Thompson's Blog

Magnificent Disruptions
Luke 1:39-55

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 46 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. 50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. 51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; 53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

A wonderful thing happened to me about twenty years ago. That wasn’t the last time something good happened to me, but this was one of those significant milestone events. When we moved from West Helena to Little Rock in June of 1996 we purchased a small house in the Heights neighborhood. It was too small for us, but it was in a good school zone, and that was our priority. It was a tight fit for the four of us, but it was all the house we could afford in that part of town. Fortunately, soon after we bought the house interest rates dropped rather dramatically, and we were able to refinance and borrow some extra money in order to make an addition on the house.

Sharla and I came up with a design – which was about as simple as it could be, and after speaking to a couple of builders we discovered we had enough money to pay for half of what we wanted. We were a little distressed about the situation, but it turned out to be the most wonderful problem I had ever had because at some point Sharla said, Well, why don’t you just build it.

Now I had dabbled in a few projects over the years, but the thought of cutting holes in perfectly good walls was new territory for me. I was excited about the possibility, but I was also a bit intimidated by the project. So I did what I always did prior to the arrival of Google – I went to Barnes and Noble and I bought a book on housebuilding. I didn’t read the whole thing, but I read enough to believe I could do it, and I embarked upon the journey of home improvement. I didn’t get it done quickly, but I got it done, and now I can’t stop myself from doing other things. That house has been under continual construction or repair for almost twenty years.

Not having enough money to get what we wanted was the best thing that ever happened to me. It hasn’t been quite as good for Sharla. Things don’t get done in what you would call a timely fashion, but I’m so affordable. And it’s been a great source of therapy for me. When you spend your days trying to work with something as mysterious as the Holy Spirit it’s nice to spend your evenings working with boards, and pipes, and sheetrock, and shingles. The opportunity to continually work on that house has been a great gift to me. I might have stumbled in to that avocation if we had been able to afford a builder twenty years ago, but not having enough money to hire a builder has been one of the great blessings of my life.

God never works in predictable ways. God doesn’t operate through the usual channels. If that were the case, we would know a lot more about the mother of Jesus. All we know is that her first name was Mary and she had an older cousin named Elizabeth. We know her fiance’s name was Joseph, and we know he came from the house of David – along with half of the population of Israel. Mary was an unknown young woman – probably a teenager.

As Luke tells the story, God’s favor didn’t fall upon anyone in a leadership position. God’s favor fell upon a nobody. Now I know it’s hard for us to imagine the mother of Jesus being anyone other than the religious celebrity we’ve turned her in to, but before Mary was the Mother of God, she wasn’t what you would call an outstanding person. She was too young to be a mother, and she went to see her cousin – who was too old to be a mother, but it was what God chose to do. God isn’t content to let us operate according to our own plans and agendas. God graciously disrupts this world and provides us opportunities to experience actual richness and grace.

In some ways it’s very unfortunate that we’ve turned Mary in to such a revered character. She may well be the most highly regarded person in human history. Even people who don’t like Jesus would never talk bad about his mother. But I think our reverence for Mary gets in the way of the story. It’s not easy for us to hear how subversive this story really is. A couple of thousand years of church lore has turned Mary in to the most pristine character that has ever lived, but Luke wanted us to see that the mother of Jesus was in a very precarious situation. Mary’s pregnancy wasn’t the result of what we would call sound family planning. She and Joseph were in an awkward situation. This is not what the elders were expecting.

This story of Mary going to visit Elizabeth is a story of two people who were both in incredibly awkward circumstances. What do you think people were saying about Elizabeth when she turns up pregnant for the first time so late in life? That’s some fine fodder for gossip right there. Neither Elizabeth nor Mary chose to turn up pregnant at those moments in their lives. People weren’t going to understand, but Mary and Elizabeth did. They understood that they had been touched by the Holy Spirit, and they celebrated what God was doing through them for the world.

Jesus entered the world in an unconventional manner because God was going to save the world in an unconventional way. The savior of the world slipped in through the back door, and according to this song that Mary sang, he was going to tear off the front door. It’s hard for us to hear this song that Mary was moved to sing in anything other than a very piously presentable way, and it begins and ends in a way that sounds very churchy, but there in the middle it sounds a lot like something a teenager might belt out.

In fact these probably were the words of a teenager. Mary was most likely in her teens when she was touched by God in this profound way. And there might not be anything more frightening to people my age than a teenager who has been empowered by God – they don’t have all of the proper filters in place. They don’t fully understand how their supposed to act. And I’m sure that’s why God chose to use one to alter the course of history.

The truth is that God is more restless than a teenager. God didn’t like the way things were going with the adults in charge, so he found a cooperative teenager, and the world has never been the same. I may be ruining this passage of scripture that we call Mary’s magnificat, but I’m thinking this song of hers is sort of a cross between something a beautiful church choir would sing and something you might hear from a punk rock band. Mary isn’t just rejoicing over the privilege of being used by God, she’s proclaiming that this child she’s going to deliver is going to totally disrupt the way this world operates. I’ve never really understood the lyrics to a punk rock song, but I think they’re pretty enthusiastic about disruption, and so is Mary.

What God was going to deliver through the life of Jesus Christ was not going to be what the elders were expecting. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but it was going to be good.

God doesn’t disrupt our lives for the sake of disruption. God wants us to live abundant lives, and it’s our safe routines that often get in the way of our access to abundant life. I believe the message we are to get from the unorthodox way in which Jesus came in to this world is that we shouldn’t be shocked when our own lives get disrupted in glorious ways. It’s often through the breakdowns in our lives that we make new discoveries about who we are, and how we can live in relation to God. It certainly suggests that we should rethink our fortune when unfortunate things happen.

I believe it’s God’s plan for there to be opportunity for new understanding and new relationships to develop whenever our normal routines are disrupted. If you ask anyone who has willingly participated in some kind of a twelve-step program I dare say they’ll tell you a story of redemption and rebirth that out of disaster – from circumstances they never would have chosen for themselves. It doesn’t happen automatically, but a disruption of life can very well be the beginning of a new and better life.

Sometimes it’s a total breakdown that puts us on track to a new life, but we don’t always have to hit the bottom before we make vital changes. I recently heard an interview with John Grisham, and his work as a writer came about through his disenchantment with being a lawyer. He said he had imagined himself doing dramatic work in a courtroom, but he didn’t find himself defending high profile causes in front of packed courtrooms. It turned out to be pretty routine business, and it didn’t really capture his interest. He ended up running for office in the Mississippi State legislature, and he was elected, but he found that serving in the legislature wasn’t as interesting as getting elected, and he noticed that the time he enjoyed most was the time he spent writing while he was waiting for another committee meeting to take place.

John Grisham didn’t have automatic success with the publication of his first novel, but he did discover what he loved doing, and it wasn’t what he set out to do with his life. It came about as the result of not finding any satisfaction in what he thought he wanted to do, and by paying attention to what it was he was inclined to do.

I don’t believe God creates disasters for us in order to show us better ways to live. God doesn’t stop us from creating disasters for ourselves, but I do believe God provides us opportunities for new life whenever our foreseen lives are altered in some way. I also believe God stepped in to this world in a very deliberate way in the life of Jesus Christ, and I believe that act continues to be a source of disruption to the work of evil in this world.

I love the thought that God used an unknown teenage girl to do the mighty act of delivering the one who continues to disrupt the plans of powerfully godless schemers.

Our God doesn’t do what we expect God to do. Our God does what we need for God to do, and I give thanks to God for those ways in which God’s grace enters our lives when our plans get disrupted and our expectations are unmet.

Thanks be to God for magnificent disruptions! Amen.

Here and Now
Luke 3:1-6

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'”

It’s likely that some of you saw the comedy team of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall perform a short routine on television on February 9, 1964. It’s not likely that any of you remember seeing them because they performed on the Ed Sullivan Show right before The Beatles were to come on to close out that show. Some of you probably remember where you were and who you were with on the night The Beatles first performed in front of an American audience, but nobody remembers who else was on that show. Seventy-three million Americans tuned in to watch that show that night – a number that haunted Charlie and Mitzi for decades

I like to listen to the podcast of a radio show called This American Life, and it was on that show that I heard the story of that miserable night in the life of Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall. Charlie & Mitzi have been married for 55 years, and they are actually pretty funny, but that was the worst night of their lives.

And they thought it was going to be the best night of their lives. Charlie and Mitzi were living and working clubs in the Los Angeles area at the time, and they thought they had hit the big time when their agent arranged for them to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show. But their dream turned out to be a perfect nightmare. Their comedy was geared toward adults, but the live audience was dominated by young teenage girls, and then at the last minute they were told to trim and adjust their act so much that it didn’t even make much sense for the television audience.

They didn’t have a bad night in front of a small audience at an out of the way club. They bombed in front of the largest television audience that had ever gathered to watch anything. They couldn’t bring themselves to watch the tape of the show for 40 years, and they still sort of cringe every time they hear a song by The Beatles. But they’re still together, and they’ve still got a good sense of humor.

I’m guessing we all have a few moments in our lives that we wish we could erase. Mitzi and Charlie didn’t really do anything wrong, but they found themselves in a terribly unfortunate situation. Painfully memorable moments are hard to forget, but memorable moments aren’t always bad. I’m sure we all have moments that we wish we could relive rather than redo. Sometimes things come together for us in ways that create rare moments of joy. Whether good or bad, there are these milestone moments in our lives that serve to guide us as we move through our lives.

Likewise, there have been these moments in history when things have come together in such ways that the course of human life is altered forever. Our text refers to one of those moments. Luke is very specific about the moment in history when a world altering message came to a previously unknown man named John who was living in the Judean wilderness.

It’s a clever opening. At first glance you might think Luke was simply trying to provide accurate information about who was doing what when this monumental message came to this devout man in the wilderness, but Luke is actually making a significant point. Luke likes to highlight the contrast between the people who thought they were in charge with the people who actually understood what was going on. Throughout his portrayal of Jesus, Luke contrasts the people with credentials with the people who actually had faith, and this is exactly what he was doing when he names the official leaders of the day and then points to the man who would actually prepare the way for the savior of the world.

Luke understood what supreme power actually looked like, and he recognized the way in which some people are inclined to seize lesser forms of power in order to maintain the illusion of being in charge. It’s a tragic combination. The desire and misuse of power would ultimately result in the violent death of our savior, but that wouldn’t be the ultimate outcome. God sent Jesus to reveal the nature and extent of God’s love for the world, and while the misguided and twisted leaders of Israel had the power to crucify Jesus they didn’t have the power to keep him in the grave. The word spread – the world changed.

The world shifted when God decided to arrive in the life of Jesus Christ, and there’s nothing anybody can do to change that. We can deny and resist this reality, but it won’t change it, and there’s only one proper response to this new situation. The only appropriate response is to repent and believe in the good news. God decided to come in the life of Jesus Christ, and he refuses to go away. People continue to act like the world is just as it always has been, but the old ways won’t ultimately work anymore. We can continue to try to act like the world is ruled by whoever has the most powerful weapons and other such resources, but John knew otherwise, and he began to spread the word.

John the Baptist is an interesting character to me. His talk of repentance is actually a little intimidating to me. Being the human being that I am I don’t want to change my thinking about anything. And that’s what it means to repent. I know we’ve all been trained to think that what it means to repent is to quit doing whatever you’re doing that you don’t want the preacher to know about, and maybe you do need to quit doing whatever that is, but it honestly doesn’t matter what the preacher may think of what you choose to do or not do.

This business of repenting is much bigger than maintaining proper behavior. What John was calling for us to do is not just to behave a little better, but to change our whole way of thinking. He called for us to believe that this world is ruled by God and not by anybody else.

This world isn’t ruled by Tiberious or Pontious Pilate or Herod or Annas or Caiaphas, or the president, or the governor, or the bishop, or the preacher. It’s not ruled by the terrorists, or the police, or the hottest celebrities of the day, or anybody else who seems to wield power in this world. It’s God who reigns over this world, and Jesus Christ came to show us what that looks like.

And what he primarily showed us is how important it is to love one another. That’s what we are called upon to believe. And it’s for that way of living that we are to prepare.

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness.
Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

You know, you learn things when you spend some time on a bicycle. And one of the things you learn is that our Federal and State Highway Departments spend a lot more money on highways that have a lot of truck traffic than on roads with mere automobile traffic. When you’re on a highway that’s made for a lot of truck traffic you have these really wide shoulders, and the roads don’t go straight up or down hills. They spread the grade out over wider areas. They fill the valleys. They cut the tops off hills.

I became mindful of this as I rode my bicycle across northern Alabama. One day I was on this four lane highway that had these long uphill and long downhill stretches. It was a little intimidating to see a long uphill stretch, but that is so much easier to deal with than the lesser financed roads that would go straight up and straight down. I was in the foothills of the Appalachians, and when I went from that major highway to a secondary highway I had the feeling that I was riding over the toes of the Appalachians. I was perpetually going up and down and it was terrible. I couldn’t even enjoy the steep downhill rides because I knew I would be going straight up the other side of the valley.

I don’t know if the Lord is coming to us on a bicycle, or in a truck, on a donkey cart, or in a cloud, but God is coming in some way in a timely fashion. I don’t fully understand how this world will become fully reconciled with the will of God, but God’s will has been fully revealed to us, and God’s will is for us to live in peace with one another. We can try to resist this. We can try to impose our own desires and use our own devices to try to establish the kind of world that we want for ourselves, but it’s God’s will that will prevail.

The only choice we have is whether or not we will help prepare the way of the Lord. We can engage in the work of making God’s will welcome in this world, or we can avoid that difficult work. We can engage in making God’s way clear and available, or we can be content to maintain the familiar ups and downs, crooked paths, and rough places. We can engage in the hard and costly work of living in response to God’s desires, or we can continue to pursue whatever it is that we just want for ourselves.

We don’t get to choose the moment in which we occupy space on earth, and sometimes we get handed a tough gig. Like Mitzi and Charlie, sometimes the opportunities we are provided are not what we expect or would like for them to be, but the challenge to be faithful will always be the same. Our challenge is to respond to life with a loving heart and trusting soul. Our challenge is to do what we can, in this moment in which we exist, to prepare the way for the Lord. To make God’s path as straight and as smooth and as level as possible.

Our challenge is to repent – to turn away from the wisdom of those who think they rule, and to embrace the wisdom of God – who has shown us what is most essential and who’s kingdom will prevail.

Thanks be to God for this invitation to abide in the kingdom of God while we are living right here – right now.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Heads Up!
Luke 21:25-36

25 “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 29 Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 34 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, 35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

It’s not easy for me to know what to do with this apocalyptic language that the lectionary provides for us on this first Sunday of Advent. I mean – I’m a United Methodist. The most dramatic thing I tend to expect is to get reappointed every now and then. But this is the recommended gospel lesson for today, and I’m sure there’s a message within it that we need to hear. While I don’t live in constant expectation of the world coming to an end, and I’ve never known a healthy person who does – I do believe there is such a thing as healthy alertness.

Although I’m not sure how much crazier it is to be watching for the end of the world than it is to live in perpetual hope of finding the best deal on the hottest items. I was struck by the sheer volume of advertising that came in last Thursday’s newspaper. I’m not saying that a good deal doesn’t catch my eye, but I think the stack of advertisements and catalogues that we get this time of the year is a clear testament to what we think is most important. It speaks to how much more oriented we are to the transactions of this world than we are to the interaction of this world with the next.

I know I can be extra-sensitive to the value of a good deal. I was reminded of this last week. I went duck hunting with my son and his friend Max last Tuesday morning, and when we finished we weren’t that far from the Waffle House in Brinkley, so that’s where we reassembled. I ordered my usual waffle and bacon, but after I heard how much more the young guys ordered I decided to add a couple of eggs to my order. I told the waitress what I wanted, and she responded by saying I should go ahead and order the All Star Breakfast which would add toast and grits to my eggs, bacon, and waffle.

I didn’t want toast and grits, but she explained that it would be cheaper to get an All Star Breakfast than to simply add 2 eggs to my order. And it threw me in to a crisis. I don’t like to waste food, but I don’t like to waste money either, and in the heat of the moment I just told her to forget the eggs. And that threw her in to a crisis. In her attempt to save me some money she was going to deprive me of getting what I wanted. We were stuck in this moment of terrible indecision until my son quoted that famous line about a chicken salad sandwich delivered by Jack Nicholson from the movie “Five Easy Pieces”. You may not know what that’s about, and you don’t need to know what that’s about, but when he said that I knew what to do.

I said: I’ll have an All Star Breakfast but hold the toast, and hold the grits. And that made us all happy.

It’s amazing what we’ll do for a good deal. I had driven twenty miles out of my way to get to the Waffle House, but I experienced a crisis that was created by about a $1.50 difference by the way I ordered two eggs. In all honesty I don’t think I’m in any position to talk about the mental health of someone who thinks the end of the world could come at any moment.

We humans can get worked up about the oddest things. Jesus understood that about us and he wanted us to get worked up about the right things. I don’t believe Jesus wanted us to be overly concerned about when God would choose to bring an end to human history as we know it, but he did want us to pay attention to the way we spend our time on earth. I don’t believe he wanted us to live in fear of anything that might transpire on earth, but he did want us to have deep desire to live with sensitivity to how we might live in relationship to God.

Jesus was not one to gloss over the reality that there are some powerful forces in this world to be reckoned with, but he didn’t give conventional advice about how we should deal with circumstances we find distressing, confusing, and outright frightening. You might say that our natural inclination is to keep our heads low when things are not as we like for them to be, but that isn’t what Jesus advised. Jesus said that when things are falling apart all around us we are to lift up our heads because our redemption is near.

It’s safe to keep your head low, and while this does make a lot of sense in many situations it’s probably not the best posture to assume for life in general. You miss things when you’ve got your head buried for protection. There’s a lot to be said for being safe, but for people who want to live life to the fullest extent it’s more important to be conscious than to be safe.

While this passage seems to be point to the eminent culmination of history and ultimate fate of the earth and its inhabitants, the truth is it probably isn’t going to happen before life comes to an end in a more traditional manner. I mean I’m not speaking with any inside knowledge, but you can only read a warning like this for a couple of thousand years before you begin to think the end is not so near – on a cosmic level.

On a personal level that’s another story, and the truth is that the end is near for all of us. None of us know when that will be or what circumstances will surround that moment, but this world is not our eternal home.

And what I hear Jesus saying is that when we’re frightened and distressed it’s more important to perk up than to duck. It’s advice that goes against our natural inclinations, and I guess that’s why it needed to be said. If all any of us had to do was follow our reflexes there would be no need to think about what Jesus or anybody else had to say.

There are times we need to override our reflexes and actually keep our heads up when we normally would be inclined to keep our heads low. I’m sure this had some clear implications for the people who were following Jesus during the first few decades after he was crucified. They were facing some powerful persecution, and his message for them was not to cower down, but to hold their heads up. They were not to understand the difficulty of their days as a sign of abandonment, but as a time to pay attention.

This parable of the fig tree is significant in that a fig tree is said to look particularly dead during the winter months. The followers of Jesus were to understand that new growth is often masked by the appearance of death. The message for people during hard times is not to retreat into despair but to pay attention for that which is certain to come. Jesus wasn’t giving advice on how to best survive threatening situations, but how to understand perilous times.

Jesus wanted us to concern ourselves with the right things and not to live in fear of the wrong things. Jesus wanted us to be people who are clear about the nature of true life, and who are not too attached to the wrong things.

While the immediate followers of Jesus certainly lived in a time of great resistance to their chosen spiritual path, I’m not sure that we face a world that is any less resistant to Jesus’ words and ways. We don’t have the overt persecution that they faced, but our adversary is no less dangerous. In some ways our enemy is even more threatening than the Roman soldiers were to the lives of the earliest disciples. It may well be harder for us to live as Jesus taught than it was for those who faced lethal force. It’s hard for us to understand the magnitude of the threats we face. Our world isn’t out-rightly hostile to Christian faith, but we face some terrible forms of distraction from spiritual truth. It pays well to pay attention to the transactions of this world and to ignore the less visible ways of the spirit.

We are approaching Christmas, and it probably isn’t very nice of me to dwell on these things that threaten our souls during this traditionally joyful time of the year, but the truth is that I didn’t bring it up – Jesus did. The season of Advent is a time of the year that we are to prepare for something good to be born within us, and we are to nurture hope within each other, but we are to be clear about the true source of hope. We are not to live in hope of avoiding all pain and material failure – we are to live with trust in God regardless of what is going on around us.

As we seek to be people who are focused on being alert, I think we have to work at paying attention to the right things. The things that Jesus would call for us to pay attention to are probably different from the things we generally wake up thinking about. I know I get weighed down by the worries of this life, and I don’t think I’m alone. It’s a tremendous challenge for us to be followers of Jesus in a shallow, materialistic, selfish and scared society. I say this with all due love for my fellow Americans, but I don’t sense that we are living in a spiritually developed society – in spite of the number of people in our country who spend a lot of time and money on church matters.

Maybe it’s unfortunate that we don’t feel threatened by the roaring of the sea and the waves. We are probably a little bit too protected from the elements right now, and it keeps us paying attention to the silliest matters, and not being alert to the most essential matters.

The season of Advent invites us to start over. I think it’s helpful to think of Advent as a new beginning for us and a time where we become particularly focused on the true source of hope for our lives. We aren’t people who need to live with fear, but we are living in a spiritually perilous world. We need to understand the things that actually are threatening to our souls, so we can focus our energies on the things that will bring us true joy. We don’t just need to be alert to good deals – we need to be alert to the subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit to give of ourselves in ways that will be truly nurturing to our neighbors and transformative to ourselves.

Keep your head up and watch for those opportunities that lead to life and away from the death-dealing and spirit-dulling ways of this world. God does provide the opportunity for life in the midst of any situation, and thanks be to God for that.

When our worlds are shaking Jesus tells us to take heart – the time of our redemption is near. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Power of Simple Kindness
Genesis 45: 1-15

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. I dare say it’s our best national holiday. It’s not a holiday that belongs to any particular religion or culture – it belongs to everyone in our country. And we need a day like that. We need a day that causes us to pause and to be mindful of our blessings. Clearly some people have more to be grateful for than others, but for the most part there’s nothing divisive about Thanksgiving. I know Thanksgiving has largely turned in to an opportunity to overeat, to nap on the sofa, and to gear up for shopping, but at least we’re all sort of doing the same thing. It’s a good day for our country. It’s a day that highlights kindness and encourages hospitality.

I love the fact that Thanksgiving is rooted in such a good story. In case you’ve forgotten what you learned in elementary school, let me remind you that the tradition of celebrating a day of thanksgiving goes back to the story of how the Pilgrims survived their first year in the New World. The Pilgrims arrived on the coast of Massachusetts in the fall of 1620. According to their own records, they hardly got off the boat that first winter. But those who survived the treacherous Atlantic crossing and the harsh New England winter disembarked in the spring of 1621, and they were soon met by some friendly members of the Wampanoag tribe.

I don’t think these Pilgrims appeared to be much of a threat, but I don’t think anyone would have been surprised if they had encountered hostility from the people Columbus had mislabeled as Indians. Things could have gone badly between them, but they didn’t. The Indians were helpful to the Pilgrims.

One particularly fortuitous turn of events was that the Pilgrim’s ship, The Mayflower, landed near in the neck of the woods where an English speaking Indian named Squanto was living. Squanto had been captured by an English sea captain and sold in to slavery, but he had escaped and had made his way back to America after spending some time in London, and through all of that he had picked up the English language. I guess Squanto’s experience with the English wasn’t all bad because he chose to help the Pilgrims adapt to the new world instead of helping to eliminate them. Consequently, the Pilgrims were much better off when the fall of 1621 came around, and they invited their Wampanoag neighbors to join them in a harvest feast – which we now think of as the first Thanksgiving.

They shared food, and they shared the land for a good period of time. The story of the interaction between the Europeans and the Native Americans got ugly fast in many other ways, but this story of the interaction between the Pilgrims and Wampanoags is a good one. It’s a story that involves a lot of surprising kindness, and stories like that are good to hear. They remind us of the goodness of people, and stories like that serve to extract goodness.

As surely as there are some stories that make us sick – there are these other stories that make us feel better. And we need to hear these good stories. I know my heart has been hurt by so many of the stories that we are seeing on the news lately. There are so many stories of predictable hostility. There is an abundance of hostility in the world today, and it’s hard to see how it’s ever going to be resolved, but it makes me feel better to remember this story of the first Thanksgiving.

Stories are powerful things. They can make us sick, and they can help heal our wounded hearts.

My father didn’t tell a lot of stories. My mother was more of the story teller in our family, but my mother died rather suddenly one year and it left us all feeling pretty devastated. We grudgingly engaged in the business of putting together her funeral service, and out of the blue as we were doing that my father said, You know, there was only one time that Martha threatened to leave me. Well that got our attention, and he went on to tell this story of the time my grandfather (his father) brought an old short-haired bird dog up to our house and tied him to a tree in our yard.

My grandfather was a good man in many ways. I loved having him as a grandfather, but he was not a particularly sensitive person, and he had somehow come across a bird dog that he just expected us to take care of. As my father told the story I remembered the day my mother and I drove up to the house and saw that bird dog tied in the yard. I was probably in about the 6th grade, and I remembered her being pretty quiet as we went in the house. My mother didn’t get loud when she was mad. She got quiet. I remember that we only had that dog for a couple of days, but I never really knew what that was all about until Daddy brought it up as we were sitting there planning my mother’s funeral.

That bird dog wasn’t the first thing my grandfather had imposed upon my parents, but it sort of functioned as functioned as the last straw. Daddy said: Martha told me, “Either that dog goes, or you go!” And then he said: And I didn’t want to go, so I told Tom he had to find somewhere else for that dog to go.

I think that was the first time any of us had laughed since my mother had died, and it was a very healing moment for us. Daddy told me he wanted me to tell that story at her funeral, and I did.

That isn’t a traditionally heartwarming story, but it warms my heart every time I think about it. I think that was the moment my father had to decide who was the most important person in his life, and I think he was proud that he had decided to do what he needed to do to get to stay with my mother.

Stories are powerful things. They can touch us in deep places. Stories of surprising kindness are particularly powerful. I picked this story of the reunion of Joseph to his brothers and his father because it is one of the many stories from our faith tradition that reminds us of how much more powerful it is to be surprisingly kind than to be predictably revengeful.

I think it’s worth noting that Thanksgiving Day wasn’t designated as a national holiday until 1863. It was at the height of the Civil War that President Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation establishing this day as a national holiday and entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”

It’s good to maintain a grateful heart during times of good fortune, but I think it’s even more important in times of distress to find ways to express a little extra kindness to people who are feeling particularly vulnerable. Thanksgiving isn’t just something to exercise when things are going well for us – Thanksgiving is the hard work we need to engage in when times are hard and relationships are strained.

I’ll be joining all of you good Americans who choose to celebrate Thanksgiving by gorging and napping on Thursday afternoon. That’s a nice tradition that I whole heartedly encourage and practice, but what I know is that the real work of Thanksgiving doesn’t just come when it’s time to clean up the dishes. The work of Thanksgiving comes when you are faced with an opportunity to extend kindness in a surprising manner to someone you may know too well – or to an ailing stranger.

It’s not easy to reach out in a risky way – the way the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims did to each other, but that’s the most fulfilling Thanksgiving tradition that we are called to maintain. And it’s through such acts of costly kindness that we come to experience the greatest sense of fullness. It’s such a good thing to practice courageous kindness. It’s good for your own heart when you do it. And it will help so many more when they hear the beautiful story of what you did when times were hard and hostilities were high.

Thanks be to God for placing the true spirit of Thanksgiving in our hearts and enabling us to live as those who truly understand the power of simple kindness. Amen.

The Story of our King
John 18:33-37

33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” 34 Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” 35 Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” 36 Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” 37 Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

This Sunday doesn’t get the kind of attention that the Sundays of Advent or Christmas or Easter are inclined to get, but in my mind, this is a significant day in the liturgical year. This is the last Sunday of the year, and we call it Christ the King Sunday. It’s sort of like our Coronation Sunday, but it’s known more as the Sunday before the beginning of Advent. It tends to be defined by its relationship to another Sunday. It’s sort of like being known as someone’s brother or sister. Now this isn’t a huge deal. I don’t think our responsibility as Christians is to properly celebrate Liturgical events. God didn’t create the Liturgical Calendar on the eighth day.

But it does come to my attention that this Sunday should be treated as more of a finale’ than a closing out of something that has run it’s course. I’m pretty sure the intention of the liturgical planners was for us to celebrate what we’ve learned and experienced with Jesus over the course of the year. It’s a day for us to make our public profession of who it is that we recognize as our king! I should have asked Andrea to provide us with some fanfare music – the kind of music they play when the king enters the room.

Of course we Americans aren’t so big on kings – at least not the kind of kings that actually have power over us. Elvis was such a powerful presence in our society it was hard for people not to think of him as the King of rock and roll. And I understand he played a few times at the King of Clubs up near Swifton. Cotton was king in this part of the world for a period of time, but it you go to king.com you will find that it is a video game company that has the king and queen of current video games: candy crush & candy crush saga – two games that I have no understanding or experience with.

We still have some talk about kings in this country, but we don’t really understand what life was like under a king. We don’t know about that because this country was largely shaped by people who were tired of living under the rule of a king. I’m not unhappy that we took the bulk of the power out of the hands of one person, but we certainly haven’t eliminated the problem of the abuse of power. We’ve just spread it out among more people.

No, we don’t really understand what it felt like to live under the rule of a king. Living in a kingdom wasn’t always awful for everyone, but it could get awful quickly for anyone who somehow got in the way of the king.

I’m currently very invested in listening to a novel by Ken Follet called World Without End. This is the second of two really long books that I’ve listened to that are set in England in the High and Late Middle Ages. The first book was set around 1150 and the book I’m currently listening to is set around 1350. Now I don’t like to just sit around and listen to a book. I need to be engaged in some kind of mindless activity to justify this time I spend listening to someone read me a book, so I tend to look for opportunities to mow or paint or drive somewhere.

These books are set during times when the king had a lot of control over the way things would go for people. In that world, everything existed for the benefit of the king. This is not to say that there weren’t people who figured out how to manipulate the king in to ruling in a way that helped them, but if you needed for the king to rule in a certain way what you had to do was to convince the King that what you wanted would be to his benefit. It was a brutal system. Basically the king owned everything and everyone that he and his army could control. The priests maintained a little power by reminding the king of his vulnerability after death, but they usually worked together to get what they wanted.

So these novels have sort of put me in touch with the worldview of people who lived under the reign of a king. I’m currently caught up in the lives of Charis, the eclectic nun, Merthyn, the genius architect and his hideous brother, Lord Ralph, who is highly valuable as a brutal soldier for King Edward III. It’s like these people have become my best friends and my worst enemies. I’ve become sensitized to what life was like under an average king.

But life under a king doesn’t have to be all bad – not if you live with Christ as your king. And I wholeheartedly embrace this idea of living with Jesus Christ as my king.

This exchange between Jesus and Pilate is an interesting one. Pilate just comes out and asks Jesus if he was the king of the Jews, but Jesus doesn’t give him a straight answer. He asks him where that question came from. And by doing that Jesus more or less puts himself on the same level with Pilate. People who feel intimidated by the authority of another person don’t ask questions.

And they have this exchange that reveals Jesus to be a king, but not a normal king. Normal kings either fight or negotiate to maintain their lives and their territory, but Jesus didn’t do either one of those things. Jesus identified himself as a king, but as he said, his kingdom is not of this world.

Jesus was a king, but he wasn’t a normal king in any way. Normal kings issue decrees and expect total obedience. Normal kings are always needing more money to finance their castles or their wars, so they always have to figure out who to tax and what rules need to be in place to make sure they can extract as much as possible from the people and the land that they own.

Jesus seems to have only made one decree. It had two parts to it, but it was basically the same message. He said the most important commandment is to love God and to love our neighbors.

Sometimes I just wish he had been more direct with his instructions I wish he had said how many times to pray each day, how to sit when we pray, and exactly how much are we to give. Now I know you’ve all heard that we are to give a tenth to the church, and I’m not saying that’s not a good thing to do. I think we’d probably be floating in money if that’s what everyone actually did, but in all honesty he didn’t make it that easy. The commandment to love God and to love our neighbors requires us to be perpetually vigilant on how we spend our time and money.
When Jesus is your king you can’t just give 10% to the church and let that be it. There’s that child who doesn’t have a coat. There’s that neighbor who needs a kind word. There’s this world that needs people who will speak up for those who are despised and disenfranchised. I wish I could bring myself to say that you only need to give generously to the church and you will have met the obligation that our king Jesus expects from us, but that is only the beginning of what he wants from us.

It’s hard to live with a king like Jesus. He doesn’t send our children to war, but he calls for us to love the very people who cause wars. This is not to say he calls for us to agree with hateful ideologies, but he doesn’t want us to love our own safety more than we want this world to become a better place for all people. And making this world a better place for all people is going to cost us all more than I want to think about.

Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, but I believe he loved this world. He didn’t allow himself to be killed by the rulers of this world in order to abandon this world and to go abide with God in a better world. I believe he gave up his life in the way he did in order to reveal what love really looks like and how powerful it is to give of ourselves in loving ways. He gave of himself in the way he did to reveal what it looks like to abide in his kingdom.

I don’t believe Jesus expects us to bail out of this world as quickly as we can so that we might join him in his kingdom that doesn’t belong to this world, but I do believe Jesus Christ has shown himself to be a king worth serving while we live in this world. And I can’t say that about any of the other kings I know to exist.

None of us are immune from having to show some level of obedience to some system that seems to play an essential role in our world, but there is only one king worth serving with complete allegiance. It’s not easy to sort out how much we have to give to the lesser kingdoms of this world in order to keep ourselves and our families fed and relatively secure, but when it comes down to it I hope we all understand who the King really is – and what we must do to abide in his kingdom.

Thanks be to God that we aren’t just subjects of minor kings in fleeting kingdoms – we have been invited to serve the true king now and forever. Thanks be to God for Christ – our King!!
Amen.

Navigating Calamity
Mark 13:1-8

1 As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” 2 Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” 3 When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, 4 “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” 5 Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. 6 Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

It seems fitting to consider the dark events of last Friday night in Paris in light of this morning’s scripture lesson. The horror of that situation leaves me somewhat speechless, but I’m compelled to say something about it, and I think what Jesus had to say is good for us to hear. Because Jesus wasn’t unfamiliar with horrible violence. You might even say that the world that Jesus inhabited was largely managed by brute force. The people of Jesus’ day and place were more likely to experience the threat of violent death than we are, but I’m guessing this old problem has always felt surprisingly raw and unwelcome.

People who love God will never be accustomed to violent destruction, but Jesus didn’t want us to let it have the power that it yearns to have. Jesus knew about death and destruction. He knew of natural disasters, he knew of political torture and he knew of war. Jesus also knew how religion sometimes fuels the engines of hateful movements, and he warned us not to go there. He knew there would continue to be great upheaval in this world and that there would always be great opportunity for us to react to the events of this world in a lot of different ways. He knew there would always be somebody with a bold scheme, and he warned us to be careful. It’s easy to lose sight of God in the drama of a desperate moment.

Misguided passion for God has always been a problem in this world. I don’t really know how people reconcile killing innocent people with obedience to God, but I know it’s been going on for a long time, and it’s been a blight within every major religion. I don’t know enough about Islam to know how badly these current murderers have distorted the teaching of Muhammad, but I don’t believe that the mass killing of innocent people is what he intended his followers to do. I don’t know what he actually taught, but I know that there are people who have found their way to God through his teachings, and there are others who use his words to do the most hateful things imaginable.

I don’t know what Muhammad taught, but I know what Jesus taught, and I know there are people who have used his words to do hateful things. It’s easy for good words to get hijacked and used in bad ways. Passion for personal power is often portrayed as passion for God. It’s easy for people to be confused about who they are serving, and Jesus warned us about this. Jesus didn’t want us to be confused.

Jesus didn’t want us to react badly to bad things. He didn’t want us to be overly excited about fleeting things or overly distressed about discouraging things.

When the disciples saw Jesus coming out of the Temple they commented on what a magnificent building the Temple was. I’m sure it was an amazing facility, but Jesus didn’t respond in the way they would have expected. He started talking about its destruction. He spoke of the way in which every one of those amazing stones was going to be thrown down, and he sort of acted like that was going to be a good thing. He wasn’t plotting its destruction, but he wasn’t distressed about its destruction.

It wasn’t that he had no appreciation for good architecture. But what he didn’t appreciate was the way God was being misrepresented by the things that were going on in the Temple, and he was looking forward to the day when God would become less identified with a particular place and more identified with a way of living.

Jesus didn’t confuse magnificent things with the magnificence of God. He didn’t want us to be overly impressed with anything in this world nor did he want us to be overly distressed by the destruction of any thing in this world.

And this is hard. Moments of social upheaval are very threatening to us, and we want clear instructions on what we need to do to regain the security we think we need. Good leadership is a valuable thing during moments of national or personal disaster, but Jesus warned us to be careful about who we chose to follow. It’s amazing how quick some people are to explain what role God is playing in any given disaster. Jesus didn’t want us to be taken in by people who offer easy answers in difficult times.

Of course as soon as Jesus started talking about the trials that were to come the first thing the disciples wanted to hear from Jesus was an easy answer. When they heard Jesus talk about the destruction of the Temple they wanted to know when it was going to happen and what they needed to look for, but Jesus didn’t make it easy for them, and it’s not easy for us.

Jesus anticipated the way in which some people are inclined to take advantage of unfortunate situations, and he didn’t want us to be taken in by those who utilize moments of insecurity to promote their own agenda. I dare say this is exactly what has happened within the Muslim community. False teachers have offered easy answers to complex problems.

I guess you could say this is my overly simplistic analysis of what’s going on in the world today, but what I also know is that there’s not an easy solution to this problem of religious terrorism. I don’t know what needs to happen to reduce tension within the world, but our challenge as Christians is the same that it’s always been. Our challenge is to fully love life and to be fully engaged in this world, but to not be overly reactive to anything that goes on in this world.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have any outrage or remorse about what we see happening in the world, but Jesus didn’t expect for things to be easy for any of us, and he didn’t want us to think that the difficulties of this world are a reflection of what God intends.

Terrible things are going on in this world. Criminals shoot honorable judges in the presence of their children. Terrorists shoot people as they attend concerts or have dinner. Refugees leave everything and risk dangerous journeys in search of safety for their families. Natural and unnatural disasters abound, and it’s probably natural for all of us to try to generate reasons for the difficulties that we face, but Jesus didn’t want us to think that way.

Jesus wanted us to have an attitude of trust in God regardless of what is going on around us. It’s important for us to look to God for comfort and direction as we seek to navigate the trials of this world, but we shouldn’t expect easy answers. What Jesus wanted us to understand is that none of the events of this world compare to the ultimate glory of God. Jesus offered this image of the trials of this world as being like the pain of childbirth.

From what I understand, the pain of childbirth is real, but it’s not futile pain. While much of what we see happening in this world seems very futile I don’t believe it reflects any kind of abandonment from God.

It’s a hard thing to balance our inability to know what’s going on or what to expect with our need to trust, but I believe that is exactly what it means to have Christian faith. We are to love this world, but our ultimate home is the kingdom of God – which extends well beyond the turf on which we currently stand.

I don’t have an easy answer for what we need to do, but it’s easy for me to tell you where to look to find some peace and understanding. Jesus wasn’t confused about what was going on in this world. He fully understood what would go on in this world, and he fully understood God. Jesus knew how to live in this world in perfect relationship with God, and he has invited us to follow him. It’s not an easy path, but it’s the true path, and it’s the path that leads to the place where true peace abounds.

Thanks be to God for being with us in the life of Jesus Christ, and for the light he offers in times of great darkness.

May the light of Christ shine brightly among us. Amen.

Divinely Invested
Mark 12:38-44

12:38 As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40 They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” 41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

I don’t have the skills to be an actual accountant, but I pretend to be one in my spare time. I never had the discipline or the aptitude to do the math homework that accountants have to do, and I don’t really like to sit still for long periods of time, but I do have some passion for financial details. I’m a little obsessive about tracking our home income and expenses.

I’ve got banking and credit card apps on my phone and I try to enter all of our receipts on my Quicken software. I don’t like Quicken as much as I liked my old Microsoft money program that went the way of the dinosaurs. I had to make the switch to Quicken about a year ago when I dropped my old laptop and had to get a new one. I was pretty dismayed to learn that my beloved home accounting program wasn’t available anymore, so I’ve been learning to use Quicken, but I miss my old Microsoft money.

I don’t consider myself to have an unhealthy amount of love for money. I love it as much as most people, but I’ve never been obsessed with making a lot of it. I’m not proud of that – I’m just not wired that way. I’m not very entrepreneurial, but as I say, I am a bit of an accounting geek.

And I have this friend who is an accounting disaster. She’s someone I got to know while I was in campus ministry. She was a perpetual student at UALR, and she’s probably the most astute student of literature I’ll ever know, but she is not so good at home economics. She’s about 15 years older than I am. She’s got some significant health problems, and she doesn’t have any known living relatives, but she’s got this group of friends that sort of look after her. Different people do different things for her, and my job is to help her manage her money. It wasn’t easy to get her financial house in order when I first began looking in to her situation, but we got things straightened out, and it’s not so hard anymore because she doesn’t have that much to manage, and she’s able to live within her means.

I helped her get in to Good Shepherd Retirement Center – which is a great place for her and her rent is subsidized. It wasn’t a very hard application for her to fill out because she gets one check per month and she has no assets. She’s got some medical debt, and she pays a little on her debts each month, but they only get what we’ve decided she can afford, and they accept it because she doesn’t have anything they can seize.

It’s actually been very satisfying for me to help her get her business in order, but it’s been an education for me as well. I had no idea there were so many predators out there. She doesn’t have anything, but there are these people who try to get what she has.

It’s happened on several occasions, but just last week she called me and told me they were trying to put her in jail. It really scared me when I heard her say that – she’s had those thoughts before when she needed her medication adjusted, but when I asked what was going on she explained that someone was calling her and telling her that she owed a bunch of money and if she didn’t pay it she was going to have to go to jail. This person said he worked with the police, and if she didn’t pay up she was going to go to jail.

I was happy to hear that someone had actually called her and made this threat. Crooks are easier to deal with than paranoia. I assured her that the police don’t call before they arrest you, and she believed me. She doesn’t answer that person’s call anymore. It’s terrible that someone would take advantage of someone like her, but apparently this has been going on for a long time. This is what Jesus was talking about in this very passage.

The man trying to take advantage of my friend wasn’t parading himself as a man of God, but he was portraying himself as a law enforcement official, and that’s not far from the position of the men that Jesus found to be so detestable. Of course the man who called my friend knew he was a criminal, and this is a bit different from the misguided religious authorities that Jesus was talking about. They somehow considered themselves to be serving God by taking advantage of disadvantaged people. And according to Jesus that’s the lowest form of human behavior.

Of course we all know what bad behavior looks like, and we all know that we should try to avoid behaving like that, but the really compelling part of this morning’s passage is the appreciation Jesus had for the woman who had so little but who gave so much. It is easy to give a lot when we have a lot, but it’s not so easy to give anything when you don’t have much – unless what you have is a profound level of trust in God. There are occasions when people give themselves so thoroughly to God, and this is a good thing for us all to remember, but I think what we experience more often is how perfectly God uses the small things we are able to give.

I was at a preacher’s leadership training event a few years ago when one of the participants told this story about the sermon she turned in to the Board of Ordained Ministry as she was going through the ordination process. One of things candidates for ordination have to do is to turn in a video of a live sermon they had preached, and she said she had put off doing that to the last moment, and she only had one Sunday left to record her sermon. I can’t remember what came up for her that week, but she had some kind of pastoral crisis to deal with, and she said she had very little time to work on her sermon. She didn’t have much a sermon prepared for that Sunday, and she was already intimidated by the thought of having her sermon recorded.

But she proceded to preach her sermon, and she said it was in fact one of the worst sermons she ever preached. She was feeling pretty awful about the whole thing, but as she began to wrap her sermon up there was a man in the congregation who had begun to cry and he made his way up to the front of the church, and when he got there he announced in this tearful voice that he wanted to give his life to Jesus. She had not planted that man in the congregation, but it was caught on tape, and it redeemed her terrible sermon.

I love that story. That’s the kind of story that enables me to be a preacher. I know I need to do my best to present the gospel in a compelling way, but I also know that God can use the most pitiful offering to do remarkable things. Sometimes I forget that it’s not entirely up to me, and that makes this work of preaching an unduly heavy load, but the truth is that my first task is not to get in the way of what the Holy Spirit is already doing in our midst.

The good news is that the work of God doesn’t depend on the quantity of what we have to offer. Jesus was more impressed with the pennies that the poor woman gave than the fortunes that the rich men provided to the treasury of the Temple. We are terribly misguided if we think the work of God depends on what we choose to provide. The only thing that really counts is the amount of love that is behind what we are able to give.

Few of us are able to give of ourselves as totally as this poor widow was willing to do, but God has blessed many of us with those experiences where we are able to see what God can do with the meager offerings we provide. Most of us can only stand in the shadow of this woman who’s gift revealed such perfect trust in the love of God, but I know how good it can feel to be giving in a genuine manner.

It’s all but impossible for any of us to match the total giving that this poor widow demonstrated, but what she primarily revealed is the attitude we are to have when we give to God and to our neighbors. We are to give what we have with love. Giving is not to be a way of putting ourselves on display or of inflating our standing among our peers. Our giving is to be a way of expressing our love for God, and when we do that we are investing ourselves in something bigger than ourselves and we are making ourselves available for the kinds of dividends that bring joy in to our lives and wholeness in to the world.

We shouldn’t be overly impressed by anything we are able to offer, but you can never underestimate God’s ability to use what we provide to do remarkable things. And it’s not our job to try to measure what we get in response to what we give, but I don’t think it’s so bad to try to keep track of ourselves. We need to pay attention to the ways in which we are investing ourselves, and it’s not so bad to pay attention to the ways in which the small things we are able to do are multiplied by God to produce astonishing yields. We’ve probably all got a little bit of an accountant in us, and these are these types of transactions we need to be tracking. Thankfully God’s economy is driven by grace, and we receive so much more than we provide.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Unbounded Life
John 11:32-44

32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus began to weep 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” 38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.”

I don’t have many memories prior to when I was 7 years old. But we moved from one house to another house when I was 7, so I know that anything that happened in or around that first house happened during those first seven years. I don’t have many memories from that place, but the memories I have are pretty vivid. One of the earliest memories I have of that house took place out in the yard. I remember the day I learned that it takes more than a superman cape to fly. I was an avid Superman fan when I was a child, and my parents had gotten me a superman outfit. I felt pretty empowered by that outfit, and I have a distinct memory of trying to fly over a short hedge. That was the day I learned what it feels like to get the breath knocked out of you.

It’s interesting for me to think about what kind of mind I was working with back in those days. The boundary between reality and imagination wasn’t fully established. I wish I could remember what it feels like to think that a red cape could enable you to fly. And of course even then I’m sure my 5 yr-old mind knew I couldn’t just fly on demand, but the way I remember the situation I was running away from someone and I just got caught up in the moment. The boundary between what is and what if got cloudy, and I launched myself in a prone position over that hedge.

I actually found that superman outfit when I was going through stuff at my parent’s house after my father died, but the cape was missing. I don’t know if I wore it out or if my parents took it away from me out of fear that I might try to use it’s power again. I don’t remember getting caught up in another such moment when I tested my capacity to fly, but that episode reminds me of what a remarkable thing a child’s mind can be.

The story we are looking at this morning is an account that requires an unusual mind to comprehend. It’s a story that challenges our view of reality. It’s unique in a number of ways. The story portrays a very supernatural event. This is not like some other gospel stories where someone who has just died comes back to life. You could argue those were situations where the person might not have fully slipped over to the other side before they were revived. But in this story there’s no doubt that Lazarus was dead. He had been in the tomb for four days and deterioration had begun. There are some unique elements to this story. But it’s also unique in the sense that John is the only gospel writer who recorded this story.

We only read twelve verses of this story, but this story takes up the first 53 verses of this 11th chapter of the Book of John. The story begins with Mary and Martha asking Jesus to come to their house because their brother is sick, it reveals the way in which Jesus was in no hurry to get to their home, it describes the various people that were on hand when Jesus arrived and who all witnessed the moment Lazarus stepped out of the tomb. The whole story is a very thorough description of what went on before, during, and after this remarkable event.

The story reads a lot like a scene from a play or something. John tells this story as if he was standing right next to all of these different people in different places. The details that he reveals are remarkable. It’s a compelling story, and while it’s possible to take it at face value, I don’t think it unreasonable for us to wonder about it and to ponder what exactly John was wanting us to understand.

Is this the actual story of a real man who died and was raised from the dead after his body had been deteriorating for four days? Is this simply the account of a moment when Jesus exercised the most extraordinary deed of power that a man has ever displayed?

And if it is, I have to wonder why none of the other gospel writers chose to mention this significant moment in the life of Jesus Christ. Our memories are funny things. I can hardly remember yesterday, but I do remember the day I tried to fly over that hedge fifty-something years ago. We remember significant things, and it seems like such a public portrayal of power would have been one of the things every gospel writer would have documented if this had happened as John reported it. This is a significant story, but I’m inclined to think this story reveals something other than one remarkable thing that happened on the way to Jerusalem. I believe John told this story the way he did to portray the miraculous possibility for new life that Jesus can offer to anyone on any day.

In order for us to see what John was revealing I think it’s helpful for us to know where this gospel writer was coming from. John wrote his account of Jesus about seventy years after Jesus had been crucified. John was connected to a community of Jews who had experienced new life through the resurrected Christ, and he wanted to share his understanding of the way in which he and his community had found their way to God by looking to Jesus. John was a true believer among other true believers, and they were surrounded by people who had no use for what they believed.

Scholars believe the writer of the Book of John was a Jewish follower of Jesus, but it was unacceptable within the dominant Jewish community of their day to believe in Jesus, and life for these Jewish Jesus followers was torturous. They weren’t just frowned upon – they had been evicted from the Jewish community. And they had lost so much of what they cherished: their families, their homes, their friends, their traditions, and their livelihoods – some had even lost their lives. But they had found something as well. Jesus had enabled those who followed him to find their way in to true life, and they were overjoyed to have this new life that he had given them. What Jesus provided for them was the ability to see beyond the surface of life. Their allegiance to Christ put them at terrible odds with people who refused to believe, and it cost them dearly, but it was worth it! It was as if they had been released from the tomb.

I’m reminded of the way in which a child can put on a uniform and see the world in an entirely different way. I’m not saying that following Christ is an exercise in childish imagination, but I do believe that when we put on the cloak of Christ we come to see the world in an entirely different way. The enemies of Christ weren’t people who didn’t believe in God, but their unwavering allegiance to the way their faith was structured caused them to become unwelcome to the new message that Christ brought them. They not only refused to see and hear what Jesus was teaching they hated him for what he did and they hated anyone who joined him. They were blinded by their animosity. Raising a man from the dead wasn’t good enough for these people – it only increased their resolve to put him to death.

I don’t believe the most essential message of this text is the remarkable power of Jesus to raise an actual dead man from the tomb. I believe what John is wanting us to understand is how powerful it is for us when we reject the religiously dead practices of our day and embrace the fresh spirit of the living Christ. This is what I think it means to put on the cloak of Christ. And true life is the gift that comes to us when we become unbound from the rags of dead traditions.

Now I don’t think the enemy of Christ is what you might call traditional religion. I don’t think our problem is that we worship God in much the same way they worshiped God a few decades ago. I’m not one who believes that the answer to church decline is to simply incorporate new technology in to worship. Contemporary worship is not the solution to dead religion.

The problem we face is much more subtle than the problem that the earliest Christians faced. Their problem was that they couldn’t even mention the name of Jesus without getting thrown out of the building. Our problem is that we speak of Jesus as if we already know what he wants us to be doing and that we’ve already got it covered. I’m not saying we aren’t doing the work of Christ in some significant ways, but I am saying that we are probably playing it pretty safe.

I can testify that a superman cape will not provide you with the kind of lift you need to fly over a short hedge and to land softly. But what would it mean for us if we were to put on that cloak of Christ and to test it’s ability to guide us in to abundant life. I think this story we have in our scripture lesson today is about the two possibilities that religious practice can provide for us. We can become overly enamoured with our own faith traditions and by doing so we can become dangerously blind to the work of God to redeem the world through Jesus Christ. Or, it can enable us to hear the voice of Christ calling us out of the tomb. It can release us from petty bindings and free us for abundant life.

That’s what I’m wanting. And that’s what I think Jesus Christ can provide for us. It’s not easy to see what’s binding us, but I believe it’s easy to get caught up in deadly agendas. I believe it takes work for us to break out of unhealthy religious understandings, and I believe Jesus is calling us to do that very thing.

With prayer, with courage, and with diligent desire to put on the true cloak of Christ I believe we can join the saints that have gone before us and soar in some remarkable ways. I believe Jesus Christ does have the power to release us from deathly patterns of existence, but Jesus never made anyone listen to what he was saying. It takes willingness on our part, and it will take consistent effort, but I believe there is such a thing as abundant life and I hope to stay in touch with it. I hope you share my desire for unbounded life, and I hope that together we really will learn to fly over the short hedges of life and in to the kingdom of God.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Living Large
Mark 10:35-45

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36 And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37 And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38 But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39 They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42 So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

I have had the good fortune of not having to deal with an overabundance of success in my life. This probably isn’t what you are hoping to hear from the pastor of a church that’s currently experiencing some significant financial strain, but it’s true. I’m not a professional failure – in fact I feel pretty good about what I’ve been able to do in the various places to which I’ve been appointed, but I’ve never performed in a manner that has been overly impressive to our institutional leaders.

I say I’m fortunate in that way because I’ve never really had to struggle with an over-inflated sense of self-importance. I’ve never been lead to believe that I was God’s gift to the United Methodist Church and had to deal with the egotistical demons that come with that territory. It could still happen. The Newport Miracle may take place in 2016, and if it does I’m sure I’ll become overly impressed with the role I’ve played and it may be that I’ll have to learn how to deal with some new types of sin.

It’s not that I don’t have any demons to wrestle with, but I just don’t have that variety of demons that comes with massive adoration.You might say I understand the sin of envy more than the sin of pride, but I’m sure I could go there, and I’m willing to deal with a new set of sins. Arrogance isn’t my default fault, but if our attendance were to double I’m sure my ego would readjust to a higher sense of self-importance. Like James and John, I’d be wanting to have that conversation with Jesus about where I might best fit in the kingdom of God.

So that’s why I think of myself as being blessed with moderate success in ministry and in life. Now I’ve had a taste of lime-light, and I’ve had some nice photo-opportunities with some A-list people, but I’ve never had trouble keeping myself in perspective. Maybe God has been watching out for me in that way, but in all honestly, I think I can take most of the credit for that myself.

For example, a few years ago Sharla and I went to Boston for a vacation, and before we went I was telling my cousin and her husband about our trip, and they said, oh, you’ve got to go to a Red Sox game and have some clam-chowder at Fenway Park. This wasn’t on our list of things to do, but they said they knew someone with the organization and that they could get us some tickets. It sounded great to me, and I talked Sharla in to going, so they lined it up for us.

My cousin told us to go to the VIP window to pick up our tickets, which felt a little out of place for us, but we did, and sure enough there were tickets waiting for us. We went where we were told, and in order to get to our seats we went through this nice club room, and we emerged into the stadium in this elevated and canopied area that was directly behind home plate. After finding our seats we actually went back down in to the more public area of the ball-park to get something to eat and drink because we didn’t want to pay the prices of the club menu.

When we got back to our seats we noticed that our area was serviced by a waiter, and before long he came and asked if we wanted anything. We didn’t want to be too cheap so we ordered something to drink and some clam chowder, and when I gave him my credit card he said he didn’t need it because the seats we were in were covered by Larry Lucchino.

We didn’t know who Larry Lucchino was, but we were grateful, and soon our neighbor asked us how we knew Larry. We explained how we got the tickets and that we had no idea who Larry Lucchino was, and he explained to us that Larry Lucchino was the CEO and General Manager of the team. And that sort of changed everything for us. I was already having a good time, but I began to have an even better time. I probably shouldn’t own up to this, but I have clear memory that the price of a beer was $8.50, which was a very moderating factor for me, but that suddenly went away.

By the middle of the game I had become great friends with many of the people sitting around us, and I’m sure our conversation was filled with impressive details of our lives in Arkansas. I was living large. The waiter came out at the beginning of the 8th inning and announced that the restaurant and bar was closing, but he leaned down and said that didn’t apply to us, so I took full advantage of that by buying a final beer for a couple of people sitting around us.

Soon after that Larry Lucchino, himself, came out and sat down with us. I felt like I was in the presence of baseball royalty, but that didn’t keep me from talking. I began talking to him like we were old friends at a reunion until all of a sudden a batter hit a hot foul ball that went straight from the bat to Larry Lucchino’s forehead.

I don’t know if he could have dodged or stopped the ball if he had been paying attention to the game – I never saw the ball until it hit him in the head. But I instantly felt like I had been a huge distraction to him. I certainly hadn’t helped protect him from the ball. A couple of guys suddenly appeared and ushered him away for medical attention, and I felt horrible about the situation. I was haunted by the thought of how much better it would have been if I had reached over and saved the CEO and General Manager of the Boston Red Sox from that blow instead of contributing to the circumstances that lead to his injury.

I left Fenway Park with a terrible sense of regret. I had an opportunity to be the hero, and I felt like the goat. He had provided us with this tremendous sense of hospitality, and I had caused him to go home with what the news reported as a detached retina. I texted my cousin about what had happened and they thought I was joking until they had the story confirmed by Larry Lucchino’s wife.

That really was an unfortunate turn of events, and I hate that he got hurt in the way he did. I still wish I could have been the hero, but what I also know is that it’s not the great successes we have in life that put us in touch with the source of true life.

I’m currently reading a book called Falling Upward, by a man named Richard Rohr. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan monk, and he is in high demand as a speaker and teacher. He has what many consider to be a profound understanding of spiritual truth, and in particular of how Jesus taught us to live in relationship with God. I’m oversimplifying his message when I say this, but Richard Rohr believes that its our failures and our various forms of inner restlessness that motivate us to seek understanding, and often it’s our outward successes that cause us to remain distracted from that which is deeply real.

Rohr believes that God hides in the depths, and that we will never find true comfort and satisfaction if we remain on the surface of life. In this book I’m reading he talks a lot about the first half of our lives as compared to the second half of our lives. On some level that breaks down in to the early part of our lives and the later years of our lives, but I don’t think he would describe these two halves of our lives as being strictly chronological. He knows we all have to spend a good amount of our time seeking to establish and maintain our physical lives, but that it’s often when our outward lives are disrupted that we begin to seek an inner life, and that it’s the inner life that provides us with the greatest satisfaction.

James and John weren’t yet full of understand of how God’s kingdom is structured when they began asking Jesus for places of honor in his kingdom. They were thinking that God’s kingdom is like every other kingdom on earth, where there is clear ranking about who is most important and who is of the least consequence, but that isn’t how it works in the kingdom of God.

In the kingdom of God, it’s the people who are the least regarded on earth that have the easiest access to the deepest truth. Now nobody has automatic access. People can remain ignorant of the way God operates in our lives regardless of their station in life, but Jesus didn’t want us to be confused about who is greatest in the Kingdom of God. He didn’t want us to think that God rewards us in the same way that the world rewards us.

This isn’t easy territory to navigate. The desire to be successful in life is not a bad thing. We all enjoy a higher quality of life because there are people who are driven to do things well, but success in life has a cost, and failure has it’s rewards.

Jesus wants us to live large in a truly grand way. He wants us to find our way in to the kingdom of God and to experience the true richness of life. James and John weren’t wrong to want to abide in important places in the kingdom of God – but they didn’t know what they were asking.

I hope to be a success as the pastor of this church. I hope we experience the kind of growth we need that will enable us to pay all of our bills and to expand our work in the community. But I hope we will never be so impressed with what we do that we forget to go where God abides – which is not in the numbers or in the headlines – it’s in the depths. God’s kingdom isn’t like any other kingdom. It doesn’t shine on the surface, but it provides us with nourishment from the deep, and it’s only by the grace of of God that we find it.

It’s hard not to seek success in conventional ways, but its often when we stumble that we connect with that which is most real, most lasting, and most satisfying. The Kingdom of God is beautiful in that way.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Upward Mobility
Mark 10:17-27

10:17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'” 20 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” 27 Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” 28 Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age–houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions–and in the age to come eternal life. 31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

I can’t help but wonder what John D. Rockefeller thought about this passage of scripture. And I’m sure he did think about this passage of scripture because he was a faithful member of the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church in Cleveland, OH. I know this because I recently listened to an extensive biography about this man who died as the richest man in America in 1937.

I really didn’t know anything about John D. Rockefeller until I listened to that book about him, and it was interesting. Although, I really don’t think I would have enjoyed his company that much. He was much too austere for my taste. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he wasn’t particularly engaging, he never touched alcohol of any kind, he went to bed early, he worked long hours, and he didn’t socialize very much. He did appreciate bicycles and in his retirement he developed an obsession with golf, so he and I do have some common ground. And as I say, he was a devout Christian. He taught Sunday School throughout his life, and I wish I could have asked him how he understood this particular passage of scripture.

I’m not a rich man in comparison to John D. Rockefeller, but in comparison to my friend who lives at the Union Rescue Mission in Little Rock and who works at the nearby Kroger so he can eat and make payments on his six-figure student loan debt – I am a rich man. And this passage of scripture sort of grabs my attention in an uncomfortable way. I’m not sure how my financial portfolio would compare with the unnamed rich man in this passage of scripture, but I think I probably have more in common with him than I do with the desperate masses of people who came to Jesus hoping to be healed or fed.

Many – possibly most of the people who were drawn to Jesus were in some kind of desperate need. So many of them were sick or starving or ostracized, and they were looking to him to relieve their immediate needs, but this wasn’t the case with this so-called rich man. This man had the luxury to contemplate the meaning of life, and he came to Jesus with interest in obtaining eternal life.

I think it’s important to note that he didn’t approach Jesus with fear for his eternal soul. He wasn’t running scared for his soul, but he was looking for something more. He asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and I think he expected Jesus to give him some advice on how he might tweak his spiritual discipline a small amount in order to put him on the road to excellence, but that isn’t what Jesus did. What Jesus told him was far more transformational than he expected. Jesus told the man to go sell everything he had and to come back to join him.

Needless to say, this isn’t what the man expected to hear, and he couldn’t bring himself to do what Jesus suggested – which is unfortunate because we’re told that Jesus loved this man. Jesus didn’t tell him to go sell all of his stuff in hope of getting rid of the man – I’m thinking Jesus was probably happy to be approached by someone who wasn’t needing him to do something for them. Jesus saw great potential in this man, but it turns out this man was more concerned with maintaining his retirement plan on earth than pursuing eternal life in the kingdom of God.

This man was offered the opportunity to hang out with the living son of God, and he chose to hang on to his stuff. It was a sad exchange, but I don’t think anyone is surprised by his decision. I can imagine myself doing the same thing. It feels good to have financial security, and when you have financial security you don’t want to let go of it.

Prosperity is such a hard thing to deal with. I think the only thing harder to navigate is poverty. I heard a song with some great lyrics the other day. I googled the lyrics and discovered that the singer/songwriter is a guy named Chris Janson. I think his song addresses our troubled relationship with money in a beautiful way. He sings: Money can’t buy me happiness, but it can buy me a boat – and a truck to pull it…

I think it’s accurate to say that neither money nor poverty buys happiness. I also think most of us prefer to deal with the challenges of affluence over the challenges of poverty, but we don’t need to underestimate the power of financial security to limit the expansion of our souls. Jesus said: It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God. And this isn’t easy for me to hear.

One of the interesting things about John D. Rockefeller was that he had more anxiety about what to do with his money than he had when he was engaged in the process of building the Standard Oil Company, which provided him with all of his money. John D. Rockefeller had some powerful detractors and critics as he went about the business of creating a monopoly on the oil business at the turn of the 20th Century, but he was never really troubled by what people had to say about him. He was a true believer in what he set out to do, which was to create a monopoly that would create a standard price for oil and oil products, and while he had some slight misgivings on some of the things he had to do to create the company he basically believed he was doing the right thing for himself and for society.

He didn’t believe he was being disobedient to God in his work, but once he made so much money he had all of these people asking him for help, and he found that to be maddening. He felt like God expected him to use his money for the right things and not to invest it in the wrong things, and he was pretty tormented by all of the requests he got.

John D. Rockefeller found a nice alternative to selling everything he had and giving it to the poor – he set up a foundation. And that was sort of a novel thing to do. The Rockefeller Foundation wasn’t the first philanthropic foundation to be established in the country, but it was one of the first, and it was operated on a scale and in a manner that was unprecedented. I’m not saying this is the avenue to eternal life, but I think John D. Rockefeller could testify to the peril of wealth. His money actually created quite a burden for him.

I don’t believe this passage of scripture is an admonition for us all to liquidate our holdings and to give our assets to the poor. Now if you have had a personal invitation from Jesus to do that, and you know where he told you to report I encourage you to do as he said and to go where he said to go. But one of the last things we need is another desperately poor person in our community. This isn’t a universal instruction for us all to embrace poverty, but it is a universal warning about the threat of wealth. Affluence can easily become a huge spiritual obstacle. Jesus probably wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go to heaven, but that’s not the only thing he said.

He also said that what’s impossible for people is possible for God. Once again I’m reminded that we don’t earn or finagle our way in to the kingdom of God. There are many obstacles to the development of our spiritual lives, and if we were on our own I think we would spend our lives banging against one or the other, but God continually provides us with opportunities for spiritual renewal. This rich man may have failed to seize the opportunity Jesus offered him that day, but that might well have been the beginning of his transformation.

Jesus said the first will be last and the last first. This rich young man didn’t go home feeling like he was first in line anymore, and that’s not all bad. It’s the experience of spiritual bankruptcy that often puts us on the path to spiritual transformation.

Yearning for more isn’t all bad. Maybe you think you only need enough money to buy a boat and a truck to pull it, but chances are, God will help you realize that there’s an even better place to be than on a lake with a yeti cooler. Jesus came to teach us to set our sights on the highest possible experience of life. Having some desire for upward mobility is a good thing – as long as you aren’t content to obtain mere financial security. We have a high calling. We are called to abide with Jesus in the Kingdom of God, and we should do all that we can to get there. Our invitation and our challenge is to tap in to the real richness of life. We all have our obstacles, but we all have opportunities as well, and by the grace of God we’ll take them.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.