Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
Self denial is not very popular in our culture. If you want proof, just look at the obesity epidemic in this country. Or look at how over-scheduled our children are. We're terrified they'll miss out on something if we don't have them do every possible activity, don't take advantage of every enrichment opportunity. Why would we deny them anything?
So what are we to do with Jesus' words from today's gospel? "Then he said to them all, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?' "
I'm not terribly good at self denial. I measure most things by whether or not they please me, satisfy me, make me feel better, and so on. I want the same things a lot of people want: to be successful, to make a little more money, to have nice things, maybe get a bigger TV, and the latest smart-phone Why would I deny myself any of those things?
I've been asking myself lately, "What would I give up in order to live more faithfully with God? What would I voluntarily let go of?" And I'm not talking about any self-improvement project such as giving up sweets so I can lose a few pounds. I'm talking about what I would give up for no personal gain other than to use that time or money or energy for the work of the Kingdom.
I should add that asking myself these questions makes me squirm a bit. But sometimes it opens my eyes to possibilities I've never seen before.
The world is filled with problems that seem too big to be addressed. In today's political climate, politicians from both parties are afraid to tackle long term issues such as Social Security, other entitlement programs, or an energy policy. Everyone agrees something needs to be done, but the task is too daunting for anyone to risk the effort.
Education is another major problem in our country. Increasingly, students in large urban areas receive an education that pales in comparison to that received by students in wealthier suburbs. There's more action here than on Social Security, but often the efforts bear little fruit as vicious cycles of poverty, gangs, drug abuse, and more seem to thwart many of the best laid plans.
It is easy to see the scale of some of the problems facing us and throw up our hands saying, "What can we do about problems so big?"
I suspect that the disciples must have felt much the same when Jesus looks out at a crowd of thousands and says to his little band of followers, "You give them something to eat." Luke tells us there were 5000 men, which presumably means thousands more women and children. And the disciples have five loves and two fish.
When we celebrate the Lord's Supper in worship, we tear pieces of bread off a loaf for each worshiper. A good size loaf will give one bite of bread to about 150 people. You do the math. The disciples are going to be cutting bread into incredibly tiny pieces.
I wonder what the disciples thought and felt as they headed out into that crowd of perhaps 10,000 with less than a single grocery bag of food. This is one of the New Testament "miracle stories," but I think the first miracle is that the disciples even tried. Surely they thought about responding, "You have got to be kidding, Jesus. That'll never work." But for some reason, they took a few handfuls of food and waded out into a sea of people.
But we're a long way removed from Jesus, and we don't much believe in miracles. Very often I've heard church discussions that sound a bit like, "We've only got a small bit of food. It's not enough to do much with. We'll just eat it ourselves."
I wonder what it would take to enable me to head out into a hungry crowd with a single loaf of bread and yell, "Come and get it?"
Lots of Christians speak of "believing" the Bible. I suppose that most Christians believe something about the Bible, but believing the Bible requires first figuring out just what it is saying, no easy task. We struggle in the United States to agree on what our US Constitution says, and it's only a few pages. The Bible is a huge document written by lots of different people over hundreds and hundreds of years. It has passages that seem to contradict one another, and it has many sorts of writing: laws, songs, prayers, letters, stories, history, etc. How does one believe a song?
Today's gospel reading is a miracle story. Jarius, a synagogue leader, asks Jesus to come and heal his young daughter, but on the way, Jesus is delayed when a woman comes up to touch him, hoping this will heal her from a long ailment. Jesus stops to find out who has touched him, and by the time he's finished, word comes that Jarius' daughter has died.
What is this story about? Is it about Jesus' healing power? That is certainly there. Is it about how Jesus, no matter how busy he is with important work, always has time to stop and restore someone to wholeness? (This woman's condition would have made her religiously unclean.) Is it about Jesus' power over death?
I suspect that if you asked Jarius and the woman with the hemorrhage what had happened in the story, you might get very different accounts. They probably saw very different things happen. Even the gospel writers themselves often tell the same story a bit differently, each thinking the meaning of the story lies in a slightly different place.
Do you, in some way, believe the Bible? We Christians might all get along a bit better if we agreed that different folks can believe in the Bible fervently without agreeing on exactly what it says.
When Jesus heals a Gerasene demoniac, there is some significant collateral damage. As he prepares to cast out the demons, Jesus honors their request to be sent into a herd of pigs rather than "into the abyss." But the pigs immediately charge headlong down the bank into the lake and are drowned. And while Jews might not have much use for pigs, I'm sure the pigs owners were none too happy about this. When the swineherds run and tell everyone what happened, all the folks come out to see. Finding the former demoniac in his right mind, they are afraid and ask Jesus to leave. Presumably the power of Jesus causes fear, but I wonder if economics figure in at all. Who else's pigs or livelihood are in danger because of Jesus?
This isn't the only time this sort of thing happens in the Bible. The book of Acts reports two different times where Paul is charged with causing economic harm. One time he casts out a "spirit of divination" from a slave girl, costing her owners the money they made from her fortune-telling. Another time the silversmiths at Ephesus riot, fearing a shrinking income from "shrines of Artemis" because of Paul's converting people to the Way. I suppose in these two cases, the damage is done to folks who are, in some way, working at cross purposes to God. But the pigs, their owners, and the folks employed as swineherds truly seem to be collateral damage.
Apparently the Kingdom is threatening to the status quo, even when the status quo looks fairly benign. The people of the Gerasene region seem to realize this and ask Jesus to leave. But the Church seems to have forgotten this. Despite those other passages in Luke that say God "has brought down the powerful..." and "sent the rich away empty..." Despite Jesus saying "Woe to you who are rich... who are full now... who are laughing now..." and "when all speak well of you..." we generally view the Kingdom as no threat at all. And if there is any danger, it is only on a personal, salvation level.
Not so for Gerasene pig farmers. And I can't help but wonder what parts of our world, that seem perfectly acceptable to us, are likely candidates for collateral damage from God's Kingdom.
When I do pre-marriage counseling, I try to prepare couples for the nearly inevitable progression that happens with most serious, long-term relationships.There is a beginning that is filled with wonder, with joyous discovery and a deepening passion that causes everything else to recede.It’s the sort of passion that produces such lines as “I only have eyes for you.”And that is true to some extent.Nothing else is so wonderful.Nothing else is so important.And so nothing else is in clear focus.Nothing else quite gets full attention.
When people are experiencing the full throes of “in love,” logic and reasonableness sometimes take a holiday.People will spend hours on the phone even when they have things they need to do.They will engage in all sorts of extravagant behaviors, from acting in ways they would have previously thought silly and foolish to lavishing their beloved with expensive gifts that require cutting expenses in other places.
But almost without fail, the throes of “in love” begin to wane.Over time, as couples settle in for the long haul, as they set up a home together, as they marry and have a family, the passion diminishes.It’s natural.That initial intensity is hard to maintain, and lots of other things, sometimes other passions, compete for attention.Children, careers, hobbies, causes, and so on all vie for their share.
Sometimes couples realize they’ve come to take each other for granted, that their life together is mostly about routines.There may not be any big conflicts and the relationship may be comfortable enough.There is care and concern for the other, but all the passion is gone.Some relationships begin to falter at this point.Small things can grow into big conflicts and couples may find themselves wondering, “Can this relationship be saved?”
I think that relationship with God can go through a similar sort of progression.People can move from a passionate relationship to one that is comfortable to something where the relationship gets taken for granted and is mostly habit and obligation.Blessings from God are merely what God is supposed do, and troubles in life feel like God failing us.
I wonder if nine of the lepers in our gospel reading today hadn’t fallen into this sort of relationship with God.I’m assuming that they grew up in the faith and tried to live good lives.They went to synagogue, kept the law, made standard Temple offerings, and attended the big religious festivals.But after all this, they found themselves suffering with leprosy.
We need to realize that leprosy in the Bible is not the horrible disease of leper colonies, not the illness portrayed by Hollywood biblical movies such as Ben Hur.Leprosy in the Bible is a catch-all term for any skin disorder, some serious and some less so.Things we would call a fungal infection, psoriasis, or eczema would all be termed leprosy.But regardless of the severity, all of them got you labeled “unclean.”And when you were unclean, you couldn’t have contact with others without rendering them unclean.And so leprosy would make life difficult.Besides physical discomfort, you weren’t going to be invited over for Passover dinner, or any other dinner for that matter.You wouldn’t be welcome at the synagogue or Temple and so on.
Given all this it is hardly surprising that when these ten lepers hear about Jesus and his reputation for healing, they go to see him.They keep their distance from Jesus as the Law mandated for “unclean” folks, and they plead for help.Jesus tells them to go show themselves to the priests.Priests had to certify that formerly unclean people were now clean, and so Jesus’ command implies the promise of a healing, and the lepers head out immediately.All ten believe Jesus can heal them, and all ten are in fact healed.But one returns to Jesus, praising God and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet in a grand show of thanksgiving.And he was a Samaritan.
Samaritans believed in God and the Law of Moses, but they were regarded as heretics by Jews, as well as being a despised ethnic group.They were outsiders in every sense of the word, and I suspect that explains why this Samaritan is praising God and running back to thank Jesus.This Jewish rabbi, Jesus, had healed him, a Samaritan.The other nine, presumable all Jews, seem to take God’s blessing more for granted, and they simply return to their daily lives.
I suppose the Samaritan returns to his old life as well, but before he does, he receives something the others don’t.All are healed, but Jesus tells the Samaritan that his faith has “saved him.”Our translation says it has “made him well,” but I pretty sure that’s a bad translation.Luke has used two other words to say the lepers were “made clean” and “healed.”But Jesus singles out this Samaritan and tells him his faith has saved him.This may not be a get-to-go-to-heaven saved the way some of us hear that word, but it is a restoration, a renewal much bigger than simply being made well.
This Samaritan has a passionate experience of God while the other nine do not.As an outsider, he seems to have an advantage.He finds it easier to get excited about what God has done for him.And I fear that we church folks are often more like the nine than this Samaritan.Sometimes our faith has lots of routine, and not much passion.
How do we become more like the Samaritan and less like the nine?I think the answer depends on who you are.If you are more like the Samaritan to begin with – and by that I mean that you’re not a longtime church person, that you’re new to this in some way – then you may actually have an advantage.Like a young person falling in love for the first time, it may be easier for you.But as with falling in love, you will need to do certain things.You will need to spend time with God, with Jesus.That means prayer and reading the Bible.It means doing things with God, which is another way of saying finding spiritual practices and activities that suit you, things you and God enjoy doing together.
But what about the rest of us, those who’ve been around God for a long time and have gotten in some pretty deep ruts?Well, what would you tell couples who had lost their passion in a marriage?I would suggest that first they need to create some space for passion.They need to push some other relationships and activities off to the side, to get rid of some of the busy, stretched-too-thin lives many of us lead so that there some room for passion.
And then you have to fall in love all over again.Like young lovers, you spend time together and find new things you enjoy doing together.You begin lavishing the other with attention, gifts, and little extravagances.You want to do things that you know the other enjoys, and you happily cut back on things for yourself in order to do so.
Of course falling in love is a two way street.The other must move toward you as well.And in Jesus, God does that with remarkable passion, even to the point of risking death.Too often the Church has depicted this in the language of contracts and formulas.But dying for another is the language of love.“I would die for you” is a line for a love song.
A Samaritan, surprised to discover how much Jesus loved him, found himself in the throes of passion that left him yelling, singing, and throwing himself at Jesus’ feet.And Jesus says this passion is a sure sign of something more than a healing, a sign of renewal and restoration, of being fully alive.
Jesus, let me know this passion.Let me be fully alive in you.
The other day, Diana Butler Bass posted a picture of a church sign on Facebook It was one of those signs that had the church's name with a space below where messages could be written with black, plastic letters. In this space it read:
TRADITIONAL WORSHIP
THE WAY
YOU REMEMBER IT
I'm not sure the sign itself requires much comment. But it does make me ponder what we mean when we talk of letting our light shine, when we use terms such as "evangelism" and "witness."
A church I served once held and "Bring a Friend" Sunday. We had a big lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the worship service, and, in terms of numbers, the day was a big success. But as we looked at the pew pads where people write in their names and, if they are so inclined, contact information, we made an interesting discovery. Every single guest that Sunday left contact information was a member of another church. People had indeed invited their friends, but it had not involved reaching out to anyone who was different from them. If some of those guests were not happy at their current church, it might had been recruitment, but it surely wasn't evangelism.
We tried to rectify this when we later held another "Bring a Friend" event. We made it clear that this was a chance to reach out to people who were not part of a church. Our members heard us and complied. They did not invite friends from other churches. Unfortunately, this meant that, for the most part, they did not invite anyone. From an attendance standpoint, our second "Bring a Friend" Sunday looked like any other.
I don't mean to be hard on the members of this church. I suspect that many of them did not have many friends who were not Christian. But they were also folks who had grown up in a very "churched," Southern culture. They tended to view the community around them as Christian. And so evangelism for them was mostly a matter of competition with other churches. If you think that most everyone is Christian, then churches are like grocery stores, and the only real question is which one they will go to.
And so we seek to serve our niche market. We hold "traditional worship the way you remember it" or some other version of church for folks with similar tastes to us. But in a culture that is no longer Christian in almost any sense of the word, catering to folks with similar tastes looks more and more like hiding our light from any but those who know just where to look for it.
"This little light of mine; I'm gonna let it shine..." for people who look like me, act like me, and like the same things I like.
There is a scene in the movie, Saving Private Ryan, where the now old Ryan visits one of the WWII era military cemeteries in Europe. Accompanied by family members, he locates the grave of one the soldiers sent to rescue him after his brothers had been killed in Allied invasion of France. Finding the headstone, he falls to the ground weeping. As his wife and family reach out to him he pleads, "Tell me I've lived a good life. Tell me I've live a good life."
I've always thought this scene a wonderful illustration of God's grace and the Christian life. God seeks us, God draws us out, rescues us so that we might live the lives we are meant to live. And as Jesus' parable in today's gospel says, some respond to this rescue as Private Ryan does, but some don't.
I'm not trying to work out any ultimate answers about our standing before God. I'll leave it to God how God's love will respond to those who seem to live without any awareness of God's grace. But for those who have experienced the gift of God's love, the call of Jesus which invites us into the way of life, true human existence, Private Ryan is not a bad model. A good life, a life that bears fruit, a life that in some small way embodies the Kingdom, this seems the only real way to say, "Thank you."
I have to admit that I'm a little confused by some of the logic in today's gospel reading. The story is straightforward enough. Jesus is invited to dinner at a Pharisee's home, and while there a woman "who was a sinner" (this status is never a point of contention) comes into the home a begins to cry on Jesus' feet, wiping the tears with her hair, and then anointing Jesus' feet with ointment. Presumably this woman's status is well known to Jesus' host and many other of the guests, and they are understandably a bit mystified that Jesus permits this to go on.
Being polite host, the Pharisee says nothing, but Jesus doesn't let that stop him from having a discussion about the matter. Jesus asks his host a question about a creditor who forgives the debt of two who owe him money, one a great deal and the other a small amount. The host, named Simon, easily answers Jesus question about who would love the creditor more, and Jesus then applies this analogy to the woman.
And this is where I get a little lost logically. The woman seems to have "shown great love" prior to her sins being forgiven. Her behavior anticipates what has not yet happened. Or does it? Has she already recognized God's love for her in Jesus, already sensed God's embrace in Jesus?
I'm really not sure. But while the order is confusing, what seems certain is the relationship between love and forgiveness. As Jesus puts it, "Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little."
Left unanswered by Jesus is the question of what makes a person "one to whom little is forgiven." Is this a simply statement assuming some need lots more forgiveness than others. Or does it imply that religious folks who assume that they are right with God don't realize their own need for forgiveness, and hence do not show great love?
A lot of us like to believe we bring as much to our relationships as we take out. Many of us prefer the balance to be a bit in our favor, imagining that our friends and lovers are lucky to have us. I think it rarer for us to be in relationship where we say, "I can't believe this person wants to be with me." And I wonder how much of a problem this poses for relationship with God.
Although some gospel accounts leave us with the clear impression that John the Baptist recognizes Jesus as Messiah from the get-go, today's reading in Luke presents the Baptist as, at the very least, having second thoughts. John, by this time in prison, sends his disciples to Jesus asking, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
When Jesus gives John's disciples an answer, presumably he thinks it a convincing one. "Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."
What is it that makes Jesus the Messiah? When Christians try to convince others that Jesus is the one, what is it that makes the case? A great many Christians focus on the topic of personal salvation. But Jesus' answer to John says nothing about this. Instead Jesus points to a new age dawning. All the things Jesus mentions are signs of the Kingdom, God's new day, that has come near. Many Jews believed that the dead would be raised at "the last day," and so the fact that Jesus raises the dead is an especially powerful sign of this day's nearness.
On top of all this, Jesus' remark about blessings upon any who take no offense at him sounds quite different from traditional Christian belief formulas. He doesn't say "Blessed are those who believe in me," or "Blessed are those who publicly profess my name." Instead he says "Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me, who doesn't stumble over me."
What makes Jesus the one? If we go by what Jesus says, and then say that nothing in the world has changed except the "saved" status of some individuals, we imply that Jesus was wrong about the Kingdom drawing near. Is Jesus the one? Do we see signs of God's new day? It's possible that these are pretty much the same question.
Growing up in the Church, I regularly heard stories of Jesus healing people and even raising people from the dead. I don't know if it was because of how I heard them or how they were presented to me, but what I primarily took away from these stories was what an amazing, powerful guy Jesus was. He was clearly from God. Look at what he could do.
Certainly these stories mean to point out God's power present in Jesus. But in more recent years I find myself seeing something different in them. I see them revealing something about God's heart.
Take today's gospel reading in Luke. As he journeys, Jesus happens upon a funeral procession. And it's not just any funeral procession. The dead man is a the only son of a widow. In that day and time, his mother was now terribly vulnerable, with no one to care for her. Luke tells us, "When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her..." When Jesus raises the son, it is an act of great, divine power, but it takes place because Jesus sees her predicament, and is moved.
I take comfort in knowing that God's heart is moved by human pain and suffering. I'll admit that I have no definitive answers for why a God so moved permits so much pain and suffering to go on, but if Jesus gives us our best glimpse into God's heart, then God must be moved by every moment that makes me ask, "Why?"
I have no easy platitudes for a world filled with hurt, but for those of us who would follow Jesus, surely our hearts must become more like Jesus' heart. We must be moved by pain and suffering whenever we see it. And if the Church is, in any real sense, to be the body of Christ in the world, then surely the Church must be filled with compassion and use all the power we possess to help.
