Philippians 2:1-13
Open your heart as I share this brief, beautiful story involving two people, a park bench, some Twinkies, and some soda.
It’s a story about the day a young boy living in a big city decided he wanted to meet God. He figured it would be a long trip to get to where he could meet the Almighty. So he grabbed a suitcase and packed it with sustenance for the anticipated long journey -- a few Twinkies and a six-pack of root beer. It turns out he paused at a neighborhood park only about three blocks from his home. There he saw an elderly woman seated on a bench, staring at some pigeons. Since it was early afternoon, he figured it was about time for a snack. So he sat next to her. Then he sensed she might be hungry. So he opened his suitcase and offered her a Twinkie. She accepted and gave him back a warm, radiant smile. The smile was so beautiful, he wanted to see it again. So he offered her a root beer. Again, she paid him with her kind appearance. They didn’t really talk. They just spet time being together. Before long, it began growing dark. The boy decided he’d journeyed enough for the day and that it was time to return home. Before he did, he offered the woman a big hug. She gladly accepted and reciprocated the loving, unifying gesture.
As he passed through the front door of his home, the boy’s mother was surprised by the look elation on his face. So she asked what he’d been up to. He replied, “I had lunch with God, and you know what? She’s got the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen!”
Meanwhile, the elderly woman had returned home as well. Her husband noted her joyful aura and questioned what she’d been doing. Her reply? “I ate Twinkies in the park with God, and you know, he’s much younger than I expected!”
This lovely story trumpets a spiritual truth … we believe we’ve met God when we believe we’ve experienced God’s loving, unifying presence. God may or may not look like what we’ve imagined. Yet we trust we’ve been in God’s presence because we’ve been encountered by something dressed in joyful acceptance and caring companionship. In this story, trust in this truth manifest itself in the simple, humble acts of sharing in a makeshift communion during an intergenerational pause to life’s hustle and bustle.
There was a time when the Apostle Paul thought he knew exactly what it meant to share an encounter with God. Back when he was known as Saul the Pharisee, he taught that there were strict rules and regulations for such moments. It was, if you’ll recall our Old Testament teachings, rather legalistic. Failure to conform was why he targeted and persecuted a radical sect claiming to directly know the true Messiah of Israel. It wasn’t until that very Messiah personally met up with him one day, in a life-transforming experience of unifying love, that Saul became Paul. His understanding of encounters with God forever changed that day. Paul’s faith journey continued, but he was a changed child of God. He had emptied himself of hatred towards those he was persecuting, emptied himself of self-righteous swagger and of self-promoting ambition. His journey forward was in faithful imitation of the tremendous humility and radical obedience and other-focused selflessness of Christ.
We know how very much Paul went on to do in and for our Lord. Our New Testament bears witness to it all. Beyond the Book of Acts, it does so in the form of letters he wrote to congregations he had varying degrees of influence in founding. What we have in this morning’s lesson is a letter to the Christian church in ancient Philippi. It is widely considered to be his most personal letter, based on biblical evidence that he and congregation had a very precious relationship (Acts 16:12-40).
He wrote this letter during what to us might seem to have been a very “empty” and anxious time in his life. He was in prison. He was without a doubt well aware the risk of execution for his advocating the loving, unifying Gospel of Christ against the carnivorous world powers of his time. We might think being in that situation would have been a time of emptiness in the form of wallowing in self-pity, fearing the possible horror of his impending death, and such.
Yet for Paul, that was a time to reinforce the immeasurable joy of serving and trusting in salvation through Christ alone. It was another occasion for him to remind his good friends in Philippi to trust in and indeed rejoice in the Lord despite suffering. He exhorted them to work out all church conflicts with the same humility and self-emptying Jesus exhibited during his time of trial. Arrogant in-fighting and unity endangering unloving attitudes were not to come about as a result of his crisis, or any crisis they had stirring amongst themselves. And so he wrote a very tender appeal, speaking from his holy transformed heart, saying “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.”
He reinforced this message with one particular word. It’s a small but wonderfully weighty word that I find anchors this passage. The word is right there in Philippians 2, verse 12. It appears right after the words I just read and after quoting an ancient hymn about the example and final glory of the Lord. Paul addressed the entire church family as his “beloved.”
The word “beloved” that Paul used is similar to and I believe rooted in a Greek word that commonly describes Christ’s love – agape. Agape means love, but it means more than being warm and neighborly. Specifically, it means love that is radically unconditional, always reciprocating, and voluntarily self-sacrificing. It’s the kind of unifying, sacrificial love that can well up in the trenches of warfare. Being in beloved community is how we honor the truth that the “story of Christ moves from separation to solidarity, and from difference to likeness, as Christ moves into the most despairing depths of human existence.”
How are you being beloved before God? In the great hustle and bustle of this world, where loneliness and endless, anxious searching for God are ever present, how do you remain mindful of the joyful, unifying love and ultimate glory of our Lord? How are you heralding it? Exhibiting it?
Your answer to this is personally your own. However, know that when Paul exhorted the Philippian Christians to work out their own salvation, he was not teaching that this is a private matter. In Christ, matters of salvation are always and forever about community, about being Christ’s Body. He was not advocating individual self-promotion in preparation for life beyond this world. He was heralding the power of church unity for the glory of the Lord in the here and now and for forever.
How are we, then, as a congregation, being Christ’s beloved? How are we helping one another to be of the same mind and the same love that was in Jesus? How do we help one another to be humble and obedient before God in this world that promotes sinful personal conquests in so many ways? Please, as you see one another in the days and weeks and months to come, share your responses together … keeping in mind the mind of Christ.
When it comes to Bible translations, I mostly reply on the New Revised Standard Version that is in your pews. But it’s also quite good a good practice to read other interpretations. I find reading this morning’s lesson from Eugene Peterson’s THE MESSAGE is wonderfully inspirational. The teaching is the same as we’ve been discussing, but the language is just a bit more frank. So open your hearts to hear it as I conclude my privileged time in the pulpit this morning.
“If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.”
Go find a spot in the middle of it all. Pop open some soda pop and break bread with a Twinkie. Selflessly make smiles happen. Believe you’ve met God because you’ve experienced God’s loving, unifying welcome. Amen.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
What's YOUR Praising Voice?
Psalm 100
“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed
gloriously!” So declared Moses (Ex.
15:1) “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his
presence with singing!” (Ps. 100:1-2).
So declares the Psalmist. “Let
the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all
wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns and spiritual
songs to God.” So declares the apostle
Paul (Col. 3:16).
“Yabba-dabbe-do-lu-yah! Hi-ho-lee-lu-yah!” So declares contemporary Christian songwriter
Chris Rice, channeling Fred Flintstone and Kermit the Frog.
In case you can’t tell, before his music career took
off, Chris Rice was in youth and college campus ministry. He quotes those cartoon great s in rather silly song called “Cartoons”
that showed up on his 1998 album. In
this tune about toons, he asks what would happen if these animated characters
we suddenly saved in Christ. He states
they’d sing praise in a whole new way and then proceeds to impersonate them. In the final verse, he confess that there
isn’t a real point to his doing so, except to say that there is a lot of
praising to do and cartoons aren’t made for that. It’s our job! We have to find our own praising voice!
Formalized singings of praises to God are an ancient
practice. It was particularly
formalized back in the time of King David.
Upon entering Solomon’s Temple, praises were sung. So too during sacrificial offerings. You have written record of these praises
right in your pews – right there in the Book of Psalms. If you thought the Psalms were just
poetry, here’s an important fact. Our
English word “psalm” comes from a Greek translation of the Old Testament Hebrew
word mizmor, means “Melody of
Praise.”[i] Our Scripture lesson this morning, then, is
Melody of Praise #100!
The earliest Christians continued the practice of
singing praises. Historical record
tells us that during the time of Jesus, it was faithful practice to sing
Melodies of Praise #’s 145-150 during the week. Melodies of Praise #’s 95-100 were sung on
the Sabbath day. Newer praise songs
soon followed as well – such as the songs of Mary, Zechariah and Simeon.
Unfortunately, the vocal praise within people’s hearts
got muted by church orthodoxy around the time of the Middle Ages. It
became that only monks were allowed to sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs
to God. This said, this period is well
credited with bringing choral and instrumental music into worship. I’m so pleased this practice of only allowing
monks to sing came to pass. Among other
things, just imagine if the choir last week had to wear earth-brown hoodies
instead of those colorfully patriotic scarves and ties!
The change from particular people to all people
praising took place, not surprisingly, during the 16th century
Protestant Reformation. Silencing the
masses has some purpose back in medieval days, but the exclusivity of this
orthodox practice was way out of step with a world freshly awash in the
rich-expressionism of the European Renaissance. Martin Luther -- the flute-playing, hymn
writing German sparkplug of ecclesiastical upheaval – is reported to have said
that a person who isn’t moved by the marvel of polyphonic music “must be a
course clod” who would rather “listen to the donkey braying Gregorian chorale.” And John Calvin, furthering the earlier words
of St. Augustine, and in support of singing praises to the Lord, wrote in 1543 that though a “nightingale or a
parrot sing ever so well, it will be without understanding. It is [humankind’s] gift to be able to sing
and to know what [we] are singing.”[ii]
Song, of course, isn’t the only way to use your
praising voice. That may be a primary
way you use it, but there are many other wonderful ways to express your praise
as well! My prayer for you is to keep
aware of, of find, your particular praising “voice” and add it to the harmony
of the great cloud of witnesses past and present.
Praising is sometimes easy and spontaneous. Other times, however, it needs to rise up
from a very deliberate, boldly faithful place in our hearts and minds.
An
inspirational reminder of this comes from the word of Joni (pronounced
‘Johnny’) Earekson Tada. She is a
strong vocal advocate for differently abled people and a very devout
Christian. Named after her father, but
spelled Joni, she was an adventurous,
life-loving teenager who enjoyed riding horses, hiking, playing tennis and
swimming. At seventeen, however, a
diving accident led to her being in a quadriplegic state with minimal use of
her hands. During the two years of
rehabilitation that followed, her adventurous side spilled out in the form of
painting with a brush between her teeth.
Her fine art later inspired people across the world and she went on to
found an evangelical international disability center.
For her, as it sure should be for us as well, in our
own unique ways, making a sacrifice of praise is a biblical mandate. To this end she has written the following
about praise – “it will always cost you something. It will be a difficult thing to do. It requires trading in our pride, our anger,
and most value of all, our human logic.
We will be compelled to voice our words of praise firmly and precisely,
even as our logic screams that God has no idea what he’s doing.” She then adds what I find a most helpful
insight, saying, “Most of the verses written about praise in God’s Word were
penned by men and women who faced crushing heartaches, injustice, treachery,
slander and scores of other intolerable situations.”
Such a faithful statement about making a sacrifice of
praise could well have come from the mouth of an ancient Israelite enduring the
hardship of exiled life in Babylonia.
It could well have come from the mouths of the earliest Christians
facing certain persecution and crucifixion.
It could well have come from the founders of the Protestant Reformation
enduring the consequences of challenging papal authority in their time.
All of these voices make it clear that praising God is
less about round-the-clock giddiness and more about having an all-out godly
disposition. It is about holding fast
in faith, having deep conviction in your belief that God is good, loving, and
brings redemption out of brokenness.
As the praising voice of 17th century British mystic and
writer William Law has put it, it’s about receiving “every day as resurrection
from death, as a new enjoyment of life” and letting “your joyful heart praise
and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.”
How do we, as members and friends of Fairmount
Presbyterian, as followers of Jesus in this time and place, help one another
find our praising voices? How do we,
as a whole, go about letting loose our praise in every season of our family
life together?
If you read this month’s Focus church newsletter, you
won’t be surprised that I’m going to answer this by reiterating our need to be
in weekly worship together. How beautiful and reassuring to make a
sacrifice of praise last week with a candle-light communion. How wonderful to be silent as we faithfully
absorb the gifted, praising voices of our choir every week. How bolstering to our daily walk with the
Lord to completely give this one hour out of the 168 in a week. And beyond this weekly hour, our worship
and praise are manifest in our service to the Lord in the greater community, in
our vocations, and in our families.
Let me share a short cute story to send us home
smiling and remembering to make all of our sacrifices of praise. It’s has to do with a time a three year-old
tried to say something she had heard in church. She had heard words of praise that said,
“We exalt Thee!” That’s not how it
flowed from her mouth, though. Instead,
she said, “We exhaust Thee!”
You know, she may be on to something. Imagine if we praised so much that God
somehow got tired of trying to keep up with it all! That’s a good way to focus on using our
praising voices and praising presence in all circumstances of life, don’t you
think? “For the Lord if good; his
steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” (Ps.
100:5) Amen.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
"Going Forward In the Lord" 9-11-11
September 11, 2011
Exodus 14:10-15
On
this tenth anniversary of the horrendous, evil attacks that threaded through
the common heart and shared security blanket of America, and with all of the freshly
scratched grief and restoked fear it brings, I invite us to revisit a
powerfully compelling, blessedly reassuring biblical story.
In last week’s sermon, we focused on the first part of this story. We focused on the mysterious way God got Moses’ attention and how Moses had to then choose to examine this more closely so he could decide whether or not to faithfully assist God’s good will.
This morning’s lesson from the Book of Exodus picks up this epic story right after he indeed chose to help God and God’s people. It tells what happened after he, along with his older brother Aaron, confronted the evil, enslaving Pharaoh of Egypt and demanded liberation of the Hebrew people. It also tells what happened after Pharaoh gave consent to this demand (after his being plagued by good reasons to do so), as well as about God leading the Hebrews in a roundabout way to the Red Sea, or to be more accurate, the Sea of Reeds.
At that shoreline, at that point in the great deliverance from evil oppression, the Hebrews fell into a tremendous fit of panic. Exodus 10 tells us they looked back from where they had come and realized the evil they had left behind had not been eradicated. It was very much alive and very much advancing in on them. The reality of this triggered a full, faith-blinding panic. They could not see an escape, a way ahead to safety. Feeling trapped, they bitterly complained to Moses that being enslaved was a better fate than being caught, captured or killed by their enemy while standing in the wilderness, at the edge of uncertainty. So enormous was their fear, so pounding the pulse of their collective panic, it seems they had quickly forgotten the good, loving, saving, ever-present and almighty power of their God that had been helping them to move forward with hope and strength.
In reply to the widespread panic, Moses cried out, “Do not be afraid … stand firm … the Lord will fight for you and you have only to keep still.” Calling out for faithful trust in the Almighty seems a good enough leadership decision. Yet Moses missed the mark. His was not the best faithful response to this crisis. God did not want the faithful people to stand firm and keep still. God did not want them to just wait for something miraculous to save them. So God corrected Moses. God demanded that he tell the people to go forward.
Yes, they all were to hold fast to faithful trust in their Lord. But God demanded it be an active, whole-hearted and full-bodied trust instead of anything weaker and more passive. This was God’s decree for how to move beyond full, faith-blinding panic. This was the decree for how to be with, to be in the Lord as the divine plan of salvation from sin and evil continued to unfold.
As we recall and relive the national tragedy of the terrorist attacks that happened ten years ago to this day, I wonder how many of us felt then as though we were suddenly standing in a wilderness, at the edge of uncertainty. Like our faithful brothers and sisters of Moses’ time, did the evil that had advanced upon us, evil we knew existed but we perhaps otherwise felt was at some distance, cause us to experience a full, faith-blinding panic? If so, in what ways, did God tell us to move forward in faith and trust and togetherness despite feeling so vulnerable to attack?
I was in my fourth year of ordained ministry at the time and serving as an associate pastor of one thousand member suburban church outside of Philadelphia. Anna was approaching three years old, and Rebecca had been born just that July. As it turned out, the senior pastor was on the other side of the country that week with no designs on coming directly back. Care of the congregation and its leadership, the church’s response in the community, and the worship service and sermon on the 16th fell to me to faithfully carry out.
Initially, like most everyone I’ve talked to about that day, I was very much gripped by shock and horror and down to the bone fear. I had a fine looking Master’s degree in Theology on my office wall, but in those moments it didn’t feel like any sort of protection or much like a manual for how to lead in such a previously unimagined crisis. Did I feel a good deal trapped by evil and on the edge of doom? Did I flat out question God how on earth to move myself and my church family faithfully forward? Absolutely.
But by the grace of God, we did move forward in faith. You all moved forward. During such difficult times, moving forward is less like taking leaps of faith across the Grand Canyon. It’s more like taking leaps of the faith the span of our footsteps. Like Moses, Aaron and all the ancient Hebrews that day by the Sea of Reeds, we stepped forward trusting in the care of God’s redeeming plan and gracious power. We did so by being together for mutual comfort and strengthening, by meeting for prayer, by meditating on the Scriptures, and by assisting the needs of neighbors near and far.
Unlike in Old Testament times, these footstep-sized leaps of faith were also done with greater knowledge of God’s great plan to deliver this world from evil. God’s will for goodness and reconciliation, for healing and peace, was known more powerfully and more personally. We knew the way forward, the way of being delivered from shock and fear that was even more dramatic than what Moses and the Hebrews experienced. I’m speaking of the way of Jesus Christ, the way we today continue to follow as we keep faithfully moving forward in the complex, still very painful aftermath of September 11, 2001 and in this world so full of present and future edges of uncertainty.
What does it mean to move forward in our Lord Jesus Christ? There is a special issue of Presbyterians Today magazine available to you all for free in our Community House. In this issue, in a section titled “The Problem of Evil,” we are reminded that the “Spirit of Jesus enables us to persevere in our grappling with the sinful and sorrowful conditions of human existence, in ways that we never could by our mortal strength alone.” It reminds us, quoting one of our denomination’s historic confessions, of how “God provides for the world by bringing good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.” (Study Catechism, question 22). And this helpful article reminds us that Jesus’ lordship is “not manifest in supernatural protection” so much as in “the divine strength we are given to persevere in the midst of a fallen world … the same strength that enabled Jesus to endure (not escape) the crucifixion” and thus undermine evil’s intention to “obstruct God’s reign.” One of my seminary professors, Dennis Olsen, once wrote about this enduring strength by saying “that the relatively small and mundane acts of ministry done by God’s people in particular times and locations participate in a larger cosmic drama involving God’s defeat of evil and the redemption of the world.”[i]
When we faithfully listen to people’s stories from 9-11 and from all other worldly tragedies and atrocities, we hear about how relatively small and mundane acts done by God’s people gave strength and hope where and when it was needed most. Of course, we also hear of and give respectful gratitude to big heroic acts. For many people, though, the faithful responses of ten years ago were less heralded but no less important.
I recall the women in a prayer group that laid hands on me that fateful Tuesday, asking God to fill me with courage and strength to lead.
We recall co-workers in the Twin Towers who didn’t just escape while they could, but stopped to help whoever else they could down narrow flights of stairs.
We reflect on thousands upon thousands of hugs and warm conversations of solidarity.
We rejoice in many desperately needed drops of donated blood, as freely given as Jesus shed blood for us.
These ways of moving forward, and more, continue today.
Soldiers confront evil this very hour with not just their training, but also their pocket Bibles, their faith in God’s love for them, and the prayers of their loved ones soldiering with them in the Spirit.
Intelligence and security personnel keeping vigilant watch over God’s flocks.
Pockets of people gather this weekend for 9-11 memorial services, honoring life with their love and the lighting of candles.
And here we are, this day, this hour … praising and petitioning the good, loving, saving, ever-present and almighty power of our God.
In last week’s sermon, we focused on the first part of this story. We focused on the mysterious way God got Moses’ attention and how Moses had to then choose to examine this more closely so he could decide whether or not to faithfully assist God’s good will.
This morning’s lesson from the Book of Exodus picks up this epic story right after he indeed chose to help God and God’s people. It tells what happened after he, along with his older brother Aaron, confronted the evil, enslaving Pharaoh of Egypt and demanded liberation of the Hebrew people. It also tells what happened after Pharaoh gave consent to this demand (after his being plagued by good reasons to do so), as well as about God leading the Hebrews in a roundabout way to the Red Sea, or to be more accurate, the Sea of Reeds.
At that shoreline, at that point in the great deliverance from evil oppression, the Hebrews fell into a tremendous fit of panic. Exodus 10 tells us they looked back from where they had come and realized the evil they had left behind had not been eradicated. It was very much alive and very much advancing in on them. The reality of this triggered a full, faith-blinding panic. They could not see an escape, a way ahead to safety. Feeling trapped, they bitterly complained to Moses that being enslaved was a better fate than being caught, captured or killed by their enemy while standing in the wilderness, at the edge of uncertainty. So enormous was their fear, so pounding the pulse of their collective panic, it seems they had quickly forgotten the good, loving, saving, ever-present and almighty power of their God that had been helping them to move forward with hope and strength.
In reply to the widespread panic, Moses cried out, “Do not be afraid … stand firm … the Lord will fight for you and you have only to keep still.” Calling out for faithful trust in the Almighty seems a good enough leadership decision. Yet Moses missed the mark. His was not the best faithful response to this crisis. God did not want the faithful people to stand firm and keep still. God did not want them to just wait for something miraculous to save them. So God corrected Moses. God demanded that he tell the people to go forward.
Yes, they all were to hold fast to faithful trust in their Lord. But God demanded it be an active, whole-hearted and full-bodied trust instead of anything weaker and more passive. This was God’s decree for how to move beyond full, faith-blinding panic. This was the decree for how to be with, to be in the Lord as the divine plan of salvation from sin and evil continued to unfold.
As we recall and relive the national tragedy of the terrorist attacks that happened ten years ago to this day, I wonder how many of us felt then as though we were suddenly standing in a wilderness, at the edge of uncertainty. Like our faithful brothers and sisters of Moses’ time, did the evil that had advanced upon us, evil we knew existed but we perhaps otherwise felt was at some distance, cause us to experience a full, faith-blinding panic? If so, in what ways, did God tell us to move forward in faith and trust and togetherness despite feeling so vulnerable to attack?
I was in my fourth year of ordained ministry at the time and serving as an associate pastor of one thousand member suburban church outside of Philadelphia. Anna was approaching three years old, and Rebecca had been born just that July. As it turned out, the senior pastor was on the other side of the country that week with no designs on coming directly back. Care of the congregation and its leadership, the church’s response in the community, and the worship service and sermon on the 16th fell to me to faithfully carry out.
Initially, like most everyone I’ve talked to about that day, I was very much gripped by shock and horror and down to the bone fear. I had a fine looking Master’s degree in Theology on my office wall, but in those moments it didn’t feel like any sort of protection or much like a manual for how to lead in such a previously unimagined crisis. Did I feel a good deal trapped by evil and on the edge of doom? Did I flat out question God how on earth to move myself and my church family faithfully forward? Absolutely.
But by the grace of God, we did move forward in faith. You all moved forward. During such difficult times, moving forward is less like taking leaps of faith across the Grand Canyon. It’s more like taking leaps of the faith the span of our footsteps. Like Moses, Aaron and all the ancient Hebrews that day by the Sea of Reeds, we stepped forward trusting in the care of God’s redeeming plan and gracious power. We did so by being together for mutual comfort and strengthening, by meeting for prayer, by meditating on the Scriptures, and by assisting the needs of neighbors near and far.
Unlike in Old Testament times, these footstep-sized leaps of faith were also done with greater knowledge of God’s great plan to deliver this world from evil. God’s will for goodness and reconciliation, for healing and peace, was known more powerfully and more personally. We knew the way forward, the way of being delivered from shock and fear that was even more dramatic than what Moses and the Hebrews experienced. I’m speaking of the way of Jesus Christ, the way we today continue to follow as we keep faithfully moving forward in the complex, still very painful aftermath of September 11, 2001 and in this world so full of present and future edges of uncertainty.
What does it mean to move forward in our Lord Jesus Christ? There is a special issue of Presbyterians Today magazine available to you all for free in our Community House. In this issue, in a section titled “The Problem of Evil,” we are reminded that the “Spirit of Jesus enables us to persevere in our grappling with the sinful and sorrowful conditions of human existence, in ways that we never could by our mortal strength alone.” It reminds us, quoting one of our denomination’s historic confessions, of how “God provides for the world by bringing good out of evil, so that nothing evil is permitted to occur that God does not bend finally to the good.” (Study Catechism, question 22). And this helpful article reminds us that Jesus’ lordship is “not manifest in supernatural protection” so much as in “the divine strength we are given to persevere in the midst of a fallen world … the same strength that enabled Jesus to endure (not escape) the crucifixion” and thus undermine evil’s intention to “obstruct God’s reign.” One of my seminary professors, Dennis Olsen, once wrote about this enduring strength by saying “that the relatively small and mundane acts of ministry done by God’s people in particular times and locations participate in a larger cosmic drama involving God’s defeat of evil and the redemption of the world.”[i]
When we faithfully listen to people’s stories from 9-11 and from all other worldly tragedies and atrocities, we hear about how relatively small and mundane acts done by God’s people gave strength and hope where and when it was needed most. Of course, we also hear of and give respectful gratitude to big heroic acts. For many people, though, the faithful responses of ten years ago were less heralded but no less important.
I recall the women in a prayer group that laid hands on me that fateful Tuesday, asking God to fill me with courage and strength to lead.
We recall co-workers in the Twin Towers who didn’t just escape while they could, but stopped to help whoever else they could down narrow flights of stairs.
We reflect on thousands upon thousands of hugs and warm conversations of solidarity.
We rejoice in many desperately needed drops of donated blood, as freely given as Jesus shed blood for us.
These ways of moving forward, and more, continue today.
Soldiers confront evil this very hour with not just their training, but also their pocket Bibles, their faith in God’s love for them, and the prayers of their loved ones soldiering with them in the Spirit.
Intelligence and security personnel keeping vigilant watch over God’s flocks.
Pockets of people gather this weekend for 9-11 memorial services, honoring life with their love and the lighting of candles.
And here we are, this day, this hour … praising and petitioning the good, loving, saving, ever-present and almighty power of our God.
Let us continue moving forward in faith by joining our voices in song, and then in a memorial litany as we prepare to share in the sacred, strengthening, communing meal of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Holy, In Sight
Exodus 3:1-6
A great historical record of all the
things Moses looked upon during his lifetime does not exist. It would be a pretty incredible thing if it
did, though, right? The eyes that
surveyed and registered such an epic life surely could tell the story
well. Though this complete account
doesn’t exist, we do have enough biblical and historical evidence to give us
insight into what this heroic ancestor’s windows of the soul absorbed.
When his eyes first took in the
light of this complex world, Moses looked upon the face of his mother,
Jochebed, his father, Amram, his sister, Miriam, and his brother Aaron. The family was living in Egypt, a generation
or so following the time when their faithful kin, Joseph, along with his
amazing multicolored coat, settled there.
Newborn Moses also first looked upon
the faces of two courageous, compassionate, God fearing Hebrew midwives,
Shiphrah and Puah. They were under the
authority of the Pharaoah’s dreadful dark decree to drown all brand spankin’
new Hebrew boys. This autocrat had no
affinity for the privileges provided to Joseph by his predecessors. The Hebrews had become too vigorous in
number, too resilient, and were perceived as too much of a threat – especially
given that the Pharaoh’s plan to slow them down by making them a human brick
factory had not quite worked out. Shiprah
and Puah, however, revered their God more than the mighty but nonetheless
mortal Pharaoh. So they disobeyed. In a bold cohort with the whole family, Moses
was soon after looking at the inside of a bulrush basket as it bobbed along the
Nile.
After grievingly watching this
precious infant sail off downstream, I don’t believe the they could ever have
imagined that when the lid popped open and little Moses had full light once
again fill his eyes, he would be looking upon the regal-lined face of the
Pharaoh’s daughter. Or that
circumstances would covertly unfold such that he could look upon the face of
his own mother again for his nursing.
Or that he would be raised gazing upon all of the glorious treasures and
the powerfully privileged lifestyle of an Egyptian prince.
We know, however, that after he’d
grown up, his life once again curiously twisted on the day Moses looked upon an
Egyptian severely beating up a Hebrew.
Some innate chord of injustice struck crisply, clearly and ragefully in
his heart. According to Exodus 2:12,
Moses had glanced “this way and that” and saw no one, then killed the brute and
buried him in the sand. His act of
defense was not welcomed by his blood-kin Hebrews, however. The very next day he looked upon two of them
fighting and when he verbally questioned this unjust behavior, Moses quickly
learned word was out about his murderous deed.
It was immediately clear to him that
it was time to look beyond his adopted life as a Prince of Egypt. He fled the Pharaoah and soon after came
face to face with the nomadic, shepherding Midian people. It’s worth noting that these people were the
very same human tribe that had once upon a time purchased Joseph. This is
the event that had eventually led the Hebrews people to Egypt in the first
place. So Moses escaped Egypt only to
live in exile with the peoples who had historically led his people to live in
Egypt! While in this long exile, Moses
spent his days looking upon his wife Zipporah, their son Gershom, his
father-in-law, Jethro, and lots of sheep (whatever their names were!).
The windows of Moses’ soul, however,
were destined to see way more than exiled Midian life. He had
been delivered from death time and again so he could be called by God to look
Pharoah straight in the eyes and demand holy justice.
This summons happened while Moses
was keeping the safety of a flock as was the task of shepherds. It
happened as he looked upon the most magnificent, mysterious thing he’d ever
viewed in his wondrously storied life.
He had led the flock to the far side of the desert and settled them at
Mt. Horeb (later more famously identified as Mt. Sinai.) This is where he suddenly looked upon licks
of fire lingering within a bush.
Right at this point, at Exodus 3
verse 2 and 3, I feel compelled to pause our perspective on all the things
Moses looked upon. It’s such a famous
and frequently interpreted biblical scene that we may not see one little and I
believe poignant detail. Had another
biblical interpreter, a neighbor in ministry in nearby Basking Ridge, not
called my attention to it I would have overlooked it as well.[i] It’s a
detail that I believe will help us in our looking about for God in our lives
and in our seeing more clearly one way God calls us to the cause of justice.
After observing the oddly unconsumed
burning bush, we read that Moses reacted by thinking, “I will go over and see this strange
sight.” The divinely luminous shrub
was not, it seems, located directly at Moses’ feet. He had to look upon it and then decide to go
over to it. To quote my insightful
colleague, “God didn’t choose the bush that Moses was about to stumble
upon. It was within sight, but at enough
distance that Moses would have had to go out of his way to explore it.”[ii]
I have no doubt Moses was at first
quite curious about this strange site just a ways off from the path he’d been
traveling on an ordinary day in exile. Being
curious about something is one way we all gain new knowledge. Now, he could have been curious and then
dismissed any concern about the burning bush.
He could have thought it would
put itself out eventually. He could
have blamed the whole vision on the heat, on his exhaustion, on having eaten
some wrong kind of desert berries.
Yes, Moses could have never turned aside for a closer look, could have shirked
his care, could have sidestepped his holy calling. Praise God, he didn’t. Praise God, he looked upon the sign and went
over to it for that closer look, that summons to liberation.
I believe, as it was for Moses, God
meets us where we are. And I believe
God continuously calls our attention in many mysterious ways, ways that we can
either ignore or faithfully decide to examine. Maybe
you haven’t seen a burning bush, but I trust you have had your holy curiosity piqued
in other ways. For example, a couple
weeks ago I mentioned the famine in Somalia and how my looking at vivid photos
really moved me. It moved not just my
sorrow and compassion, it even more so moved me to wonder where God was in the
midst of it and what God might be calling me to do in order help remedy the
injustice of it. My holy curiosity was
captured and I had to decide whether or not to turn away and ignore it or look
upon it with more of my faithful time and energy and above all love.
In a sermon about this passage from
Exodus 3, Rev. Barbara Lundblad, a preaching professor at Union Seminary in
NYC, offered up this bold comment – “It is one of God’s great inefficiencies,
this waiting for human beings to turn aside.” She says this because despite our being
compelled by our curiosities, we human beings also have an “almost endless
capacity to keep walking.” The professor points out that this walking on,
this not turning aside and moving closer to examine, happens because of our
schedules, our terrible busyness, our professions that we’ll come back to
something later.
Moses is heroic to our faith for
many reasons. May we not miss that one
of these reasons is his teaching us – by example -- to honor God’s efficiency
in summoning us to the biblical cause of social justice. One seemingly small decision to turn aside
and examine that curious event engulfed his heart and soul with his life’s true
purpose. Upon understanding what God
wanted him to do he was frightened, he was hesitant … and yet also deeply
reassured that he was not going to answer his calling alone. His abiding by God’s call for holy justice
was accompanied by God’s abiding in him.
Throughout your life, what sorts of
sites and scenarios have led you to feel God calling you to a particular purpose? Did you sense this calling because it was
right at your feet as if something you were searching for? Or because something – a happening, a
conversation – just a little ways off of your daily routine caught your
attention, compelled you to look closer, and burned a holy calling into your
heart and soul? I ask as one called
time and again to look closer and to keep glorifying the name and liberating
mission of Christ Jesus. Amen.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Soul Strengthening Celebrations!
Psalm 138
As I continue to move toward the age of forty-two, and as I look beyond that, I find myself taking inventory of certain things that I am very content to say will not happen before my last breath. Most of the things I’m quite glad to keep off of my “bucket list” involve great risks. So I can tell you with considerable peace of mind this morning that I’m not ever going to be a rock face climber. I do hope to go to one of those indoor rock wall gyms a couple more times. That’ll be enough. I have no intention of ever learning how to scale George Washington’s Mt. Rushmore face so I can place a rock-pick up his great nose!
I have rock climbing on the brain this morning because of a passage I read in Eugene Peterson’s rather intriguingly titled book, The Unnecessary Pastor. This well-known Presbyterian pastor and scholar has two sons who are both rock climbers. He writes about listening to them meticulously plan their ascents and about how this planning takes up as much time as the actual climbing. I can trust that this faithful father is greatly reassured in knowing all the tiniest safety details involved with such a potentially perilous sport.
One such key detail has to do with equipment called “pitons.” These are the small metal spikes with an eye for threading rope through that get hammered into small crevices of the rock face. They are the climber’s protection from rapid descent to death. As the reverend bluntly puts it, “Rock climbers who fail to put in protection have short climbing careers.”
Metaphorically speaking, what can we say these life-saving spikes have to do with our living faithfully? With appreciating what Psalm 138 has to sing to us?
Pastor Peterson writes, “Our pitons or ‘protection’ come as we remember and hold on to those times when we have experienced God's faithfulness in our lives. Every answered prayer, every victory, every storm that has been calmed by his presence is a piton which keeps us from falling, losing hope, or worse yet, losing our faith.”[i]
I fuse this devout insight with language from Psalm 138. As we carry on through life’s great adventure -- with its great, joyous peaks and its tough, often tragic, valleys – we do so placing our trust in God alone to faithfully “strengthen our soul.” Life is full of both celebrations and desolations. Ascents and descents. Is trust in God honestly your truest security measure through it all? Security as absolutely essential to your life adventure as those metal spikes rock climbers depend upon in order to complete their mission safely and celebrate life?
The Psalmist acknowledges that there are many false “gods” people place their trust in over and against the one God of biblical faith. In the Psalmist’s day, these were the deities of foreign cultures. To dance with them meant peril and impurity. The names and cultural identities of these are different today, but that they are unreliable when it comes to being fully present and trustworthy for us throughout our life adventure remains steadfastly true.
Having acknowledged the existence of other “gods,” the Psalmist then operatically sings praise to our God that is splendidly resilient. This faithful person had been through some very troubling life experience. We aren’t told what it was. I imagine it could have been anything a grave illness on through surviving an assassination plot. All we have in print is the honest report of this brother or sister having been divinely delivered through the midst of that trouble.
I think it’s good that the trouble is vague. When we read the Psalm, this lack of detail allows us to relate to being in the “midst of trouble” in our own personally relevant ways. Our troubles are at once universal and intimately unique. So too God’s soul strengthening is global yet also particular for each and every one of us. What we all have in common is the grateful, joyful proclamation that follows our faithfully concluding that God was very much present with us through all the fearful desperation.
To really sing along confidently with the Psalmist – and remember, the Psalms were originally like a hymnal -- we need to have a good understanding of what the ancient Israelite’s understood the “soul” to be.
Bible scholars teach us that the Hebrew word for “soul,” nephesh is not a body part but a full part of our body. It can be translated as referring to God’s breath within our complete body. So when the Psalmist sings of his or her soul being strengthened, we hear praise for God being totally and immediately present. Indeed, alive in every breath taken. It’s not strengthening just for one part of us that will one day return to our Creator. It is God very directly being part of and strengthening our daily living. The soul is not some part of us whose function we may not understand – like the appendix. It’s integrated into our whole self and thus more like God breathing air into our lungs.
Do we trust bodily breathing is what we most need to sustain our lives? Yes! So should we trust in God. We do not have a soul so much as we are a soul. We don’t have God as some part of us so much as we are in God.
Trusting in God’s faithfulness to you in the dramatic way that climbers trust their pitons to preserve them from death, in the way resiliently proclaimed by the Psalmist, means you trust God’s loving grace is circulating with your blood and breath through every moment of your life -- a faithful trust most especially grasped through perilous times.
One of my twelve year old daughter Anna’s favorite songs that I’ve written is called, “All Will Grow.” I asked her just a week or so ago what songs I should consider putting on a new CD. She immediately blurted out the title of this one. I was not expecting this, given that it is not as fun and funky as some others I write. This song, this contemporary Psalm, was written at the perilous feeling time when our family was at the onset of divorce. As it goes with my musical expression, it was prayer. The lyrics, melody, chords … all were my breathing with God, God breathing with me. Though she has never said so directly, I can tell it has helped and helps Anna breath as well … to be reminded that God has been present and will continue to present, that God’s love is steadfast and resilient.
Each stanza functions like one of those life-sustaining spikes I’ve been talking about. I’d like to share these words with you as a very personal example of how holding fast to God’s good, gracious presence has helped me not to lose hope, or as Eugene Peterson has said, “worse yet, faith.”
The song is metaphorically about fruit – specifically apples. At the time, I was deliberating within myself about God’s intention for marriage and where a failed marriage fits in with the narrative beginning of the Garden of Eden. I say deliberating with myself, but, as I’ve mentioned, also with God since God is present in every breath and thought. In the song’s three brief stanzas I sing the following words –
“So the apple has fallen, from the firm rooted tree. It has split apart, upon new ground / Four solid pieces, each precious in its own right, each holding seeds, for the future / New orchards will rise up, from healthy hearted parts. Many will be nourished, from this fallen fruit.”
The apple represents our family and the tree our firmly-rooted faith. The apple fell and split apart … but on new ground where each piece was still precious and part of new, nourishing future growth. The chorus to the song is but one line, “All will grow in love.” And there is but one line to a refrain at the end, “Nothing can break redeeming grace.”
Like the Psalmist, I breathed out my time of trouble … the time of feeling perilously down low. Like the Psalmist, I breathed out my trust in God as I recalled my Creator’s past loving faithfulness toward me. Now, it’s been over two years since I wrote “All Will Grow.” I am joyfully well into appreciating God’s healing grace and God’s birthing of new beginnings for us “apples.” As such, the song is like a new piton I’ll rely on for the rest of my life adventures. Like Psalm 138, it is a soul strengthening celebration song!
I encourage you to go home from our time of worship together today celebrating times when you believe God strengthened your soul, your whole self. Do so as witness to God’s steadfast presence and unflappable faithfulness. Speak it, write it, sing it. Just be sure to share it! It may well be a word of security some other soul greatly needs to hear and grasp for their life adventure. Amen.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
A Tale of Dogged Faith
Matthew 15:21-28
Have you ever been called an offensive name? Unfortunately, it seems this is part of life for most everyone. From grade school taunts, to slander in the heat of debate, to dysfunctional family chides and labeling … name-calling happens. When it happens, angry defensiveness and underlying shame usually do the tango. Even when we forgivingly dismiss whatever word we were verbally slapped with, it never fails to leave some mark on the relationship it spawned from.
Given this hurtful aspect of human nature, were you shocked by our Scripture passage this morning? If you read and listened to it carefully, then you didn’t miss the name calling. It’s a particularly ugly bit of it too because it is not directed at someone acting offensively or arrogantly. It is directed instead at an anxious, grieving mom making a desperate appeal on behalf of her spiritually tormented daughter. It’s quite offensive to slander someone in crisis who is only reaching out for help!
And what makes this incident from our holy pages downright shocking is that the name caller is … Jesus. What was His reply to this woman begging him to heal her daughter? Our Lord calls her a “dog.”
That His disciples want to ignore and quickly dismiss her isn’t as disturbing – there are other instances when they come across as missing the heart and soul of their commission and when we read it, we know Jesus is going to correct them. But Jesus? Sure He once name called the Pharisees a “brood of vipors.” But that was the voice of prophet holding tradition bearer’s accountable. And sure He once labeled Peter “Satan,” but again, that also was about threat to faithful fidelity. What on earth did this mom do to warrant being called a “dog” – a demeaning, dismissive slang term -- by our Lord?
It seems she didn’t do anything except live her life in the region of Tyre and Sidon. These cities were in foreign territory, territory tied to Caananite tribes. A quick review of the Old Testament – of how Noah cursed his grandson, named Caanan, and on through various military conquests beginning with Joshua – reveals that Israelites regarded the beliefs and overall culture of the Caananites as abominable. This Caananite woman was thus generally regarded as impure, as an enemy even, in the culture of Jesus and his disciples.
How very curious, then, that Jesus, who was at that point in his flesh and bone ministry very near to the crisis of His crucifixion, chose to retreat from the demanding crowds all around Galilee by entering into Caananite turf. Most scholars I’ve read suggest this was because He was exhausted and figured to catch a breather from a population who would not hope in Him as their Messiah. If this was indeed the case, Jesus totally underestimated how far his fame as a healer had spread. It had grown great … so very great … that it had fallen off the master table of ministry in Jerusalem and was found by this foreign mother so hungry for a morsel of miracle.
Whatever had convinced her to place great faith in Jesus, she did so completely undeterred by the name calling. She was not for a moment concerned about historic bad blood between peoples, or even being labeled as unworthy of being listened to. Parents fighting for the lives of their children are typically immune to such unproductive talk. She focused firmly on just one thing – her family’s need for the mercy of the God whom Jesus represented. So she pleaded, and she did so with great worshipful shouts using the traditional language of Israelite culture – “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David!”
Perhaps Jesus’ uncaring response was indeed because of his exhaustion. That’s a fine enough way to justify it – haven’t we all spoken the wrong words at times when we were emotionally and physically fried? I know my daughters are well aware that after 8:45 p.m. on any given night, their tired dad can be a lot less lovingly hinged together.
My study and prayer about this passage over this past week, however, leads me more to believe that Jesus was instead once again making the most of an opportunity to teach about the full saving grace he had been born to give to the entire world.
Keep in mind, our tale of her dogged faith took place well within earshot of His disciples. We can imagine him calling her a “dog” with a little knowing glint in His compassionate eyes as he labeled her the narrow way they saw her. And keep in mind, or become newly aware of, that scholars believe the original hearers of Matthew’s account of the life and times of Jesus were overwhelmingly Jewish and thus Jesus is primarily presented in this Gospel as a profound interpreter of the old Mosaic Law.[i]
So I believe this teaching moment was a two-fold test -- one that challenged his closest followers to hold in check their cultural prejudices while at the same time giving the mom an opportunity to express the fervent faith Jesus greatly wanted from His followers.
Her sincere, praise-full pleading did not disappoint Him. After respectfully, faithfully referring to Him as “Lord” three times she turned the derogatory comment on directly on its head. She did so by declaring that even the “dogs” need the spilled crumbs from the Master’s table. What a profound, humble and wise observation this was. And it delighted Jesus to such a great degree that he performed the miracle without delay!
What this unnamed woman teaches all of is how to follow Jesus with dogged faith. If you haven’t caught on, I’m enjoying a little word play with this terminology, and further with the full sermon title. I do so to reinforce that there are times in people’s lives when simple, implicit trust in the mercy of God to cast away dark realities may not be quite enough. There are times, complete crises, when faithful expression needs to be full-on worshipfully petitioned, cried for with culture-rattling determination to be heard, to be radically synched up with verbal professions of belief.
Having dogged faith means having an unflappable trust in the all-inclusive, ever-present mercy of our Lord.
It is faith that does not take any given situation at face value, but instead considers it at full faith value.
It is faith always at the ready to be challenged and taught bold and holy truth by Jesus, through His Spirit that is very actively present in each of our hearts and all across this world.
Where, today, are there voices crying out for holy mercy? Voices we modern day disciples can faithfully hear as an appeal to our Lord for help? Where, especially, are the voices of those we may be sinfully tempted to dismiss as offensive outsiders best left on their own to deal with their own troubles?
If you have been following world news, you know well that many merciful, miraculous morsels from the Master’s table are needed in Southern Somalia, on the horn of Africa. Hundreds of thousands of Somalis are suffering from famine due to a drought. No relief of these life-killing conditions, of death by excruciatingly slow starvation, is expected until we are enjoying our next Christmas and New Year’s celebrations. The famine has created a huge number of people fleeing from pastoral areas into the war-torn capital city of Mogadishu. It has also caused a massive number of refugees – with more than 55,000 fleeing across the borders of Ethiopia and Kenya this past June alone. Just this morning, shortly after I woke up and turned on CNN, I found myself sadly surveying a refugee camp with Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Are we disciples of Jesus hearing the voices of these, our mostly Muslim neighbors? Are we giving faithful attention to all of that crying out for crumbs? The loudest cries hit my ears through the silence of photos showing starving, dying children. Seeing them in hi-resolution on my computer laptop screen – even more than on television -- is a particularly loud plea for help. As always, there are political and other ideological entanglements that go with such disasters. As usual, I’m not one to get into those from the pulpit. I prefer, as ever, to first and foremost enter into prayer … prayer that many people’s dogged faith will respond to this crisis.
Our denomination’s Presbyterian Disaster Assistance response so far has been to provide $100,000 of One Great Hour of Sharing funds to meet immediate, basic humanitarian needs and offer life-saving measures. We take up collection for One Great Hour of Sharing during Lent and Easter, so FPC has already offered some measures of help. The PDA team is responding as part of the ACT Alliance, an organization of 111 churches and church-based groups founded in 2010 and currently working in 130 countries.[ii] I’ve included in your bulletin one way for you to give more financial assistance if you feel moved to do so. In addition to the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance there are also a good number of other humanitarian agencies actively serving this disaster. On the PDA website there is a reminder about what needs to come first that is worth quoting – “Our best response is prayer. 1 Thessalonians implores us to pray without ceasing, so your prayers are requested above all else. Please pray for families who are hungry, thirsty, displaced, or need medical care because of this crisis. Also pray for the people responding to the disaster, and for those whose lives are closely linked to both the disaster survivors and the workers who minister to them.”
Greatly inspired by this morning’s tale of dogged faith, today turns out to be a time for name calling after all. I’m going to name-call myself and name-call all of you. I’m going to do so now using powerfully evocative names like “disciple,” “servant,” “missionary,” “steward,” “neighbor,” “friend,” “child of God.” I do so for the sake and to the glory of Jesus, the Good Shepherd of all. Amen.
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