society. There is a lot of resistance to the love of God in this world, and while we don’t need to be naïve, we do need to be diligent in our effort to respond with love to all that we encounter.

Because we know of what happened to Jesus when he came down the mountain we shouldn’t expect life to be easy, but we have reason to have hope regardless of what we encounter in life. Things may not go as we wish they would, but we have reason to trust that God is with us when we struggle, and that hard times can be redeemed. We aren’t all going to turn our trials into great victories. But even death isn’t a defeat for those who listen to Jesus.

The words that Peter, James, and John heard from that cloud are much like the words I can still hear my mother saying to my father and they are good words for us all to hear from God who says to each of us: “If you would just listen!”

Thanks be to God for the way in which God speaks to us in those mysterious ways that redeem and remind us of how well we are loved regardless of what’s going on.

Amen.

The Pesky Truth
Luke 4:21-30

4:21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

What am I supposed to do with a passage of scripture like this? I want you to put yourself in my place this morning and think about what you would say in response to this scripture. What do you say to a group of well-meaning people like yourselves who came to church this morning in hope of hearing an encouraging word, and here’s this story of Jesus telling the good people of Nazareth things they didn’t really want to hear.

On some level, it appears to me that the effective delivery of the truth can be as welcome as a hot poker in the ear. What kind of response should I hope to receive from a sermon on this text? In all honesty, I like to hear people say how nice my sermon was – even when it isn’t. But that’s not the way Jesus was. He seems to have been pretty intent on poking some people in their sore spots.

Now it may be that the people of Nazareth were particularly misguided and in need of exposure to some raw truth. We don’t really know what kind of people lived in Nazareth or what kind of history Jesus had with some of his childhood neighbors. Different towns have different personalities, and I believe there are some places that need a little more prodding than others, but I don’t really think this is what was going on. I’m thinking it would have been easy for the people of Jesus’ hometown to be blindly enthusiastic about their native son who had gained regional notoriety for the amazing things he had done in Capernaum, but Jesus didn’t want that.

Jesus didn’t just want a bunch of people getting excited about what he was going to do. For one thing, that wasn’t politically expedient. We tend to think it’s a good thing to have a bunch of people talking about how great you are, but that’s not such a good thing when you live under an emperor who considers himself to be a god. Roman soldiers were on the lookout for people who were drawing a crowd, and Jesus had work to do before he became the object of the governor’s attention.

I think the people of his hometown would have easily become excited about the possibility of great things coming from one of their own, but he didn’t need that kind of attention and he knew what to say to squash their enthusiasm. He reminded them of the ways in which God had overlooked the needs of the Israelites and extended grace to outsiders.

So once again I say, what’s a preacher to do with a passage like this? Honestly, I’m hoping when I finish speaking this morning you’ll be inclined to tell me how nice my words were this morning, but Jesus doesn’t give a preacher much to work with in this story. This probably would have been a good weekend for me to go to Kansas City!

But here I am. And here you are. I know we’re all hoping we can get out of here this morning without exchanging any unpleasantries, but this isn’t an easy story for those of us who claim closeness to Jesus. The message for all of us is that Jesus doesn’t want blind enthusiasm. Jesus doesn’t just want us to be excited about the grand things he was capable of doing. Jesus wants us to have passion for the truth, and that’s not always what we want to hear.

An epic example of the way people don’t want to hear the truth is revealed in the story of Ignaz Semmelweis, who was a Hungarian physician in the mid-1800s. While working in the Vienna General Hospital, Dr. Semmelweis became distressed by the number of women who died from infections following childbirth in that hospital. So he set out in a very scientific fashion to discover what was going on, and after pursuing a number of different theories he came to realize that it was beneficial for the attending physicians to wash their hands with a chlorine solution. In fact this procedure cut the death-rate of the women by 90%, but this procedure indicated that it was the doctors dirty hands that was the cause of the high death-rate, and they refused to believe it. They wouldn’t accept his finding nor would they institute his recommendation.

The refusal of the medical community to accept his idea was literally maddening to Dr. Semmelweis. He became very verbally combative with his peers, and in time he was commited to an asylum where he was beaten by guards during an attempt to escape, and he died from an infected wound two weeks later. Twenty years later Louis Pasteur would present his germ theory, and it was at that point that importance of disinfecting procedures became accepted, but a lot of people died in the meantime because there were some powerful people were more interested in protecting their self-importance than in knowing the truth.

It’s possible for any of us to become way too invested in protecting what we already believe than in keeping ourselves open to the truth. Jesus certainly understood this and he used the good people of his hometown to illustrate this truth. He didn’t just want to be well regarded, Jesus wanted to help us all see the ways in which we are sometimes inclined to love the wrong things. It was costly for him to be so honest, but he wasn’t confused about what he was out to do. Jesus came to expose us to the truth, and it was by the grace of God that he didn’t get killed before he really got started.

And I suppose this is part of the good news in this morning’s story. Nobody got killed that day. As bad as things got between Jesus and his hometown peers, they didn’t kill him. We don’t know if Jesus escaped the grips of the murderous crowd through an act of God or if his peers came to see what they were doing and stepped back from the edge. The truth always prevails in the long run, but it doesn’t always come to light before good people get killed.

On some level it speaks well of the Nazarenes that they didn’t follow through with their lethal anger. Crowds aren’t known for doing the right thing, but this crowd let him go on his way that day, and that’s unusual for a crowd.

The truth that Jesus brought has the power to transform people, and that is good news for us all. It’s good for us to be exposed to the truth whether we like it or not, and regardless of how we respond to it, it can have a good impact on us. I suppose I could try to do you the favor of trying to expose you to some painful truth, but I think I’ll just expose you to some unusual truth instead.

It has to do with the Dung Beetle, and I know this is something you were hoping to hear about in church today. (You learn the most interesting things on National Public Radio.) One of the great mysteries that baffled entomologists for many years was the navigational system of some Dung Beetles that live in southern Africa. Dung Beetles live off of the dung of large mammals and they do this by creating little dung balls and rolling them away from the dung pile site.

It’s important to get their dung balls away from the dung pile as quickly as possible because there’s a lot of competition for that valuable resource, and in order to keep their newly created dung balls away from their scavenging neighbors these Dung Beetles need to roll their dung balls in a straight line away from the dung pile. If they roll the ball in a circle they’ll come right back in to the dung harvesting fray.

These beetles operate at night and the researches were trying to figure out how they managed to travel in such straight lines. They thought they used the moon for navigation, but it turns out they are able to go in straight lines when the moon isn’t out. They don’t go in such straight lines on cloudy nights, and they’ve determined that these Dung Beetles orient themselves by the light of the Milky Way. They’ve done some testing of these beetles, and when they put them in a planetarium where the stars are scrambled these beetles are totally disoriented. As far as anyone knows, this is the only case where animals other than wise men use the stars for navigation.

I think this little pearl of information illustrates the value of the truth in a way that’s not too threatening to any of us. It’s not so important that we know how dung beetles navigate, but as surely as dung beetles don’t do so well when the arrangement of the stars is distorted, we don’t do so well when we try to travel by anything less than the light of God’s truth.

The truth isn’t always convenient nor pleasant. In fact it can be terrible to encounter the truth about ourselves, and there’s probably some ugly truth about all of us. Just as Jesus found some unsettling things to say to the Nazarenes, I’m sure he could find some disturbing things to say to us if he feared we were going to get too enthusiastic about the wrong things – although I don’t think he would find our demeanor to be something he needed to calm down.

Jesus always provided what people needed, and I’m sure that’s what he seeking to do for us. I’m sure Jesus is seeking to guide us in to the truth, and he’s wanting us to get excited about the right things. Jesus didn’t want to squash all passion – but he wanted people to be passionate about the right things.

Jesus revealed what it truly looks like to live in response to the love of God and that’s what we are all challenged and inspired to do. It is a challenge to live by the light of Christ because Jesus didn’t just do what people wanted him to do. And while it’s never any fun to have our illusions shattered, the worst thing that can happen to any of us is to press on through life with great conviction for false ideals. We shouldn’t fear the possibility of having our cherished beliefs challenged – our greatest fear should be the possibility of living without exposure to people and experiences that cause us to rethink and readjust.

That’s what Jesus did for the Nazarenes, and that’s what he does for us – because he loves us. Jesus loves us and Jesus wants us to live by the light of God’s truth.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Ministry Plan
Luke 4:14-21

14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Not long ago there was this trend within the Arkansas Conference of the United Methodist Church to get individuals and churches to develop ministry plans. I don’t know if other organizations are still utilizing this type of tool as a means of promoting a higher level of function, but that was the initiative within our conference for about a decade. And I’m guessing this was the case for many institutions within our state and nation. Some of my peers may still be engaged in this exercise, but I stopped turning in a personal ministry plan when the Charge Conference packet stopped asking for one.

It’s not a bad exercise to engage in the process of examining your values and goals, but I can testify that the development of a personal ministry plan is not an automatically transformational activity. It may be that I’m hopelessly entrenched in the way I function, but I think I entered into the process of developing a personal ministry plan with a reasonable amount of willingness, and it was not a life-altering enterprise.

Now it could be that I would be even more disorganized and unfocused if I hadn’t written down what’s most important to me, but I don’t think it altered the course of my behavior very much.

I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of spending time intentionally thinking about what is most important. I actually enjoyed some of the workshops I attended where I was lead through this process of developing a personal ministry plan. It’s not a bad thing for people to try to identify what is most important to themselves as individuals or for groups of people to create statements that best reflect what they intend to do, but I’m guessing most of us have an internal guidance system that tends to override whatever it is that we say we intend to do.

Maybe the development of mission statements and mission plans helps some people or organizations to recognize strategic gaps between intentions and actions, but I’m pretty convinced we all operate by a clear set of guiding principles – whether we’ve written them down or not – even whether we know them or not.

You might say Jesus had just attended a very unorthodox personal ministry plan workshop just prior to his arrival in Nazareth. The preceding story relates his experience of being tested by satan in the wilderness, and we’ll actually look at that encounter more closely in a couple of weeks, but I think he came out of that experience with a very clear sense of who he was and what he intended to do. As far as we know he didn’t write anything down when that trial was over, but he certainly knew what was written on his heart, and he shared it with the people of Nazareth.

My father once said that there is no such thing as a bad short sermon, and I think there’s a good amount of truth to that, but Jesus wasn’t just trying to keep the message short when he spoke these brief words to those who had gathered in the synagogue to hear what he had to say. After finding and reading these powerful words from Isaiah, his sermon was one sentence long: Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Jesus’ sermon was short, but it was powerful. In fact some of the people who heard what he said tried to kill him. I’ll have more to say about this next week when we look at the next few verses in this chapter, but what Jesus had to say was shockingly clear and to the point. Jesus’ ministry plan was remarkably clear and ambitious in the best sense of the word. Jesus had no doubt about what he intended to do with his life, and many people found it to be disturbing.

We are told that Jesus was filled with the power of God’s Spirit, and that spirit had a very clear agenda. It wasn’t just a spirit that moved him to worship in a lively way, it propelled him to reach out to the people who were most disenfranchised from life. The text says that Jesus found this passage to read, which means that Jesus wasn’t just reading a text that was handed to him. He was very intentional about what he read, and he made it very clear as to what his agenda would be.

One thing this passage does for me is to remind me that Jesus was very much a Jew. We Christians tend to forget this sometimes, but the first place Jesus went when he finished his trial in the wilderness was to a synagogue. Jesus was the perfect manifestation of the message of Judaism. He would be the source of terrible conflict within the Jewish community, but it wasn’t because Jesus departed from the tradition. Jesus had a clear sense of what the Jewish faith was all about, but it wasn’t an understanding that was shared by everyone.

As people who claim Jesus as our guide, I think it’s helpful for us to understand where Jesus came from, and I also it’s important for us to examine the ways in which our intentions to follow Jesus actually match up with the actions we take to follow him. How well do our words match up with our deeds? Are our stated or unstated ministry plans in line with who Jesus was and what he did?

I think it’s important for us to think about these things because as surely as the Jewish community had trouble recognizing the hand of God in the life of the one who perfectly embodied their faith, it’s possible for those of us who claim Christ as our savior to live in ways that are counter to who he was. I’m not wanting to point to anyone or anything that might implicate our current lostness. I don’t want my sermon to be so powerful that you will want to get rid of me, but there’s a significant amount of historical evidence that indicates such a thing can go on.

I also know it’s possible for us to get caught up in the same spirit that Jesus embodied and shared – there’s evidence that points to this possibility as well, but in some ways it’s easier to become disconnected from the true spirit of Christ than to become consumed by it.

A few years ago my son gave me a book to read that made quite an impression on me. It’s probably a good book for all preachers to read, but I doubt that it has ever been included in anyone’s seminary training. The book was called, The Braindead Megaphone Essays by George Saunders. It is a collection of essays on a variety of topics that touch on the way we interact with one another, and the essay from which the name of the book is drawn portrays a party where people are milling about having reasonable conversations with each other until a man bursts into the room with a megaphone and begins broadcasting these really lame messages.

The people at the party try to ignore the intrusion at first, and they resist the loud voice in a variety of ways for a while, but ultimately the man with the megaphone wins out. At some point people stop resisting the loud voice and in time they all allow him to define reality for them. They quit talking about whatever it was that used to be of interest to them, and they only talk about whatever it is the man with the megaphone happens to be going on about.

Saunders, who is a sociologist, uses this image to describe the way in which our public discourse is largely defined by large corporate media outlets who get fixed on certain stories which become the focus of our national attention. I can testify to the truth of this. I don’t feel bad about my recent total fixation on the super snow-storm of the last few days, but CNN has made it the most important thing in my life for the last few days. I find this essay to be pretty convincing, and it serves to remind me of the ways in which we often relinquish control of our lives and our minds to messages that aren’t necessarily rooted in essential truth. And the really insidious thing is that we are generally unaware of the way in which there is someone with a megaphone in the room who is guiding our thoughts and actions.

This may be an usual thing to hear from the guy standing in the pulpit with a microphone, but you need to be suspicious of the various ways loud voices seek to gain control of our minds. And it’s not just large media corporations that do this – I dare say it’s possible to turn your brain over to facebook and other forms of social media. The devices we use have powerful impacts on our lives, and we need to be careful how we interact with them. We are exposed to a lot of loud voices. And the loudest voices aren’t always the least reliable voices, but they often are.

Jesus certainly wasn’t known for being loud. He was known for being the most righteous, and the most gracious, and the most truthful person.

I’m pretty convinced that it’s hard to live in our society without being guided by agendas that have little to do with Jesus and the spirit that guided him. Christianity gets defined in a lot of different ways in our world, and many things that are labelled as Christian have nothing to do with what Jesus taught or how he lived. There are always some loud voices telling us what’s wrong with our society and how to resist the evil of our day, but it’s important for those of us who aspire to follow Christ to listen to listen to sound of his voice – which isn’t easy.

It’s easy to see that things aren’t quite right in the world, but it’s not an easy fix. Jesus announced that he came to liberate people from all kinds of oppression, and I take great comfort in this because we all know how oppressive this world can be. Many of us have access to an abundance of material comforts, but none of us are free from some kind of bondage, and we all are in need of a savior.

Jesus came to provide access to abundant life to all of us, and we need to allow him to show us how to find it. Jesus had a plan, and we need to make sure our plans are in line with his plan.

Following Christ is a high calling, and it’s a hard calling. In fact without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives it’s an impossible calling. And while Holy Spirit may not speak with the loudest voice, it’s the most persistent voice, and in time if we are open to it – it will get through to all of us and enable us to know that today the words that Jesus spoke have once again been fulfilled in our hearing!

Now is the year of God’s favor – thanks be to God. Amen

The Voice of God
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

It was a dark and stormy night. It was the fall of 1977. I had been trying to work Calculus problems in the library room of the United Methodist Student Center which was located at the corner of Leveret and Maple in Fayetteville. But my work wasn’t going well, and it made me mad. Calculus didn’t make sense to me, and it made me miserable to work at it. But it wasn’t just Calculus. There was hardly anything that made sense to me. I didn’t like where I was living, I didn’t like what I was having to study, and I didn’t have a good place to go rant about how miserable I was.

So I did the next best thing – I decided to walk home in the middle of a thunderstorm. I put my books in my backpack, I put on my rain jacket – made from the first generation of gortex material which was almost waterproof, and I headed for the door. I took a couple of steps out of the building, but I had hardly gone anywhere before there was this tremendous bolt of lightening that seemed to strike directly behind the Kappa House – which was right across the street from where I was standing, and I instantly jumped back against the wall of the Wesley Foundation building.

A moment later I heard this voice come from above that said: Thompson, this is your God. I was speechless for a couple of seconds, and then I heard that same voice start giggling. It wasn’t the voice of God I had heard – it was the voice of Costas Economicles. Costas had been watching the storm approach from an upstairs window in the old Pierce House, which was owned by the Wesley Foundation and where rooms were rented to students at a very cut rate. Costas was an architecture student from Greece who had a quick mind and a wicked sense of humor.

You might think I would have been amused by the situation, but it wasn’t as funny to me as it was to him. I didn’t join him in laughing at the remarkable timing of everything and the quickness of his wit – it made me even madder and I proceeded to do what I had intended to do and I walked home in the rain, thunder, and lightening. I found myself ranting at God about how miserable I was as I trekked through the storm and I actually found myself daring God to take better aim with the next bolt of lightening.

Now this isn’t exactly like what happened on the day Jesus went out to the Jordan River and was baptized by John the Baptist. But clearly there are some comparable elements.

There was water involved in each of the situations. And there was the descending of something powerful. Lightening in my case and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove in Jesus’ case. And there was a voice from above with a Middle Eastern accent. But there are some significant departures between the two events as well – the most notable difference being the source of the voice that came from above.

The presence of God was palpable on the day Jesus was baptized, but it’s easy for me to believe that God was at hand on the night I went out in to the storm. I think the fact that I didn’t get struck by lightening as I walked home that night is a testament to the prevenient grace of God, and while I didn’t make any eternal pledges to God that night, I suspect the events of that night had some impact on my journey in to ministry. Some people might have taken that initial bolt of lightening as a sign to go back inside and finish their homework. Had I done that I might have ended up an engineer after all, but that isn’t what I chose to do.

I’m not sure if I was laughing about what had happened by the time I went to bed that night, but I can tell you it generated some laughs at the Wesley Foundation the next day – and to this day. Just the other day I mentioned this to my friend, Lewis Chesser, who was the director of the Wesley Foundation at the time. Costas was an epic story teller, and while he really didn’t have to elaborate on anything that happened, he loved telling people what had transpired, and it actually left me feeling pretty special. I don’t know many people who have thought for as long as three seconds that they had heard the actual voice of God, but I am one of those people. What else can you do but become a preacher when you’ve had such a close encounter.

Today’s scripture lesson isn’t comical, but it is the account of an unusual turn of events. First of all, a day in the presence of John the Baptist is a day that anyone would remember. I think John the Baptist probably had the looks of the character Tom Hanks played in the movie “Castaway” after he had been marooned on that deserted island for more than a year. And I think he had the personality of the guy known as the Soup Nazi on the Seinfeld show. If you’ve never seen either of those characters I’m sure you have your own image and impression of John the Baptist – a man with the look of a feral animal and the resolve of a soldier. He had a razor sharp focus on serving God, and he gave his all to preparing the way for the coming of the lord.

John the Baptist had a lot to say, and you can’t argue with what he said, but God wasn’t going to change the world through the fiery words of John the Baptist. God was going to change the world through the words and actions of the man who doesn’t say a word in this particular passage of scripture. John the Baptist spoke, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon Jesus, and then God spoke. Jesus never said a word as these things transpired, but we are told that he was in prayer. It’s accurate to say that Jesus was sharing words with God, but we don’t know what they were.

There’s an important message to us in this. I know we often think the most important words are the ones we say out-loud, but I don’t think we know what words to say if we don’t spend some time trying to be quietly present to God.

Sometimes I wish I had understood the value of being quietly present to God when I was a younger person. I was pretty impatient to know what I was going to do and why I was going to do it. I wanted a plan and I wanted to like it. I made some plans, but my plans weren’t working out the way I wanted them to, and it made me mad. I didn’t go to God with quiet patience – I went to God with demands, and that’s not something you should do if you aren’t willing to become a preacher.

I used to think Calculus was mysterious – that was before I started trying to prepare sermons. You may find it distressing to hear that I don’t step in to the pulpit each week with a clear understanding of what God intends for me to say to you. There probably are preachers who speak with that kind of authority, but I am not one of them. I wish I had such clarity in regard to what I need to say and what you need to hear, but God doesn’t speak to me so clearly. I struggle to find the right words, and the words I offer – I offer in hope that they will fall well on your hearts. And I do trust that they can be used by God to provide you with some access to the good news that Jesus Christ came to deliver.

The truth is that it’s impossible for me to figure out what I need to say in a sermon. If it was all up to me to generate the right words and to deliver them properly it would truly be an overwhelming task, but I try to remember that God uses us all in ways we don’t fully understand to do the work of sharing the gospel. I wrestle with the task of preaching, but I also know that the Holy Spirit is as free as a dove. It didn’t descend upon Jesus because of something he or John the Baptist said – it goes where it will and does what it will do.

If you aren’t hearing what you want to hear from the preacher be careful what you wish for because you might find yourself doing something you never imagined. I’m not saying that there is no such thing as bad preaching – I’ve heard it and I’ve done it. There is such a thing as a bad sermon, but God’s word is uncontained. The same Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove can come upon us in ways that we would never have imagined. God can use anyone and anything to get our attention and to open our hearts to the truth of the gospel.

It’s interesting to think of the unusual ways that we come to hear the word of God. I don’t know of anyone who has actually heard the voice of God who provided them with clear instructions on what they need to do next. I’m not saying that has never happened or can’t happen. I say that because I don’t know what God is capable of doing nor am I anxious to get some of those clear instructions from God. From what I can tell, God doesn’t send people on easy missions. I known what can happen when you taunt God. I don’t do that anymore.

The voice of God is illusive, but Jesus Christ has revealed to us what clearly pleases God. It pleases God for us to live with love for one another, and when I say one another I don’t just mean the people we already love and cherish. The love of Jesus Christ is the kind of love that has no boundaries. Jesus didn’t just love the people who were living the right way and doing the right things – Jesus loved people because they were people. That was what made him the beloved son of God that he was, and that is what he has invited us to join him in doing.

The voice of God is a powerful thing that comes to us in unusual ways. None of us are too young or too old to hear it, and in spite of my warning not to taunt God, I believe it always comes as a welcome word to willing hearts. The voice of God isn’t loud, but it’s profound, and it changes everything. To hear the voice of God is to come to understand that which is truly important. It’s the voice of God that calls us out of our small worlds of self-concern and points us toward the world with love and compassion.

We haven’t heard many words from God, but we’ve heard enough to know what to be listening for. And thanks be to God — we haven’t yet heard the last word!

Amen.

The Big Picture
John 1:1-18

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

I’m sure many of you have used the phone or computer app called Google Earth. It’s sort of amazing that you can enter an address or a place name and it will take you on a visual journey from somewhere in outer space to the very spot on earth that you are wanting to see. It’s like visually travelling to the spot you have identified from thousands of miles away down to about 50 feet away in a couple of seconds. I don’t know how those Google people have managed to do this, but this app allows you to get a close-up view of every address or named place on earth.

Google Earth is a powerful tool, and it gives you some interesting perspective both on how large the earth is and also how small it is. The truth is, we humans are parked on a pretty small speck in the universe, but having a life on earth is a pretty big deal. There’s an interesting contrast between the powerfully strong individual experiences we all have and the infinitesimally small space we actually occupy. I don’t wake up each morning thinking about what a small creature I am on this small speck of a planet orbiting one of the billions of stars that make up the universe, but I know I am that small. We are all that small, but we usually wake up to face seemingly large challenges and opportunities each day.

This prologue to the Gospel of John sort of reminds me of this experience of going from a really grand viewpoint of reality down to a curbside view of how God chose to step on to the earth. I see in these verses the contrast of the grand scale of God’s glorious design of the universe with the unique desire of God to touch each of our lives.

John uses about five verses to describe what God and the word had been doing from the beginning of time. He doesn’t get caught up in the details of creation. It’s a very general description of what God had been doing for an unfathomable length of time, and then he says: There was a man sent from God named John.

John’s first pin-point focus was on John the Baptist, not Jesus, but I think John the Baptist was someone who had gotten a lot of attention, and John the Gospel writer wanted his readers to understand how John the Baptist fit in the big picture. John the Baptist had gathered a lot of attention, but there was to be no confusion about his role. He was not the light – he was the one who pointed to the light. John the Baptist played a large role in the plan of God to redeem the world, but he wasn’t to be the primary object of our attention.

In some ways I think John the Baptist is a more knowable man. John the Baptist was more disciplined and righteous than average people are able to be, but we understand discipline and order. John the Baptist knew how to follow divine rules, but he didn’t fully embody the grace and the love that would come in the life of Jesus Christ, and those are things that aren’t so easy to comprehend. John the Baptist was remarkable enough to get divine attention, but he wasn’t the one we are to focus our full attention upon. What we see John the Baptist doing is pointing to the one who fully embodied the light of life.

What John the gospel writer wanted us to understand is that Jesus Christ came in to this world to totally transform our understanding of God. Our understanding of God was going to go from being unfathomably general to incredibly specific. This unknowable logos that was with God from the very beginning was going to become a man and dwell among us. God’s way of thinking became embodied in a man, and to meet this man is to have your understanding of life turned upside down.

John provides us with an interesting introduction to the story of Jesus. He brings our attention to that which is most essential, and I think it’s a good passage for us to read as we begin a new year. Just as John invites us to get the big picture in mind I think this is a good time for us to be reminded of that picture. It’s an invitation for us to consider how our own specific lives fit in to this drama that has been unfolding since the beginning of time. There’s no way for us to get our minds around how large this story really is, but by looking at Jesus we can gain an understanding of how the light that was present in his life can shine in our own lives.

And it’s important that we embrace this light because there’s this other reality in this world that we have to deal with – darkness. John doesn’t explain where this darkness came from or why it’s around, but he doesn’t act like it’s not there. Darkness exists, and it’s a problem. It’s a problem for the light, but it isn’t as powerful as the light. The light prevails – but not without a struggle. That’s what I understand John to be saying in this passage, and that’s how I understand the reality of life to be. It’s a struggle to maintain the light of life. The darkness will never fully prevail in the world, but it’s a nagging presence to all of us.

It’s a nagging presence, but it can be contained. John is proclaiming in these verses that the whole enterprise of God establishing creation and eventually taking on the form of flesh and blood was to enable us to live as children of God. God became flesh in order to reveal God’s true nature – which is as light in darkness. We’re told that there is a gift that comes to those who love and seek to follow Jesus, and the gift is for us to continue the tradition of bringing this abstract concept of God into the reality of human life.

I’m speaking in what I consider to be very abstract language, but I don’t just think of the incarnation as being an abstract concept. I may be totally off base, but what I like to think that God did when God took on the form of a human being was to show us what it really means for us to become human. And we humans have a lot to offer to one another.

A wonderful thing happened to me one Christmas Eve a few years ago. I received a call from a friend who was having a hard time. My friend has some severe medical issues, but in addition to having a hard time with his body he was also experiencing a profound sense of fear that the end of his life was near. His medical condition wasn’t life threatening, but he had this sense that something really dark was approaching and it was going to take him away.

On one hand, he knew that it might be an irrational fear that he was experiencing that may well have been brought on by a round of a really strong antibiotic, but he was also in touch with the thought that it may be true. He was asking the question, what if it’s true that he was about to die and that bad news awaited his eternal soul. This is what he was feeling.

He told me he had hoped to attend a Christmas Eve Communion service, but that he wasn’t going to be able to make it. I offered to bring communion to him and that sounded good to him.

When I got to his house I found him in a state of profound resignation to the end of his life. He wasn’t suicidal, but he just thought his life was over. He once again spoke of his sense that something dark was approaching, and that things were not going to be OK. For some reason his words made me think of my mother, and I told him how I had been really lucky in the sense that from my earliest days my mother always made me feel like things were going to be OK. I told him I thought I had been conditioned to believe that the world was a good place, and that I had never really had my illusion shattered.

No doubt the reason I thought of my mother was that she had recently died from a sudden and massive stroke. The person who had always made me feel like things were going to be OK had departed in a manner that didn’t feel OK when it happened. But as I spoke to my friend it occurred to me that the feeling she had instilled in me seemed to have reemerged. I went on to share my belief that this was the message Jesus wanted us to understand – that in the largest sense, regardless of what was going on, things were going to be OK. Jesus was killed in a way that wasn’t OK, but even that wasn’t able to destroy him. His physical body was destroyed, but his presence remains, and we continue to experience this gift of being the children of God. Ultimately, we still have a way to be OK.

I went on to read the communion ritual, we shared the elements, and I think it left both of us feeling better. We didn’t ward off the darkness for good, but we both had a moment of reprieve. I know the exchange we had felt like a gift to me. I had never really articulated how my mother had always made me feel like things were going to be OK, and how it seemed to be a feeling that remained with me even though she was no longer around. My mother was a person who fully embraced the teachings of Christ, and she had that gift of living as a child of God. I’m pretty sure her sense of optimism about life was rooted in her trust in God.

I don’t always feel like things are going to be OK. I’m familiar with that sense of darkness that seems to find it’s way into our lives at unfortunate moments. I don’t think any of us remain illuminated by the light of life every day of our lives, but I believe that people who embrace the life of Jesus Christ and who seek to follow his teachings grow in their ability to share the light of Christ. Following Jesus doesn’t protect us from the assault of darkness, but darkness doesn’t prevail in the lives of those who embrace the light.
John says God has offered a gift to us all – we are offered the opportunity to live as the children of God. As we begin this new year I invite you to embrace this gift and I encourage you to look forward to those opportunities that God will provide for you to be the sharer of light in to all the places you will go.

One of the large oversights of our United Methodist Hymnal is that they didn’t include John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer – which is a prayer he would include in his annual New Year’s Covenant Renewal service. I wish I could tell you to turn in your hymnals to that prayer, but it isn’t there. I think it’s a good prayer for us to pray this morning, so I invite you to pray that prayer with me as I read it to you:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by thee or laid aside by thee.
Exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.