Musings on the Daily Lectionary

We live in a media saturated, visually driven culture. Talk with advertisers and they will tell you that it is more important to have visual impact and "feel" in a commercial than it is to have content. Sometimes it seems that packaging is more important than content. In politics the sound-byte replaces carefully articulated positions on issues. News broadcasts say they cannot make money doing traditional, in-depth reporting on complicated issues because of the public's shrinking attention span.

In the church, this trend often produces a desire for worship that is more about feel than content. Worshipers want to be energized and given a boost, but often they're not much interested in wrestling with what the Bible says. Especially for Protestants, who broke away from the Roman Church in part over insistence that each Christian needed to read and interpret Scripture for him or herself, it is stunning how few church members regularly read the Bible.

It makes one wonder how the Apostle Paul would have fared in our day. Even in the First Century, Paul apparently lost points because he was an unimpressive figure and a poor public speaker. Other missionaries, who had more flash, came in after him and sometimes persuaded churches Paul founded to abandon Paul's message of a gospel offered to both Jew and Gentile, restricting it to those who would become Jews. But when Paul defends himself by letter, he insists that his lack of looks, pizazz, prestige, and style is preferable. The good news he brings is not about him and not focused on him.

Today's reading from 2 Corinthians is at the end of a long discussion about boasting. Paul writes, "Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong."

Power made perfect in weakness is one of those biblical concepts than many Christians are familiar with, but lots of us don't quite know what to do with the idea. And I always wondered if the Church didn't sell a good deal of its soul all those years ago when we got respectable, when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome. From then on, at least in the West, we've been well connected to power, influence, prestige and the ways of the culture. I also wonder if the Church's current loss of status and prestige in the US might not just be one of the greatest gifts we've been given in modern times. Now if I could only really embrace what Paul says.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

Today's Old Testament reading is a portion of The Song of Moses, some of Moses' final words prior to his death just short of the Promised Land. "The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he; yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him, a perverse and crooked generation. Do you thus repay the LORD, O foolish and senseless people? Is not he your father, who created you, who made you and established you?"

I have heard folks remark that they cannot understand how the people of Israel, who were rescued from slavery in Egypt and witnessed mighty, saving acts by Yahweh, could so easily turn away. The Israelites in the wilderness repeatedly complained, questioned whether God was with them, and broke covenant with God. What was wrong with these people?

But my personal experience very much mirrors theirs. I never saw the sea parted, but I have my moments when God's presence seems very real, when it has led me in directions I would never have gone on my own. But I have a lot more moments where I can't seem to find God, and God's absence often seems much more real to me than the memories of God's presence.

A lot of religious people, myself included, long for so-called mountain top experiences, but most of life is lived down in the valley. And I think that what I need is not more dramatic encounters with God, but more awareness of God in the moment, in the mundane, in the day to day, where life and faith are lived out.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

A friend once told me about a conversation at a pastors' luncheon. It was an ecumenical gathering with pastors or all stripes at the table. At some point there was a discussion about what day each of them took off. Normally such conversations are a discussion on the merits of Monday versus Friday, but one pastor insisted that pastors had no business taking any days off. "After all," he said, "Satan never takes a day off."

My fried commented that God did, and that more or less ended that conversation. But the exchange reminded me of how some religious folk seem to be forever worried that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Some seem convinced that if the faithful are not extremely vigilant, all could be lost. But this strikes me as terribly unbiblical, ceding the future to human hands rather than to a sovereign God.

Now I am making no claims that the world doesn't have lots of troubles or that evil isn't real. It would require a real talent for denial to do so. Not that this is anything new. Today's psalm begins, "Help, O LORD, for there is no longer anyone who is godly; the faithful have disappeared from humankind." The psalmist clearly despairs about the state of the world. Yet the psalmist still knows that the future belongs to God. "Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, I will now rise up," says the LORD... The promises of the LORD are promises that are pure."

As Christians, I believe that we are called to work for peace and justice, to care for the poor and needy, and to struggle against all that is evil and despoils God's world. But in the end, the outcome is not simply left to us. God is at work in surprising ways to bring victory out of what seem defeat. If the cross says anything, surely it is that what may look like evil's greatest triumphs end up bringing about God's will.

Oh God, give us faith to trust that the future is securely in your hands.

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Sunday Sermon: "What You Know Might Hurt You"

Sermon for June 7: "What You Know Might Hurt You"

Jesus has a lot of trouble with the religious folks of his day. Their religious certainties made it difficult for them to comprehend the new thing he brought. We modern day religious folks can have a similar difficulty. Jesus says that we can only be part of the "kingdom" if we are transformed via the wind-like Spirit, which blows where it chooses, which defies the doctrines, platitudes, and formulas we devise to contain it.

Sermon for June 7.mp3

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

Psalm 62 begins, "For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken." The exact same lines repeat again in the middle of the psalm, one clearly written from a place of distress.

I suppose that Jesus could easily have leaned on this Psalm as he moved toward Jerusalem and what he knew awaited him there. In today's reading from Luke, Jesus' disciples and companions do not understand what is going on and, presumably, are of little support and comfort to him. Yet he "set his face to go to Jerusalem," as Luke says in 9:51, and he never wavers. God alone is his rock and he is never shaken.

Oh if only I could do the same. I trust and hope in God, but I put my hope and trust in a lot of other things, too. My happiness, my sense of fulfillment, my sense of well being, and my sense of security are often more dependent on the economy, events at the church, the ups and down of family life, worries about the environment, and many more. Oh that all my worries were swallowed up by the certainty of God as my rock, a security that could not let me be shaken.

By nature, I tend to be a perfectionist and a worrier. And I think that both sometimes work at odds with faith. My perfectionism puts too much faith in me, and my worrying too little in God. God, how about helping me tone down both.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

Sing aloud to God our strength;
shout for joy to the God of Jacob.
Raise a song, sound the tambourine,
the sweet lyre with the harp.
Blow the trumpet at the new moon,
at the full moon, on our festal day.

So say the opening verses of Psalm 81. Let's see; the Psalm mentions tambourine, lyre, harp, and trumpet, but no mention of organ or piano. Of course that's not really surprising when you remember that these instruments had not yet been invented.

Most would be so bold (or arrogant?), but I've heard people state that the organ is the only musical instrument truly appropriate for Christian worship. That of course begs the question of how the Church survived all those centuries before there were organs.

There seems to be a human tendency to connect the way we do it with how God prefers it. Personally I love a big pipe organ playing a hymn, but that hardly means that worship without hymn and pipe organ is somehow deficient and displeasing to God.

Back in the heyday of the missionary movement into Africa, missionaries were quick to push out traditional, indigenous instruments in favor of pianos or small organs. And they insisted on singing western hymns, as well as requiring pastors to wear black robes in sweltering conditions. Apparently these missionaries presumed local culture was pagan as opposed to their own Christian, Western culture. Only their culture would do. And we wonder why Christianity became linked with Western imperialism.

But questions about what sort of church is pleasing to God are hardly relegated to the past. Some present day congregations serve more as museums to a dying church culture of 50 years ago than they do as communities reaching out to share God's love in Jesus, as places where new disciples can learn a faith that is intelligible in their culture. There is rarely any malice or evil intent at work here, just that old assumption the way we do it is somehow required for a true church to exist.

At this time in history when the culture around us is changing rapidly, we need to rediscover how to translate church to those who are not from a church culture. This is an enterprise not unlike what went on when a First Century, Jewish, messianic movement was translated into the Greco-Roman culture of that day. It is an enterprise that requires us to discern what of our tradition is essential, and what is simply a part of the surrounding culture of a previous time. May God guide us in this task.

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

In today's reading from Luke, 10 lepers approach Jesus, asking his help. Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. Presumably this implies that they will be healed. When "unclean" became "clean" again, this needed to be certified by the priests. On their way to the priests, "they were made clean." One of the 10 comes running back, praising God, and falling at Jesus' feet to thank him. "And he was a Samaritan."

That line may not be so startling as it was nearly 2000 years ago. But as Jesus himself notes, Samaritans were foreigners. They were also considered to be vile by most Jews of that day. But this despised outsider is commended for his faith by Jesus. "Your faith has made you well." The word Jesus uses here is different from the earlier word saying he was "made clean." This word literally means "saved" and is often translated that way. It also has connotations of wholeness. And so by faith this outsider has not only been cleansed but has been made whole, saved, become a part of the people of God.

Last night at our session meeting (that's the governing board of a Presbyterian Church) we discussed a passage from Romans where Paul writes that we have "received a spirit of adoption." Brett, the other pastor here, recalled a family in his home church that had a large number of adopted children, children from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. We noted how different adopted families can look from biological ones, and we recalled how the Church is a family of adoptees. Christian faith is supposed to be a big tent, a diverse family of all sorts of people. It's there in our gospel verses today, and it's there in the famous words from Paul, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."

Paul cites the primary divisions of his world, insisting that all divisions have been undone by this adoption that we have in Jesus. And so it seems to me that when our congregations mirror the divisions of the world, divisions of race, ethnicity, class, and so on, we fail to live out our calling to be something new, to live out the oneness we have in Jesus.

O God, may our congregations become places of welcome and diversity that fully reflect the family of our adoption in Jesus Christ.

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Sunday Sermon: "Transitions and Identity"

Other than birth, we often think of our identities as fashioned by the transitions we accomplish, such as graduation. But what of those transitions that happen to us, such as the gift of the Holy Spirit?

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

There is a popular image of Jesus as meek, mild, and saccharin sweet. Certainly Jesus is loving and kind, but he can also be very demanding of those who follow him. "Let them deny themselves and take up their cross... For those who want to save their life will lose it." And then from today's gospel, "And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, 'I repent,' you must forgive... So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!'"

Now it is likely that the term "worthless slaves" was less harsh to the ears of Jesus' first hearers than it is to ours. "Worthless" may here refer to a slave who is owed nothing and not be a value judgment on the person's character. But even so, there is nothing sweet and saccharin about what Jesus says.

One of the difficulties with following Jesus is the need to handle the paradox of Christian faith. On the one hand, God's grace is freely offered to us in Jesus. Forgiveness, wholeness, peace with God, and true community with others are ours for the receiving. But at the same time, followers of Jesus are called to live out Jesus' teachings, to do the will of God, to love Jesus more than family or life itself.

Most of us don't like paradoxes. We want to resolve them, usually by embracing one side of the paradox or the other. Some emphasize the obedience side of the Christian life. For them faith is primarily a matter of keeping the rules, remaining pure, walking the straight and narrow. Others emphasize the grace side. For them faith is primarily a matter of freely accepting God's love and offering it to others. And both these groups often see the other as perverting faith.

But as uncomfortable as paradoxes can be, resolving the faith paradox simply doesn't work. It cannot be grace or obedience, love or law. Somehow it must be both. May God help us live faithfully in the tension of this paradox.

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Sermon for May 31: "Transitions and Identity"

Other than birth, we often think of our identities as fashioned by the transitions we accomplish, such as graduation. But what of those transitions that happen to us, such as the gift of the Holy Spirit?

Sermon for May 31.mp3

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

My denomination has struggled for many years now over the issue of ordaining those who are in same sex relationships. As Presbyterians, we tend to argue the issue over how we interpret the Bible. People of deep faith have very different but sincerely held views on what Scripture says on this issue. That is not to say, however, that this issue arose because it figures so prominently in biblical texts.

Why for example, has our denomination never fought about whether or not to ordain people who are greedy. The Bible has considerably more to say about this topic. Jesus spoke on how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom, and Old and New Testament regularly condemn greed and especially how the rich exploit the poor.

Today's reading from Ezekiel is a case in point. The prophet speaks of God judging between sheep, that is between the different people of Israel, and it is the rich who appear to be in danger. "Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture?.. Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep."

When it comes to the Bible, most all of us seem remarkably adept at grabbing those verses that support our positions and ignoring those which don't. And I can think of no real reason for the issue of gay ordination to become the line in the sand issue when it comes to following the Bible, except that a majority of Presbyterians feel safe that they can stay on the "correct" side of the line. But if the issue is greed or God's preferential care of the poor, that's less clear, and we dare not set up any clear cut standards on these.

An adult Sunday School class at our congregation has be reading A Year of Living Biblically, by A.J. Jacobs, which recounts a man's attempt to follow literally what the Bible says. It makes for interesting reading. And it just might make us all think about how we choose which parts of the Bible we will actually follow.

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