Brewing Theology With Teer: Recent Episodes
Teer Hardy
Lent 4
2 Corinthians 5:16-21
The difficulties we carry from our past – the things we wish we had not said even if it was OK to say those things back then, the doors we locked while at traffic lights, the streets we crossed to avoid walking past someone, or the people we misidentified because of the nothing more than the color of their skin – were taken to the cross with Christ and buried. The result of this is God reconciling creation to God so that we can become instruments of God's reconciling work.
We have been entrusted with the message of reconciliation.
A message of love.
A message of hope.
So, what are we to do?
Trust in the promises of God. Trust that we have not been left alone to figure this out. Trust that through "self–examination and repentance; prayer, fasting, and self–denial; and reading and meditating on God's Holy Word," God has reconciled us, and God is reconciling us. To one another – to those, we hold dear in our memories, those we have unknowingly harmed, those we have knowingly harmed, and those who continue to live with their backs against the wall.
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February 26, 2023
Psalm 13
The help we expect, the help we so desperately need, does not come from ourselves. The track record of human history tells this to be true, and yet time and time again, we turn to ourselves to make right that which we continue to taint with our sin. Cries of lament are our turning toward God, acknowledging our humanness, and opening ourselves to being transformed. It is in being transformed that we can act first by setting aside empty platitudes like “racism is too much, we have to give it to God,” and second, by actively working to correct generations of harm that was done in Christ’s name through acts of supposed mercy and compassion. The very things the Church has been called to do since the disciples were first called away from their fishing nets.
The transformation that comes, the coming reality of Dr. King’s dream, the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, the Kin-dom of God, is a gift to us by the One to whom we pray, the One who is actively working to transform his body, and the One who assures us we are never beyond the reach of God’s grace.
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February 19, 2023
Matthew 17:1-9
The transfiguration of Jesus Christ, God's shining glory and splendidness, was not a one-off event. Every time the Word of God is proclaimed, every time water is blessed and falls over a person’s head, every time we gather around Christ’s table of grace, and every time we act wither mercy and compassion, we experience what John Wesley called means of grace, and we are transfigured.
Many voices, too many to list off, tell us we need to transform ourselves.“Make yourself better,” they say.“Improve this so that you can...”As Jesus was glorified at the Transfiguration and set his sights on Jerusalem, we know the heavy lifting has been done. Making his way to the cross, Jesus carried the weight of our sin and guilt, as well as the glory that can only belong to the second person of the Trinity.
As he exited the tomb, the weight of the guilt of our sin was left behind so that his righteousness would be ours. And it is the righteousness of God, revealed in Christ – born, transfigured, crucified, and resurrected – that transforms us, transfigures us, from the inside out.
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For us, for you, on a hard wooden pew or sitting in a church basement… As we prepare to enter the season of Lent, as we trade the bright light of epiphany and journey toward the cross, we are blessed because we get to experience this journey in light of the transfiguration, as we journey toward the light of the resurrection. The way the means of Grace work, is they reveal to us the person and work of Jesus for us. Beholding his glory on the mountain, and then on the cross, and then in the empty tomb, that all of this is done for us, that is what ultimately changes us as the hymn says, “from glory into glory.”
The darkness of our world pushes those who feel isolated, alone, or forgotten further into the shadows, where it can seemingly feel impossible to see or experience and source of hope – a source of light.
Rev. Fleming Rutledge wrote, “Jesus is calling us to let our light shine in a world often shrouded in darkness. Our good works, acts of kindness and compassion, can bring light into the lives of those around us.”The things we do in the church – the hymns we sing, the meals we share, the sacraments, the mission work, the committee, and council meetings – are not things we do to make ourselves feel better or to check a box on the list of good things we are supposed to do. No, what we do here matters because, in everything we do – in the hymns, meals, sacraments, mission work, and yes, even the meetings – we are bearing the light of Christ into a world in desperate need of light.
Being bears of the light of the world makes us a source of hope and positivity, even in difficult and trying times, because our world can feel hopeless and dark. But, when we step out, of this physical space and out of the comfort of our preferences and desires, we are beacons of hope, beacons of light, shining the grace of Jesus Christ for all to see.
Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”The good news for us and the world is that the light we bear is not our own; thus, our effectiveness is not entirely up to us. The yous in Jesus’ “you are” is singular, yes, but it is also plural. We “are the light of the world” because we have been formed by Christ, because Christ sustains us, and because we are sent into the world in the name of Christ.
We are not doing this on our own. Christ is with us, before and after us.
The light shines in the darkness, sings the psalmist, “They rise in the darkness as a light for the upright; they are gracious, merciful, and righteous.” We get to be a part of the grand crescendo of God’s kingdom-building work in the world, but more urgently in the dark corners of our community. This sounds like a mighty, seemingly impossible task, but by God’s grace, a light shines from within us, even on those days when the world's chaos appears to have the upper hand.
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January 8, 2023
Matthew 3:13-17
Baptism is not reserved for those who have unwavering faith, those who perfectly understand the church's doctrines, or those who have accomplished every act of works righteousness declared to be required by someone wearing a robe or headset attached to a mic pack. The “belovedness” bestowed upon the baptized is for everyone.
Every single one of us.
For those we forget or say are unworthy.
For those in the cheap seats and those who sit in the front row.
For the scoundrels and losers.
For the sinners and saints.
Your “belovedness” is to be celebrated with childlike wonder and awe.
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Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
For all our strengths and abilities are not gods and will never know the right time. The best we can do is mark time in the ways Jesus instructed us: in worship, around Christ’s table, and in remembering that the author of time has called each of us beloved, forgiven, and free. The good news is this – wherever we are headed this year, in the seasons that lay ahead of us, we are held in the hands of God, and by God’s grace it will be well.
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As far back as I remember, the Christmas story has not changed. A mash-up of Luke and Matthew’s accounts is etched into my mind: Mary and Joseph are both greeted by the angel Gabriel, wise men traversing a far, shepherds keeping their flocks by night, no room in the inn, and the manger. Oh yeah, and sweet baby Jesus. I could tell you the story and leave out one or two parts, and you wouldn’t miss a beat. Everyone knows this story.
Every year, regardless of national or global events – during war and peacetime; before a pandemic and during; as a child, adult, or slightly older adult – the story is read, “pageanted” and preached around the world. We did this last year and the year before, albeit online, we are doing it tonight, and if I did the math correctly, we will do this again in 365 days.
So, what is it about the story of the birth of the Messiah that brings us back year after year?
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The turkey will be dry.
Your end-of-the-year bonus may come in the form of a jelly subscription you did not want.
The relatives you dread seeing will overstay their welcome.
And, that powder room appliance might be full.
No matter how much we try to avoid the broken and messiness of the world and our lives, the birth of Joseph’s boy tells creation that we are not separated from God.
Our story is not Jesus’ story; instead, Jesus takes the world's story, our Sin – our the messy side of ourselves that we try to hide during the holidays – upon himself.
The peace we want on earth, the peace we will attempt to create for ourselves is here, through the grace of God, through a child, through a family as messed up as mine or yours.
December 4, 2022
Luke 1:26-38
“Let it be with me according to” the will of God, according to the grand plans of God’s earth-shaking in-breaking. “Let it be with me according to” the Creator of Heaven and Earth.
That’s what she said.
With three words, “Let it be,” Mary reveals to the world that the way things are is not how things will be when the will of God is followed when the Kingdom of God is fully realized.
Let it be.
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Luke 21:5-19
The Church has a word to speak in the face of rising Christian Nationalism and all the bigotry that comes with it. The One through whom all creation has been saved has a word for us.
Paul wrote to the church in Rome, facing down persecution themselves, “faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.”
The church tells the story that evil does not get the last word.
The light of Jesus Christ shines brighter than any of the shiny distractions in Herod’s temple – 2000 years ago and today – because all creation is God's dwelling place.
Live with the knowledge that we have a word to speak today in the race of rising Christian Nationalism, and that word is that death, destruction, and evil do not hold the last word.
Jesus promises to set the world right.
Jesus promises that work has begun through his church, no matter how flawed or lost we become.
Christ is Lord. We are not.
He has come. And he will come again.
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November 6, 2022
Ephesians 1:11-23
While we want to control, guide, and strategize our way into what is to come, the truth is that God is the One at the wheel.
The role of the saints – past, present, and future – is to praise God, soak up God’s amazing grace, and be open to being used as vessels of mercy, grace, and compassion.
Our story, saints of yesterday, day, and tomorrow is wrapped in the unifying salvific work of God in Jesus Christ.
Freedom from sin.
A life shaped by the fullness of God’s grace.
An invitation to “saintliness” today, just as we are, just as you are, because of who we are in Jesus Christ; beloved.
October 9, 2022
Luke 17:11-19
Because we are recipients of a supernatural Grace, something we a difficulty naming but once we have experienced it, we are never the same, our posture and response to God are one of gratitude, shifting our worldview entirely.
Worship goes from being a 60-minute weekly hostage situation to being the posture we assume throughout the week. Stewardship becomes joy-filled generosity instead of being a fundraiser where the giver is constantly on the lookout for a return on their investment.
Jesus told the Samaritan man, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” A better translation of this is, “Get us and go on your way. Your faith has saved you.” The mustard seed-sized faith that the man had transformed him from the inside out.
The same is true of us – the sinners and saints of the church.
In his book, Kingdom, Grace, and Judgment Robert Farrar Capon wrote, “Grace perennially waits for us to accept our destruction and, in that acceptance, to discover the power of the Resurrection and the Life.”
God’s generosity produces gratitude in us, moving us from wondering what’s in it for us to seeing the Kingdom building we are called to as an opportunity to be an extension of the generosity of God’s Grace.
Grace, Gratitude, and Generosity – they begin with and return to God. Such is the Kingdom of God.
Luke 16:19-31
Jesus is not telling a parable about Hell, the final judgment, or heavenly rewards. Our lesson is not a story about the afterlife and how to get to where we all want to go. Jesus is extending an invitation to the Pharisees then and today, to his followers then and today, to live as though the Kingdom of God (his kingdom) is already among us. The Kingdom of God broke into the world through Mary’s womb, which the cross or grave could not snuff out.
It can feel as though the chasm is too great. But church, we bear witness to Christ’s chasm crossing, Kingdom ruling, and grace extending every time we gather for worship – proclaiming Christ resurrected and ascended. In our witness to Christ’s Kingdom, we flip how we view the world, setting aside the worth of material lives and instead choosing to put our faith in God’s Grace.
Jesus say sthe rich man’s family wouldn’t believe a dead man walking into their living room with a Jacob Marley-like warning.
Lucky for us, death did not hold back Christ and does not hold back Christ’s body – resurrected, ascended, and gathered here this morning.
Luke 16:1-13
Through Grace, Jesus saves those respectability says are beyond saving. This parable is not about finances or management. It is a parable about new life.
New life free from the weight and guilt and consequences of our sin.
New life that comes to us by way of the unjust steward’s death to self.
New life that is a gift from God, given to respectable people but also to the people ignored, exploited, and forgotten by the respectability our world demands.
The unjust manager is inviting us to love God where we love wealth, to love God where we love security by relying and trusting upon the Grace of God given at no cost to us.
Grace, love, and mercy for scoundrels like you and me.
Jeremiah 2:4-13
According to Swiss theologian Karl Barth, all scripture and the entire Christian faith hang on the integrity of four little words from our text today: “Thus the Lord said….”
Everything we believe as Christians stems from these four words. “Thus the Lord said….”
God said creation would happen, and it did.
God said Israel would be the shining star to the nations, and it is. God did not forsake or abandon Israel when they turned to the gods of Baal or ignored their set-apartness.
God has spoken a promise, and, in the church, we believe that promise is fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The loquacious God took on human flesh and showed us what faithful life to the Lord looks like to the point of death, and then showed us that even death cannot separate us from the Lord.
Isaiah 5, Isaiah 27, Jon 15
Parables of judgment always feel like a smack on the nose. Like a teammate, launch a firm chest pass your way when you are not ready, and instead of a quick layup, you have a broken nose and blood on your new sneakers.
But the Good News in the doom and gloom of the parables of judgment is that judgment does not equal punishment. God does not tear down the walls of the vineyard and allow the beasts of the wild to trample the vineyard.
Isaiah does not forget the second part of his prophetic task – to energize and announce the good news of God’s justice and new creation. Building up after tearing down.
Hosea 11:1-11
We often turn toward God’s love or God’s justice. This leads us to the thought that the God of the Hebrew Bible and the God of the New Testament are somehow different – the God of the Hebrew Bible is focused on justice and vengeance, while the God of the New Testament is concerned with love.
Ignoring this tension ignores that tension reveals even more to us about God than we imagine. We know that God does not seek justice at the expense of love, nor love at the expense of justice.
Jesus holds this tension in perfect harmony.
He invites himself to dinner at the home of tax collectors who cheats their neighbors, extending grace and an invitation to repentance.
He drew in the dirt to disperse a rock-wielding mob and then told a woman to go and sin no more.
As he took his last breaths on the cross, Jesus extended forgiveness to the man next to him and invited the man to be with him in paradise.
That is gospel Good News. That is the good news revealed from Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21.
Amos 8
Amos declared that the superficial religion of many – their Sunday morning best while not caring for the poor, going so far as to make a profit off the backs of the poor – was about to end. Resulting in their destruction. While it may not seem like it, the sending of Amos by God to the northern kingdom was an act of compassion and grace.
God was all out of patience, and the summer fruit represented Israel’s end, looking delicious and inviting on the surface but rotting from the inside out.
Their temple praise – their Sunday morning songs – would turn to wailing and sadness.
Reading like Amos eight makes us, or at least me, uncomfortable because we do not like to think of God being anything but patient, loving, and kind; full of grace, and slow to anger. A critique of me is that, as a preacher, I lean too much into the grace of God at the expense of holiness. I do not like the critique, but it is probably fair.
The problem Israel faced is similar to one we wrestle with daily – trampling on and taking advantage of the poor instead of with the people God sends to us; instead of being the people God has called us to be.
Amos 7
The prophets point out to the people of God where God is calling us to go when complacency takes root, and we miss the movement of God happening before our eyes. The prophet, then and now, has the task of bringing a word from God to the people. In the case of Amos, this word from God was to return to the will of God.
Amos is one of six minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. “Minor” describes the length of Amos’ writings compared to the more loquacious “major” prophets. Still, it does not diminish the word he brings to the people of God.
The prophet's work disturbs those in power or places of comfort when those in power act in ways contrary to God’s will for all creation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the ministry of Christ. In the church, we believe Jesus to be more than a prophet. Christ is the Word of God Made Flesh, the Loquacious Word of God. We believe Jesus came to inaugurate God’s rule on earth, to set right the human propensity to set ourselves against God’s will, and to fulfill all of the requirements of the Law.
The rejection of Christ by the nations was foreshadowed when he was rejected by his hometown, nearly run off a cliff by a congregation made up of his extended family, for proclaiming God’s word.
But the Good News is that no matter how often we reject those called to deliver God’s word, no matter how often we reject the One who fulfilled God’s word, God does not stop sending the prophets. Christ does not abandon us.
Prophets sent to our nation during the civil rights movement of the last century were rejected, even killed. Still, today, people like William Barber and Liz Theoharris call our nation to God’s will.
Prophets are being sent to the church today advocating for the inclusion of people God has already called to ministry, whether we like that calling or not.
“I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycomore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’”
God continues to call and equip the prophets today in the same way God calls and equips disciples – calling upon imperfect, untrained, unprepared people like Amos to go to new places and lead the people of God to God’s will. It sounds like an impossible task, and it would be if not for the grace of the One doing the calling and equipping.
Galatians 5
Paul’s letter was not written for you.
Paul’s letter, Paul’s letters, and all of the Holy Scriptures were written for the Church. The Body of Christ is assembled through the love of God our Creator, the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Paul writes, “the fruit of the Spirit is.” Singular. Not the “fruits of the Spirit are.” Do you notice the difference? The Fruit of the Spirit is one gift, requiring one another, produced through the Holy Spirit and not individual Christians. Through Christ’s body. The Fruit of the Spirit – the Spirit-Filled Life – is to learn to be a disciple and live a life where we require others in our lives.
The Fruit of the Spirit describe the Body of Christ, made flesh in the world through the work of the Holy Spirit.
We need one another.
Life centered on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Life made possible through Word and Sacrament.
Life free from religion for the sake of self-improvement instead freed to live a life only possible through the work of the Holy Spirit. Life centered on who you are – beloved and free – where who you are not is no longer interesting.
Life where I need you, and you need me. We need one another.
Life, new life, in Christ.
Trinity Sunday
John 16:12-15
June 12, 2022
The Holy Spirit will guide us.
Jesus tells us the Holy Spirit will “take you by the hand and guide you into all the truth there is.” The Holy Spirit will not “draw attention to himself, but will make sense out of what is about to happen, indeed out of all that” Jesus “has done and said.”
Jesus tells his disciples that they, we, will not be left on our own to make sense of the work of God. We are not left to ourselves to decipher what a faith-filled life looks like or how to respond to the call Jesus has placed on each of our lives.
Pentecost
Acts 2
God takes the most fragmented parts of our modern “post-Babel” lives and makes them whole. This is part of God making all of creation whole. We bear witness to this when we gather around Christ’s table. This is our witness in our worship, mission, and teaching. The unification of the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit – bringing people who speak different languages or only listen to siloed voices together to speak the one language of the Holy Spirit, the one language of God. The language of Grace.
May 22, 2022
Acts 16
There is no such thing as a “self-made Christian.” A heart opened to the works of God, along with our conversion or faith, are acts initiated by God. This is why when the church speaks of repentance, we remember that we have been repented, that it is the inward working of the Holy Spirit that enables us to turn toward God.
Jesus’ life and ministry testify to this.
Jesus called his disciples. They did not seek him out. People would come to him only after he began his ministry and word spread.
In situations and places where hope and the presence of God seemed to be surely gone – a possessed man chained up among the tombs or at the grave of Lazarus – Jesus, the Lord, imitates what is needed for us to be open to the good news of new life that can only be found in him.
New life that calls us beyond the city gates. Moving us away from the safety of our comfort and into the lives of the people we least expect.
New life that opens our hearts and minds to receive the good news of the gospel. And in turn, we hear, once again, the good news of our salvation.
New life that breaks through the barriers of race, gender, identity, and more! Remember, Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth, meaning she was a rich woman. While just a few weeks ago, Tabitha or Dorcas was caring for the poor and forgotten. There is no one outside the reach of the movement of God.
Acts 10 and 11; Revelation 21
May 15, 2022
“Will we allow the Holy Spirit to prod us today, to give us a vision, to drag us, as it dragged our apostolic forebearers before us, kicking and screaming, all the way toward the wideness of God’s mercy?”[7]
In just a few minutes, we will pray that Charlie is so filled with the same Holy Spirit that moved the home of Cornelius that he is never the same. And because he will not be the same, we pray that we will not be the same. The work of the Holy Spirit moves us beyond our bolted down pews, and our Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy toward the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, toward the wideness of God’s mercy.
Do not misunderstand. Doctrine, disciple, and practice are necessary for the church, just as the law was necessary for Peter and Israel. But our attachment to constancy in doctrine and practice puts us at a disadvantage when it comes to the work of God because we often see the way things are (or the way things were) to be more powerful than what God is doing before our very eyes.
Still, the witness we bear to the world is to the One who does not see our comfort in constancy as a hurdle to the wideness of God’s mercy.
This was the case when Peter received a vision, and Holy Spirit descended upon the home of Cornelius.
It was the case when Jesus dined with Zacchaeus, extending grace to a man who had cheated his neighbors.
It was the case when the power of Sin and Death could not hold back the gravestone.
And it will be the case in just a few moments when the waters of baptism clothe Charlie in new life. And oddly enough, new life that all of us have been clothed in as well because of the wideness of God’s mercy.
May 8, 2022
Acts 9:34-34
Our fixed structures often lead to paralysis and death for those on the margins or lower rungs of the social ladder. But the One who ordered the chaos of creation, was worshiped in a manger, and carried a cross telling fishermen to drop their nets, and the ill and dead to get up.
In Aeneas’ healing and Tabitha’s rising these social systems have been rendered null and void.
And church, we bear witness to this. We are witnesses to how Jesus Christ has overcome the power of Sin and Death. In the empty tomb, leaving his burial clothes behind, Jesus tells the world no more with we be separated from God or one another.
It is not that the last shall be first; they are.
It is not that the dead shall live; when we were dead to our Sin Jesus offers us new life.
In Christ no one stays in their place: fishermen will preach, the paralyzed walk, and the dead live again.
From death in Sin to new life through Grace.
May 1, 2022
Acts 9:1-20
Our stories of encountering the risen Lord are how we bear witness to Mary’s Easter morning discovery of the empty tomb.
We are witnesses to the very voice that knocked Saul on his behind, who spoke to Ananias, who overcame the power of Sin and Death, and who continues to speak to us today.
Luke tells us Saul was completely changed – from Enemy-Number-One to being the person who would carry the Good News of God in Jesus Christ to the Gentile world. To people like you and me.
We stand today as witnesses to the awesome work of God along the Damascus Road.
It would have been easy, maybe even justified, for God to write off Saul. After all, Saul was Enemy-Number-One of the Church. But as we read each year on Good Friday, God is not in the business of writing people off. When Jesus was nailed to the cross, he prayed for the forgiveness of the very people who killed him.
And that is Grace – the nothing you can do to earn or lose it love and forgiveness of God.
Right now, it is yours, just as it is Saul’s and Ananias’.
Right now, it is yours, just as it was extended to the soldiers who put the nails in Jesus’ hands and who mocked him.
Right now, this amazing Grace is yours just as it is for the person you might believe deserves it the least.
The conversion of Saul is a story of God’s Grace before it is the story of Saul being converted or changed. A story of the work of God in the people and times we least expect.
As resurrection people, this is what we bear witness to – the work of God.
To one another.
To the world.
Today is a celebration of the Gospel Good News that Sin and Death do not hold the last word. The very thing Mary went to the tomb to
confront and mourn is no more because of Christ.
Easter is not just the celebration of the tomb being empty. In the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see how the darkness of this world has been and will be overcome and ultimately annihilated by God.
Mary arrived in the garden at night expecting to weep and mourn the rising of the sun yet revealed the victory of the Son, living, breathing, with no need for his burial clothes. Jesus’ physical presence and emptiness of the tomb echoed what he said to Mary’s sister, Martha, at the graveside of their brother Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by
believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
April 10, 2022
Palm Sunday
Luke 19:28-40
In our procession of fools, we miss that there is so much more to this story.
In each stop between the Mount of Olives (Palm Sunday) and The Skull (the cross), Jesus is gathering all of humanity into him. The best and the worst we have to offer. No prayer or ritual must first be spoken or performed on our part.
If last Sunday, Mary’s anointing of Jesus with perfume was the prelude to Holy Week, then Palm Sunday is Act One of a larger story. A story that we have all been gathered into. Fleming said it best, “the testimony of the four evangelists (gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), the testimony of the Christian church, is that in this event, in this godforsaken death, the cosmic scale has been conclusively tipped in the opposite direction, so that sin and evil and death are not the last word and never will be again.”
There is so much more to this story.
April 3, 2022
Luke 12:1-8
I want to be Mary, we should all want to be Mary, but none of us are., all the time.
Yes, sometimes we are Mary but other times we are either Martha busying ourselves with work, or we are Judas, wanting to attach Jesus to our political agendas. Nevertheless, Christ gathers all to himself when he goes to the cross.
Adoration, gratitude, and worship while in the next breath being made righteous, still being a recipient of the grace of God when we reject or betray the gift afforded to each of us.
And still, Jesus is gathering us in. Jesus is gathering you in.
Grace is and always has been extended to the faithful and unfaithful – to Martha, Mary, and Judas, to you and me. Inclusive of all people, Christ is gathering us into the transforming light of his grace. A light so bright that the darkness of this cross cannot drown it out.
March 27, 2022
Lent 4
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
Both sons forgot who they were, first and foremost, who they were before the world applied its labels and new identification.
The father in this parable must have been looking for him, Junior, to see his son returning. On top of the family home, he watched, looked, waited, and then ran; in the same way, God continues to seek us out, gathering us in, calling us child, calling us beloved.
This is the same Father who at his Son’s baptism shouted, “You are my Son, the Beloved,”[7] and at the Transfiguration said, “This is my son, the beloved.”[8]
Howard Thurman
Theologian Howard Thurman wrote, “you don’t need to leave home to forget”[9] who you are.
Junior and Senior forgot, but the one who sought them both would not let them forget.
The world will call you many things. Your sin will call you many things. But the One who insists on embracing you and throwing a banquet in your honor will not allow you to forget and is calling you beloved, a child of God, even when we forget.
March 20, 2022
Luke 13:1-9
Lent 3, Year C
The hope we need in a world broken by sin is that our fruitfulness comes by the laboring of the divine gardener, the One who is devoted to the flourishing, the fruitfulness of all creation, despite what our sin says about us.
By gathering all of creation up in his mercy and grace, Jesus is cultivating us toward fruitfulness, answering the question pastors love to debate with one another in large arenas and dank church basements – “how has God has dealt with our sin?”
The starting point for us is to repent, turning away from the bright lights of sin and toward the faithfulness of the gardener. The One who promises never to forsake or abandon. The One who has covered us in the manure of his divine grace so that we are made clean by his righteousness.
Grace and mercy.
Mercy and grace.
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March 13, 2022
Luke 13:31-35
Transformation through the faithfulness of the One who did not turn his back on us after lamenting that we had turned our backs on him.
And the good news is that as you have been gathered and sent, you are not sent out covered in the dirt the world has smeared on you by puppets who would like to think they can leave a lasting impact on your life.
In Jesus gathering us up, we are made clean.
The cause of Jesus’ lament, our sin, does not hold the final word. Jesus has invited us to stop the puppet show and to step into his grace under his wing of love, protection, and transformation.
Luke 4:1-13
Lent 1, Year C
The Gospel good news is that there are no ifs. There are no buts. No fine print.
We have begun our journey through Lent in the wilderness because Lent is a time of being in the desert, being in the wilderness. We live in the wilderness. We live in a world where the temptation to assume Christ's throne as our own is always present. We opt for the most reasonable decision, planned entirely, leaving nothing to chance, and in doing so, push God entirely out of the picture. God, relegated to the private, while we wander the wilderness seeking ways to ascend when the truth is that God has already descended to us.
Jesus Christ has descended to us, bring the divine gift of grace: unmerited, nothing you can do about it, no if/then's attached love, forgiveness, and mercy.
Many people view Lent as a season to get better through piety. So often, our Lenten practices are laden with the same temptations presented to Jesus in the wilderness – if you do this, then you will ascend, you will achieve, you will be blessed. And if you don't, then you are less than, not worthy of ascension or achieving.
The good news for us, during Lent and year-round, is that the One tempted in the wilderness is also the crucified One, sacrificing himself in your place, and the one who rose on the third day. The One in whom new life is made available, without prereq, no if/then's, for those who cannot resist the temptation. He gathers us up in his grace.
Luke 9:27-36
Listen to him.
Though we are shaped by social, cultural, and economic pressures that tell us we must ascend, if we listen, if we set aside our own noise, we hear words of grace. A word that tells us God will not be confined to the mountain-top, theology, or Law. A word that tells us God is present with us now, in this sanctuary, in our homes, in the places we feel most alone.
God has come down, dwelling among us in flesh and blood, a holy and living tabernacle, and is not set apart from us. God is seeking us, giving us something different from G-law-spel – a law-filled list of you must X, Y, and Z to receive grace.
Jesus is speaking to the church today.
Listen to him.
Set aside the Law and follow, for the Law of Moses and the words of the prophets have been fulfilled. God has come to us. God continues to come to us. Because God is continually seeking us out, the love of God, the amazing grace of our Lord and Savior is always yours. It never ends.
February 20, 2022
Luke 6:27-38
Blessed are the poor.
Blessed are the hungry.
Blessed are those who weep.
Blessed are you when you are hated.
Woe to the rich.
Woe to the full.
Woe to those who laugh or mock.
Woe to those who are falsely propped up.
Blessed are you, the one overlooked by the world.
Woe to you who cannot see beyond your pride and self-interest.
Blessed are you, the one deemed a loser by the standards of the world.
And woe to you who insist on those standards being kept.
In this flip, Jesus declares a new way of living and being. Jesus is not offering a list of character qualities for us to aspire toward. No, Jesus’ opening words in the Sermon on the Plain create a new list of contrasts between the kingdom of Caesar and the Kingdom of God with the implications of Jesus’ flip detailed in our scripture reading.
Love your enemies. No thanks. I can barely love my neighbors.
Bless those who curse you. I would rather pass. They can have their blessing when they stop their cursing.
Pray for those who abuse you. Maybe next week, Jesus.
Do to others as you would have them do to you. How about doing to others as they have done to me.
These tongue-in-cheek responses better match the game we all have been playing since birth. This is a game where getting even, settling the score, are preferred norms. Instead of being merciful just as God is merciful, we trick, deceive, and get even. And if we do not do those actions, someone will surely, do it to us.
February 13, 2022
1 Corinthians 15:12-20
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ… the last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
The resurrection of Jesus Christ and the resurrection assured to us is an affirmation of the whole life of Jesus.
The resurrection of Christ offers us hope when we cannot see the fruits of our labors today.
An affirmation of the significance of every human life.
An affirmation of our hope placed in the news that our sins are forgiven, a place at Jesus’ table is prepared for us, and that the anxieties of this life caused by pain and death do not hold the final word.
Paul is making an argument. He is not relying on testimony from the tomb, that will come later from the gospel writers. For Paul, not having seen the empty tomb himself, Paul did Jesus on the Damascus Road must be empty, and because of the FACT that Jesus is resurrected. And because Jesus is risen, we too can live with the hope given in the FACT that the same resurrection is assured to all of creation through the grace that goes before us. The grace that overcomes rumors to the contrary. The grace that forgives.
The rumors, according to Paul, are false. Christ is risen, and so shall we.
February 6, 2022
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
The Gospel Good News of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s vindication over the power of sin and death in this life.
It is Good News.
It is Good News because what happened on the cross and because Jesus Christ is risen, all of your failures to adequately answer the question “What Would Jesus Do?” are forgiven. Once-for-all forgiveness for you.
The tomb remains empty so that you will remember that all of your sins – the ones they will not let you forget and the ones you cannot forgive yourself for – are forgotten. Buried with Jesus Christ in his death were all of your sins. And in the light of the Good News of his resurrection, his perfect righteousness is now yours.
The best news.
Good News.
This Good News is the news that is proclaimed week after week, the best kind of broken record because it does not matter if you are an orthodox stick in the mud or an unorthodox heretic. It does not matter if you cling to the resurrection news or find it impossible to believe because you are not who they say you are, what you do, or what you believe.
Because of the Good News encountered by the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus – Jesus Christ, resurrected – witnessed by the Church for over 2000 years, you are who Jesus is – a beloved child of God. You are what he has done. You are perfect – made perfect by his righteousness and unwavering love.
January 16, 2022
1 Corinthians 12:1-12
The lordship of Christ is not a declaration the church can make on its own or a declaration the church can sustain over generations without the help of God. And this is where we find the gospel good news – regardless of what gifts the Spirit has given you, regardless of whether you think you are worthy of such a gift, and regardless of the priority others might place on those gifts God is going to use you to further God’s kingdom. Buckle-up because God promises to use the gifts God has given to individual members of Christ’s body to build up the entire body, and in building up the whole body, the Kingdom of God is advanced, revealed a bit more as we await Christ’s promise to return, and the Kingdom of God is fully revealed.
Christ has leveled the field. He is Lord, and there is no hierarchy. No one higher than the other because the lordship of Jesus Christ, a gift to all of creation, refocuses the attention of the church away from division and conflict, pointing us toward the salvific work that began in the manger, was revealed in a star, and was realized when Mary and Mary found the tomb to be empty.
January 9, 2022 - Baptism of the Lord
Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
Patterns are changing whether we want them to or not.
We observe the patterns of life in the church differently. But because Jesus is lord and because what happened in the Jordan cannot be undone just like what happened at your baptism cannot be undone even though the patterns of our lives may change the call to discipleship and the pattern of following Christ’s example does not. We may gather online or at home for worship, we may have small gatherings in sanctuaries, and what we do today might shift in the weeks to come and our call to follow is the same. This is why the patterns of the church; the liturgy of our shared life is so important. These things give us an unmovable guidepost by which we can keep moving onward toward what John Wesley called Christian perfection, perfecting our lives in Christ because by Christ’s actions we have been right before God.
Micah 5:2-5a
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)
While the Good News of Christ’s embodied life fills me with joy, it is even better news for the people of a nowhere village than those living in an empire like, well, us. For people who live in the empire, with all the privileges of Pax Romana, those same privileges can blur our vision and prevent us from seeing that Christ would not be born and Virginia Hospital Center.
Mary’s Magnificat was not sung in the Temple or National Cathedral. No, her song of praise and servanthood was sung in the backwoods as she and her cousin lived under the boot of the empire. We often say that God does not take sides, but God has done just that in Bethlehem and through Mary. In flesh and blood, God has taken the side of those on the margins.
With those pulling a double-shift only to be barely able to put food on the table.
With those working in the fields, feeding the empire while not being able to come out of the shadows.
Mary’s boy with a birth certificate stamped in a one-donkey town takes the tidings of comfort and joy we sing of and amplifies them to those who are overlooked, forgotten, and ignored.
God is revealed in the places, and in the people we least expect. We might expect God to be announced in grand or ornate spaces, and God is revealed in these spaces, but, as the prophet Micah said, and Mary and Elizabeth reveal the embodied presence of God, God in flesh and bone, will take place in a town of little consequence and through a person that many might overlook. This is what makes the Good News of the Gospel good news for all creation: God did not enter human history through power and influence as we describe those terms. Mary’s song of faithfulness, along with the words of the prophet, invites us to look for the hospitality, love, and redemption of God in the people and places we least expect.
Off the map places.
People overlooked.
December 5, 2021
Luke 1:68-79
The peace Zechariah prophesied has no meaning apart from the will and purpose of God. Let me repeat it; the peace Zechariah prophesied has no meaning apart from the will and purpose of God. The church cannot make sense of peace and pursue justice in the name of peace, apart from the peace of God embodied in flesh and blood and laid in a manger. The peace of God was proclaimed and prophesied by Zechariah and Elizabeth, "an old couple, an old, hopeless, powerless, futureless couple. The peace of God was embodied by a helpless child, dependent on his poor parents, not born into a politically influential family.
Jesus was born into a world where the sword achieved the peace of an empire. Peace by the pointy end of a sword, gun, or any instrument of violence exemplifies how well we do not understand the very thing we all want for ourselves generations to come. Humanity was and continues to be unable to save itself or secure its own peace, so much so that God broke into human history in a manger in Bethlehem, "among the poor, lonely, old and impotent" and saved us from ourselves.
The prophetic hymn of Zechariah and his son’s voice crying from the wilderness calls into question whether we know what we are talking about when we use words like justice and peace. The word “peace” appears 329 in the Christian Bible; 91 times in our New Testament. Each New Testament reference to peace points toward the salvific word of God in Jesus Christ – explicitly or implicitly by pointing to humanity’s inability to secure peace on our own.
God did not enter human history through the door of Caesar or influential politicians, and this is where we find the Good News of Zechariah's hymn, Advent, and the gospel. Peace is something God makes, something God has done. Peace, is a gift to all creation to be sure, and something God promises is coming again. And in the church, we live as a viable alternative to peace through any means apart from God. That we might be saved from the consequences of our attempts to take matters into our own hands, creating justice and peace through means that lead us to anywhere but the peaceful life we desire. Through the tender mercy of God, giving light to all who are in darkness, and guiding our feet on the path of peace. Christ is coming. Amen.
Jeremiah 33:14-16
The good ole days and even the status quo may be OK or even great for us, but for many, the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God, Christ's return cannot come quickly enough. What we may long for could be a return to pain and suffering for others. So, what are we to do? What is to be done? This is the rub; there is nothing for us to do. The prophet Jeremiah did not leave a checklist. I checked the gospels, and Jesus did not leave five easy steps to the second coming. All we can do is look forward, not backward, waiting, anticipating, and trusting the coming reality embodied in the promise of Chris's return, proclaiming the reign of Christ.
We are living between two Advents. Christ has come; Christ will come. The tension can be unbearable, and this is the life the Church lives. Between the two Advents, we find ourselves between the good ole days and what has been promised by God.
The good ole days and status quo are not good news, but because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we can be proclaimers and a community that embodies the reign of Christ, the Righteous Branch, here and now. A community of people committed to waiting, anticipating, and trusting, all the while knowing that we may look odd or seem out of place in doing so. But our oddness points away from ourselves, and toward the new normal the Christ promises is coming.
Mark 13
November 14, 2021
Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Dismantling this world is frightening. But in Mark 13 Jesus describes a dismantling to realize God’s justice and love for all of creation. God’s redemption and transformation of this broken world is good news for all; the comfort and privilege for which we work and to which we cling instantly pale in the light of God’s justice and love.
Fleming put it best, "No suffering can be properly understood until the Lord comes – but he will come. God is accomplishing his purposes in spite of all appearances to the contrary. Nothing can lie beyond the power of God to redeem and transform. We believe this because we have been seized by the unique authority of the voice of Jesus Christ."
Knowing God will get the last word, our acts of mercy and justice, along with our communal acts of faithfulness, become signs of the God Kingdom – Queendom, Kin-dom – that is yet to come.
October 31, 2021
John 8:31-36
While we may live free to do as we please because of geography, our condition as sinners does not change. There is no amount of flag-draped apparel, apple pie, or fireworks that can undo this condition.
In following Jesus, we have been sent from the consequences of our sin. All of them. That is what we mean when we declare our sins to be forgiven. That very declaration of forgiveness is our declaration of freedom, a declaration of dependence, not independence, upon one in who we find freedom. Freedom has little to do with our ability to deserve or earn it, and instead, freedom extended to all of creation, regardless of geography or birthright.
Freedom in Jesus Christ is more than forgiveness. Freedom in Jesus Christ is liberation from what we have turned toward at the expense of our relationship with our creation. And this freedom was not bought with military might or thoughtful diplomacy. It is freely offered to us through the righteousness of the One whose righteousness we clothe ourselves in when we are baptized. The freedom transforms us from the inside out when we listen to Jesus and place our whole trust in his grace. In the church, we call this new life. It is what Bartimaeus pleaded for, what the rich young man could not imagine, and what the saints of the past have placed their trust in.
The truth revealed in and through Jesus Christ and the subsequent freedom from sin that is ours, we can, like the saints before us, walk in his way of love in the world that others might know that freedom is theirs.
October 24, 2021
Mark 10:46-52
Generous living as a disciple of Jesus Christ is to be like Bartimaeus, like the saints of the past, to give our whole selves over to being formed, shaped by the one who calls out, over the noise of the world that rebukes us, telling us we are insignificant and not enough, not worthy of someone else's time. Our time, our generosity, our love joins us with Christ. This is what it means in our communion liturgy when we pray that we may be for the world the body of Christ redeemed by his blood in transforming this world, as we work together to ensure all are loved, cared for, and heard. In giving our whole selves to Jesus, we can do what the rich young man could not do and live as James and John could not imagine, but what Bartimaeus the blind beggar did without hesitation. Namely, allowing the establishing and maintaining of wealth and status and prestige to take a backseat to follow the extravagant grace of God in Jesus Christ.
Faith in Christ is not simply the conviction that Jesus is our divine errand boy or healer, but instead that Jesus wants us to follow. All of us. Every part of us. Because Bartimaeus followed, his story stands as a rebuke to the world and an invitation to us who may not be as energetic or even as faithful in our following of Jesus. But in following, like Bartimaeus, like James and John, the extravagant generosity of God in Jesus Christ belongs to you, to me, to all of creation. And in that generosity, we are free to live a new life in Jesus Christ, throwing off the garments of this life. A life of sharing our time, our money, our love, sharing our whole selves.
Mark 10:17-31
October 10, 2021
Eternal life, salvation, and the kingdom of God are not things to be bought or earned. The rich young man did not expect Jesus to tell him to sell everything. The rich young man wanted to talk about social morality, practical ethics, or have Jesus say to him after bragging about his righteousness that he was good to go, nothing else to be done. Go young rich man, and enjoy your eternal life.
The rich young man "lacked one thing.”[iii] This one thing was beyond conventional morality or practical ethics. This man needed to repent and turn away from the one thing preventing him from being all-in with God. The man's conversion was the other of the day, not an impromptu yard sale. This is where we appear in the story.
The man’s question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”[iv] was faulty from the beginning. You see, eternal life, salvation, and the kingdom of God are not things we receive by doing. There is nothing to be done because to inherit something, as the young man incorrectly stated, is to receive something. The thing you receive is yours, end of the story. The only people who inherit eternal life, or are saved, are those who realize salvation, for all people, is an impossible miracle.
Salvation is an act of God, and the ultimate inheritance and a gift we do not deserve, could never buy, and did not see coming.
A gift paid for at a great price.
Once realized, this gift transforms our hearts, becoming the thing we cherish most so that we do not have any other gods, idols before the Lord.
This good news transforms the entire way we live and view the world in such a generous way that we do not ask questions like, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”[v]
What percentage do I give?
How much do I have to give?
Do I really have to give at all?
The generous giving we, you, do is not an obligation required to earn favor with God.
We give generously, all that we can because Christ has already given everything away for us.
A religious person, like the rich young man, may ask, “well, how much is the right amount?” but those who have experienced the amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ know generous giving is not about percentages or tax write-offs.
This is not a money issue. It is a Gospel issue.
Life as a disciple of Jesus Christ is about having your attitude about money, along with everything else, shaped by the good news that Christ has already accomplished all that was required for you to inherit eternal life.
Nothing competes for your love of God and neighbor more than money.
Nothing works against us growing in faith, following Jesus, maturing as disciples, and surrendering all that we have to God more than money, the pursuit of wealth, and the management of a lifestyle.
Jesus did not want the rich young man’s money, and God does not want yours. Like the young rich man, God wants your heart, and Jesus has already paid a lot for it.
In giving ourselves over to God, our whole selves, we care less about percentages and numbers, knowing that what we generously give pales in comparison to what has already been given for us.
Mark 9:38-50
September 26, 2021
The methods we follow, proclaim, and serve in Jesus' name may work for us, but the truth is that we do not get to put a trademark on Jesus, and we do not get to copyright the amazing grace we proclaim week after week.
Jesus was not interested in squabbling over team affiliation or franchising rights. Instead, Jesus redirected the disciples' attention to something more important than claiming credit for the redeeming work he would accomplish through his life, death, and resurrection. Namely serving the least, lost, and lonely.
September 19, 2021
Mark 9:30-37
The disciples' missteps are our missteps. Their feet in the mouth moments of embarrassment are our moments. Their confusing, disorienting, and abrupt mistakes and misreading of Jesus based on their experiences of the world mirror the confusion, disorientation, and abruptness we feel when Jesus calls us away from the ways of this world and invites us, after seeking us first, to seek him, to follow, just as the first disciples did, just as disciples have for centuries.
Mark 8:27-38
As those who seek Christ, we have been freed, along with all of creation, from the burden of perfection knowing Christ has done for us which we have never been able to do. Peter could not see it and still, he was the rock upon which Christ built the church. God continues to work through those who follow Christ today, proclaiming his Lordship over all creation. God continues to work through you and through me, freeing us to follow. No more. No less.
Psalm 125
Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, extending peace that surpasses all understanding to the righteous – the people who follow God’s law, loving God and neighbor perfectly – but also to those of us who depend upon grace being extended to us. Through his life, death, and resurrection not only did Jesus display what peace looked like among the nations and neighbors but by taking our unrighteousness upon himself on the cross we have been made righteous. The righteousness of God in Jesus Christ became our righteousness not because of anything we have done or ever could do, not because of our ability to secure peace for ourselves or others, rather because of Christ’s insistence that Pax Romana, peace by the sword, would not continue to hold a grip over creation.
In the Kingdom of God peace is not the result of the sword or a world at war with itself or human accomplishment. The peace of Christ, extended far and wide, extended indiscriminately, is the result of Christ’s faithfulness.
August 8, 2021
Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, Arlington, Virginia
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
We are all like Absalom if Absalom had narrowly avoided that tree and was restored to the Father who loves him. And that is because another King’s Son rode on a royal donkey to a tree. In his body on the tree, on the cross, he suffers the curse that belongs to every David and Absalom, every Goliath, every apostle, every saint, and every sinner. The curse that belongs to you and me. So, it’s not just that our sins have been forgiven. It’s bigger than forgiveness.
The sword departs every one of our houses at the cross.
No more does Nathan say, it will never let up because of what you did.
Sin has consequences, yes, but they are borne by another for you.
Grace is the opposite of karma. It is offensive sure, but it is also amazing.
Grace tells us that the way the world is, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth is not what God had intended. Grace defies the logic we have accumulated from the way the world appears to be ordered. Grace interrupts the just consequences of our unjust actions. We would be in big trouble, every one of us, if karma got the last word. But Grace tells us that in the Kingdom of God we will never reap what we sow and that is the best news we could ever hear because for my part I know what I’ve sown. The Grace of God in Jesus Christ says that we do not have lean on our own religiosity
2 Samuel 7:1-14a
July 18, 2021
David was able to control God just as much as I can prevent the movement of God with a well-placed Bible on a table. No matter how hard David tried, no matter how hard we try we are unable to domesticate, to control, to keep at bay the movement and presence of God. This section of 2 Samuel is titled “God’s Covenant with David” with God being the center of the story and not the actions of David no matter how well-intended or pious David’s actions were.
Introduced in this oracle to Nathan was the unconditional grace of God to Israel, the bedrock of hope, securing the hope of David and his people even when they turned away from God. God would raise up a house out of David’s name. David’s son will raise a temple, a house for the Lord, and ultimately the messianic hopes of all creation would bear David's name. Jesus would be born into David's line, bearing his name, establishing the house of God as the cornerstone, built upon the witness of the prophets and the apostles.
This is the kingdom, the Kingdom of God, we saw inaugurated in Bethlehem.
It was the kingdom, the Kingdom of God, that could not be broken by the pains of the cross and the separation of death.
And it is the kingdom, the Kingdom of God, Christ promises will be fully realized, by all of creation. All of creation repenting, turning back towards God and away from the security promised to us by power and lifestyle.
God’s Kingdom cannot be contained, manipulated, or used to legitimize anything other than the reign of God in Jesus Christ.
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Israel's story in 1 and 2 Samuel is one of change. The cycle of the story in 1 and 2 Samuel from Israel's defeat and loss of the Ark to the Philistines defeat and Israel's reclaiming of the Ark does not bring to reader, it did not bring Israel back to the original starting point. The story may have pushed Israel into a new physical location with a new King legitimized buy by the move but God, who had been with them - delivering them from captivity, bringing them all the way to the City of David - that God was steady, unwavering, and faithful.
Change was inevitable for the people of God then and is inevitable for the people of God today. We may change how we gather, where we gather, and then change it all again, but what we give witness to and proclaim does not change - Christ resurrected and reigning. We may dance and sing, we may play the organ, riff on a guitar, or bang on a cowbell and God remains God. God remains with us by the love of God our Creator, the grace of Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
Back to Uzzah for a second. I know that it sounds like Uzzah was trying to help and he was. There are many thoughts on why he was struck down – he was too close to God’s holiness, or it was an issue of purity, meaning he was not ritually clean for the procession to Jerusalem, he was not ritually prepared to come before the presence of God.
For us, we believe that God’s power and presence was nurtured in the ark of Mary’s womb, God in Jesus Christ who suffered for us rather than striking us down. As we move closer to exiting this pandemic the power of Jesus Christ is with us in our songs, prayers, and yes, even in our dancing – of celebration and even lament. With us in the same way Christ was with the saints before us and will be with the saints that are yet to come.
June 6, 2021
Mark 3:20-35
Throughout his ministry, beginning in Capernaum, continuing to the cross when he told a disciple and his mother, “Here is your mother. Woman here is your son,” Jesus created a new family, and frankly, it looked and continues to look different than many expect.
Those that were once out are now in.
Those unable to be healed are now whole.
Those relegated to the outskirts of the community are welcomed home with open arms, with a banquet fit only for a prodigal returning home.
This new family includes all of the people who look, think, and act like us, and all of the people who do not look, think or act like us. This new family includes every person excluded for whatever reason, especially those excluded because fear and bigotry were embraced more than the grace extended to us from God in Christ. This new family includes every person excluded by the church, where judgment is embraced more than love.
This is a family, we are a family-centered on the One who has promised us, assured us by his amazing grace, that all of creation will be made whole. A family held in the love of our Creator. A family empowered by wholly the Holy Spirit to engage in our own Capernaum campaign so that as we embrace one another exiting a year of separation everyone will know the love of their Creator, they would feel the amazing grace of Christ, and be filled themselves with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Pentecost 2021
Acts 2:1-21
On that Pentecost we were all there. All of us. All of you. And that is how the church was formed and sent - all people, engulfed by God’s amazing grace, not because of their merit rather because of the faithfulness of the One the church proclaimed then and proclaims today.
At Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no nuance missed, or nonverbal misconstrued the Holy Spirit descended so that those present, those in the past returned to dust, and us today might trust, we might believe, so that we will have faith grounded in the hard to believe, impossible and yet all too real promise made by God in Jesus Christ - the perfection demanded in the Law, obedience, and perfection, has been given to you, has been given to everyone, not by what we can do but rather by what has been done. What has been done, accomplished - resurrected and ascended - by Christ.
At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was once again set loose on creation, setting the church in motion, filling Peter with words to proclaim, setting us loose and filling us with the cosmic-breaking power of God not so that we would retreat back to the Upper Room. No, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit we, like Peter, point to the One who was present when that “wind from God swept across the face of the waters” and there was light. Proclaiming the Good News of Christ the church then and today proclaims - so much so that we may be confused for being drunk at nine o’clock in the morning - that we have been redeemed, we have been saved, regardless of time, location, or merit. The God who created and sustains has redeemed creation and continues to fill us, sending us out to proclaim it again and again.
Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Luke 24:36b-48
The disciples had witnessed first hand the work Jesus had been engaged in and the Gospels tell us early on that they believed. They believe after having received physical confirmation. The disciples believed enough to give up their lives and follow Jesus, an itinerant rabbi, for three years, and at every turn along the way physical signs were being performed to confirm who Jesus was to the disciples and the world.
Every day, for three years, the disciples were alongside Jesus, witnessing Jesus’ ministry and hearing Jesus’ teachings all of which pointed to and revealed his glory - the glory confirmed on Easter.
So now, on the day of the resurrection, the disciples needed another physical reminder of who Jesus is. Just as the Emmaus journey encountered ended with the sharing of a meal, here we have Christ revealing the fullness of the resurrection with a meal. With his real-physical presence.
In eating a piece of broiled fish and in the breaking and sharing of bread Jesus offered the disciples then and us today exactly what they and we need. And it is nothing new and it is the greatest of news. The physical presence of our Lord has been the norm since the beginning of his ministry. As the disciples were 2000 years ago, we are witness to the physical signs of Christ’s presence, recipients of faith by grace not so we can hold on to it for ourselves. No, instead we proclaim a new reality, the good news in the light of the empty tomb - that the resurrected life begins and is sustained not by anything we have done or will do. We are sustained through this very community, through being the body present to somebody - through word and sacrament, in the physical presence of Jesus Christ.
Christ is with us now, tomorrow, and always.
The cross is ultimately where the Palm Sunday procession leads. While the might and power of Pilate’s procession would lead to the seat of power, Jesus, the donkey riding Savior, would ultimately end up being put to death. Jesus, riding a borrowed colt, is making clear that he is not the Messianic king the crowds expected. There would be no violent overthrow of the Roman Empire. His disciples still, even after this parade did not get it, so much so that Peter would bring a sword with him to Gethsemane. Jesus, entering Jerusalem on a borrowed burro opposite Pilate and the might of Rome is the modern-day equivalent of borrowing a 1976 Ford Fiesta and entering DC opposite a Presidential motorcade entering the city from Joint Base Andrews. And yea, throughout the Gospels and affirmed by Saint Paul, this is exactly how God will upend the principalities and powers that stand opposite the Kingdom of God.
Regardless of where we have been worshiping over the past year, we, the church, Christ’s called and gathered body, are resurrection people. We do not believe that sin and death and the hopelessness of the valley of dry bones hold the last word. This has been difficult to remember of the past year, because, frankly, death and dry bones have been part of our everyday life.
Even if you have somehow managed to avoid the virus over the past year you have still had your life turned upside down. You might be working from home. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you've been separated from family – physically because of the virus and socially as well because of disagreement over the need for masks, distancing, and new protocols. Maybe you're coming off a shift where you were wearing one of those astronaut-like suits only to see people at the grocery store ignoring the practices that would keep them from needing your care. This past year has proved to us, whether we wanted it to or not, that no matter how hard we try, no matter how much we want it to be different, sin and death, and the valley of dry bones, are ever around us.
Week after week and day after day, the church being the same broken record that it has been since God called Christ out of a borrowed grave on the third day has proclaimed hope and promise. It didn't have to be like this, sin and death did not have to have a grip on creation. And church, we say it will not be like this. There is hope. We have been assured through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, promised that sin and death do not hold the last word. There is hope. Every time we proclaim Christ resurrected we are telling the world that what we see before us will not last and that the same God who can fill the driest of bones with breath, with life, can call a dead man from his eternal slumber, and raise a crucified Son will do the same to for us.
As the United Methodist Church’s communion liturgy states, suggesting Peter was right, “It is a good and joyful thing always and everywhere to give to give thanks,” to give praise to God. That is to give praise to God in Christ.
What we see here in this theophany, is that Christ is the Maker of heaven and earth, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, and that same one has promised that his yoke is light, and his burden is easy. His yoke is light, and his burden is easy because, as we see today, he is the end of the law and the prophets. Therefore, we can show up like Pastor Jeff said last week by being present and doing X, Y, and Z without the burden of expectations or performance. The one God tells us to listen to today promises “Behold, I make all things new!”
And that includes you.
He has and he is and he will do it.
The good news is not that we must ascend up to God by our own good deeds or spiritual striving; the good news of the Gospel is that the one who met Moses in a burning bush and spoke through Elijah has come down to us in Jesus Christ and will come again to….
Howard Thurman wrote of the glad surprise, describing it, “as if a man stumbling in the darkness, having lost his way, finds the spot at which he falls is the foot of a stairway that leads from darkness into light.” This is precisely what Peter did. He worshiped. The goal of discipleship is to be transformed, ourselves transfigured, not by our own hands rather through the one who to whom the law and all of the prophets pointed to. If not, what is the point of going up the mountain with Jesus?
We can try to contain the hope of the Good News revealed to us on the mountain but the Good News for us, revealed by the faithfulness of Peter, is that as Jesus’ humanity was transfigured so too will our humanity be called into perfect union with God, and not because of what we do when we come down from the mountain. Rather, because of the one who invites us to ascend, to worship, and to be transformed, and there is no containing that news.
Jesus Christ is the Hope of the world.
Every day we place hope in one another to get through the day, live as a community, and care for one another, and yet, Jesus tells us, and we see in his ministry that to follow him means our hope rests in him and nowhere else. This may sound lofty or church of me to say, but when we proclaim Jesus Christ to be Lord, placing our whole trust in his grace, we are saying that the ways of the world, those who ask for our allegiance and fidelity must take a backseat because have been called by the One in who God chooses to redeem the world.
Jesus Christ is the Hope of the world.
In and through him God reconciled the world. When we choose the ways of this world over the ways of God the faithfulness of Christ stands. The Hope of Christ remains. When our love for one another, when our love for God fails the love of Christ stands. In Christ the Kingdom of God was at hand, inaugurated by his life, death, and resurrection. The invitation given to his first disciples is an invitation to us to be part of the kingdom-building work that began on the banks of the Jordan River and Sea of Galilee.
Jesus gave a simple instruction, “Follow me.”[4] Two words, without much explanation and yet those words have set the course for the church, for generation upon generation of Christians to do one of two things: get it right or get it wrong.
When we get it right, when we drop our nets, reorienting our lives to follow Jesus miraculous things occur. The hungry are fed. The lost are found. Healing begins as divisions are cast aside. Our focus moves towards God and away from others who ask us to follow them.
Jesus gave a simple instruction, but when the church gets that instruction wrong, the results are anything but miraculous or a sign that the Kingdom of God is at hand. What we get wrong is thinking that the Kingdom of God has anything to do with our actions. The church has proven this time and time again, that we cannot follow the simplest instruction- to follow.
To follow Jesus as he fed the hungry on the side of a hill.
To follow Jesus as he stood beside a woman at a well.
To follow Jesus as he healed the sick and invited the marginalized into his Kingdom as honored guests.
To follow Jesus’ call to put our weapons down.
To follow Jesus is to follow the Hope of the world, not storm the castle, secure our own rights, or make anything great. To follow Jesus is to live in the Kingdom of God that is present now and work alongside other disciples as we await the fulfillment of Christ's kingdom.
Baptism of the Lord - Acts 19:1-17, Year B
In the waters of our baptism, God has clothed us in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and given us a full pardon. The baptism offered by John was not able to do this and if we think today that the person doing the sprinkling, pouring, or dunking has any control over what is happening in this holy moment we are wholly mistaken.
Professor James Torrance put it best: “But it is not the water, not the church, not the minister, not my faith, not my dying and rising, which forgives and heals. It is Christ who has done this for us and in us by the Spirit. So, we are baptized ‘in the name of Christ’ - not our own name - and we are baptized into a life of union with Christ, of dying and rising with Christ, in a life of communion.”
In your baptism, you have been raised into a new Hope, and that Hope is new life in the life and death of Jesus Christ.
“Remember Your Baptism and Be Thankful.”
Mark 13:24-37
We find ourselves in a time of already and not yet. The Kingdom of God is here, inaugurated in the Christmas manger we look toward, and not yet fully realized as we await Christ's return. As Advent people, we are doorkeepers and people of the watch.
Waiting seems more intense this year, as we wait in the pandemic, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for the day when masks a necessary accessory, waiting for life to get back to normal. The Advent waiting is of a different sort. We are stuck in a time when we can either wait for the promised redemptive work of God in Christ or a miraculous, self-achieving salvation through our own actions.
2020 has reminded us of what many in the rest of the world already knew and lived with every day... that the world is not as God would have it, that just as often God seems absent as present, that “Why do bad things happen…?” are still questions with no answers. We’re all like those in Mark’s parable. We are waiting based solely on the knowledge of the Master’s past actions not knowing if or when he will return. Until we have sat with the ambiguity and darkness of the world fully, we have not seriously considered the cost or scope of our redemption.
We wait for the return of Christ. We wait for the knock on the door, the hand reaching out, and the movement of the cosmos. In the season of Advent, we find ourselves in a position of being right where we hope to be but not yet entirely there as we await the promised return of Christ. The coming of Emmanuel.
www.teerhardy.com/blog
November 15, 2020
Ephesians 4:1-16
The unity we see is already present.
The peace we long for is here.
The absence of division and fraction is here.
It is just like Jesus says it is, like a treasure hidden in a field, buried in your backyard. Just because you do not realize it’s there. Just because you refuse to believe it’s there. Just because you won’t risk looking like a fool and go digging up your yard it t doesn’t mean it’s not there. It does not mean it’s not real and true. It doesn’t mean you are not already sitting on a fortune and could be living out of those riches.
This realization can be a “monumental, historic, scary, and angst-filled” moment. The release of agency is not something we have been trained or formed to do outside of the church. And frankly, with the focus more on division as of late, the Church has allowed this “monumental, historic, scary, and angst-filled” shift to fall by the wayside, allowing us to become dismissive of the history, traditions, and rituals that have set the church apart from the political mess swirling around us.
Unity within the body of Christ begins and ends in the lordship of the One who has called us to not only be a place where the divine and human intersect in the amazing grace of Christ, but we have been called to also be recipients of that grace. Held together by Grace. Held together by the peace of Christ.
Unity is something we must realize and live into but rather to live by faith is to trust that it’s something God is doing, by Word and Sacrament, by the Holy Spirit. The bad news is, the lack of unity in our nation, the lack of unity in the Church is too great for us to repair it. The good news is, it’s too great for us to repair it...but the Living God is able to...
Do you have swagger and confidence? What if I told you that swagger and confidence were traits of followers of Jesus? But... that swagger doesn't come from where you think it does.
Philippians 3:4b-12
We now live in the realest world, already transformed by Christ. Church, at its best, is just renewing our minds once a week to realize what Christ has already accomplished in spite of, and for, us.
The transformation we seek and the transformation we experience does not come as the result of our greatness or ability to transform ourselves. To not be conformed to this world and instead being transformed means we rely on the greatness and the ability of God.
We are transformed, the world around us is formed by what has happened in Christ and by what is happening here today in worship. What we do tomorrow, through the rest of the week is a direct result of the collision that has happened here in worship. A collision between the world as we know it – broken and in need of rescue – and the real world, established in the truth and power of Christ’s ultimate reign. This is the world when Christ reigns over all of creation, when the sick are healed, division mended, and enemies forgive one another.
July 26, 2020
Romans 8:26-39
“Who will condemn us?
Who is against us?
Who can separate us from the love of Christ?”
Paul continues, “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”
Jesus told his followers that the extravagance of God’s love, manifested in the Kingdom of God, is like that of a tiny mustard seed. It can appear small or insignificant, but when the mustard seed grows, the seed becomes a tree. “It is the greatest of shrubs” with room for the birds of the air to come and nest.
The truth is, it is cheap theology to look a the happenings of the world and to assume that God is in some way asleep at the wheel or worse punishing creation. To do so ignores not only what Saint Paul wrote to the church in Rome but also the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul’s rhetorical questions leave the gate open and open the possibility for us to grossly misinterpret, running amuck with the Amazing Grace, the Amazing love of God in Christ that has and continues to be freely given to all people, all of creation.
Pastor Brian Zahnd continued, “God has a disposition towards sinners and it’s the spirit of Jesus. This is the beautiful gospel… God is like Jesus. God has always been like Jesus. There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus; we haven’t always known this, but now we do. God is like Jesus! God is not a sadistic monster who abhors sinners and dangles them over a fiery pit.”[5]
“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News for those who gather to worship and those who have not been in quite some time, if ever, is that the love of God in Christ is ours. There is nothing we can do to earn this love and better yet, there is nothing we or anyone or anything can do to separate us from this amazing love.
Romans 8:1-11
Paul’s point is that sin - manifested by “peril…famine...sword...” - has been defeated by the cross of Christ. To live according to the Spirit is to live with the free confidence and joy that all that stands against God has already been defeated. By the Grace of God, we are free to set aside the agenda of life in the flesh - life consumed by us verse them, inequality and injustice, hatred and fear - and instead, being filled with the Spirit of Christ live life in a realm ruled by God. A world where Jesus is indeed Lord and the ways of the flesh fall by the wayside.
Life in the Spirit moves us from condemnation and guilt to a life that is not our own. This is the life we put on as we emerge from the waters of our baptism.
A life we cannot earn for ourselves, rather a life of freedom received by Grace.
A life that makes is possible for us to set aside rebellion and to be swept up in the Spirit of Christ.
A life free from what separates us.
A life that frees us to just get along.
A life free from condemnation and guilt.
Matthew 10:40-42
Compassion and mercy are the model given to us by Jesus for loving and welcoming every person who comes to us in His name.
The difficult task is that it will take more than a little bit of grace to open the doors of the church that have been closed to so many people - the LGBTQ+ community, single or divorced adults, those who haven’t opened a Bible in decades or ever. Then there are the doors of the church that have been used to segregate Christ’s body simply because the color of someone’s skin does not match ours.
The task before us is monumental, and frankly long overdue in being addressed. But the Good News in Jesus words are not only for the ones being welcomed or ushered to the balcony. The Good News also is for the church where people are sent to the balcony to make us more comfortable, the church where a hand of welcome is not extended to someone whose hand looks different from our own, and the church where we may not participate in such actions but we certainly are not doing anything to address the actions of the larger body. The Good News is for them and for us is that we are not the Queen’s guard. We are not the gatekeepers of Christ’s body and we certainly are not the gatekeepers of the Kingdom of God!
Praise be to God that we are not!
Our work is monumental and yet it is simple: to offer welcome. To extend a hand of invitation to experience the same amazing grace that changed our lives when we ourselves were once lost and hoping to the be found. The work ahead of us is to offer an embrace when an embrace is invited, and to give a cool cup of water in the sweltering humidity of a Virginia summer. God will take care of the rest, even when a button pushing pastor shows up on Sunday morning wearing too short running shorts.
The message of Pentecost is that everything has been done. Done for everyone.
The Holy Spirit at Pentecost, using every language known so that there would be no mistake, no mistranslation, no nuance missed, or nonverbal misconstrued came so that those present and us today might trust, we might believe, so that we will have faith grounded in the hard to believe, impossible and yet all too real promise made by God in Jesus Christ - the perfection demanded in the Law, obedience, and perfection, has been given to you, has been given to everyone, not by what we can do but rather by what has been done.
The outpouring of the power of God will touch everyone and there is nothing we can do to stop this. Try as we might to sell Jesus flavored Law - be a good person and do your best to do good things - doing our best to hide our tells behind masks of unwritten or rewritten church law, the Holy Spirit at Pentecost tells us something else.
New life for everything and everyone is present in Jesus Christ. The one who while ascended and seated at the right hand of God promises to never abandon or forsake. The burden on us is not to control others or even the Holy Spirit as we share this news. Our task is not greatness. Our task, given by Jesus, reiterated at Pentecost so that all can hear and believes is to do just that: believe. To trust in, to have faith that the One who overcame the power of sin and death can and will do the same for you and through you.
When I was a kid, like many of my friends, I was the proud owner of a rock tumbler. A rock tumbler allowed us to take a variety of rocks we found in the neighborhood and polish them to the point that the rocks were like gems. As a kid all we needed were a few rocks from the neighbor’s driveway, some polishing grit, and a little bit of patience. This recipe for success allowed us to (at least in our minds) print money. We would load up our rock tumblers and let them run for a few days and after we washed away the polishing grit, we believed we had diamonds and rubies in our hands.
If our parents had only seen the potential in our childhood get rich quick scheme, maybe they could have retired early and today I would be the founder and CEO of Polished Rocks Inc., you’re one stop shop for fine polished driveway stones.
There are few passages in the New Testament that pull us in with rich metaphorical language like our reading today. God’s grace and our election through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ grab our attention, revealing that not only are we freed from the bonds of sin and Death through Christ’s Easter victory but now we are included, because of Christ’s faithfulness, in the household of God. Those who have felt as though they were not welcomed or told they were not accepted before God now breathe a sigh of relief and then step forward and into a new home, a new grounding, with Christ as the cornerstone of the new Temple. The grounding we rely on for our faith is found in the sureness of Christ as our cornerstone.
All other stones in this new structure will be shaped and set by the Cornerstone, the ultimate reference point determining the position of the entire structure. God chose Jesus Christ as our Cornerstone, a living stone – a living hope for all of creation and the living Word of God.
Christ, the living Cornerstone would be rejected, the Psalmist and the prophet Isaiah foretold of these events. The Psalmist wrote, “The stone rejected by the builders is now the main foundation stone!”[1] Throughout his ministry Jesus was despised by the religious elite of the day and then Jesus was ultimately rejected on Good Friday as the crowds in Jerusalem – the home of the Temple, the place where it was believed God resided – shouted “Crucify!”
Yet, rejection was not enough and Jesus Christ, then and today is the Living Cornerstone of the Church. The Living Cornerstone is not only drawing us closer to God, Christ is building us, refining us into a spiritual temple. We are brought into new life in Christ as we are joined with other imperfect stones into “God’s household.”[2]
We all have had too much time on and temptation on our hands over the past nine weeks to consider a new hobby to make our COVID time a “success.” Many of us are achievers and see time at home as an opportunity to organize, clean, rearrange, or remodel. Some have taken up sewing to help make masks for those of us who either do not own a sewing machine or possess the skill set necessary for the task. We have challenged ourselves to read more or learn to play a musical instrument – to the band, don’t worry, I’ve been practicing.
Even before COVID turned our world upside down, stillness was not applauded, and busyness was considered a sign of determination and grit. The same is true in the church. We fill our calendar with programming in hopes that we, all by ourselves, can build up Christ’s body for the transformation of the world. We do and we go, believing that if we just go and do enough rather than residing in stillness, our faith will grow, we will become closer to God and more sanctified in the process.
One of the things I learned using a rock tumbler is that it did not matter what I did after I put the rocks and polishing grit into the tumbler. When I plugged the black power cable into the outlet and switched the machine on, I had to rely and trust that the tumbler would do what the box said it would do, trusting that the little work I did was enough for the outcome I desired.
Our Living Hope, the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ is building us up. Jesus Christ has built you up and will continue building. The Cornerstone that was rejected is now placing each of us, building His Church so that we can bear His amazing Light into the dark corners of our community and world.
It can feel as though we have to go, go, go, and do, do, do and because of where many of us live, just a stone throw from the Nation’s Capital this has been our normal for as long as we can remember. It can feel like we have to go, and we have to do, but the honing, shaping, and building is not our work to do. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ made nobodies into a royal priesthood, taking those who had and continue to be cast aside or told they need to go and do before God will respond, making them and us, everyone into living stones.
We have been out of the physical church building for nine weeks, a building with a physical cornerstone and our hub for ministry in our corner of the world. Because we have been out of the physical church building for so long it can seem as though our stillness, as the world continues to move (at a slower pace) is a lack of faithfulness to the One who calls, shapes, and sends us. On the contrary, Christ is still honing, shaping, and building up the Church, even while we are not physically together.
The power of Christ’s Resurrection ensures that we are all, all of creation, are held together, we are grounded in His Grace through the love of our Creator and the power of God’s Spirit.
All of this is God’s doing.
The salvation we receive by Grace comes to us from Jesus Christ, the Cornerstone, who is calling and building each us so that we might bear this Good News to all of the world, that all may know of God’s mercy.
The culmination of the Emmaus story is found in the disciples being able to see the Risen Lord in the breaking of bread, but they are unable to see the Risen Lord without Jesus’ Bible study to end all Bible studies – explaining how the entire Old Testament is actually about him. For us, as followers of Christ, we believe God’s Plan A has always been Jesus and the revelation of the coming Messiah, now present in our Risen Lord, is everywhere in the Old Testament.
Jesus as Lord is the Big Picture we miss when we, like the disciples on their way to Emmaus, hone in on a detail of the story and when that detail does not suffice we, as a failing art critic would attempt to do, make sense of the story of the person of Jesus that fails to show the bigger picture – that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ Sin and Death no longer hold their boot to the throat of what God created and Jesus reigns over.
While we may be hunkered down, like a teenager grounded and unable to leave the house, and wondering what we are supposed to do or where God is this Emmaus story, the entire story – not just the disciples' failure to see Jesus, the breaking of bread, or their rush back to Jerusalem – shows us that not only is Jesus at work but that he’s been at work since the beginning.
Before Moses, way back when the Word was God and the Word was with God, God has been present, and God is present with us now. God is reigning now.
While we may be grounded at home and feel as though our grounding is shifting, Christ remains the same. Christ - the One the scriptures were pointing to, the one who overcame the power of Sind and Death, and the one who continues to reign as Lord over all of creation – is our grounding, our sure foundation.
Our Risen Lord is among us. He is present when we pray when we study when we break bread, but more importantly, he has always been present, he has always been Lord.
If we leave the story at “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven” we miss the abruptness with which Lent draws to a close, the closing is not drawn out, and the quickness with which Holy Week moves. Jesus entered the Holy City and before a week goes by, he will have been crucified. He will be dead. In less than a week the man who entered the city peacefully, with no show military force, will tell his disciples to put away their swords as he was taken from a garden, arrested and then killed. The quickness with which we move into Holy Week, beginning with this procession, is a shock we experience year after year. Rev. Fleming Rutledge describes the movement as beginning with “triumph” and ending in “catastrophe.”
The “turmoil” Jesus caused as he entered the Holy City stirred up such alarm among the religious and political leaders that the only thing left to do to this peaceful prophet was to kill him. And in a moment of brief clarity the religious leadership of Jerusalem and the political leadership of Rome, two groups who did not always see eye-to-eye, found a common enemy they could focus their attention on.
We cannot, as Fleming puts it, pass “from Palm Sunday to Easter without Good Friday.”
No amount of cancelations or changes in plans can cancel or change this condition we all face. But in Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, the One who came down from on high and took on our earthly existence we are the recipients of the promise that Death does not get the last word.
The day is coming when God is going to shout, “Come out!” and all of the death will be unbound, their grave clothes will no longer be necessary. The words of resurrection spoken to Lazarus are words of resurrection spoken to us.
God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel say that the dry bones shall live again. Where life and hope seem gone, in dust and ash, and in the grave God is going to shout, “Come out!”
Over the past few weeks we have been reflecting on who we are as followers of Christ. As Saint Paul put it, we ‘adopt the same mind that was in Christ.” Who are we? We are resurrection people. We are people who do not believe Death holds the final word. A week after week we proclaim, boldly, Christ resurrected.
As Lent begins to draw to a close and we approach Holy Week, anticipating the grand celebration of Easter, hold onto this promise - the promise that the shadow of the cross, the shadow of Death does not get the last word. We can hold onto this promise no just because of Christ’s triumph over Death on Easter but also because resurrection, new life, eternal life where death was thought to have found victory is who Jesus is.
Skipping over Jesus’ bit of being born anothen, preferring the safer-waters of John 3:16, we miss that we have been born anothen. We have been born again. We have been born from above, born anew.
Jesus’ resurrection sealed this for all us. Everyone. Even those of us who prefer John 3:16 over John 3:3 or 3:5.
This Lenten season we are considering what it means, as Saint Paul put it, to “adopt the mind of Christ.”[3]
To adopt the mind of Christ is to acknowledge that regardless if you have ever come forward during an altar call, regardless if you have your born again date circled on the calendar, regardless if you attend a “born again, Bible-believing” church or the happy middle ground of mainline Protestantism, you have already been accepted by God. The faithfulness of Christ to the will of God is what gives us life. This is something we could never do on our own.
So while you may have a date you can remember - confirmation as a teenager, an altar call way back when, or just a few years ago - the anniversary date on your calendar is a signifier of your recognition of something accomplished for you, whether you knew you needed it done or not, whether you wanted it done or not. Hold onto those dates and keep them circled but don’t forget that the sorrow of Good Friday does not last indefinitely.
We are Easter people and when the stone was rolled away and Mary found Jesus, she mistook the New Adam for the gardener, the caretaker on the first day of God’s new creation.
What Jesus accomplished for us remains the if/then of being born again - if you are born again, born from above, born anew, then you will see the Kingdom of God. What Jesus accomplished for us is true today, now and will always be true.
For all of us. Everyone.
This is not just Good News. This is Great News! Some might call it Awesome News!
This Awesome News we celebrate today, gathering around the baptismal font, we are reminded that each of us has been born anothen, through water and the Spirit, as we celebrate the baptism of Eliza Charlotte.
Being born anothen gives each of us new sight - to be able to see Jesus in the darkness of night, to see Jesus while the shadow-side of creation looms, to see him not as the gardener but rather the new Adam, the first of God’s new creation.
Seeing Jesus and trusting that his faithfulness is enough frees us to see all of creation with new eyes. The darkness does not seem so dark because the light of Christ - because of his faithfulness and love of God - shines on each of us, exposing our born anothen-ness to the world but more importantly, to those of us who doubt our enoughness.
God is willing to risk our disobedience in hopes that we will freely turn towards God and proclaim that we are followers of Jesus Christ, that we have adopted the attitude of Christ.”
Not followers up to a certain point.
Not followers with prerequisites - God must first prove something in hopes that we might repent and follow Christ.
Throughout our Lenten journey we will turn towards Christ, turning away from the temptation of sin, and consider the question “Who am I?”
It can often feel as though we are people, who when presented with the discomfort of temptation will lean into the comforts of this world, through our own devices and means. But our Lenten journey is an invitation to lean into the faithfulness of Christ. Our faithfulness to our Lenten fasts will wane. We will be tempted to break our fast or to test God’s faithfulness as a way to ignore the suffering around us or to accept the trappings of this life. This journey we find ourselves on, a journey that will ultimately lead us to the cross, is an invitation to lean into the faithfulness of Christ when our own faithfulness wanes.
The Good News is that the proclamation that echoed as Jesus exited his baptismal waters and began his journey in the wilderness - “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well- pleased” - is the same proclamation made by God to you at your baptism. Because by water and the Spirit, you are in Christ. His belovedness is yours.
So, back to the silly question I was asked by that interviewer, “Who am I?” I am a sinner. When push comes to shove I have fallen and will fall again to the temptation of sin. But more importantly, it’s not up to me or my ability to hold a fast during Lent or overcome my own sin. Regardless of what I have or have not given up for Lent, regardless of how well I hold that fast, I am God’s beloved, in whom, for Christ’s sake, God is well pleased.
Every time we hear Jesus’ invitation to his table and we share bread and wine, taking seriously his invitation to all people - the poor and the rich, the meek and the powerful, the hungry and those with plenty - we are experiencing the grace and promise of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus’ table is a table of blessing, a common table where the excluded are welcomed and blessed. What we do here this morning, breaking bread, sharing the cup, extends outward to all of the other places we do not want it to happen, where we are told it cannot happen. The grace extended to us by G-d, at this table is a call to extend grace at the tables of our own making - coffee shops and barbershops, playgrounds and lunchrooms.
Every time we hear Jesus’ invitation to his table and we share bread and wine, taking seriously his invitation to all people - the poor and the rich, the meek and the powerful, the hungry and those with plenty - we are experiencing the grace and promise of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus’ table is a table of blessing, a common table where the excluded are welcomed and blessed. What we do here this morning, breaking bread, sharing the cup, extends outward to all of the other places we do not want it to happen, where we are told it cannot happen. The grace extended to us by G-d, at this table is a call to extend grace at the tables of our own making. A place setting has been prepared for you and no expense has been spared by the host. Jesus is the host of this feast and he has invited us to join him those whose we have neglected to invite.
The invitation to grace was part of what made Mister Rogers and the Neighborhood of Make-believe tick. Fred Rogers was a Presbyterian minister. His calling was to care for children, me and you, in a world that often neglects the intelligence of children in exchange for easy distractions and questions unanswered. Mister Rogers once said, “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”
This is grace at its most basic definition, extending love and acceptance to someone exactly as they are, exactly where they are. This is precisely what Jesus did in going to Galilee instead of Jerusalem. Jesus went to a place where the law, the thing that was supposed to guide the liturgy of the community was not always followed. He went to this place and said “Here comes the kingdom of heaven, not because of your ability to follow the liturgy of the community perfectly but because, as you are and where you are, G-d has come down from on high to heal and share the good news that while we may be filled with sin, G-d still loves you. G-d has not abandoned us, leaving us to figure it out on our own. The new liturgy for this community, for the world, we will write it together, guided by G-d’s love.
The pattern of our community may not always mirror G-d’s plan but G-d, in Christ can work with us, guiding us to a new pattern of holiness. This is at the heart of Jesus’ invitation to Change your hearts and lives!” Repent, turn towards G-d because the G-d’s Kingdom is at hand.
Jesus extended an invitation to the disciples he called by the Sea of Galilee and it is the same invitation he extends to use when we answer his call to follow him and we emerge from the waters of baptism. This invitation is to change the narrative of the community by changing the pattern, changing the liturgy that guides us. The patterns created by our lives together do not change because of anything we do but because we have been changed by Christ’s invitation to grace and cannot imagine doing anything but changing.
A liturgy of grace, the work of God’s love we participate in does not remove us from the weekday and weekend liturgy of the neighborhood. Our work continues.
Assuming our unrighteousness upon himself, Jesus will take our unrighteousness with him to the cross - by the baptism of his suffering, death, and resurrection, Christ has done for us that which we were and continues to be unable to do for ourselves.
We have been made righteous.
We are right before God.
Our justification began in the Jordan River and was realized on the cross when Jesus died for the empire colluders, thieves, and religious hypocrites. John’s baptism of repentance was about soliciting a pardon for us from God. Jesus baptism and our baptism into his death and resurrection is about the work completed by God. The waters of baptism are not a solicitation, no, we are celebrating that in Christ we have received the pardon we could have only hoped for and have claimed the name beloved child of God.
The water we sprinkle or plunge into may look sentimental. After all, on most Sundays, our baptismal font is well-places so family photos catch the sun shining from the east side of the building. But this water is outrageous - the grace extended to us and to others is offensive. Attached to these waters, so much that it cannot be strained or filtered, is that because you have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection you are forgiven.
You are clean.
You are righteous.
Your sins, all of them, including that one you cannot forgive yourself for committing, has been washed away.
It is done.
Once and for all.
For everything, full stop.
No asterisk.
No, if/then prerequisites.
Because you have been baptized into Christ you are no longer your sin.
You are no longer what sin and death call you.
In these waters, God has clothed you with the righteousness of Christ and given you a full pardon. Not because of the one doing the sprinkling or pouring but because Christ took your, took my unrighteousness upon himself, was nailed to the cross, walked out of the empty tomb, leaving our sin and unrighteousness behind.
God’s dreams seem beyond us because they are.
This is the work of God that we get to be a small (very small) part of. The beginning of the dream Isaiah saw was revealed to Joseph. The scandal of the incarnation is that in Christ, God is prepared the rearrange the ordering of creation - beginning not with power and political might but rather through a child born in a manger, and eventually on the cross and in an empty tomb.
While scientists can debate the purpose and function of dreams in our lives, God’s dreams have a specific purpose. In Joseph’s dream, we relinquished control and on the cross and in the empty tomb God’s plan for the redemption and salvation of all people was revealed. All of creation will be made new.
As the shadows of Advent begin to give way to the Light revealed at Christmas, we recall the beginning of the Kingdom of God in a child and in doing so we await the full realization of a dream bigger than we can imagine but not so big that any of us will be left out.
We can dream on because behold, a Savior has come and will come again.
On Christmas, we will recall how Jesus entered into the darkness of this world, the darkness created by sin, as the great Light. Yet, we allow the bright lights of Christmas to overtake the darkness of Advent begins with. Standing in the Light of the Christ child in the manger is more comfortable than waiting in the shadow of what is to come because in waiting we relinquish control of the agenda. In our waiting during Advent we are acknowledging the limitedness with which we can predict and control G-d’s acts of grace.
Our circumstances may give us pause, distracting us from the larger story we are a part of, but the Psalmist is reminding us that our response to G-d’s mighty acts is a posture of worship - praise and thanksgiving - aka a posture of gratitude. Gratitude because today, regardless of the affairs in your life, the moment your feet hit the ground and you took a deep breath of a new day it was the divine breath of life that fills your lungs. While chaos may be swirling around us and the melodies we find ourselves singing sound anything but grateful, the sound of praise and gratitude, worship, is our default because G-d is in the business of creating order out of the chaos of this world. We are grateful for what G-d has done because what G-d has done and what G-d continues to do is bigger than anything we can imagine or do on our own.
The Thessalonians, one of the earliest Christian communities, like many Christians today, earnestly expected Jesus’ return within the lifespan of the first generation of Christians. Their hope for the new age to come was giving way, challenged by the realities of life. The grind of everyday life had shifted the Thessalonians' posture of anticipation and gratitude to impatience.
Community members were dying from old age and persecution. Hardship seemed to have fallen on those who believed Jesus had and would continue to free them from the bondage of this world. Rejoicing, prayer, and gratitude shifted to doubt, laziness, and a lack of focus on the cross.
Jesus promised a blessing upon the poor and weak, and those who mourn, but the harshness of the rough road of life had overshadowed the promised hope to come. As the shadow grew larger, the mundane of this life took priority over the promised hope to come. Redemption, fulfillment, and blessing were forgotten as the community traded gratitude for impatience.
Jeremiah 32:1-3, 6-15
Luke 16:19-31
Everything necessary for salvation - the saving of us and all of humanity - is found in this book. On face value, the stories are complicated, grotesque, beautiful, and full of hope.
We do not have to twist the words in this book to fit the agenda of the Church or our politics. Jesus’ teachings, while confusing at times, clearly outline what the garden in Revelation will look like and how we get there - the Great Commission given to the Church by Christ, is clear.
Words like Grace make little sense outside of communities unified in the Lordship of Christ.
Our need for the unmerited love of G-d is the thread that holds us together and we cannot be a community of faith without Christ and His Grace as the center.
We can excel at doing good things for people in need but without the Grace of G-d, we are people trying to be good, knowing (or unknowing) that the good we do cannot repay the Sin humanity has committed against God.
Much to our chagrin, this gift of a unified Grace-filled community may seem like the last thing we could want or need and yet, this unmerited gift is a forecast of the Kingdom Christ inaugurated through his own ministry.
The Good News is this - amid division and disagreement we are still the recipients of G-d’s Grace. There is no theological disagreement or division of the Church on socio-economic status, race, political affiliation, or sexual orientation that change the blessing we have received by the Grace of God.
The journey we find ourselves on is about us having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ (a frightening thought) but at the same time, we are part of a community formed by the Potter for the task of being the Potter’s hands and feet in the midst of what the Potter has created.
Jesus was the ultimate vessel created by the Potter. Taking the form of the first human created out of clay by the Potter, Jesus, from the manger in Bethlehem all the way to the cross was shaped and moved by the Potter. Jesus did this by remaining open to the will of G-d. In worship, in community, through spiritual disciplines, and in his generosity, Jesus remains the unbroken vessel that we now follow.
The Good News is that while we individually may be broken vessels and at times our community may fall short of what the Potter has formed us to be, the Potter is not done with us. The Psalmist writes that G-d is distant and still intimately close with every aspect of our lives. We were created and we exist today to marvel in the Potter’s brilliance. When we turn towards G-d we are no longer passive lumps being formed but rather we, a community, are a vessel open to the possibility that the Kingdom of G-d may take shape through G-d’s work in us. The journey we find ourselves on places us in the hands of the Master Potter, and in the process we relinquish our own will and turn towards the One who will mold and shape us despite our own desire to mold and shape ourselves. The mercy of the Master Potter is ours.
We are assured that things will be put right in the presence of Christ, regardless of how people like me interpret the Law. Regardless of what religious professional debate endlessly, regardless of what a finalized doctrinal statement says, Jesus, G-d, will have the final say over our application of G-d’s Word.
The indignation of the synagogue leader revealed that he found his justification by following the rules. There is nothing wrong with being a rule follower (this coming from a self-confessed chronic follower of rules). But in Jesus, G-d revealed that we do not have to seek out our justification through the rules. We do not have to seek our righteousness by doing the correct action on a particular day while on a different day not performing the action we had previously done.
We, all of us, find our justification, our “enoughness” in the eyes of G-d not through our own actions, and not in our own ability to not work on the Sabbath and keep it holy. We find our
Whatever may come the way of the church, we know that the faithfulness we exhibit is grounded in the faithfulness of Christ. Without relying on the faithfulness of Christ, to the point of death, the church then and today has little to stand on.
Simply put… because G-d is faithful, we are assured that we may live more faithful lives.
We do not have to live in fear of weariness or hardship.
We do not have to live in fear of what if’s.
We do not have to live as though we are doing this on our own.
Each of the people listed by the author of this letter, referencing stories from the Hebrew Bible were not exactly the perfect people or events we think G-d would use.
Moses, before leading Israel to freedom through the Red Sea, killed a man.
The battle of Jericho gave a new home to Israel but another group of people was displaced.
Rahab may not have been a prostitute.
David, the great king of Israel, had a man sent to the front lines and killed so that David could then take the man’s wife as his own.
Throughout the Psalms, many of which are attributed to David, we read of weariness and difficulty in keeping one’s faith.
But through the saints imperfections and our own, through the weariness experienced by the saints and the weariness we experience, the endurance of Jesus in the journey we all find ourselves in is sufficient when our endurance wavers.
Christ is the perfecter of our faith. Not our individual-personal faith but rather the faith we cling to as a community, the faith of saints of today and saints who have gone before us. Christ’s faithfulness perfected the faith we claim and remains sufficient for us today when our faith wanes. Not only are we the beneficiaries of the witness of the saints but we are the beneficiaries of G-d’s faithfulness through the saints and throughout Jesus Christ.
The DIY faith Paul is writing to correct calls us away from quick-fix solutions, and towards grace and mercy, telling us the work of Christ was and continues to be insufficient. Paul was calling the ancient church away from revolutionized human teachings - three-quick and easy steps and back to a life of extravagance.
Extravagant grace.
Extravagant compassion.
Extravagant mercy.
Simply put… the foundation of our faith is not something we do or accomplish. The foundation of our faith is someone, someone who accomplished that which we could never do for ourselves.
Christianity is not DIY.
Christianity is discipleship, meaning in following Christ we acknowledge and hold onto Christ’s reconciling work that we, us and them, are unable to accomplish for ourselves.
In Christ, we discover that the poverty we enter into at death - you cannot take it with you - and the sad comprehension of the cruel reversal turns into Good News. Just as Jesus fully revealed God’s good purposes for creation in his earthy life, so too is it for us who have clothed ourselves in Christ at the time of our death. There is nothing left to do, no barns to take down or to build up, and instead, through the grace of Jesus Christ, we are invited to lean into God’s good purposes revealed to us by Christ. Now we await the day when the fullness of God’s new creation, made possible through the faithfulness of Christ, is finally revealed
July 28, 2019
Luke 11:1-13
Simply put… Bon Jovi is right, we are a community living on a prayer. A prayer mind you, that lacks $15 seminary words and is not longwinded. The prayer Jesus taught to his disciples is sufficient witness to G-d, made truthful by worshipers, through the One who taught is to be prayed.
Jesus offers us, through this prayer and all prayer to G-d, sufficient grace and compassion to ensure our needs, our daily bread is made available. The response we receive from G-d to the need we present may not match the desires we have. The daily bread or the healing we request from G-d may not mirror what we desire and this is where the difficult work of seeking G-d’s will through prayerful dialogue with our Creator begins. This is when we begin to lean into the Lord, bending even further towards G-d so that we can catch a glimpse, we pray, of what G-d’s will is for our lives and for the new creation inaugurated by Christ’s death and resurrection.
As we pray and make the words of Christ not only our prayer but a post by which we build our faith - knowing we were created by a G-d who desires to provide for our needs - know that when you do not feel like speaking the words or that you do not have the faith to do so at the moment, not only is this community praying the words for you, but the church universal is as well. In a world full of division among the church, Christ is still the head of the church, and through prayer, we are still connected to Christ and one another.
Scripture tells us Jesus is the capital “W” word of God, the fullness of God’s image that is otherwise invisible to creation. Jesus is the full revelation of God when we otherwise rely on those who caught a glimpse of the infinite wonder of God.
Go and care for the person in the ditch.
Go and care for the person, the group of people you despise.
Go and care for the person wearing the MAGA hat.
Go and care for the person wearing the Black Lives Matter shirt
Go and care for the person who has wronged you.
Help every single person that comes across your path without first wondering if they are “just going to buy booze” with the fist-full of money you are going to give them.
Go and care for every single person who you believe has gotten what they deserved without reservation and instead with extravagance.
To make Paul’s words through this entire letter plain - Simply put… it is foolish to think we can fool G-d with self-righteous works of the Law to achieve salvation. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection are sufficient for all people.
It is foolish to think circumcision - works of the Law - is a sufficient alternative to the Gospel. When we buy into the idea that there is something necessary for salvation apart from the grace and mercy of G-d in Christ we are like the ancient church in Galatia foolishly (Paul’s words, not mine) turning toward a different gospel (1:6).
It is foolish to fail to see the universal scope of G-d’s grace that brought the ones outside the original covenant into the presence of Christ’s grace and mercy. Paul’s Galatian opponents believed Gentile converts needed to first be grafted into the original covenant established by G-d with Israel. Paul wrote that we, all us, everyone full stop, are children of G-d through faith. Clothing ourselves in Christ removes the title “Jew or Greek.” Paul continues, “there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (3:28-29, NRSV)
Jesus ministered to those outside the original covenant established by G-d with Israel by going to the “other side.” Jesus went to the very people, extending grace and mercy, Paul’s opponents say first need to adhere to the Law.
We are fooling ourselves if we think we can fool G-d. The focus of the Law more often than not is us, acts we can do to save ourselves, when the reality is, as Paul tells us, that it is the indwelling of G-d’s Spirit that produces saving works in our lives. We are foolish Paul writes to put our focus in the wrong place. Our attention on the cross is to be focused on Christ’s faithfulness because every time we place our attention on our own works our faithfulness will fall short.
The Law in place of the Gospel is an attempt to hide the scandal of the cross - Jesus came to save all. In belonging to Christ, all are “heirs according to the promise” (3:29). Not some. Not this group or that group.
All, everyone, are heirs, including you.
Avoiding the scandal of the cross enables us to “feel religious” apart from Christ. Avoiding the scandal of the cross enables us to say things like “I find G-d in nature” or in whatever hobby you may have when the reality is that for Christians, those of us who have died to ourselves in the waters of Baptism, we find G-d in Christ. Law abiding righteousness misses the real-life, self-sacrificing love of G-d and misses the power of G-d’s Spirit in Christians and among Christian communities.
Christ has freed us from the Law.
It was Jesus that freed the man removed and restrained by his community, not the disciples.
It was Jesus that freed the man by removing the restraints place on him by his community, not some do-gooder neighbor that finally felt guilty about the man’s situation.
So thanks be to G-d that we are not Jesus because how often do we ignore the bondage of those removed and restrained from the community. How often to we fail to act when we see a person laying by the side of the road and choose to pass by on the other side rather than bandaging that person’s wounds?
Jesus, extended freedom and mercy to the unnamed man and Jesus extends freedom and mercy, through his bride, the Church Universal, whenever we respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit and go where we are sent by the Most High Son. When we respond to the movement of the Holy Spirit and go, engaging in acts of justice and mercy, we are instruments of Christ’s grace and mercy. We are instruments being used by Christ but we are not Jesus.
We will pray that as you come to know the love of G-d in Christ that you will welcome the Holy Spirit’s movement for yourself. Know Milana, that the Holy Spirit is not oppressive, forcing itself upon you, but rather the Holy Spirit, just like Christ, is life-giving. The late Phyllis Tickle wrote that we today are living in the age of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is moving us within the Church and those outside the church, in a moment of Holy Revitalization so that Christ’s Lordship may be known throughout creation. The confirmands and Milana are joining us, the body of Christ, in proclaiming Jesus to be Lord and everything to be…
Milana, you are becoming part of the Body that seeks to end suffering and oppression around the world not by our own hands but rather by the movement of the Holy Spirit and the work of Christ. This means the Holy Spirit may not act like an anesthesiologist numbing you or us to the suffering of the world. To the contrary, the Spirit of G-d may just place the suffering of the world front and center in your life, front and center in our lives.
Milana, just like the confirmands upstairs, the weather that is about to be placed on your head - an outward sign of an inward and invisible grace - seals you as a beloved child of G-d and in that same moment marks you. Our faithfulness to the leading of the Spirit results in our adoption as heirs to the Kingdom of G-d, right there alongside Christ himself. The Holy Spirit is coming for you!
It may not seem like it but you Milana, and all of us, have been set free from the bondage and slavery to sin and death. Through this sealing and marking, you are now part of a community of freedom and as you emerge out of the baptismal waters, dying to yourself, you will receive new life, being adopted in the New Creation established by Christ’s death and resurrection.
The Good News Milana, and everyone who has nodded off by this point, is that we are not in this alone. We are a community of believers, doubters, and skeptics. But Milana, we are committed, just as your parents are, to doing this with you and with one another as part of Christ’s Universal Church. As the Holy Spirit works within you, and as the Holy Spirit works within us - sustaining us in times of suffering, sealing our adoption, and empowering us in the life changing ministry Christ has called us to, and will call you to.
The world will know Christ's love by not the unity we advertise, but by the unity we find in Christ's love for one another. Our unity - beyond Mount Olivet the United Methodist Church but also including them - shows to the world Christ's love through the way we love one another.
The Good News is through Christ's faithfulnesses to us, Christ's prayer for us does not change because of our lack of unity or faith. Our lack of unity - our willingness to cutoff and push aside part of the body - does not reduce what happened in Bethlehem, in the Jordan, on Calvary's Hill, in the empty tomb, or in Christ's ascension.
"The Holy Spirit’s proper work never goes anywhere without Christ, and the Spirit does nothing apart from resurrecting Christ in dead sinners. The Spirit does not moonlight in any other job but to drive everything in all creation to Christ."
We are a community of disciples and no one is expect to grow, learn, or minister alone. Jesus promises us the Holy Spirit will, is, working in and through us. The Holy Spirit is working for you, in you, revealing Jesus in our midst and continuing to reveal the teachings of Jesus.
As we figure all of this out, the churchy-phase for that is "discerning G-d's will," we do not have to feel naked, afraid, or alone. The point of all this is not merely survival but instead we are invited to thrive because the Holy Spirit has been sent, is present among us. The Holy Spirit is revealing Christ's presence and teachings to us. And that friends, the assurance and sending of G-d's Advocate, is grace in its fullest. Grace upon Grace.
The problem, like the religious leaders, we cannot come to faith through knowledge and empirical truths. Every time we approach faith in this manner we come up short because the answer given by Jesus does not fit in our empirical truth box.
Our faith in the messiahship of Christ, what we believe to be true about who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing today, is only possible through G-d’s faithfulness. Jesus told the religious leaders, “the works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me.” (John 10:25) Everything Jesus did connected him intimately to the One who sent him. They, Jesus and G-d his Father, our Creator, are one.
The faithfulness of the One who sent Jesus is just as assured as the faithfulness of the One who overcame the power of death. The faithfulness of Christ reveals the faithfulness of G-d.
Listen to him. We are not separated from G-d because of our sin. We find eternal life not because of our attempts at faithful living or to prove the Messiahship of Christ. We have been saved because Jesus was faithful and continues to be faithful, even when we approach him with questions to which we think we already know the answers.
The calling extended to Peter, “Follow me,” is the same calling extended to each of us when we emerge from our baptismal waters. This calling - “Follow Me” - is an invitation to meet Christ at his table, but “Follow me” is also an invitation to experience the fullness of the freedom extended to us by the power of Jesus’ Easter victory - the final victory over our captivity to sin and death.
Thanks to preachers and fresco artists, Thomas has carried a bad reputation for 2000 years.
Because of people like me using the doubter to convince you not doubt but to have faith, Thomas is known for something not entirely accurate to who he was or what he was doing in his moment of infamy.
“Doubting Thomas” was simply asking for something he had been accustomed to receiving. Because the crucifixion itself was a sign - “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,” (John 17:1) - a sign confirming Jesus’ resurrection was/is not an unreasonable request from someone who had been receiving confirmation of what was being taught for the past three years.
The signs performed by Jesus - wine in Cana (my favorite), healings, feedings, walking on water - were confirmation of what Thomas along with the other disciples had been taught by Christ.
When the Kingdom of G-d and earthly realms collide, it is not always immediately apparent, but the Kingdom of G-d is always victorious.
We have seen these collisions throughout Christ’s ministry but now on Palm Sunday as the shadow of the cross begins to appear on the horizon we may not be so sure of what is to come.
The prophets foretold what would happen - “despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.”
Jesus told his disciples exactly what was going to happen - “He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
“Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”
The crowd's proclamation, an echo of the angel’s announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, points to the promised peace of G-d through Christ. The coming collision between the Kingdom of G-d in Christ and the religious and political powers of Jerusalem will become a point of contact between heaven and earth.
The shadow of the cross blinds us to the peace of heaven spilling over into creation. The domination through ruthlessness - Pax Roma - is no match for the justice and mercy - Pax Christi - of the Kingdom of G-d.
So enjoy the celebration of Palm Sunday because if you think this is something, remember, even though the darkness of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday is ahead of us after the collision Easter is coming
Because we live on this side of the empty tomb we have the ability to see the new thing the Lord did in Christ Jesus and yet still, we still stand with our arms folded, hardened to the possibility that this new thing really changed the world. We find it hard to believe the new thing the Lord has done is still changing the world.
Jesus told his disciple in orders to experience the newness of what the Lord is doing we are to assume the posture of a child. Meekness in the sense that we are open to joyful possibility and not despair caused by the current state of society or the church. Jesus invites to open ourselves to experience the fullness of new creation. We find it hard to experience the new thing promised to us by G-d through the prophet and realized in Jesus Christ because the institutions charged with cultivating and nurturing our childlike openness have at some level fundamentally failed. Doctrine and polity have taken the place of promise and experience, the surprise of the new thing the Lord has promised to all of creation.
Whether we opened ourselves up to what the Lord has promised or we wait decades to do so, the invitation to all is still the same. Jesus told his disciples to taste and see. The invitation is extended to everyone. And once you taste and once you have seen the new thing the Lord is doing the childlike wonder and joy reenters your life. You, we are radically changed. When we taste and we see, we embrace G-d’s new thing like a child, seeing the fullness of what G-d makes possible. Viewing the world with possibility changes the way we see the calling G-d has given each of us. Childlike wonder opens us to seeing the bread and the cup as an invitation into full participation int he new thing G-d did through Jesus Christ and continues to do today.
Reconciliation with one another - which enables us to gather around Christ’s table - cannot happen without forgiveness. After all, if we have been reconciled to G-d by Jesus and G-d is no longer “counting people’s sins against them” then we are a community called to the same work. We are a community seeking reconciliation but without forgiveness, we cannot be reconciled to one another.
Luke 13:1-9
For Jesus - his life, death, and resurrection - the Kingdom of G-d is always at the forefront. The Kingdom of G-d is priority number one for Christ.
When we accept Christ’s invitation to repent w are intentionally turning towards his kingdom. In this turn, we begin to see, experience, and become a part of the healing, liberation, and compassion extended to all of creation by G-d through Jesus Christ.
The Good News is that in five weeks, through the emptiness of his grave, we see the healing, liberation, and compassion of G-d in its fullest. In the empty tomb we find the extravagant grace of the Gardener - G-d Almighty - as the healing grace of Christ is extended to us regardless of our ability, and willingness, to repent with all our heart.
Philippians 3:17-4:1, Genesis 15
Pauls’ words speak life to Mount Olivet. We are reminded that in all we do, everything, we are to imitate Christ’s love. No exceptions.
This work is not easy, and like the Philippians, we will miss the bar established by Christ. We will fall short. In our shortcomings, G-d’s grace - the love unmerited love of G-d - is still ours. That never changes.
So whether we are engaged in acts of justice and mercy - not just speaking and marching but engaging in meaningful change in the lives of those who are experiencing persecution, exclusion, or violence, or mudding through doctrinal and theological impasses, Christ not only remains with us, but also continues to extend an invitation to Mount Olivet, and to each of us. There was no skill to be learned before this invitation was extended. No degree or piece of church legislation can change our calling. We are imitators of Christ.
Whatever the perceived distance between us and G-d is gone. The truth is through Christ’s faithfulness the promises of G-d, G-d’s covenant established with Abram is not out of our reach. Christ dwells in each of us and because Christ is in each of us, Christ is present here at Mount Olivet, in Arlington, and throughout the world. Like Abram, we have been reassured of G-d’s promise - even when we miss the mark, we are invited into the waters at our baptism and a seat at Christ’s table is always waiting for us.
The Law worked to offer the assurance of G-d’s presence in a period of waiting on G-d to make good on a promise. But as the story continues to unfold we see the generosity of G-d, and the promises of G-d fulfilled as Israel established itself in the promised land and later returned home after the exile.
Israel’s response to G-d’s generosity was to give thanks, yet as the early church began to find its way, Israel’s response to the generosity and the ordering of a community began to be used to separate and exclude people from the body of Christ.
The early church and we today forget that when G-d makes extravagant promises they are kept. We may have to wait but as resurrection community, we are able to enter periods of wander and wonder knowing G-d’s promises are always kept.
It’s not easy. Wander and wonder do make good bedfellows as we are finite creatures and have the tendency to keep our eyes on earthly promises - winter will always give way to spring, even when it seems as though the cold darkness wants to hold on for one last snow.
We have missed the mark, and so on Ash Wednesday, the marks on our foreheads are a reminder to us to ask for forgiveness and try again. The Good News tonight is that on the cross and in the victorious empty grave we will find on Easter morning we are made righteous before G-d.
Lent is not about giving something up so that we can be uncomfortable like Christ spent 40 uncomfortable days in the wilderness. During the season of Lent we remember that which we could not and cannot do for ourselves, Christ has done for us.
While little of what happened in a once indoor NFL stadium resembled a group of people following Jesus, today, a few days removed from General Conference, Jesus is still the transfigured Messiah, guiding his disciples down the mountain, heading towards the cross.
Jesus sought these three men out. Before he was teaching on the banks of the Sea of Galilee they were a group of business partners who had a bad night at work. Before Jesus stepped into Simon’s boat, Simon was just a guy trying to clean his fishing gear and go home. But that’s the way discipleship works. Before you or I decided to be a follower of Jesus, Jesus revealed the awesome abundance of G-d.
Worship establishes in us a new posture to not only approach G-d with but also a new posture for how we approach all of creation.
Like the magi, we approach the manger not knowing all of the answers. We approach the manger not having all of the junk in our lives we continue to carry with us not quite figured out. We approach the light of the manger still struggling to over come the curse of sin that we fall back into no matter how many times we think we have overcome it.
The reality of what happened in Emmanuel trading the clothing of royalty for bands of cloth and laying in the manger is found in those who had forgotten or ignored the promise made by G-d. The good news changes the reality for all people, and invites all of creation to enter into the grace of G-d regardless of what the powerful say. Regardless of what the darkness of sin says.
The entire prophetic tradition culminates in John the Baptist’s words, and we convince ourselves that what we’ve done is just too much. John knew the time had come. He knew the Messiah was here and that it was time to change. Things were already changing. The coming of Christ is good news. It is awesome news, yet due to the “darkside of ourselves” we see the darkside of creation and think there is no changing this. Things are too far gone for G-d to work through a baby or a grown man. We see war after war and think things are too far gone for repentance. We see an environmental disaster on the horizon and think it is just too much, nothing can be done. We see poverty, racism, classism, extremism, homophobia, nationalism, and violence and think that creation is too far gone. It seems creation as a whole cannot even praise G-d let alone prepare the way of the Messiah. We see these things, we think it is too much, we become crippled by fear, and then the preparations that were underway cease.
It is easy in Advent to become so focused on the babe in the manger that we forget Christ’s promise of return and vindication. The shininess of the tinsel and glow of the lights make it easy for us to lose focus. It is easy in our attempts to control the peace, hope, joy, and love of the season through packages from Amazon and Target we forget G-d is in control, holding all things in a vision that is boarder and more intricate that we can either think or enact on our own. Advent is a time when we remember the Kingdom of God is coming, it is not just a season for the gathering of a family celebrating and making memories together. Through the manger and in the return of Christ we see the fulfillment of a promise “made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” A promise that has already been fulfilled and not fully realized. A promise that will be celebrated by all of creation.
November 25, 2018 - Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Luke 18:33-37, Christ the King Sunday
When we are baptized, named and claimed as beloved by our Creator, we proclaim Christ as our Savior and promise to serve Him as Lord. That was a bold profession to make 2000 years ago and it continues to be so today. It is a declaration that Christ is Lord and everything else is secondary. Our allegiance lies with Christ, because of the promises made at our baptism which means the truth for our lives looks different from those who do not make the same proclamation.
November 4, 2018 - Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Mark 12:28-34, All Saints Sunday
The saints of the past and us today have flaws. They, we, fell short of what Christ describes as the greatest of the things we are supposed to do. But in Christ loving us as himself, the saints and each of us are made righteous. What once was thought to separate us from the love of G-d is no more and Christ invites us to join him and the saints around His table. Clothed in the righteousness of Christ through our Baptism into His life, death, and resurrection, and not our own self-righteousness, we are declared holy. The greatest commandments, loving “the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” and loving your neighbor is a little less daunting knowing that before we ever attempt to fulfill it, Christ first loved us.
In the darkness we experience today, a world-wide refugee crisis, a criminal justice system in desperate need of reform, wars that seem to have been accept as the status quo without end in sight, bigotry and hatred that has percolated out of the holes it had been hiding in, and a children who still have not been reunited with parents, in these situations it easy to allow the darkness to adjust our vision so that we miss what John told us from the very beginning, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” In the darkness each of us experience the grace of our Lord and Savior is present. The Light will not give way to darkness.
October 28, 2018 - Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Job 42
Much of what we do as followers of Christ is based upon mystery. From the basics of how exactly did Jesus turn water into wine or how the feeding of the 5000 actually happen to the sacraments - Baptism and Communion - there is much that we claim to know but what we think we know pales in comparison to the mystery that still remains.
There are aspects of creation that I will never understand - violence, illness, and hate. I’m sure many of you have similar questions. Throughout the Holy texts, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in our own encounters with the divine we find that G-d is faithful. The covenant established by G-d remains with us. This covenant sustains us and there is nothing we can do to change that. G-d does not turn a back on us today just as G-d did not abandon Job. One day, all things will be revealed by our Creator to each of us. In the meantime, we live in the confidence that G-d, our Creator, will remain faithful even when we do not fully understand.
October 14, 2018 - Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Mark 10:35-45
What Jesus said to the disciples shapes our lives as followers of Jesus, individually, and as a community. Discipleship means following Jesus with childlike reliance and living a cross-bearing life that resists the power and prestige we grasp for when our own security is in question.
Jesus lived this cross-bearing life to the point of death so that we can do likewise, faithfully, evening though, like James and John we continue to allow fear to consume and drive our decisions, worrying about the security ourselves and our families, our status, and our station. Christ’s ransom for us frees each of us from slavery to fear-based decision making and invites us to serve one another.
October 7, 2018 - World Communion Sunday
Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Mark 10:2-16
By quoting Genesis instead of echoing Deuteronomy Jesus told the Pharisees that the Kingdom of G-d, G-d’s disruptive reign, will empower those previously without power. Social structures designed to keep people groups in their place will be disrupted. This point is driven home further when Jesus double-down, using children, a segment of the population viewed as property, to illustrate what kind of dependency, reliance on G-d, will be necessary to be apart of the Kingdom building world Jesus has begun in his own ministry.
Jesus told the disciples and the scriptures remind us today that in the Kingdom of G-d there is a greater equality and hospitality for those who are most oppressed. Not seeing or understanding this is a trap we all fall into, because while Jesus is talking about equality, inclusion, and humility, the Pharisees, we, continue to think that the Kingdom of G-d is about us.
Childlike dependance on G-d relieves us from debating the finer points of the law & instead invites us to step into the grace of G-d made known to us by Christ who extends the same invitation despite how many times someone else sets a trap for us or how many times we set the trap.
September 30, 2018
Mount Olivet United Methodist Church
Luke 19:1-10
Extravagant generosity is about us participating in the extravagant kingdom-building work G-d is engaged in. G-d’s act of “loving, saving, and healing” in our community and around the world.
Mount Olivet UMC - September 23, 2018
Genesis 41
1 Corinthians 16:1-4
The culture of now tells us that we earned this and thus we deserve it, but when we read stories like Joseph we see that the plenty we enjoy is a gift from God, a generous gift placed in our lives by our Creator.
Stewardship means caring for something that ultimately is not ours, which is why talking about stewardship of creation is so easy while talking about stewardship of money is so difficult.
Stewardship means caring for something that ultimately is not ours, which is why talking about stewardship of creation is so easy while talking about stewardship of money is so difficult.
Mount Olivet United Methodist Church - September 16, 2018
Proverbs 3:13-16
Luke 16:1-13
How we earn money is a clear and accurate indicator of our priorities. We might speak out in favor of honest work that others should be doing but do we follow the same prescription in our own businesses? We can earn by following the footsteps of someone else but at some point we have to begin living into the calling G-d has place on our lives because what you are called to will look different than what your mentor has been called to. We can preach about Sabbath and ethical practices but if we are not observing them ourselves our true commitments become more apparent.
Ephesisans 4:25-5:2
So then, the new life offered to us by G-d in Christ is an invitation to claim the renaming and claiming done by G-d in our baptism. This is not a new list of things we must do to be renamed “beloved child of G-d” and claimed. It is not a list of things we must to do experience G-d’s grace. Instead, in speaking truthfully, resisting evil speech, and resisting anger we are able to don that which G-d has offered to each of us through Christ, a way of life that is different from the “but that’s the way we’ve always done.
The power of G-d’s blessing should not be used for personal or political advantage over another person or group of people. Jesus never said “G-d Bless America," or for the context of His time “G-d bless Rome,” because while overlooking our blessings and theirs, ignoring the fullness of what G-d is doing and was doing, G-d already gave a blessing and continues to do so.
G-d has blessed us, but in some cases we have yet to reach the inner-spiritual harmony, the same harmony Jacob lacked, in order to fully realize and live into what G-d has given us. On a day like today with the events that are happening across the river and in Charlottesville we are reminded of our nation’s corporate lack of inner-spiritual harmony and unity.
G-d, thank you for blessing America, please help us find the inner-harmony necessary to fully live into what you have given us, as we work to eliminate intolerance and hate and truly live Christ’s command to love each other
July 22, 2018
Matthew 27:15-23
Which Jesus do you want? Jesus Barabbas or Jesus of Nazareth?
July 29, 2018
Deuteronomy 23:12-14
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
The Bible says a lot of things. It is a collection of books telling the story of the people of God. It is a book of covenant, heartache, promise, lament, renew, and hope. But “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it,” creates a problem.
When Jesus flipped the social structure of first-century Israel on its head in the Beatitudes, He did not leave it to the disciples to figure out. He laid out a detailed plan for how His followers are to become a force for transformation, filling in the spaces He opened up.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the church. When followers of Jesus Christ come together to further the Kingdom of G-d great things happen. So often though, inviting someone to church is about great programming or a fabulous new preacher when instead we are called to be proclaimers of G-d’s unwavering grace, lived out by Jesus Christ, and witnesses to the power and promise of the empty tomb.
It is not that we should not invite people to church. Instead, our lives are to be a force of transformation, a living witness to the Word of G-d made flesh in Jesus Christ, and that is a far greater invitation than anything else we can offer.
Mount Olivet UMC
Isaiah 55
Romans 10
The saving work that we proclaim has been done by Jesus. Words and actions do matter, both are necessary but the former leads to the latter. While faith without works might be dead, works without the Gospel proclamation only point others to the self-righteousness we want to put on display. Proclamation is not about us. It does not start with us and it does not end with us. So when we are stuck starring at a blank page in a notebook or feel as though we do not know what to say, the Good News is that the “work” has been done by Jesus, now we get share it with the world.
In the redundancy of love the sinner hate the sin we overlook that Jesus calls us, each and every one of us without exception, to love. The redundancy of love the sinner hate the sin blinds us to the role of God in all of this, as we try to assume the agency of the divine. It is God who judges, not us. Especially not religious leaders like me. Jesus did not let the adulterous woman off the hook. In showing mercy and forgiveness (we call this grace) Jesus also shows that holiness matters as he acknowledged her past, forgave her, and then telling her to sin no more and inviting her to step into grace.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit seals the Church’s identity in the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Our identity is not found in local church politics, denominational dysfunction, or theological impasses but instead in the One who calls us to transform the world.
May 6, 2018
Year B, Easter 6
John 15:9-17
While we might want to think of ourselves as Joey saving Ross, more often than not we are Joey saving his sandwich
I'm not talking about throwing Bibles as weapons, I am referring to the weaponization the Holy Word of God to do battle against your enemy. This is not in a spiritual warfare scenario but rather to battle back against secularization in an attempt to reclaim the Church's position of authority and power in the United States. All of this to maintain the status quo for churches who thrive on a combination of nationalism, patriotism, and bad praise music.
April 22, 2018
Easter 4, Year B
John 10:11-18, Good Shepherd Sunday
The community created by the Shepherd is open and inclusive. All are invited to join the flock. There is no one who is outside the reach of this Shepherd and no one so far gone that they cannot become part of the flock. Because the risen Christ is the Shepherd, and people like me are not, our deepest fears, insecurities, and separations can be healed by the Shepherd. Whether you drive a Jeep or a Prius, whether you eat processed grains or are an organic vegan, the risen Christ invites you to come through the gate and join the flock.
April 18, 2018 - Wesley Theological Seminary
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Irrelevancy and decline are the undead among us, preventing us living the called life we were born into through the waters of baptism. Without living into the new life we experience through the waters of baptism we are not only those trying to survive the post-apocalyptic zombie-infested world, worst yet we are the living dead, reaching, pulling, and ripping the life out of anything we can get our hands on. Without the living waters, we emerge from and the new life promised to us in that exit we are wandering through the world struggling to survive.
April 15, 2018
Easter 3, Year B
Luke 24:36-48
The part of Christianity that is most necessary is at times the hardest to not only explain to outsiders but also to explain to someone who has faithfully attended worship for 40 years. We start thinking of ghosts instead of bodies, creating for ourselves the same tricky-wicket the disciples experienced.
Easter 2018
Mark 16:1-8
The ending of The Gospel of Mark does not fit the new life, new hope feeling we enjoy each year as we use Easter to signal the return of new life in spring. On a day when we expect to feel the overwhelming presence of the risen Christ, the ending of Mark’s gospel is entirely underwhelming.
March 25, 2018
Palm Sunday, Year B
Mark 11:1-11
To challenge those who are paraded through the empire in up-armored vehicles and with military escorts is a dangerous business. In doing so you run the risk of being mocked by people you have never met. In doing so you run the risk of being betrayed by your closest friends. In doing so you run the risk of being assaulted by the very power you are standing up to. To challenge the status quo, to be the counter-cultural voice, to put on a piece of political street theater, requires you to be willing to enjoy the carnival-like atmosphere while it lasts because if you challenge things enough, if you push the empire enough the empire will push back.
Because there is so much going on in this story, and the writer of Mark wrote such a condensed account of the ministry of Jesus, and on top of that uses misdirection, we miss it. The people in the synagogue did not miss it. Yes, they were astounded by the spirit being cast aside but they knew what was going on. They saw something different happening.
But what happens when God incarnate is the one calling us to repent and believe? It is easy to blow off the street preach as we walk out of Starbucks or to flip the channel when the slick-haired televangelist begins preaching. It’s easy to not make eye contact with someone on the street or turn off the television and go play with our kids. It is easy to write off the story of Jonah, but what are we to do when Jesus calls upon us to repent and believe?
Year B, Epiphany 3
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Mark 1:14-20
Year after year we see the wise men as minor characters in our children’s Christmas pageants and fail to see that for us, Gentiles, the wise men’s visit to Bethlehem signaled, just as Simeon declared in the Temple, that Christ had come for all people.
Simeon and Anna were ordinary people. Neither of them held the title of Reverend in front of their name. Simeon and Anna were ordinary people faithfully waiting for God to move.
We almost have a great story in the Nativity. All we needed was for sweet baby Jesus to defeat the empire. Instead of fleeing to Egypt as a refugee, we needed sweet baby Jesus to raise an angelic army, wielding Luke’s lost light saber, defeating the empire, releasing Israel from the rod of their oppressor. As Mary and Jospeh are being counted to calculate the tax to be handed down by Emperor Augustus we need Jesus to say, “Stand back Mom and Dad. I’ve got this.
God empowered Mary to this journey and just as God awaited Mary’s response of “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to you word” God waits for us today to respond in a similar manner. The story of the incarnation is not a story to keep in the books, 2000 years ago. Each day we are invited to see God’s favor upon us and respond, even when we feel unworthy to the task.
On Christ the King Sunday I was joined in the pulpit by Jim Dake to discuss what it means to be called to ministry, both as clergy and a laity.
All of us are called to be in ministry. Each of our calls will look different. No one person will have the same call as their mentor colleagues. Whether you are called to ministry in your home, neighborhood, or on the other side of the world, you are called by the same Jesus who called His disciples to follow him.
We can look to what is to come with confidence, not worrying about what will or won’t happen, because Christ has already sealed the deal for us. Christ has already conquered death, atoning for our sins, making us righteous before God, acting as our mediator, and ensuring that when he comes again in the fullness of his glory all will participate. Regardless if we died yesterday and Christ comes tomorrow, we are assured through the promise of scripture and the strength of our faith that we too will spend an eternity with Christ.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Mount Olivet UMC
November 12, 2017
1 Thessalonians 2:1-13
Revelation 7:9-17
What we miss in avoiding the tension between Thessalonians and Revelation is that while it may be hard in this life we have the confidence of knowing what happens at the end of the book: God wins. We win. Christ’s holiness wins over “failure and disappointment,” “separation and abandonment.”
Matthew 22:15-22
We keep the lights on because we are returning ourselves to the One whose eikon was stamped onto our lives when we were formed in our mother’s womb and through the new life we receive when we die to ourselves in the waters of baptism. We keep the lights on because we have not mixed up God and Caesar.
Jesus is pretty clear about children in the Kingdom of God. This is one of the subjects within Jesus' teaching where it is hard to twist the meaning of His words.
What I do matters because you depend on me. What you do matters because a community of disciples is impossible without you. They way we speak of one another matters because when we speak poorly of other disciples we are showing to the world how we fail each other. We are then telling the world that our differences are bigger than the One who created and the One who was present at creation.
September 10, 2017 - Matthew 18 - Proper 18
The three-part confrontation of sin that Jesus outlined was not merely a recommendation. Hauerwas said Jesus’ style of confronting sin is, “an indication of the kind of community that Jesus has called into existence.” Because we love God, and we love one another, and it is God’s love that binds us together, we must “refuse to risk the loss” of one person to sin. This is why Jesus tells us that our “Father in heaven” rejoices when one of the lost sheep returns.
When we accept the invitation to take up the trials and troubles that come in the life of discipleship and bear them bravely as Jesus we are accepting the passive piece of cross-bearing. But active cross-bearing calls us to something different. Active cross-bearing calls us to lose our independence entirely, submitting to the Kingdom of God over the kingdoms we are striving to build for ourselves. Jesus told his disciples, "For those who want to save their life will lose it." We have the choice. Discipleship is a choice we make. Discipleship, following Jesus, is a decision that enables us to turn away from the independence we seek and live a life without the self-aggrandizing independence tells us we need.
We are being commanded to step out of our boat, it is time to jump in, witnessing to Jesus in a world where the waves of hate and injustice seems to be coming at Christ’s body from all sides. We will fall in the water every time we refuse to see the humanity in one another. We will fall in the water every time we say that they are less than we are. And we will fall in every time others speak those words and we fail to act.
Jesus is offering us an alternative. An alternative where it does not matter if 5000 or 10,000 are fed. What matters is that all are fed. The reality of what we have to offer Jesus is something that should discourage us. There is no agenda of pride, arrogance, or power. The only agenda is an agenda of compassion.
In world of fakes and alternatives, let us be a church where the alternative offered by us is the same alternative the risen Christ is embraced. Not so we can further the standing of our own agenda but so that we can be a part of the miraculous work of our Lord and King. Our scripture reading today is one of an alternative politic that we all know, now let us all live it out.
We all love a success story that begins from modest means. In the modesty of Jesus’ power and ministry, we discover the reality of the Gospel and who Jesus really is. Our natural reaction to this discovery is to go out joyfully being faithful disciples, selling all we have not out of a nagging obligation but instead compelled to do so because we have experienced grace that is only available to us in the same kingdom we joyfully participate in.
Matthew 13
The parable of the sower is more so about the sower and less about how we change our lives, creating good soil where the seeds of our faith can grow. The sower, God, will continue to cast seeds where God knows they will not grow. Or where they will grow but will later be scorched.
Prayer is a way for us to yoke ourselves alongside Christ. The Son of God is offering to come alongside us, to share the load so that we can keep moving forward. We can keep moving forward being fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, friends and neighbors, and people who have committed to living lives together, living as a witness to the resurrected Christ.
If we are truly going to live as a church with “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors,” truly being welcoming and anxiously awaiting the opportunity to receive new disciples of Jesus Christ, then we need to understand that because our relationships with one another, those sitting next to us and upstairs are a witness the the community declaring that our hearts, minds, and doors have been opened.
Jesus talks about his coming death on the cross. Peter has another idea. However, there is one way for reconciliation to happen. Jesus outlines how and the disciples are confused because they don't have the benefit of seeing the empty tomb yet.
I have the greatest job in the world. This past weekend I had the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with 35 youth as they confirmed their faith, reaffirmed their baptisms, and committed to follow Christ. As part of confirmation weekend I had the opportunity to give a message on Romans 3:1-8, circumcision of the heart.