Musings on the Daily Lectionary

"Then give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." I've always liked the translation that says, "Render unto Caesar," when Jesus is asked about paying taxes. Of course the question isn't really about taxes. It's an attempt to trap Jesus. The taxes in question are those due to Rome. Rome was not only an occupying power, but it made claims of divinity for its emperor, and Roman coins had inscriptions referring to this divinity. And so there were theological objections to the taxes along with a general dislike of Rome, but a great fear of what happened if you defied Rome. Thus Jesus' opponents think they have cornered him with their question. If Jesus says, "Yes" to paying taxes he alienates all those who object on theological or nationalistic grounds. Say, "No," and the Romans will be after him.

But as often happens with Jesus, he doesn't really answer the question. Instead he springs a trap on his opponents. Asking them to show him a Roman coin, one that contains a graven image of the divine emperor, he catches them in violation of the commandment against graven images. He then sidesteps the trap laid for him with that well know phrase about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. But Jesus never says how one determines which is which.

Of course Jesus knows his Scripture, our Old Testament, backward and forward. And I'm convinced that he has this verse in mind as he parries his opponents. "The Earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it." (Psalm 24:1)

And so we're left with a hanging question about loyalties, about what is owed whom, about who and what we should support and serve. If Jesus' answer to his opponents is a bit evasive, the way he lives his life is clear. Serving God trumps all other loyalties, to family, to his religion, to his country, even to his own personal desires and safety. And for me, following him in this path is a lot more difficult question than the one about taxes.

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Sunday Sermon: "All God's Children: Adoptive Families"

Musings on the Daily Lectionary

In today's reading from Acts, the disciples are talking with the risen Jesus shortly after the first Easter. Considering all that has happened, the question they ask Jesus is hardly surprising. "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" Jesus the Messiah has been raised from the dead. Jews of Jesus' day thought that the resurrection would come at the end of the age, so it made perfect sense to thing something big was about to happen.

But Jesus' answer tosses aside any concerns about timetables and and the arrival of the end. Instead he says his followers have work to do. "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

This is not the only place in the Bible where Jesus tells his followers not to concern themselves with figuring out when the end comes. And here Jesus insists that the life of the Christian is not about figuring out such mysteries. Rather it is about being witnesses. And yet many Christians are still fascinated with trying to figure out supposed formulas in the book of Revelation. And the Christian life is often understood to be more about belief than about anything else.

I suppose it is not surprising that any focus on being witnesses diminished in this country over the years, especially when we tended to think of ourselves as a "Christian nation." But I wonder if we didn't lose our souls along the way. I wonder if we didn't cut the heart out of the Christian life when we shifted the focus of the faith to believing and attending church, forgetting that we are called to be witnesses. And of course, our lives are our most powerful witness. And if the Church is struggling in our day, surely the quality of our witness has something to do with that.

Jesus promises the Holy Spirit will empower us to be his witnesses. Send her to us, Lord!

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Musings on the Daily Lectionary

I can't quote it exactly, not having the book in front of me, but in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard relates a conversation between an Eskimo and a missionary. My impression is that this conversation takes place after the fellow's conversion, but regardless, he asks whether his soul was in any danger before he knew about God and sin. The missionary replies that it was not. To which the convert replies, "Then why did you tell me?"

When I first read those words, they gave me great pause. At least in that conversation, Christian conversion ended up sounding more like a loss of innocence than any great prize. And I couldn't help but wonder about the image of Christian life that this missionary had imparted, and that we in the Church typically demonstrate, if it would make a convert long for the former life he had lost.

"How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God." So begins Psalm 84. Loveliness, longing, and joyous song springing from the heart pour out from these two verses. I wonder if the Christian life imparted by that Alaskan missionary had much of Psalm 84's feel to it. And more to the point, what about the Christian life that I demonstrate?

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Summer Sermon Series

Once again this summer, we will have a sermon series. Last year we focused on call. This summer James and Brett will look at a specific call that we believe is given to BPC, to be a congregation that reaches out, welcomes all, and exhibits Christian hospitality to those whom we meet. The unifying theme will be "All God's Children."

Beginning in July, we will also have an open discussion group meeting in the lounge following worship and fellowship. We will discuss the sermon and other topics related to becoming a more welcoming and diverse congregation.

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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