Monday, March 30, 2009

Lent 5 - B

Death or something like it....

One of the best bits of advice I ever read in a self help book was to imagine that everyone around you would be dead tomorrow.

It sounds a bit morbid I know, but it adds a certain dimension to how you interact. I mean; what if this is my last sermon? What if the moment at the door where we shake hands is the last thing we will ever say to one another? What if tonight is the last supper you will ever eat with the people you love?

Death has been called the great leveller – it comes to everyone and in the end – it is equal. My father, who is a physician, jokes that everyone dies of the same thing – lack of oxygen to the brain. Scientifically true, it happens for different reasons, like your heart stops beating, or the blood vessels break, or whatever, but you don’t ‘die’ until your brain stops getting oxygen.

How is that for a morbid way to get into our Bible stories?

Here is the thing, I have been saying that Lent is a time for serious soul searching. I think of it as the most meditative, most inward looking part of being the church. There is nothing deeper than thinking about death – nothing that has the power to change things like confronting your mortality.

Alcoholics don’t usually give up until almost everything is gone. Corporate CEO’s don’t usually quit until they have a heart attack. You see what I am saying don’t you... at some point we have to go deeper; we have ask the harder questions, we have to confront the end and ask ourselves – where are we on the journey?



When Philip reported to Jesus that the Greeks had asked to see him, Jesus exclaimed, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This is a major turning point in John’s gospel. Scholars tell us that John is divided into the “book of signs” and the “book of glory.” In the “book of signs” (the first part of John) Jesus performs seven miracles that John refers to as signs. They begin when Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana and culminate with Jesus’ greatest miracle: raising Lazarus from the dead. Throughout the “book of signs” Jesus makes enigmatic references to his “hour” or “time” and says that it has not yet come. When his mother tells him that the revellers at the wedding feast have run out of wine, he says, “My hour has not yet come.” In John 7:8, Jesus tells his disciples that he will not go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths because his “time has not yet fully come.”

But when the Greeks asked to see Jesus, he knew that the hour had come for him to be glorified. I don’t want to get sidetracked about why... let’s just say that he was getting famous enough that he knew someone would have to do something....

And Jesus does something we all do when we start thinking about death; he becomes philosophical...

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. … Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. … And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

This is the turning point. In another Gospel Luke says it this way – “he set his face toward Jerusalem.” We are talking about the moment when confronting your reality leads to some major life decisions – and in the midst of that Jesus comes to see the inevitability of what is to come; and decides to face it head on.

Jesus reflects on his coming death and then turns the focus on us. He begins this speech by saying that the time of his death has arrived, and the passage ends with him describing the form that death will take: he will be "lifted up" on the cross.

So when he explains that "this voice has come for your sake," he's stressing how important it is that his hearers understand what he is saying about death.

Jesus explains that the hour of his death initiates "the judgment of this world, [when] the ruler of this world will be driven out" and all people will be drawn to Jesus. As he moves through his death, he draws everyone into it with him—not into his literal death but into a giving up, a relinquishing of one's place in the machinations of this world. The world's rules are the dark and deeply embedded codes of power, rivalry, conquest and self-preservation. They are strategies to convince us that we can come out on top, can cheat death—and it's in this possibility that we place our trust.

Jesus speaks of another way: those who cling to the life prescribed by the world will lose true life. Only by rejecting this pseudo-life system do we gain the real, transforming life in Christ that is governed by mercy, by love embedded in relationship. It's a life not over and above but with God and our neighbour.



Imagine for one moment that this afternoon is it... that you walk out these doors and have five hours to do whatever you want. My feeling is that most of us would want to do something that might make a difference – that might leave some lasting impact on the world.

So here is another little look at death that I was given by a prof from the Queen’s business school. I want you to picture a table... it is a work table... a desk, a board meeting table, whatever fits you... now... imagine that you do die tonight – what will happen around that table tomorrow? How quickly will you be replaced?
Now picture another table – your own dining room table... and picture your chair empty there...

What is tomorrow like for the people who are gathered there? How quickly are you replaced? When do you imagine they will forget you and move on?

You see – thinking about death can clear a lot of things up for us...

Cicero, the great Roman orator and martyr for the Republic, wrote, "To philosophize is to learn how to die."

As Lent nears Good Friday; as we turn from inward contemplation to outward faith – lets spend one more week searching our hearts and focusing on what really matters – love in the face of death. That after all is the meaning of life....

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Lent 4 - B

THE HARD AND THE EASY

The spiritual journey is not always an easy journey.

I think if I could put it in a nutshell, that is what Lent is trying to teach us. This is a 40 day period to walk through our own wilderness; becoming aware of just how far we might have strayed from what we hoped for our lives; pondering how the forces of the world often seem to work again us; and wondering about our sense of how we fit in to the bigger picture.

Has anyone ever tried to meditate? I once did this exercise where we were to take one minute and try to count the number of different thoughts we had. I was with a group of 50 people, and I hda the highest score – 14 different thoughts in once minute.

Now, perhaps this is ADHD, more than likely it is just a cultivated habit of thinking about things. The average for the room was 8 thoughts.

I am not suggesting that any of this is a problem – unless you are trying to meditate. Let’s try it for thirty seconds. I will time you, try closing your eyes and counting the number of different thoughts you have... at the same time, try not to have any thoughts....

See what I mean? It is hard. And it is hard because the world intrudes on us. The thoughts we have are usually worries about something, or fears we have, or memories of things creeping in. It is very hard for us to feel at peace, because the world is really not that peaceful a place. It is noisy, confusing, and often painful.

Let me tell you a story. You just heard it told to you in one way – very literally about some people in a desert and some snakes... But let me tell you the exact same story using different imagery:

All day long it seems that life is just one thing after another... get up, do some work; eat some food, go to sleep... over and over and over... There are many days that I think that life is just not worth it. And then... then... this happens; tragedy; the sky is falling; just when you think it cannot get any worse... And that is it. This is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back, and I have had enough....

Just when I am thinking of giving up – something changes... in that final moment when all seems lost, the person I trust the most, the one who has always been there for me, holds up the truth in front of me... and I realize that God has given me the strength to get through this – that it is possible that I will be, somehow, okay.
This is the Good News – God loves us enough to do something about it.

Okay – keep the whole Snake on a Pole story in mind for a second and listen to Ephesians again...

“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world... All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved...”

Language is such a barrier. I don’t know if you ever think about that in terms of the church, or the Bible, or prayers – but really – the words we sometime here others use throw us off so much that we fail to see what is behind the words.

See – Ephesians is making the same point as was made a thousand years before in the desert... we don’t tend to make good choices. We tend to follow the whims of the world and get caught up in the wrong things, we are like everyone else and we forget about following God. But God, who loves us in a way we can barely understand, forgives us anyway...

It is that forgiveness and love that makes it possible to go on.
One of the things I most like about that story where Moses and the Folks encounter the poisonous snakes is that God never takes away the snakes... God just gives them something else to focus on so that they can get through it....

To me, this explains a lot about life, and about where we go wrong when we start thinking about God as a magician who somehow will solve everything – God does not make the world a better place, God simply gives us a way to get through it.

Not only that; but I strongly suspect that it is getting through the troubles of our lives that makes us who we are. Maturity and strength come from encountering troubles along the way. Some of us have those troubles when we are 4 and become wise really, really quickly. Some of you may yet to have had to face something that changes you forever; but wherever you are on the spectrum of life, God is there, and god’s strength is yours if you only focus on what is ahead of you.

I want to share with you a poem that I think sums up what I am trying to say and in a perspective that will help us as we continue to allow the journey of lent to deepen our faith:

If hope has made you walk
farther than fear,
you will raise your eyes.
Then you will be able to hold firm
until you reach the sun of God.
If anger caused you to clamor for justice for all,
your heart will be wounded.
Then you will be able to struggle
along with the oppressed.
If weakness made you fall along the way,
you will know how to open your arms.
Then you will be able to dance
to the rhythm of forgiveness.
If destitution made you search in the hungry night,
you will have an open heart.
Then you will be able to give
the bread of poverty.
If suffering made you shed tears of blood,
you will have cleansed eyes.
Then you will be able to pray
with your brother on the cross.
If sadness has made you doubt
on a night when you felt abandoned,
you will know how to carry your cross.
Then you will be able to die
in step with the God-Man.

J. Akepsimas and M. Scouarnec, Des mots et des notes pour célébrer, 99.

Monday, March 16, 2009

LENT 3 -B

Laws We Can Believe In

Laws are sometimes challenging, we don’t often like them... Can anyone name me some laws that we complain about?
Copyright
Privacy
Speed limits

Now let me ask you a different question: Why do we have laws in society?

Safety
Protection
Order

Of course, laws are also used sometimes to keep people in their place, to benefit the rich, or just to hurt others.
I really love the Gospel story today. It is the story of Jesus going to the temple just before the Passover. You might remember that what he finds there, is that this holy place of worship has taken on a very business-like attitude.

Let’s try to set this story in a historical context. The people of Jesus’ day had to offer sacrifices when they came to the temple. People from all over Israel would travel there, at least once a year to worship; and it was not always practical to bring along livestock. So, in order to make it easier for people to worship, they sold animals right there – you didn’t have to cart your own pigeon across half a country.

But there was something else... Things that went into the temple had to be clean, they had to be right, and they could not be Roman. That was just wrong, the Romans were the enemy. So, when you got there, you could also exchange Roman currency which had Caesar’s picture on it, for temple currency, which didn’t.

There was nothing really wrong with either of these things – the practice was set up in order to make life easier for everyone... But, there was the whole problem of where to put the stalls. What Jesus discovered was that the sellers and money changers had moved into the Gentile part of the synagogue.

We don’t have an equivalent part of church, but this was a place where guests could come and be welcome, it was the “welcome centre” for people who were interested in church. Now, you can imagine what the noise would have been like with the sheep, cattle, pigeons, etc. or how about the smell? I doubt it was very welcoming for an outsider who had no idea what was going on. On top of that, this was supposed to be like a chapel where these people could come and pray. No one would have been able to worship, pray or meditate.

Of course, you also have to think that the church discovered they could make a few extra shekels by altering the exchange rate; or offering slightly off sheep.

None of this escapes the eyes of Jesus – and he simply calls a spade a spade. He responds in the only appropriate way, getting angry and creating a lot of chaos... These people, the religious leaders of the day, had actually taken a place of worship and prevented almost everyone from being able to use it to worship God.

Now the Jesus we meet in this passage is no meek and mild Jesus, this is an image of Jesus we don’t often look at or like to remember. This Jesus calls out to his brothers and sisters and violently questions their interpretation of the rules. The people needed to have the animals for sacrifices, they needed temple currency, but which was more important? The components required for the ritual, or the people?

I want to back this up a couple of thousand years and suggest to you that we look at the 10 commandments for an answer to that question.

What have you always thought the commandments were about? I was certainly brought up to see the commandments as rules that I had to follow and if I followed them then I would earn God’s favour. Now it was never said that way specifically but that was the understanding I had. The commandments were there for me to follow for my own benefit. If I was going to be good, I did what I was told.

But does God really act like that? Is God’s love dependant on my obedience? Sometimes we forget this, but everyone who has ever thought about this has said, NO! Walter Brueggemann, probably the best known Old Testament Scholar alive today points out that God had already chosen Abram and Sarai to be the parents of a divine promise. God had already made the covenant that God will be their God and the God of their descendents long before the 10 commandments were ever produced. Nothing was going to make God go back on that promise.

So what’s the point? In the 16th Century John Calvin said: The Commandments play an indispensible positive roll in Christian life. They are, as the bible tells us, a lamp to our feet. They guide us as we journey in our life before God and our life with our neighbours. They do not show us what we must do or how we must live in order to receive God’s covenantal grace.

SO if they are not about my behaviour and personal salvation or earning God’s love and acceptance, what are they for? Well here’s the thing. What if I told you the commandments already assume you are faithful, and then go on to talk about what it means to live that out? You see, the first 3 commandments are about our relationship with God and the remaining 7 are about our relationship with each other.
In essence, this is the first time that God answers the question, how then are we to live? Later, when Jesus is asked what is the greatest commandment he responds that we are to love the lord our God with all our heart, mind, and soul and our neighbour as our self. Jesus doesn’t say do this and do that – he knows the commandments are all about loving God and neighbour.
There is a story of about Rabbi Hillel, who was a contemporary of Jesus. A Gentile approached the Rabbi and said that he would convert to Judaism if Rabbi Hillel could recite the whole Torah while standing on one leg. SO the Rabbi stood on one leg and said: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and study it."
This is the same sort of answer that Jesus gave... If you want to know what God is really like, look at the commandments that we think came from God; they are all about how we treat each other.


The point is that the commandments are not about me, gaining God’s favour, love, or entrance into heaven. They are about my neighbour.

The commandments remind us that we always need to be attentive to our relationships – work at keeping ourselves out of the way – caring for others, not be too self important by remembering that we aren’t perfect.

The other thing they do is try to ensure that our neighbour can have the best life possible.

Try to reverse the commandments for a minute to see what I mean. The reason that I am not to steal, is so that you ______ can have a better life, and know your possessions are safe. I am not to murder so you ________ can have a better life, living in safety and knowing those you love and depend on are safe. They ensure that as a community, we all care for one another, support one another, and live in right relationship with each other – no lies, no slander, no fear, no jealousy...

Jesus not only taught this way of life, he lived it. That is why he was so angry that the temple was ignoring everything that would help people to feel safe, and cared for... they had missed, or forgotten, the real reason for the law in the first place.

We need to reclaim the 10 commandments from the realms of negativity. Rules are not bad, inconvenient by times, challenging at others; but they were never put in place to make our lives more difficult. Rather they can set us free. When you and I live for our neighbour – both near and far – our world does change. Remember that God gave these commandments to newly freed slaves – it is what freedom looks like.

I invite you, throughout this 3rd week of Lent to read and live with the 10 commandments. Apply them to your life and every day; ask yourself the question how can I use this rule to live for my neighbour? Through our Lenten journey we seek freedom from all that binds us and keeps us from the life Jesus invites us to live – abundant life, a life of love, hope, joy and peace. This week go out to make those things a reality for others and trust that others will be doing the same for you.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Grace is Free; but it’s not cheap...

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, "I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous." Then Abram fell on his face...

This wasn't the first, or the last time God and Abram had a conversation; in fact, the Book of Genesis is regularly punctuated with the words, "The Lord said to Abram:" It isn't even the first time that God "made a covenant" with Abram and promised him lots of descendants, as numerous as the stars in the night sky.

I also imagine that this was not the first time that Abram wondered, am I crazy? Is this even possible? What would it mean?

In order to live faithfully in this covenant relationship with god Abram and Sarai have to endure a lot. First they pull up stakes and leave Haran, to set out for a new home and a new future. Then at 99 they start the process of pregnancy, infancy, toddlerhood, and all those wonderful sleepless nights.

Later still, you may recall, Abraham is going to be asked to sacrifice his only son because of this relationship he has with God.

This is the beginning of our story.

It helps us understand what's happening underneath this story if we think about how it was written. The Book of Genesis, scholars generally agree, brings together the work of several writers who in turn brought together ancient traditions about the origins of the people of God (which sheds light on why some things are repeated). Consider the narrative so far, as it went from the vastness of creation, separating light from dark, to the story of the beginning of all humankind, to this story of Abraham and Sarah.

What we are looking at is a sort of pre-history, the prequel to the story of Israel. This whole book is meant to set the stage in a way that helps us to understand what it means to be God’s people.

You see, over time we have faced countless moments of pain, or exile, wars, destruction, economic downturns, loss... there have been many times when God’s people just hung their heads in sorrow, or fear.

It is at times like this that we need to hear the “original promise” of what life is all about. God will be your God, and you will be God’s people. No matter how hopeless it looks right now, your descendents will be as numerous as the stars. This is an "everlasting" covenant with the people, no matter what.

Do any of you have any doubts of that being true? Has anyone given any thought to the bird flu, the pandemic, global warming, the next ice age, food shortages, immigration, or the economy? I went out for Chinese food the other day and actually said to myself, I better eat rice while I still can; it might not be available next year.

One of the main points of religion is that those who follow it believe in something different. We set ourselves apart from the day to day workings of the world because we believe that there is a future, that we can have Hope!

This original promise is there precisely for moments like these; rough spots on the path of our evolution; times in history when we are not sure about the future.

We are just starting Lent, a long way from Easter, and whether we give something up or not, whether we want to or not, Lent is a time of self examination; a time to work on our relationships with each other and with God.

To use a good old fashioned biblical word; Lent is a time for repentance, too, for facing the ways we are broken and have broken others and the world.

The thing is, the original covenant promise is not one sided, it presents a hope filled future based on two things – God being faithful, and our faithful response.

There is no sitting back and waiting for God to save us.

There is this myth out there that as soon as we have become disciples, as soon as we set foot into church things will keep getting better and better. This myth has done more harm than any single other facet of our faith, because personal experience keeps rearing its ugly head and reminding us that our faith in something better does not necessarily make it so.

It was Jesus who first pointed this out. After Peter confessed that he was the Christ, Jesus began to predict his death, much to the shock of his disciples who were hoping for much more... like someone to take on the Romans.

A second shock then followed when Jesus insisted that this pattern of self-denying suffering was, well, was what any believer had to look forward to. After predicting his own suffering, rejection, and death to the disciples, he then turned to the larger crowd: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34–35).
God’s grace is free, but it's not cheap, for it demands everything.

I want to suggest to you that we are back to the original pre-history stories. Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Sarah – each of them came face to face with this harsh truth too; and each of them found it as difficult to truly take hold of as the disciples, and as we do, at first.

But it is there, and it is there in spades.

In the Gospel of Mark Jesus is continually talking about how real faith takes a change in heart and a change in behaviour. You would know the other stories really well, even if we don’t take them to heart; a rich young man comes up to Jesus and asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus almost playfully says, what does the Bible say? To which he gets a summary of the Ten Commandments. Hey, not bad, Jesus responds, but there is something else... give up everything you have to the poor and follow me...

Faith is about a change of heart, it is not something you can “inherit” which is what the ruler was asking for, it is something that is given to you, and when you have it, it changes everything.

As Jesus himself taught, it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We argue too much about what he might have meant... we know what it means... if anyone would come after me, take up their own cross, give everything to the poor, build and ark, pull up tent stakes and move across the country... if anyone wants to know what God is about – put God first and then we will be living quite differently.

The thing is, Jesus is talking to us. This is a message aimed squarely at me and you. We have a lot at stake in this world and we walk through it just as fearful as that rich young man who wonders what is next, and whether he is safe.

Take a second and ask yourself, what is your biggest fear right now? What are you most afraid of losing? What would Jesus say to you?

Listen to Jesus words again. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”

Jesus isn’t talking about evangelism, he isn’t talking about foreign missionaries, he is talking about life. The right here right now down and dirty way we get through tomorrow. If we put being rich, being successful, and being safe ahead of everything else in this life we are never going to be happy; or fulfilled, and we will certainly never be safe.

But what if we put the gospel first? You remember what Jesus summarized the gospel as don’t you? “Love God, love your neighbour, love yourself with all your heart and mind and soul.” What if that was our focus. What if we made that our focus so much so that we lost out on what fame and fortune could bring us? What if we refuse to get rich by putting other people down, what if we refuse to buy things that force other people to work like slaves? What if....

What if we held up our part of the bargain and lived according to God’s covenant...
Remember the promise: “I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous... You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations... I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you... “

We need to remember that discipleship has a cost, a responsibility. Lets recapture that part of our faith and truly make a difference.