Friends, here is a review of a new book to bless you and your church family of all ages. Read on to see how it could shape your summer enrichment plans.
“In the rustling grass I hear God pass. God speaks to me everywhere.” That’s one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite hymns, and I think of it when I listen for God in the great cathedral of creation. I also thought of it as I read Glenys Nellist’s new book, Song of the Seasons. It is based on Psalm 98, and echoes other psalms and scriptures, too. Readers follow along as two children explore the cathedral of creation, noting the wonders of each of the four seasons.
Spring flowers and rustling grasses declare their maker’s glory, then their song gives way to that of their summer siblings. The bright blue summer sky and full-leafed trees sing, as does the water rippling and splashing on the shore. Fall’s royal reds, golds, and browns take up the song while animals follow their creator’s ingenious plan, storing food for winter. Autumn light slants in. As birds fly south, honking geese sing a particularly loud song calling all to notice God’s presence all around. In winter bare trees reach toward the One who made them. Snowflakes whisper, and twinkling stars sing along in the clear, cold sky. Water in its frozen state adds yet another harmony. The earth rests in God’s care. Soon the voice of spring will be heard again. The first and last stanzas summarize the whole book:
The earth sings God a brand-new song
From grass to mountain peak,
And if you pause and close your eyes
You’ll hear the seasons speak.
Deeply hued art brings out the special beauties of each season, and the joy on the children’s faces is infectious. When you read this book with your own children, you can seek and find the treasures on every page. The author has created resources for parents and others who nurture children’s spirituality that can be freely downloaded from Paraclete Press’s web site. They include a parent pack with coloring sheets and printable Bible verse cards, a plan for a story walk of eighteen stations inviting exploration, discussion, and creativity, and a thirty-two page resource booklet that can be used in a variety of formats, including five-day Vacation Bible School. I’m so glad to have these resources! Enjoy this book, and sing a new song, for God truly has done marvelous things!
Friends, I love using children’s books in ministry, and I love to recommend books that families—grandparents included!—can use with their young folks at home to nurture faith. Lent starts early this year on Wednesday, February 14, so it’s time now to prepare. Here is a new book that is useful for people of all ages, ‘Twas the Season of Lent, by Glenys Nellist. You can get to know Glenys and her work at glenysnellist.com. You can find activities to share there, and you can sign up for her newsletter.
I’m looking forward to sharing this book with God’s children, grownup children included, for it offers a gentle, yet full journey through the season of Lent. It’s also a primer on the Christian life.
Here is Glenys’ succinct statement of what Lent is about:
“For forty days we wait for Easter to come. And as we wait, we get ready…
to grow and to change
to listen to God
to ask God questions
to think about the choices we make
to try to put God first,” p. 4.
Through poetry, devotions, prayers, and evocative art by Elena Selivanova, Glenys invites us to do these things, drawing closer to Jesus, learning to love, care, give, and help the world heal as he does. Each day includes a scripture passage that you can read from the version that is most appropriate for you and your family.
I appreciate Glenys’ fresh insights into familiar stories. For example, she lifts up Nicodemus as an honest questioner whose example we can follow during Lent. Along the way she reflects on Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, and we see him welcoming all sorts of people with love as he makes his way to the cross and beyond. She also discusses spiritual practices like fasting, prayer, generosity, and acts of caring, noting that while some people consider giving things up for Lent, we might also consider adding something to our days.
I love the way children are present in so many of the illustrations, sometimes observing, and sometimes actively interacting with Jesus. The pictures themselves invite contemplation. If you use this book with very young children, you might focus on the pictures and tell the stories simply in your own words.
Glenys conveys the scene at the cross with stunning simplicity:
“The world turned dark at three o’clock
The day that Jesus died.
The flowers, trembling, hung their heads.
And God in heaven cried,” p. 44.
Catch the vision of God’s tears. But the story isn’t over…not yet.
’Twas the Season of Lent is going to be a centerpiece for me as I walk through Lent this year with my congregation, and I look forward to returning to it again and again in the years to come.
Beloved neighbor Fred Rogers was born on March 20. Some will celebrate it as Mister Rogers Day. Here is a sermon reflecting on Jesus’ way of being a neighbor. It’s a new version of a sermon I never got to preach when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020. Fred learned much of what he knew about neighboring from Jesus, and we can, too.
Mister Rogers’ shoes
A Sermon on John 4:1-42
In March of 2020 I had neighboring on my mind. Several of us had just about finished reading the book Neighborhood Church together, and we were looking forward to talking more about what we and Morton Church could learn from its insights. What’s more, Rebecca Ball and I had just watched the Tom Hanks movie about Mr. Rogers together, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Fred Rogers was a good neighbor, and he had much to teach about neighboring. I couldn’t wait to share with you all some of what Rebecca and I had seen. And lo and behold, the lectionary scripture calendar for the third Sunday in Lent called us to look at the Samaritan woman at the well story in John 4, where Jesus is a neighbor, welcoming her and the townspeople as neighbors. I was psyched. I had that sermon all ready to go.
And then COVID invaded, and suddenly the best way to care for our neighbors was the stay away from them. It was the only means we had to try to slow and stop the virus. We canceled worship that Sunday, March 15, but the following Sunday we were all back together virtually on Zoom as we are today. Faced with COVID lockdown, however, how could I preach that sermon about making contact with neighbors? I sure couldn’t preach it the way it was written. It seemed it would have to wait. I hoped the way would be clear to preach it in the not too distant future, maybe a matter of weeks, after Easter, perhaps?
Well, here it is almost two years later, COVID is still a threat, and we still have big safety concerns about interacting with neighbors. And because of all the ugly and UNneighborly behavior we have witnessed these last two years, not to mention in the years before, it seems like making neighborly connections is needed now more than ever. The way of neighbor Jesus is needed now, more than ever. Maybe that neighbor sermon shouldn’t wait any more.
But my spiritual GPS is not working well right now. It’s being slow to boot up. GPS is that thing that tells you the steps to take to get somewhere, with spiritual GPS being a sense of direction towards people and places needing the touch of Jesus. Mine is sort of stuck right now, like that little circle going round and round on the computer screen.
Spiritual GPS told Jesus that he had to travel through Samaria, even though he could have geographically recalculated the route as just about everybody else did and go around it. Jesus was interested in that neighborhood and those neighbors.
Tired and thirsty, Jesus sat down at a well outside a Samaritan town called Sychar. And while his disciples went into town to buy lunch, Jesus made a connection with a woman through his own simple human need for water. She came to draw water, and he asked her to draw some up for him and let him drink from her jar. She was astounded. What was a Jewish man doing talking to a Samaritan woman and asking for a drink from her cup, a Samaritan cup? Didn’t he think both she and her cup were unclean?
Well, actually, no. Jesus saw her as a neighbor, and he saw that her soul was thirsty. He saw that, like everybody, this woman had a story, and that her story was filled with pain. Jesus could have commented on the weather, taken a drink and left it at that. Instead, he soon had her reflecting on her experience, and on what living water is.
This nameless woman had been married five times, and was now in a relationship with a sixth man. We should not be quick to conclude that she was damaged goods or trashy somehow. Remember that in those days women were almost always dependent legally and economically on a man, either a husband or a male relative. She could have been widowed, with few or even no relatives. Or she could have been cast aside because men were free to divorce their wives at any time for almost any reason, while women had no right to initiate a divorce at all. Here’s what I think is a big possibility: the story doesn’t mention any children, so perhaps this woman had not been able to conceive a child. Infertility was thought to be a source of great shame for a woman, and a valid reason for a man to cast her aside. Let’s assume that this woman was doing the best she could under the circumstances.
That’s what Jesus did. There’s no condemnation in Jesus’ voice. When he surmised her difficult history and brought it out into the open, the woman was not offended. Her response was again amazement. This stranger at the well must be a prophet, she thought, one who knows the deep things of God. Jesus saw her, knew her, and wanted to keep talking with her. The awareness of being seen, known as you are, and not rejected is pretty powerful.
In fact all human beings need someone to give them this gift, and when they don’t get it, distress and dysfunction result. Fred Rogers spent a lifetime sharing this gift with children and adults, and he tried to show others how to do it. The movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood shows him doing it. It’s a portrait of Mr. Rogers’ neighborliness, and a reflection of Jesus’ way with the woman at the well.
The movie is based on the story of a writer who interviewed Mr. Rogers for Esquire magazine back in the late 90s. In the movie he is called Lloyd Vogel. Lloyd was a cynical writer known for hard-hitting articles critical of people. He also had a difficult family history and a lot of unresolved pain and anger. It was hard for him to believe that Mr. Rogers really was kind and interested in people. He thought it might just be an act.
It was quickly apparent that Fred Rogers was interested in him, and that he sensed that Lloyd had a pain-filled story to tell. At their first meeting Fred slowed things down, posing questions to Lloyd, too, and what was supposed to be a twenty minute interview stretched out much longer. Before Lloyd even realized it, a friendship was born. Fred wasn’t pushy about it. He just invited. Once Fred simply said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about you and your father,” realizing that the relationship was troubled. And that simple sentence showing interest made a wall come down. And like the woman at the well, Lloyd recognized that he was known, and here he was being welcomed into friendship. Mr. Rogers wanted him for a neighbor. It was real!
When there was a crisis in Lloyd’s family, he felt he could go to Fred. Once, in the midst of the family crisis, Fred takes Lloyd out for lunch. Lloyd says, “You really do love people like me, people that are broken.” Fred was well aware of Lloyd’s brokenness and of his own brokenness, the memory of which gave Fred great compassion for others. Fred gives Lloyd a rather unexpected answer: “I don’t think you are broken,” he says, meaning “I don’t see you as damaged goods. That’s not what I am focused on. I see your strength.”
It was reminiscent of an early scene in the movie when Fred was patiently trying to talk to a little boy who obviously had a lot of issues. The child was on oxygen, so he had some kind of medical problem, but he also had problems interacting. He was really hyper, and he had a plastic sword that he couldn’t stop waving around. His parents were trying to get him to calm down. Mr. Rogers said, “You have to be strong to handle that sword. I know you’re strong on the inside, too.” This was a child who was probably used to hearing adults telling him “no” and “stop that.” Here Mr. Rogers was, focusing on him as someone who did have something to offer the world. Somebody worth knowing. The little boy realized Mr. Rogers saw him, understood him, wanted him as a neighbor. He stopped and focused on Mr. Rogers, then let Mr. Rogers hold him.
I think that is what the woman at the well experienced with Jesus. He respected her, knew and understood her, regarded her as a person with something to offer the world, and wanted her as a neighbor. The conversation went on for much longer. The woman became so intrigued that she left her water jar at the well and hurried back into town to invite other neighbors to come out and see and talk with Jesus. They ended up joining the conversation, too.
When Jesus’ disciples asked him about all this, he gestured at the surrounding neighborhood—Samaria of all places—and said, “Look around you! The fields are ripe for the harvest.”
And here Jesus is in the midst of COVID—wearing a mask, I’m sure—gesturing around at the neighborhood around Morton, and at all the neighborhoods we circulate in and saying, “Look around you! The fields are ripe for the harvest.” People empty of meaning and full of cares. People with stories to tell. People who need somebody to see them through Jesus’ eyes and to listen to them through Jesus’ ears and heart.
With COVID still a reality, and given that it’s still uncertain how we might need to operate if and when it becomes an ongoing presence like the flu, I don’t know specifically what forms contact with neighbors can take. And I don’t know how knowing that so many people are on edge emotionally and other ways should shape our approach. Perhaps one day we will end up meeting some of the families and children who will use the special needs gym that a family is planning to build across the road from our church building. But meanwhile, now that they are living in that RV on the site, perhaps we can find ways to bless these neighbors and support them as they work towards their dream of blessing children.
I am sure about this: Whatever forms it takes, neighboring has to do with seeing with Jesus’ eyes and listening with Jesus’ ears and heart. It has to do with being kind and considering the needs of others, letting them know we think they are worth knowing, and that we want them as neighbors, something you are already so good at, Morton Church. What good neighbors you are! As we figure out how to move forward from here, as we struggle to follow spiritual GPS, we can take a page from Mr. Rogers’ playbook, seeing our neighbors as people with strengths and assets and stories to tell. We can approach them with genuine wonder about all that, wondering about what they think, wondering what their challenges and hopes are.
Fear not. This isn’t about arguing people into believing something. It’s not about wowing people with some irresistible program. It’s about encountering people at the well, where we find them in everyday life. It’s about ordinary conversation in ordinary times and ordinary places. It’s about simple acts of concern and welcoming. And there Jesus is, in the middle of us, letting people know they are seen and heard and wanted as neighbors—and loved. Won’t you be our neighbor?
Lord Jesus, dearest neighbor, please come and help us! AMEN.
Ephesians 1:15-23, with Allusions to Jeremiah 29:11 and 32:6-15
Paul’s prayer for congregations reading this letter is a heartfelt mix of thankfulness for their faithfulness and love, and of loving concern for them. He understood how challenging it can be to hold on to hope when the world gives us so many reasons to lose hope.
The respite we enjoyed earlier in the summer was short-lived. Now COVID has come roaring back in the delta mutation. This new wave of sickness and death is heartbreaking enough. What’s especially challenging my sense of hope is that this human tragedy has become politicized. We could and should be working together to contain and vanquish the virus, but instead relationships are being torn apart. People are fighting over vaccinations and masks. People are fearful and angry.
I’m also fed up with legislators focused on fighting and defeating each other, and focused on manipulating voters to solidify their power, instead of working together to serve the people, all the people. I can’t help thinking of what Abraham Lincoln said in his Gettysburg address, when he said that the civil war was testing whether or not a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people—men, originally—are created equal can long endure. Government of the people, by the people, for the people is being mightily tested now.
We are not the first to live through times of multiple traumas, wars, and disasters, both natural and human-made. It was this bad in Jeremiah’s day, and he agonized over what was happening. Babylonian soldiers were encamped around Jerusalem. Any day now they could push through the city walls. And that would mean more death. And more people would be carried away into exile in Babylon.
What made it even worse was that the people in control were in denial. Jeremiah and other prophets saw that a certain amount of cooperation with Babylon would lessen the devastation and save people’s lives. But King Zedekiah and his cohorts harbored grand illusions of pushing the much bigger empire, Babylon, away. What’s more, wrongheaded notions about God were part of the problem. The king was among those who said, “We are God’s chosen nation. God’s Temple is here. God is not going to let Jerusalem fall. God is going to come and rescue us.” This led them to believe they could rebel against Babylon and succeed.
Zedekiah was tired of all Jeremiah’s warnings of disaster and his preaching that the government ought to work with Babylon instead of continuing to antagonize Babylon. In the eyes of the king and his minions, Jeremiah was unpatriotic. Jeremiah was a traitor, and Zedekiah tried to intimidate him into shutting up. So he had Jeremiah placed under house arrest in the courtyard of the palace guardhouse. Jeremiah’s eyes were worn out with weeping over all that was happening, and over people’s stubborn refusal to listen and take productive action.
The people of Paul’s day were certainly no strangers to death and disease and dysfunctional and downright bad government. In every age hope is a challenge, and so Paul wrote, “I am so thankful to God for your faith and your love, and I hold you in my prayers, always. I pray that God will light up the eyes of your hearts so that you can see and know the hope that God is calling you to. May God light up your eyes with hope.”
Then he points to where this hope comes from. The source of this hope is the power of God, the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Jesus Christ was tortured to death, leaving his followers in total despair, total hopelessness. But God raised him up, put him on the throne that is above all thrones, and now the living Christ is the ruler above all rulers.
This same powerful, life-giving God is still at work, and our hope starts there. When hope lights up our eyes, we may not be able to see the details of what God is dreaming of and working towards, but we know that death cannot stop God. The God of resurrection continues to will and to work for what is good, right, just, loving, redeeming, saving, and life-giving for all. Christ the king of love and light is on the throne. God is the ruler yet.
God is the ruler yet. By the Spirit, God reminded Jeremiah of that. He was grieving what was happening in his country, but he was also listening intently for a word from God. And here came the word instructing him to do something that did not make practical sense. Despite the fact that Jerusalem and the nation was about to be overrun by Babylonians, God said, “Jeremiah, your cousin Hanamel wants you to buy his field in Anathoth. When he offers you this land, I want you to buy it.” Hanamel was likely cashing in and planning to get out of Judah before it was too late. Cash is portable. Land is not.
Jeremiah did what God said, bought the land, got everything all signed and sealed and witnessed and filed the documents away in a clay jar for future reference. With doom on the horizon, why would Jeremiah buy a field that he in all likelihood would not live to be able to use? It seems nutty.
Well, this wasn’t just a real estate transaction. This was a sermon in action. Jeremiah explained it this way: “This is what God says: homes and fields and vineyards are again going to be bought in this country, just you wait. God is going to make a new life here one day.” In buying the field, Jeremiah said, “I am counting on God to make a future.”
Earlier, God put the promise this way: “I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you a future with hope.” Jeremiah literally put his money down on that hope.
Jeremiah’s eyes were alight with hope for the future as he imagined God taking action, even though it was action he would probably not live to see. Jeremiah’s eyes were lit up with hope even though they were still filled with tears.
I join Paul in praying that prayer for us, that God might light up the eyes of our hearts with hope—we who pray again and again, “Thy kingdom come, God, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” May God light up our eyes, even when they are brimming with tears. May God light up our eyes, that we might glimpse what the God of resurrection is working on even in the midst of the present darkness, or at least help us find the strength to trust that this God is at work; for whatever God is doing, it is leading to justice and righteousness. It is leading to life.
This week I read some reflections on the challenge of hope by artist Jan Richardson. She paints and writes as an expression of faith. Jan survived the sudden, devastating death of her husband. “Christ who wore our flesh abides with us still, hoping for us when our hope is shattered, breathing new life into us,” she writes. And not only that Christ encompasses “us in the arms of a community that holds us with hope.” In other words, hope is held in community, and when we are in despair, the community holds on to hope and holds on to us.
Jan describes hope this way: “Hope is not always comforting or comfortable. Hope asks us to open ourselves to what we do not know, to pray for illumination in this life, to imagine what is beyond our imagining, to bear what seems unbearable. [Hope] calls us to keep breathing when loves ones have left us, to turn toward one another when we would prefer to turn away. Hope draws our eyes and hearts toward a more whole future, but propels us also into the present, where Christ waits for us to work with him toward a more whole world now.” (Jan Richardson, http://paintedprayerbook.com/2014/11/19/so-that-you-may-know-the-hope/)
Living into hope means looking towards the future with imaginative eyes, looking for what God is doing on the horizon, and letting that shape what we decide to do in the present. We join God’s work towards a more whole world now.
In this present time of strife and fear and sorrow, we still look to the God of hope and to the king of love who is on the throne, and we remain determined to live and act the way he teaches us to live and act, with concern for the wellbeing of everyone. Everyone. Including those people whose attitudes and actions we just don’t understand. We still look to the God of hope to show us where to put our money down, where to buy the field of hope.
My hopes were lifted yesterday during a lovely phone visit with my friend Bettie Powell. Some of you may remember meeting Mrs. Bettie when she and her son Randy came to visit us one Sunday at Morton. They are leaders in the St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church on Tarboro Street. We almost always pray when we visit, and Mrs. Bettie prayed so eloquently and with so much heart that God’s dreams of loving community might be realized here in our divided nation. She prayed for her church and our church, too.
Friends, I hold you in prayer, too, echoing Paul. Echoing Mrs. Bettie. I thank God for your faith and your love. May God light up the eyes of your hearts, that you might glimpse and know the hope God calls us to. May God light up our hearts to glimpse God’s great power at work for good, the same power through which God raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. May God put glimmers of hope in our eyes even when, and especially when our eyes are brimming over with tears. AMEN.
God is love. Really. Love is who God is. Love is what God does. Love is why God created everything, and why God created us in God’s image, the image of love. Love is God’s number one concern. Every telling of God’s story must start with love, and end with love, and be filled with love all the way through; for God’s steadfast love endures forever.
But so many people tell the story as though God’s number one concern is sin, and stamping sin out is God’s number one goal. Since sin is totally incompatible with a holy God, God can’t stand to be around it or even to look at it.
There were some in Jesus’ day who put sin at the center of the story. Their focus was on controlling sin. We certainly should not knock the very good and moral lives they lived, trying to honor God by keeping God’s law down to the last detail. Trying to walk in the ways of God is honorable and worthy of respect.
But these people felt they HAD to be right or else. There was one right way of interpreting the scriptures—their way, and one right way to practice the sacred laws—their way. And any other way was itself sin. Any other way did not please God. Any other way invited God’s anger and judgment.
These are the people that Jesus got in trouble with. He read the scriptures differently, and he put them into practice differently. It seemed to them that Jesus was lax in his observance of the sacred law and even worse, teaching others to do the same. That in itself was sin in their eyes. Jesus was leading people astray. What’s more, Jesus didn’t just tolerate people whom they judged unclean and immoral—the “sinners.” Jesus welcomed them. Jesus even shared the table with them. Being soft on sin was in itself sin.
Some of these folk set out to prove themselves right and Jesus wrong. I’m sure ego and pride and wanting to maintain control was involved, but I think fear was the deeper motivator. Fear is the motivator when people feel they have to be right. Things had to be just so. A few even believed that the Messiah would not come until all of God’s people got their act together and kept the law perfectly. “If we want to be an independent nation again,” they maintained, “everybody needs to get with it and follow God’s law! God will never rescue us from the Roman oppressors unless and until we all stop offending God and start pleasing God!” No wonder right scripture interpretation and right practice meant so much to them.
When people center God’s story on sin, God often comes across as somebody with a hair-trigger temper who gets offended easily, won’t accept anything less than perfection in every way, holds grudges, and has to be placated and appeased to keep his anger in control. If God’s number one objective is to destroy sin, that’s just one step away from saying God’s objective is to destroy sinners. The result is an understanding of God based on fear, and not the healthy kind. Not the kind of awe and respect that prompts one to bow the head. Fear, instead of the thankfulness that prompts one to open the arms and the heart to God.
Heard through fearful ears, God’s story comes across this way: Ever since the time of Adam and Eve, God has borne a great grudge against all humanity. Adam and especially Eve didn’t get it right, and nobody since has gotten it right, and nobody can get it right. That’s sin. The penalty for any sin whatsoever, big or small, doesn’t matter, is eternal punishment. As a consequence, by default, all souls are destined for everlasting torment in hell. Somebody’s got to be punished so God can forgive us. Somebody’s got to be the target for God’s rage, so God sent Jesus to be the target and take the blow that should fall on each and every sinner.
But that doesn’t have to happen to you if you just get this one thing right. Believe that Jesus did this for you and accept him into your heart. Jesus saves you from God. If you get this wrong, the punishment is eternal torture.
Think about what that implies: God’s steadfast love really isn’t forever because if you don’t get this belief right before you die, that’s it. God’s love for you is over. God will not be even as merciful as the worst human terrorist.
Anxious people looking at the salvation story this way are often critical and judgmental of others who, in their eyes, don’t have their scripture interpretation and beliefs right, and/or don’t have their actions right, and/or don’t take a hard line on others who don’t get it right. For them it isn’t just sin that destines you for hell. Being soft on sin also destines you for hell. And if you don’t warn others that they’re being soft on sin, God will ultimately hold that against you.
Fearful people sometimes play on people’s fears as a way to tell the story of Jesus. Scaring people is even applauded. Here’s an example: Every once in a while our church gets an invitation in the mail to an event called a Judgment House, or to a show with a title like “Hell’s Flames, Heaven’s Gates.” They especially want churches to bring their young people. They dramatize the torture that lies ahead for all who don’t accept Jesus into their heart.
Is fear really a good foundation for a loving, life-giving, life-saving relationship with God? Is fear a good starting point for telling the story of Jesus? John the writer of today’s readings doesn’t think so. The foundation is God’s love. The starting point is God’s love. We love because God loved us first. We are here because God loves us. And the reason we can love is that God loved us first. God pours God’s love out for us and into us in the same way we do our own children, only even more. That is why John calls us beloved children of God, born of God.
How deep is this love? If we are tempted to doubt God’s love, John says to look to the cross. Remember what God did through the cross and resurrection. Yes, it is an act of sacrifice, but it is not the act of an enraged father punishing his child. The sacrifice is God’s letting go in love, not pulling his son back out of harm’s way. Not withholding his son or his love from humanity. Even when humanity rejected him, Jesus didn’t pull back. He laid his life down. And here’s the wondrous mystery: he defeated sin and death by taking it on himself. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ disarms sin and death, breaks its power, delivers us from it. Sin is real and it is a killer, but through Christ we live. The cross and resurrection are the sign, the seal, the guarantee of God’s mighty, eternal love.
This love is overwhelming. This love is perfect. This love chases fear away. There is no fear in love, but love casts out fear, John writes, for fear focuses on punishment. This love holds us safe. Safe in Jesus, who is God’s supreme offering of love, we are not afraid of judgment.
God’s primary objective is not to stamp out sin, but to love us in every way, and that includes rescuing us from the grip of sin and death. The heart of the salvation story is not how to keep God from punishing us, but an invitation to let God love us. To stake our whole lives on God’s love, to live in it, to abide in it, to embody it for others. There is no need to be scared of being wrong. John wants everyone to know and believe the love that God has for us. I think that’s why he keeps saying the same thing over and over again, why he keeps on urging us to abide in God’s love, to rest in it, to live it. That is why he keeps on urging us to share it with others.
And we can share it with others, courageously, freely, graciously, generously, even when they don’t love us back because we are safe in Jesus. We are safe in God’s love. Like Jesus, we dare to put our lives on the line, loving with all that we are and all that we have. Concern for others’ wellbeing is as second nature to us as well as our own, because we know God’s got us safe. God’s seeing to our wellbeing, always. We love because God loves us first.
God is love. Really. Love is who God is. Love is what God does. Love is why God created everything, and why God created you and me in God’s image, the image of love. Love is God’s number one concern. God’s steadfast love really does endure forever, for you and for me. Really. And that’s the story I love to tell. AMEN.
A Sermon on Mark 16:1-8, with allusions to Isaiah 25:6-10a
Easter
Mark’s Easter story may be the most realistic one. The women burst out of the tomb and ran away in stunned silence. Maybe they ran because they didn’t get what resurrection meant. Or maybe they ran because they DID get it.
They went to the tomb looking for closure, expecting to finish the traditional burial customs. Yes, they would have to see about getting the stone rolled back, but that problem wasn’t insurmountable. If the stone could be levered into place, it could also be levered out of place.
Jesus’ death was heartbreaking, but in a way, it was also a sad relief. Now Jesus’ followers wouldn’t have to struggle with the challenges he kept laying before them, what he called laying self down and taking up the cross. Now they wouldn’t be so out of step with the powers that be around them. They could go back to being civilians, normal expectations intact, back to something like the life they knew before Jesus came along calling them to something more.
Expectations began to crumble when the women arrived at the tomb and found the stone already rolled back. Somebody had obviously gotten there ahead of them.
Once they got inside their expectations were utterly blown away. There was no body. Instead, there was a young man clothed in bright white. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said, which is what just about every messenger from God in the Bible says because at the very least such an appearance is startling.
“Jesus is not here because he is not dead. He has been raised,” the messenger announced. “Now you tell the disciples, Peter in particular, that he is going to Galilee ahead of you. You go to Galilee, and you will see him there. Remember what he told you?”
The women’s reaction was not relief, “Oh, so this is happily ever after starts.” No! They recognized what this meant. It means Jesus is out there, on the loose, and up to something in Galilee. And if they go to meet him there, he will soon have them up to something, too. And what’s he going to be up to? They’ll find Jesus right back where they saw him when they met him the first time, with the sick, the suffering, the outcast, the needy, forgiving sin, and ushering in the kingdom of God, the good, just, righteous way and rule of God. He’ll be right back to realizing God’s ancient dream of people from everywhere gathered around God’s table, where there’s plenty of nourishment for all, where everyone’s tears are wiped away. He’ll be right back to doing loving things, which are often difficult.
No wonder the women ran. No wonder they were speechless. When they got their wits back about them, they had a decision to make. All Jesus’ followers had a decision to make: Would they go to meet Jesus, would they put themselves on the line with him again, risking struggle and broken hearts and more? Or would they grasp at old expectations and old certainties, and work as hard as they could to get back to the old normal, the way things were before Jesus came along in the first place?
We are getting closer to coming back out in the open after a year of being closed in. I admit I’m unsettled and a little apprehensive. When you come out of darkness and into the light, it’s hard to see well at first, and the light can even hurt. Wide open possibilities can be more intimidating than a narrow set of options.
Short term, I wonder how best to tend to and heal the many emotional, relational, and communal wounds the pandemic will leave behind. Like—what if the strife carries over into conflict between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated?
Long term, what might meeting the risen Christ in Galilee mean for us? For he is risen, on the loose, and up to something. He is out there, calling us to come to him, daring us to dream his dreams, daring us to embrace God’s ancient dream of the bountiful table for all. Death has not stopped the Lord Jesus Christ. He is out there daring us to believe that the way things in this world seem to work is not the way the have to work, not as far as God is concerned. For what is worldly wisdom to God? With God the dead don’t stay dead. Who knows what else is possible?
The Gospel of Mark ends with Jesus’ followers completely unsettled and on the point of having to make a big decision. Easter puts that big decision before us individually and together as a community of faith. As we emerge from the pandemic, we could decide to do everything in our power to resume our former patterns, to find and settle back into what is comfortable, what meets our own needs.
Or we could decide to rivet our eyes to the risen Christ who goes ahead of us into the future, decide to put our lives in the hands of the one who has lavished healing love on us and spread it among us at Morton, the one who has shown us in our life together how good sacred community can be. We can decide to follow the risen Christ who stands in the midst of a world that desperately needs all of God’s dreams to be realized, a world that desperately needs sacred, beloved community. There he is, still holding up God’s vision before us, still working tirelessly to realize it, and still calling us to join him in it. To do loving things with him, which can indeed be difficult. There’s no way around that.
Mark ends with the women running away from the tomb. But they won’t be able to run away from that decision.
We do know this: We are blessed because of the decision they eventually did make.
It’s Easter, the risen Christ, the living God is out there on the loose, calling to us and beckoning us to come where he is.
Immediately after his baptism, the Holy Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness for a time of testing. God sent help. Where is the help that God sends us in challenging times like these?
A sermon on Mark 1:12-15 with allusions to 1 Peter 5:7-11
Mark tells us that right after Jesus was baptized, right after he received God’s wonderful words of love and assurance, the Holy Spirit drove—not nudged, not urged—DROVE Jesus out into the wilderness to face the enemy, Satan. The word Satan means adversary, the adversary and enemy of all that is good. The Spirit immediately compelled Jesus to face the forces of evilhead on.
Matthew and Luke tell us about the conversations Jesus had with the enemy, and the logic Satan tried to use on Jesus in the wilderness in an attempt to turn him away from God’s plans. But Mark simply gives us a vivid snapshot of the scene: wild beasts threatened Jesus, but angels helped him.
The early church that Mark wrote for knew what it was to feel threatened, to be menaced by destructive forces beyond their control. It was not easy or safe to be a Christian. Jesus’ followers fell victim to imprisonment, torture, and even execution for standing up for him.
Around the time Mark wrote this gospel, the Roman emperor Nero blamed the Christians of Rome for a fire that destroyed much of the city, a fire that some historians suspect Nero set himself so that he could further his political agenda. Christians suffered greatly because of the evil cohorts of Satan prowling around them like wild beasts. Some were literally thrown to wild beasts in the arenas of Rome.
Sometimes the world looks like a wilderness full of dreadful beasts, big and small. Yesterday I saw a photograph of tall fences that have been placed around the U.S. Capitol with razor wire on top for fear of what could happen this week. It seems a symbol of the times. All kinds of roaring rhetoric and beastly behavior leaves people broken and afraid and unable to trust one another. What is all the violence, hatred, and selfishness of the world if it’s not a pack of wild beasts preying on God’s children, ripping the human family apart? Sin is so terribly and demonstrably real!
Jesus contended with wild beasts in the wilderness and beyond. Often he cried with pain and frustration, as when he looked out over the city of Jerusalem and lamented, “Oh, if only you knew the things that make for peace, but you can’t see it!” As when Jesus sweat blood in the that last Thursday night, with horrible dread of the next day, longing for the cup of suffering to pass him by. Jesus contended with the forces of evil all his life, until those forces nailed him to a cross.
But God was stronger than the beasts. God sent angels to care for Jesus in the wilderness, just as God had cared for so many others in the wilderness over the centuries, not the least of which were God’s people in that wilderness space between Egypt and the Promised Land. In the book of Genesis, father Abraham and mother Sarah threw their servant Hagar and her son Ishmael—also Abraham’s son—out into the wilderness where they faced almost certain death. But God spoke to Hagar through an angel, opening her eyes to find water to sustain them.
When the prophet Elijah was exhausted and in total despair in the wilderness, God sent an angel not once, but twice to urge him to eat and drink and take strength for his long journey to the mountain of God, where God renewed his call.
In the book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon flew into a fit of rage when three of God’s faithful servants, Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego refused to worship the golden statue made in the king’s image. The king had them thrown into a furnace blazing seven times hotter than normal. These servants of God were steadfast. They had decided to stick with God whether they survived or not. Witnesses reported seeing a fourth figure walking around in the fire with them.
When Daniel himself was thrown by another king’s order into a den of lions, he recounted afterwards how God’s angel shut the lions’ mouths.
The beastly forces of evil still have the power to frighten and to hurt and to kill. But they are not stronger than God. God’s love, God’s compassion, God’s providence, God’s justice and righteousness, and God’s resurrecting power are all stronger. God sent angels to minister to Jesus in the wilderness, and some think the angels even fed him. Some of the early Greek manuscripts of Luke report that an angel also came to give Jesus strength the night before he died. In neither case, however, did the angels snatch Jesus away from the danger and magically make everything all right. They stayed with him to help him.
Where are the angels now? Where are the helpers in this wilderness? As I was typing this yesterday my mind flashed back to one of my favorite quotes from Mister Rogers. As a child when he heard about frightening things in the news, his mother would say to him: “‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood premiered on public television in 1968, another year that was tumultuous for our country. The program was brand new when Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June, just weeks after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Mister Rogers didn’t shy away from talking about it with children. He taped a segment where Daniel Tiger asks, “What does assassination mean?” And Lady Aberlin gently explains. Mister Rogers believed that children need to be listened to carefully at times like these, told the truth, with care of course, and reassured that the grownups who love them are with them. Mister Rogers certainly conveyed the message of the angels to adults as well as children.
(I’m sorry to report that Mrs. Rogers, Joanne, died on Thursday, January 14. She was 92.)
Where are the angels in this present wilderness? Where is God’s help in the middle of the trouble? So often God’s help comes in ordinary ways, in ordinary events, through ordinary people who are simply trying to do what is just and right and loving, even when that is so very hard, and even when others criticize them. The cries of the hurting are being heard and heeded. The hungry are being fed. Wounds are being bandaged, and injustice is being corrected.
If we look for the helpers, we will find them in those God sends to support and comfort, or to challenge how we see things, or to show us a new avenue of help, a new way to hope that never occurred to us before.
We can look for the helpers, we can see them, and we can be them. In fact, it is our privilege to do the work of angels, sharing God’s message of love, and tending to people with compassion, just as the angels cared for Jesus when he struggled.
We shouldn’t underestimate the power of small things, of small acts of reaching out. This past Thursday the clergy group I’m in had a discussion on how to talk to people whose viewpoint is so very different from our own, from whom we feel so distant. We know we can’t convince them to see things another way. Someone made the point that we should not underestimate the power of small talk to open the possibility of connection, even talking about the weather, and about everyday aspects of life that we share as fellow human beings. A little light is still light.
God sends help for people in the wilderness. That’s why Peter urged the suffering early church, “Cast your cares upon him, for he cares for you.”
The beasts in the wilderness are horrible, and we shed many tears because of it. But our God is stronger than any beast. Wild beasts plagued Jesus, but God sent his angels to help. Our God is stronger than death. That is the promise of Easter.
Take heart, all you who are hurt, frightened, or bewildered. Cast all your anxieties on him, for just as he cared for his Son, Jesus, in the wilderness, our God cares for you, powerfully, tenderly, all the time. AMEN.
There is so much pain these days, and so many tears need tending to. People need to be heard.
The Burning Bush, by one of the Morton Church children
A Sermon on Exodus 2:23-3:12 (With allusions to Mark 10:46-52)
Moses had no plans to go back to Egypt. He had left the pain behind. He had left the whole situation behind. A fat lot of good it had done when he reacted impetuously to the brutality he saw all those years ago. It had forced him to flee for his life to Midian. Now he was well into middle age with a good family, a good job, a good life.
But God never left the suffering and the suffering people behind. God heard every cry for help and pitied every groan. God saw everything, knew everything. And God remembered God’s covenant with all the ancestors of the people.
We do not know how many generations the Israelites endured trauma upon trauma. Genesis 15 says the oppression lasted 400 years. Year succeeded year with no relief in sight, and it impacted people’s psyches, shaped their outlook, shaped the lives of their children and grandchildren. I am sure their cries echoed those that are collected in the Bible in the Book of Psalms, cries like: Are you listening, God? Have you forsaken us? How long must we bear this pain? Is there no one to help us? When it feels like those cries have not been heard, not been heeded, the pain is multiplied.
But God was listening, and when a new Pharaoh came to power in Egypt, God saw an opportunity to take action. However, God needed at least one human partner to help. With his life story, and with his passion for justice, even though it had gone dormant, Moses was just the person God wanted to work in, with and through.
One ordinary workday, God caught Moses’ attention out in the field. And when Moses came nearer to see what was going on with that bush, God spoke to him. “I am the God of your ancestors,” God announced. Then God poured out what was in God’s heart. “I have seen how miserable my people are,” God said. “I have heard their cries, and I know how much they are hurting. I know what slavery is doing to them. So I have come down here to do something about it, to get them out of there and take them to a fertile place where they will be safe and free.” Then God repeated, “I have heard their cries! I have seen what the Egyptians are doing to them!”
Moses’ heart must have stirred with the memory of what he himself had seen. It certainly was about time God did something! “And so,” God was saying, “I am sending you to speak to Pharaoh and bring my people out of Egypt.”
“Oh, no,” Moses groaned inwardly. “Who am I to do that?” Moses exclaimed to God. And thus began a long argument between Moses and God. Moses steadfastly maintained he was not the person for the job—no way!—until he finally said flat out, “Lord, please send somebody else!”
There were a lot of reasons why Moses was reluctant to say yes to God’s call. One objection he raised was his difficulty in speaking clearly. But God had an answer to that objection and all the rest.
I’m thinking one reason was that if Moses says yes to God’s call, that means Moses will have to see and hear and know what God sees and hears and knows, and I can’t blame him for not wanting to get close to all that anguish and hurt again. It is not fun to witness people’s distress. It is distressing to hear people cry. It can leave you crying, too. How perfectly understandable if Moses wanted to shield himself from such things. It’s uncomfortable. And sometimes people’s cries strike others as a nuisance, even offensive, as Bartimaeus’ loud cries annoyed the people around him. They wanted him to hush and not interrupt their time with Jesus.
How tempting it is to try to say something to make the hurt stop, like telling an anguished person all the reasons why the situation isn’t all that bad, or that they are overreacting, or explaining that a tragedy is God’s will. The unspoken message is, “Be quiet. Move on.” The suffering person is left feeling unheard.
Being unheard, not being taken seriously, especially if it happens again and again, adds to the trauma and leaves lasting effects. I’ve shared this experience with you before, and thank you for bearing with me as I relate it again. Surgery is traumatic in general, but it holds special distress for children. I have vivid memories of surgery and hospitalizations. When I was nine years old, I went in the hospital for surgery, one of the less invasive ones. It was the Monday after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. That night I didn’t sleep well at all. I was so nervous I had to get up and go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. The next morning I had to wait a long time because the surgery was towards the middle of the day. Then they took me down to the surgery suite too early and left me waiting all alone on a stretcher out in the hall for what felt like a very long time. Finally I just couldn’t stand it any more. I was grieving the whole situation and dreading the sickness I knew was coming on the other side of the operation. I lost it, and I started crying. In the operating room, a man in a mask, a doctor I guess, said to me, “If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to slap you.”
It took me a long time to heal from the damage that did to me. I never told anybody about it until I was an adult. I was in my twenties before I told my mother. I thought it was my fault, that something was wrong with me because I could not stop my tears, that my tenderheartedness was a weakness.
I don’t think that any more.
My next major operation was at age 12. That time I didn’t cry. But I got sick at my stomach before I even went to the operating room.
If that is my small experience, what about people who have been through so much worse? What about the Israelites who couldn’t stop crying then? What about people now who cannot stop their tears? People grieving huge losses. People afraid for themselves and others. People for whom fresh news of justice denied or justice delayed rubs more salt into wounds that go way back, memories of thousands of episodes of justice denied or justice delayed, of many, many small cuts, cutting remarks, cutting looks. People who have been told time and again just get over it already, just be quiet. Disappointed people, angry at the way their lives have turned out, angry that they haven’t been taken seriously.
What about the Israelites, and all God’s children with tears they cannot stop? God never leaves suffering people behind. God is listening. God hears every cry. God heard my cries that day, and many more since. God hears your cries. And God is enlisting partners to do something about it.
The other day I read a quote from a theologian named Paul Tillich. He said, “The first duty of love is to listen.” Amen and amen. Being still and quiet enough to hear people out is a form of love. It is a way to humble oneself and take up the cross, to see with God’s eyes and to listen with God’s ears.
God says: I see, I hear, I know the pain, and I have come to do something about it, to take people to freedom and safety. And so I am sending you to crying children, to struggling children everywhere, to people whose bodies and souls ache, to the anxious and frightened, to those whose wellbeing is precarious for any number of reasons, all of whom need to be listened to well. Help me get them to a place of freedom and safety!
God said, “I’m sending you, Moses. Go tell Pharaoh to let my people go.” So Moses went to his father-in-law Jethro and said, “I have to go back to Egypt.”
Pharaoh was a demagogue. A demagogue is a leader who rallies support from people by appealing to their prejudices and to their emotions, especially fear. Demagogues pit people against one another. He told the Egyptian people, “Look, there’s getting to be more of those Hebrews, those Israelites, than there are of us, and they’re getting to be more powerful than we are. We’ve got to do something, or else they will take us over. We’re not safe. If we keep getting more of them, they are going to team up with our enemies and fight against us.”
Pharaoh stirred up enough fear and hate to get enough of the Egyptian population to cooperate with him in turning Egypt into one big forced labor camp. Enslaving the Israelites was aimed at accomplishing two things: keeping their population down, and exploiting their bodies for labor in manufacturing, construction, field work and more. The Egyptians were ruthless in their treatment of the slaves.
This plan worked in that the Israelites did provide the labor that pumped up the Egyptian economy. However, it failed to curb the Israelite population. The more Israelites there were, the more the Egyptians feared and hated them, and the worse they treated them. So Pharaoh came up with a plan of selective extermination. He ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill every Hebrew newborn boy. I am sure Pharaoh thought the midwives were the perfect people to implement this evil policy. They could easily snap a newborn’s neck, or prevent him from ever drawing the first breath. They could even tell the mothers that their little boys were stillborn.
The midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, had a choice. They could have done what so many others in so many other holocausts have done down through the ages: obeyed and then absolved themselves of responsibility this way: “We were just following Pharaoh’s orders.” But they didn’t. There was something more important to Shiphrah and Puah than protecting their own lives or sucking up to the dictator. They had a reverence for God and a reverence for life. Their calling was to usher life in, not snuff it out. So they conspired against Pharaoh and his evil plan. They conspired against death and for life.
When Pharaoh called them back in to demand why they had let the children live, with perfectly straight faces they told a story. It’s clear in the Hebrew text of Exodus 1 that Pharaoh told his people that the Israelites were multiplying like animals. So the midwives said to him, “Well, your majesty, the Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women. They give birth on their own like animals before we can get to them.” It reminds me of the web of lies that certain members of the German medical community concocted to spirit vulnerable people away when Hitler ordered them to kill the weak, the elderly in particular, and people with disabilities.
So Pharaoh sought out other people who would participate in the genocide. Like Nazis ordering people to turn in Jews, gay people, gypsies, and other so-called undesirables, Pharaoh ordered ALL Egyptians to be part of the killing machine: drown every newborn Hebrew boy in the Nile. Scripture doesn’t tell us how many did or didn’t cooperate. I suspect that a few cooperated, ingratiating themselves to Pharaoh, and that many, many people looked the other way, pretending they didn’t know what was happening. We know for sure that a few courageously resisted Pharaoh’s orders, and one of them was Pharaoh’s own daughter.
Pharaoh’s daughter knew what she was doing when she conspired with Moses’ sister and his mother to save him. Moses’ life was saved, and down the road this courageous action would lead to new life for many. What delicious irony that Moses, who would one day lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt, grew up right under Pharaoh’s nose.
People’s lives were saved because all these women conspired for life. They truly were midwives of new life, unleashing the power of life by putting their own lives on the line. They took the path Jesus took many centuries later when he put his own life on the line. He did it because it meant life for everyone else. Jesus did not run away when some of the religious leaders wanted him to stop what he was doing, to stop associating with and being so gracious to the wrong people, to stop throwing forgiveness around so freely, to stop interpreting the scriptures in new ways. Jesus kept right on doing what meant healing and life for others, even though it led to the cross. Jesus defied the powers of evil by facing them squarely, even accepting death, because this way led to life for many. Jesus called his followers to follow his example, putting our lives on the line. That is why he said, “If you want to follow me, you must take up your cross.” Some things are more important than protecting and saving ourselves.
Conspiring for life, we can join Shiphrah and Puah and say no to what demeans and destroys others. We can say no to demagogues and bullies. Conspiring for life, we can seek creative ways to guard and defend others, like Moses’ mother and sister. Conspiring for life, we can say yes, responding to the need God has put right in front of us, like Pharaoh’s daughter pulling that baby out of the water, never mind what her daddy might think or say or do.
I heard an interesting quote this week from an author named Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s a reflection on people’s desire to go back to normal, meaning back to the way things were before COVID-19 hit. She says, “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.” (https://www.instagram.com/p/B-fc3ejAlvd/?hl=en)
To put that another way, we are being given an opportunity to conspire on the side of life, to midwife new life and new ways into being. Why would we want to go back to a “normal” where some people are considered expendable, as in it’s no big deal if the old and the weak get COVID because they’re going to die anyway? Why would we want to go back to a “normal” where in practice some people’s lives do matter less than others? Why would we want to go back to, or stay in a place where selfishness and greed are celebrated and those who have the most stuff are the most admired? Where injustice and justice delayed is acceptable? Where it is acceptable for millions to simply subsist or even do without adequate food, shelter, medical care or dental care? Why would we want to consider that “normal?”
What would it look like to conspire on the side of something better, to work towards a new normal that is more in line with the kingdom of God that we long for, that we pray for every single time we pray Jesus’ prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?
Jesus invites us to commit ourselves to being midwives who conspire on the side of life, of love, of hope. Follow me, he says. And that means taking up the cross. AMEN.
Jesus said that people who have been trained for the kingdom of heaven are like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old. That is what Jesus does, and what he invites his disciples to do.What new treasures will emerge as the church follows God through the COVID-19 pandemic?
At the end of a series of parables about the kingdom of God, Jesus asked his disciples, “Are you getting all this?” They replied, “Yes”—though like all of us they still had lots to learn. Then he added another twist with another parable about treasure. “Every expert in the law who becomes a disciple, a learner in the kingdom of heaven, is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasure as well as old.” Notice that Jesus mentioned the new treasure first. Cherished treasures can be old, like a family heirloom, a family tradition, memories, and stories. But treasures can also be new, like a precious new baby that God has brought into the family, a new tradition, a new song. Wise disciples cherish the new along with the old.
Bringing out new treasures along with the old is what Jesus himself was doing. “I haven’t come to abolish the old tradition, the law and the prophets,” he declared early in Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount. “I have come to fulfill them.” Jesus cherished the old tradition, but he also brought new treasure to add to and fulfill it. Through Jesus, people could now see deep into the merciful heart of God in a new way.
Not everybody was open to the new treasure, though. Right after Jesus concluded that particular teaching session, he went home to Nazareth to teach in his home congregation. You’d think family and friends would be bursting with pride and welcome what he had to say. But what was their response? They were offended. “Where is this youngster getting this quote unquote wisdom?” they complained. “What gives Jesus the authority to speak a new word from God? We know Moses, and he’s no Moses. He’s just the carpenter’s boy, Mary’s boy. We’ve known him since he was a kid. Who does he think he is telling us that we need to look at things in a new light?” Tragically, Jesus’ hometown folks hardened their hearts against Jesus and his teaching. Thus they closed themselves off from the powerful good new things he might have done in their midst.
Hard-heartedness can prevent God’s people from recognizing and embracing new treasure. I can’t help, for example, thinking of all the treasure that people miss when they refuse to consider that God might speak a word or shepherd a flock through a woman. And how often has the church forgotten that the old treasures, like favorite old songs and old programs like Sunday school were once brand new? Sunday school as we know it didn’t originate until 1780, and believe it or not, people in the church resisted it.
Hard-heartedness certainly prevents people from recognizing new treasure, but so can broken-heartedness. That was the case for God’s people in exile. Painful memories and guilt and shame hindered them from seeing and latching on to the new treasure that God was offering them. “The prophets were right,” they confessed. “We were arrogant and greedy. We didn’t pay attention to God’s cries for justice for the poor and the widowed and the orphan and the alien. No wonder God didn’t stop the Babylonians from crushing our homeland. We might as well get used to it,” they concluded. “We will never see a golden age like the Exodus or the time of King David again. And even if the Babylonians did decide to let us go home, there’s a huge desert between us and Jerusalem.” God’s people lost their ability to dream. If you don’t dream of new possibilities, then you won’t get hurt when they aren’t realized.
That didn’t stop God from dreaming, though. The people were resigned to life in Babylon, but God was already fashioning new possibilities and doing new things. “Remember what you saw me do in the past?” God said through Isaiah. “Well, that’s nothing in comparison to what I am about to do. Watch for the new thing I’m going to do. It’s already underway. Where there seems not to be a way, I am going to make a way home for you, and you are going to sing a new song of praise.”
In the years that followed, some people dared to dream and go with God, and some didn’t. Some sang new songs of the wonders of God, and some didn’t. Some welcomed God’s new thing, and some didn’t.
According to Jesus, wise disciples cherish the old treasure and open their hearts to the new. They give thanks for and draw from the old, old story, but they also get ready to sing a new, new song in response to the living God who is even now up to something new.
We aren’t in exile in the same way as God’s people in Babylon, and yet we are experiencing an exile. COVID-19 has exiled us from the church building, and from gathering closely together. It is challenging us to find new ways to do many things in our families and as a congregation. Right now it is especially challenging for our families with school children, and their teachers, persevering through a lot of trial and error and ironing out technical issues as they try to keep learning going. Necessity is definitely the mother of invention.
This pandemic is challenging emotionally and financially, and in so many other ways. It has also pulled back the curtain that for so long has allowed our nation to continue to look past big inequity, inequality, injustice. What other nation with the kinds of resources we have, for example, continues to allow a situation where millions and millions of people are only one illness away from bankruptcy?
What could God be up to in the middle of this mess and uncertainty that is causing pain to so many? What God said to the exiles in Babylon God says now: “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Even now it is springing forth. Do you see it?” God never stops dreaming and fashioning new possibilities, and God is still in the business of making a way where there doesn’t seem to be any way.
What’s emerging among us at Morton? What new treasures are on the way to us in this “necessity is the mother of invention time”? I am looking forward to seeing how God is going to take the new skills we are learning and use them to help us share the old story of Jesus and his love near and far. Now people can participate from afar.
Building or no, the essentials are getting done. Prayer? Check. Worship and the word? Check. Sacraments? Check. Caring for the wellbeing of others inside our fellowship and beyond? Check and check. What other possibilities await as we live as active citizens of the kingdom of God? God says, “Behold, I am up to something new. Do you see it?” Maybe not yet, but we’re on the lookout.
Thanks be to God for precious old treasure. Thanks be to God for new treasure, challenging and hope-filled. Wise disciples cherish them both. AMEN.
The Mustard Seed Journal 