Remembered

Posted on November 7, 2022 by taylormertins

Luke 6.20-31

Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Sermons are strange things.

Someone spends a week in prayer, pouring over the text, hoping against hope for something to say. Meanwhile, everyone else sits in the pews on a Sunday morning, waiting on a Word from the Lord.

It’s a bit odd that this is one of the ways God’s speaks to us. Most of us can understand, or at the very least appreciate, God speaking through scripture. Many of us are indeed moved by God speaking through music.

But preaching?

The theologian Karl Barth famously noted that “preachers dare to talk about God.” Barth told his students that preaching is meant to be risky in order to ensure that it hasn’t lost its nerve. He dared his students to get out of the way so God could use their sermons to speak.

For, it’s not a sermon until God shows up.

Sermons come and go, some inspire and others bore, some give life while others kill. Preachers must be mindful of the words they use whenever they dare to talk about God.

Which is made all the more confounding when we jump into the strange new world of the Bible only to discover a sermon that God dares to preach about God!

Listen – shortly after choosing the 12 apostles, after word spread about his teachings and healings, Jesus stood on a level place among a great crowd and offered a Word:

“Blessed are those whose lives are an absolute mess, for God does God’s best with broken pieces.

Blessed are the humiliated, for they have been relieved from the burden of self-righteousness.

Blessed are the broken-hearted, for grace falls through the cracks.

Blessed are those who grieve, for what is grief if not love persevering?

Blessed are the last, least, lost, little, and dead, for to them the kingdom has been prepared.

Blessed are the forgivers, for, at the end of the day, what else is there?

And blessed are the forgiven, for they have nothing left to hide.”

“But woe to you who think salvation is yours to earn through power, wealth, and pride, you will be disappointed.

Woe to the fat cats and the hedonists, there will come a time when you are empty.

Woe to those who think life goes on forever and ever, for you will die.”

“Therefore, live wild and reckless lives, for in so doing you will inherit the kingdom of God. Love the unlovable. Forgive the unforgivable. If someone asks for food, invite them to your table. If someone is in need of clothing, give them the jacket off your back. None of it was ever yours in the first place.”

“Love others the way you would like to be loved.”

In the name of the Father, myself, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Upon first inspection, it might not seem like Jesus’ sermon dares to speak about God. In fact, it sounds a lot like it only deals with us. Blessed are you, woe to you, do this, do that, and so on.

And yet, the blessings, woes, do’s and don’ts are only made possible and intelligible by God in the flesh who proclaims these words.

Today is All Saints’ Sunday – the blessed occasion to name and remember the saints in worship, to give thanks to God for putting them in our lives, and to praise God for raising them up into the great cloud of witnesses. And yet, in so doing, we often paint pictures of the saints as being holy and perfect people.

The saints of God’s church are and were anything but perfect.

It’s all nice and fine to elevate biblical characters from the New Testament, but it’s important to remember that people like Peter and Paul were perjurers and murderers. And, for some strange reason, we can’t stop naming churches after them!

Or, to leave the Bible for a moment, do you know the story of St. Nicholas? Yes, that St. Nicholas, the one who famously provided gifts for children in the middle of the night. Well, the story goes that during the Council of Nicea in 325 a certain Christian named Arius was arguing that Jesus was not co-equal to the Father but was instead created by God. And, unable to restrain his disdain for such a theological back-step, St. Nicholas marched across the floor, and punched Arius in the face!

The saints, contrary to how we might like to imagine them, or hide them away in museum-like churches, are far more complicated, and therefore faithful, than our limited perspectives of perfection.

To put it another way, as Oscar Wilde said it, “The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

Sermons, strange and daring as they are, give us the language to express the difference Jesus makes. For, we Christians are a threatening bunch to the order of things.

Just think about what Jesus preached! Love your enemies? Do good to those who hate you? Turn the other cheek? Those proclamations run against everything we’re taught about what it means to exist in the world.

And yet, Jesus proclaims this strange and even bizarre sermon not because these things work. Loving your enemies doesn’t make them disappear, just as turning the other cheek doesn’t stop us from getting hit. In fact, it usually guarantees it.

Saints exists because of a community we call church that nurtures and shapes people who, while often unfaithful, learn the story of God through Jesus’ preaching.

Jesus preaches this sermon not because it works, but because it tells us who God is.

And God changes everything.

In the book of Acts, those outside the church called the earliest followers of Jesus “world-turners” because they kept flipping things upside down. The first will be last, resurrection out of death, etc. But by the 2nd century, those outside the church described those who followed Jesus as a burial society.

Of course, the church is more than just a burial society, but we are also exactly that!

We are a burial society because we gather to mourn the dead, and yet we do so with hope because we know death is not the end! All of us experience death prior to our deaths because we are baptized. In baptism we are buried with Christ that we might rise with Christ.

How strange it is to be a Christian.

Week after week, we pull out this old book and find that it is alive and speaks into our existence here and now. We baptize the young and the old alike knowing that it incorporates us into something we might now have ever discovered on our own. We gather at the table and we are made participants in the communion of the saints. We hold fast to the truth of the gospel that only God can tell us who we are.

I remember coming forward for communion once when I was a kid. My hands were outstretched in line with everyone else. Right in front of me was an older man, and I could hear him crying as he walked forward. As soon as he stood in front of the table, our pastor looked on his tears and said, “Why are you crying?!”

And I heard him say, “I’ve been a bad man.”

And without missing a beat our preacher said, “As have we all! But take heart! You belong to God.”

Hear the Good News of the Gospel: God does not make anyone a saint who is not first a sinner, nor does God provide love to any but the wretched. God has mercy on none but the bad, and gives grace only to those who are in disgrace.

Which is why we can do the strange things we do in church. Whether its preaching, or baptizing, or serving. Whether its crying or laughing. We can even happily remember the saints, not as a denial of their deaths, but as a recognition that their deaths are not their ends.

Jesus does not say, “Bring to me your perfect lives and your perfect jobs and your perfect families.”

Instead, Jesus says, “Bring to me your burdens, and I will give you rest.”

Jesus does not look at our choices and our actions in order to weigh out whether we’ve done enough to make it through the pearly gates.

Instead, Jesus says, “I have come to save sinners and only sinners.”

Jesus does not write us off for our faults and failures.

Instead, Jesus says, “You are mine, and I am thine.”

On All Saints, we remember the Saints, all of them.

Notably, the “all” in “All Saints” is the acknowledgment by the church that we do not know the names of all who have lived and died to make possible what we are about to do: gather at the table of God.

If sermons are strange, communion is even stranger. For, when we gather at the table, we commune not just with God, but we commune with all the saints who have come before us, those who surround us now, and those who will be here long after we’re gone.

This feast stretches across time and is a foretaste of the Supper of the Lamb when we will gather with those we have lost.

Today, we bring all of our emotions to the table. The joy and gratitude for the saints, the grief and the pain that they are no longer here. And we can bring all of our feelings because Jesus says “Heaven belongs to those who cry, those who grieve and ache and wish that it wasn’t so, those who know not all is as it should be.”

In short, heaven belongs to the saints, and to us.

Thanks be to God.

Jesus Changes Everything

Posted on November 3, 2022 by taylormertins

Luke 20.38

Now God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to God all of them are alive.

The Sadducees ask Jesus a question. If a woman remarries 7 times, to whom will she be married in the resurrection of the dead?

Jesus has two choices in terms of an answer.

1) He could pick 1 of the 7 husbands, perhaps the first, or the last, or one in the middle, to be her husband in heaven. But none of them make for a good answer since 6 of the former husbands would be left to inherit the wind.

2) He could admit that the Sadducees have a point – If she can’t be married to one of her husbands in the resurrection, then perhaps there is no promised resurrection.

But, of course, Jesus doesn’t go with either of those options. Instead, he breaks through with an answer previously unthought of. Jesus simply asserts that the resurrection is an entirely new ballgame in which the present rules and assumptions about marriage no longer apply. Additionally, he furthers his answer with the claim that the Torah proves the resurrection since God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all of whom were not alive at the same time and if God is to be their God they all must be alive together in some other way.

Jesus’ answer is less about the nuts and bolts of marriage, and more about how the kingdom of God works. He asserts, in just a few verses, that the people we marry and bury in this life don’t really belong to us.

And that’s Good News.

However, for some of this this might actually sound like radically bad news; we shudder to think of a time when we will lose the people we’ve taken hold of in this life. We don’t want to imagine a moment in which someone wearing a ring is no longer bound by that ring.

But that’s exactly the kind of assumption that Jesus is overturning.

It’s why we say, “‘Till death do us part.”

Jesus changes everything. The life, death, and resurrection of the Lord obliterates all of our previous notions of possession, particularly when it comes to people. Notably, the Sadducees held to a rigid understanding that women belonged to men as if property. But then Jesus stands and offers a truly radical witness to marriage: We aren’t lesser halves or better halves until (and after) we get married. We are fully and wonderfully made by God whether we get married or not. Marriage is something that happens in this life, but in the resurrection of the dead all notions of labels fade away as we gather at the Supper of the Lamb.

It’s as if Jesus addresses the crowd and says, “Listen up! A new world is colliding with the old. Behold, I am doing a new thing, something beyond even your wildest imaginations. In this world, the world you’re so wedded to, there is death. But in the world I’m bringing there is life and life abundant. In this world, your world, people are made to feel less than whole. But in the world to come, all people are children of the living God.”

On Sunday, Christians across the globe will gather to remember the saints (unless they did so already on Tuesday). It is an occasion for us to give thanks to God for those now dead while, at the same time, rejoicing with the knowledge that they now await us at the Supper of the Lamb. Oddly enough, we can happily remember the saints, even in our grief, because we worship the God of the living.

Praying Our Goodbyes

Posted on October 31, 2022 by taylormertins

This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Mikang Kim about the readings for All Saints’ Sunday [C] (Daniel 7.1-3, 15-18, Psalm 149, Ephesians 1.11-23, Luke 6.20-31). Mikang is the pastor of Epworth UMC on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Our conversation covers a range of topics including proper pronunciation, perseverance, communal reading, saintliness, the difference Christ makes, directions for singing, courage, blessings and woes, sermon introductions, and Kingdom work. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Praying Our Goodbyes

The Death of Death

Posted on November 1, 2021 by taylormertins

Revelation 21.1-6a

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

What frightens you more – the hospital or the cemetery?

We have an aversion to death in our culture. We take pills that promise to make us look, or feel, younger even though they don’t. We listen to doctors tell us about our need to reduce sodium or sugar but then we find ourselves coming out of the Drive Thru lane with a super sized soda and a mountain of French fries. We read the numbers and the statistics of those who die, but we assume that the same fate can’t, or won’t, befall us.

When death rears its ugly head, we do everything we can to run in the opposite direction.

I meet with families to prepare a service of death and resurrection and I am told that they don’t children present for fear of frightening them about the finality of death. In the days before COVID, I would visit people in the hospital who told me how bad they wished others would come and sit with them, but they understood the reluctance – no one wants to get too close to the truth.

When I was in seminary, we were required to tour a funeral home in order to learn everything that happens to dead bodies from arrival until burial or cremation. We were escorted through the embalming process, shown the vast array of color coordinated coffins, and we were even shown the inner workings of the crematory which had to get hot enough to turn bones into ash.

And then, shortly before it was all over, we were shown the viewing room in which a recently dead woman lay in her coffin, ready to receive her friends and family that evening. We paid our respects, but more than a few of my peers stood frozen in their tracks – it was the first dead body many of them had ever seen, and it shocked them so much they couldn’t move.

Death has an ugly color. I have seen it more times than I can count. Rare are the calls to a pastor when something has gone well. I’m the one they call when death shows up.

Why are we talking about such things today in church? Why are we talking about death?

Well, for one thing, today is Halloween. What better day could there be to talk of death? Tonight, scores of children will dress as super heroes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, defenders of peace and justice from the Galactic Empire, and even extinct creatures that used to roam the earth. And, of course, there will be some who dress as more frightening figures, those who straddle the thin line between life and death.

Halloween forces us to confront death in an odd way – through children. I’ve come to rejoice in this strangest of holidays not only because I already get to dress up in somewhat of a costume every week in church, and not only because I have an unhealthy appetite for KitKats, but because it is a necessary opportunity for all of us to come close to an inconvenient truth – no one makes it out of this life alive.

And yet, this year, I’m not sure how badly we need the reminder… Every day we are bombarded with the statistics about COVID19 and its disregard for our pretensions, we are met with masks on the young and old alike making it impossible to deny the gravity of our situation. Even with the vaccine on the imminent horizon for 5-12 year olds, death keeps rearing it ugly head.

Church, oddly enough, is one of the few places where, even though the rest of the world actively engages in the denial of death, we stare into it week after week.

We put up crosses, we sing songs about those who from their labors rest, we even occasionally feast on the Lord. We are compelled to face the truth that we would rather avoid.

Death is ugly.

And it is here, squarely staring death in the face, do we dare to proclaim the Gospel of God:

There is a new heaven, and a new earth! A loud voice shouts from the throne, “See, the home of God is among the people! God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more! Mourning and crying and pain will be gone!” And the one seated on the throne said, “See I am making all things new!”

Do you have goosebumps?

Did you hear the Good News?

In the end, death is no contest for the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Death is defeated by the King of kings who comes to die in our place. The death of death is made possible by the One who broke forth from the tomb in resurrection.

Revelation is a wild ride, one worthy of Halloween worship. The whole book contains these fantastical images and scenes that go beyond our ability to comprehend. They point to God’s cosmic victory over the cosmos. The vision granted to John boldly proclaims that no amount of pain, no number of graveyards, no heap of hospital hallways have the final word.

Sure, they will sting like nothing else on earth – they might even derail everything we think we know to be true – but they are not the truth.

There’s a reason that this text, this vision, has been associated with Christian burials since the very beginning. There’s a reason that we read these words when we bury our friends, our families, and even our children.

They are words of hope for a people who feel no hope in the world. Whether it was the earliest Christians suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire, or someone who just said their final goodbye, these words mean something.

These are the words that guide, shape, and nurture the saints.

Today, in addition to Halloween, is when we celebrate All Saints. We read and remember the names of those who have died in the last year. It is a somber and holy moment in which we pause to reflect on how God worked in and through those now dead. It is an opportunity to imagine what God might even be up to with us.

And the “all” in “All Saints” is important. Lest we fall prey to the temptation of believing that saints are only those perfect Christians – Saints are just sinners in the hands of a loving God. In fact, if there’s any real requirement for being a saint, it is merely the admission that we are not yet what we can be. It’s about coming to grips with the condition of our condition all while holding fast to the wonderful Good News that Jesus does his best work with people like us – Jesus deals in the realm of impossible possibility – Jesus is in the resurrection business.

John sees the New Heaven and the New Earth and notice, they are not replacements for the old ones. In our deaths we are not beamed away to some distant realm of existence. God does not reject the created order. The New Heaven and the New Earth are transfigurations of what we have right now – they are the created order raised and glorified.

Which means that wherever we find brokenness today – in our lives, in our families, in our institutions, God is actively working to rectify those wrongs right now. God calls us, even us, to live into the reality of all things being made new.

Do you see? What John sees has already happened, it is happening, and it will happen.

God made all things new in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God makes all things new whenever one of us is in Christ (there is a new creation), and God will make all things new in the Eschaton.

All Saints, what we do today, allows us to be re-communed with every saint that has come before us, with the saints in our midst now, and strangely enough with the saints who will arrive long after we’re gone.

We belong to and believe in the communion of saints, the great cloud of witnesses, past, present, and future.

The church is a peculiar thing – we move forward by looking back and we live now because of death. We are what we are because of what we’ve inherited, but we are also who we are because, in baptism, we’ve died with Christ in order that we might live, truly live.

There is, of course, a lingering question – How can we know this to be true?

None of us know the writers of the scriptures, we don’t know the authors of the hymns and songs we’re singing today, we don’t even know the names of the people who adorn our windows in this sanctuary.

We, I, can’t prove any of this. The resurrection of the dead, the communion of the saints, the great cloud of witnesses, is not that kind of knowledge. It is a gift of faith, of trust.

I know it to be true because my grandmother told me its true. I know it to be true because I’ve had countless individuals, saints, who lived lives according to that truth, people who showed me the way. I trust the witnesses, because that’s what we all are, in the end. We testify and listen to those who testify to the truth.

On this spookiest of holidays, as we prepare to look death squarely in its face, as we take time to give thanks for the saints, we do so in the light of this news, this truth:

Descending from the realm of light and life, invading the horrid darkness of the kingdom of Death and destroying it forever, comes One who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. To us he speaks the enduring words of the Gospel: “I am the resurrection and I am life, whoever trusts in me shall live.” He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Time After Time

Posted on November 1, 2020 by taylormertins

Matthew 5.1-12

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kings of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

The day after the 2016 presidential election:

Thousands of angry citizens in California gather to protest against the election of Donald Trump. Though initially peaceful, the protest eventually turns violent as the crowds begin attacking the police and lighting dumpsters on fire. As tear gas is fired into the crowd, a chant starts to rise, “Kill Trump, Kill Trump, Kill Trump!”

Meanwhile, a woman walks into a Wal-mart in the Midwest while wearing her religious hijab. She goes up and down the aisles picking out her items when another woman walks up, grabs her by the shoulder while pointing at her hijab and says, “That would look a lot better around your neck! This is our country now!”

Meanwhile, a man is driving through a suburb of Chicago when a crowd of young men surrounds his car, pulls him from the vehicle, and drags him through the streets. They attack him because he has a Trump sticker on his bumper, and in the videos taken by on-lookers you can hear the young men shouting, “You voted for Trump, and now you’re going to pay for it!”

Meanwhile, white students at a Junior High School in Michigan form a human wall to block minority students from entering the building. There are shouts of “go back to your country” and “we’re going to make America great again.”

Presidential elections tend to bring out the worst in us.

Or, to use Paul’s language, it’s times like these that we are reminded “There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one.”

Time after time, it seems this is our fate. We, that is Christians, are content to gather, whether online or in-person, with people of differing political persuasions so long as we never address those differences and then, after an election, we hope things will tone down and we can get back to living life.

And yet, as Christians, we are already living in the time after time. God in Christ made, and still makes, time for us and has quite literally changed time forever.

It’s just that sometimes we don’t act like its true.

Today Christians across the globe are gathering for All Saints. All Saints is a day set apart, a different time, in remembrance of the dead – it is an opportunity for the church to offer witness to the ways in which God moved through the saints of our lives.

It is a radical moment in terms of the liturgical calendar, rivaled only by the radical words of Jesus from Matthew’s Gospel.

The so-called beatitudes have always been a source of comfort and hope for the people called church. Though, at times, we have inverted them to be descriptions of how we’re supposed to behave. We lift them up over the heads of dozing Christians and explain that if they want to join the community of saints, this is how you have to live.

But what Jesus describes in his Sermon on the Mount, both in the beatitudes and in the descriptions of behavior following, like turning the other cheek and praying for one’s enemies, they don’t describe what “works.”

Seeking righteousness in a world full of self-righteousness, and praying for the person persecuting you, tends to lead to more self-righteousness and more harm.

Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount isn’t a to-do list to make the world a better place. Instead, it is a description of who God is.

The poor, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, they are blessed not because they’ve earned it or deserve it, but simply because it is God’s good pleasure to do so.

To put it simply, the idea behind this crazy thing called church is that we might worship the Lord as well as learn what it means to exist as a beatific community in exile where the mourning, the meek, and the merciful are blessed.

The people called church are in the world, but not of the world.

The people called church are constituted and bound not by political documents, but by the Lord of heaven and earth.

The people called church are a community that has learned that to live in a manner described by the Sermon on the Mount requires learning to trust others to help us live accordingly.

To put it even simpler terms: the object of Jesus’ words to the crowds that day, and to us today, is to create dependence – it is to force us to need one another.

But, most of us don’t want to need anyone else. We’ve been spoon fed a narrative of self-determination since birth and we can’t stand the idea of having to rely on others.

And this is why the beatitudes will never make sense to those outside the people called church. Jesus’ words are only intelligible, and therefore advisable, in light of the cross and the empty tomb.

Otherwise, they are garbage.

But in the church, we are reminded over and over again that we are dependent on one another and the Lord, and that we are kidding ourselves if we think we can make it through this thing called life on our own.

The church is at her best when we can speak and hear the truth about the condition of our condition, that we are sinners in need of grace, that we are all in need of help and mercy, and that we all need one another far more than we think we do.

But that is not how we are used to hearing about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. If we hear about it at all, it is usually a brief reflection about how there are merely suggestions for how we should live or they are only meant for the super faithful among us, the Mother Teresas and the Mister Rogerses.

In short, we’re told the Beatitudes describe the saints.

The challenge for us, unlike most sermons proclaimed and received today, is that we cannot divorce this message from the messenger. Because, unlike preachers today (myself included), Jesus did not just say these words about some group of people sometime in the future; he, in himself, is the inauguration of the new time.

Jesus is the Messiah of the beginning and the end. Through his death and resurrection he has made it possible for us to live according to these confounding words not by our own effort, but by the Spirit moving through us.

And, saints (that is: all disciples) are not those who are the super best Christians of all. Saints are simply those who have already died in baptism to be raised into a new life where the impossibility of Jesus’ words not only become possible, but become real.

Which is just another way of saying, we’re all in this crazy thing called church together.

Presidential elections may bring out the worst in us, but they also remind us of who we are: sinners in need of grace. Contrary to how the talking heads might want us to think, the world does not hinge on our elections. God has been God a whole lot longer than we’ve been picking and choosing leaders, and God will be God long after we cast our final votes.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus is Lord – that means we believe that God is God regardless of who sits behind the desk in the Oval Office. And, pertinently, it means we believe God is calling us to live according the words of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which includes praying for our enemies.

Can you imagine? Christians praying for the people they disagree with?

Sadly, that’s at the heart of what it means to follow the Lord and it has been so absent during this election cycle, and the one before it, and the one before that one, and so on. Instead of praying for and loving our enemies, voters have been intimidated, people have been attacked, and families and churches have been divided.

And, perhaps we’d like to blame our politicians for this tumultuous season. But the problem goes far deeper than those running, and selected, for office.

The problem is us.

Rather than seeing one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, we’ve viewed each other through the names on our bumper stickers.

Rather than listening to and praying for those of different opinions, we’ve just shouted louder into the fray.

Rather than confessing Jesus as Lord and living accordingly, we’ve fallen prey to believing that what happens on Tuesday is more important than what happens on Sunday.

Our election of leaders will always pale in comparison to God’s election of us, precisely because we do not deserve it. We’ve been elected to salvation through Christ in spite of copious amounts of evidence to the contrary.

And Jesus calls us to a life of humility in which we pray for those whom we hate.

Jesus constitutes a people who are his body on earth to be for the last, least, lost, little, and dead.

Jesus, high in the air with the nails in his hands and feet, says, “Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they are doing.”

And, if we’re honest, we have no idea what we’re doing.

We don’t know how to be Christian in America, we don’t know how to hold our Christian identities and political identities in tandem, and we do not know how to love the people we hate.

But we do know this: Jesus is Lord – and he won’t give up on us.

So today, in spite of the world spinning as it does with fightings and fears within and without, we give thanks to the Lord our God who makes a way where there is no way, who has created a new community of love in his only begotten Son, and who elected us to salvation. Amen.

Preaching Isn’t Public Speaking

Posted on October 26, 2020 by taylormertins

This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Sara Keeling about the readings for the 22nd Sunday After Pentecost [A] (Joshua 3.7-17, Psalm 107.1-7, 1 Thessalonians 2.9-13, Matthew 23.1-12). Sara serves as the lead pastor at Good Shepherd UMC in Dale City, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including The Overstory, connected characters, divine deliverance, All Saints all the time, the God who gathers, theological wandering, rules and regulations, and sitting at the reject table. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Preaching Isn’t Public Speaking

Radical

Posted on November 4, 2019 by taylormertins

Luke 6.20-31

There are a lot of churches around here. I’ve mentioned before that, depending on which way I go, I can pass by 15 other churches on my way from my house to this church. All kinds of churches – big churches and little churches, protestant churches and catholic churches (well, only one of those). And they’re all different. On Sundays they are filled with different people listening to different pastors preached about different subjects.

I wish there was only one church, a united single church within which all Christians across the globe could call home. But it doesn’t exist.

Instead we disagree on an almost limitless number of things such that new kinds of churches are sprouting up every day.

In fact there are so many different versions of church out there that we have something in the modern parlance called “church shopping.” If you simply don’t like what you hear on a Sunday morning you can try out a different church next Sunday and the one after that and the one after that until you find the perfect church.

I’m assuming that most of you are here because this church is as close as you’ve found to perfection.

And even though there is no one real thing that unites the multiplicity of churches, except for maybe Jesus, there is something around here that seems to bind them all together: Harvest Parties.

Have you seen the signs recently? Have you been invited by your neighbors? I haven’t been able to drive anywhere without big and bold letters letting me know that some Christian group is having a harvest party – and they’ve all been scheduled for the same weekend. This weekend!

So why are churches hosting harvest parties? I don’t know.

My best guess is it seems like a whole bunch of churches want to have Halloween parties without calling them Halloween parties.

Perhaps they don’t like the idea of kids in costumes, or free candy, and putting the word “harvest” on a celebration makes it feel more wholesome.

And the problem with all of that is the fact that Halloween is a Christian holiday!

Halloween comes from All Hallows’ Eve – a liturgical service in the midst of the Christian year. And All Hallows’ Ever is just an older English way of saying All Saints’ Eve.

It occurs the evening before the first of November, and it is a time marked by Christians across the globe by giving thanks to God for the departed saints who came before us. In other churches this took place on Friday, but we’re celebrating All Saints’ today. And because it is fundamentally a remembrance of the dead and anticipating their resurrection, it’s obvious how it connects with the habits and practice of what we call Halloween.

When Christians get afraid of consumes and the candy, or try to move it or tame it or water it down, it just reinforces our greatest fear the we try to deny with every waking breath – the inevitability of death.

But Halloween, All Saints, they are prime opportunities for us to dance with death, not in a way that worships the darkness that frightens us, but to shout with a resounding voice that death will not win. We Christians are the ones who laugh at death’s power in this world, not because it doesn’t sting, but because we have already died with Christ that he might raise us into new life.

Halloween is therefore one of the most Christian days of the year because our God is in the business of raising the dead!

Our God is a radical God!

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On All Saints the church witnesses to the ways in which God moved through the saints of our lives who are no longer alive. We read their names and offer time for reflective and prayerful silence. And we do all of that because in ways both big and small, the saints we remember today joined in the unending chorus of laughter in the face of death’s dark rays.

It is one of the more radical moments in the liturgical year.

Matched only by the radical words from the lips of Jesus read for us already.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.”

This topsy turvy announcement about the power of God’s grace contains tremendous blessings: If you are weeping now you God will turn it around to bring forth laughter – if you are suffering now for the Son of Man you will jump in joy for your reward is great in heaven.

But for as much as it presents a rose tinted view of a time not yet seen, Jesus continues the reversal.

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

The poor and hungry will have their fortunes reversed – that sounds like good news. But for those us us who are sitting well in our finances and happy with full bellies – its not so good. The rich, the powerful, the well regarded, their fortunes are going to be reversed as well.

In this mini sermon from the gospel of Luke, Jesus overturns all of our previous misconceptions about the way the world works: The poor become rich, the rich become poor, the outcasts are brought in, and the powerful are cast out. We might struggle with these words, or perhaps we might consider them unfair, but God isn’t fair. For if God were fair, none of us would be good enough.

God is inherently unfair – God is in the business of righting wrongs and even wronging rights – God raises the dead.

Throughout Luke’s gospel, Jesus lives according to the words of this sermon by going to those on the margins, consistently challenging the status quo, and convicting those who feel too certain they are right. Likewise, saints are those whose lives demonstrated a care for those on the margins, or standing up for those forced to the ground, and speaking for those whose voice were taken away.

But, lest we leave today under the impression that saints are very, very holy people, a people whose lives cannot be matched, saints really are just like us. Again and again in Paul’s letter, he addresses the people as the saints who are in Christ Jesus. For Paul, being a Christian and being a saint were one in the same. The assumption being that to be a Christian meant you were ready to die for your faith.

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The earliest saints, in fact, were the earliest Christian martyrs – people literally killed because of what they believed. And here we come to another often forgotten or disregarded piece of discipleship: Christianity is about more than being nice to people. Jesus wasn’t killed for telling people to love one another and the early Christians weren’t martyred for suggesting we all just get along with each other.

They were killed for being radical.

They were killed for saying things like the first will be last and the last will be first.

They were killed because they believed in worshipping God rather than Caesar, rather than the King, rather than the President.

And that’s not every getting into all the stuff about how we are supposed to relate to one another: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

And that comes into direct conflict with the powers and the principalities. To say those things aren’t the end all be all is to start carrying our own crosses up to Golgotha.

Whether its Rome, or America, or our bosses, or our spouses, or whoever – we are forever being told who we are. We define ourselves by the definitions given to us by others, and more often than not from the others with power. When we look in the mirror we see not what we see but we see what we’ve been told.

But for Christians, none of us know who we really are until God tells us.

And that kind of behavior drives the powers and principalities crazy! As those who follow Jesus we refused to be defined by others. We are more than the people we vote for, or the team we cheer on, or the embarrassing story that stayed with us for years. We are not those things. We are who we are because of God.

Being a saint, then, is really nothing more than confessing we have been saved by the One who made us part of an extraordinary community that refuses to let others tell us who we are.

All Saints’ Sunday is a time for us to celebrate the lives and the deaths of those who were here before us. It is not an accident the the text assigned for today ultimately has to do with death. Living according to the words of Jesus is a radical thing. It is also a total thing.

The “All” in “All Saints’” is powerful. It is the church’s proclamation that we do not know the names of all who have lived and died to make possible what we do as a church. You don’t have to have lived the perfect life at the perfect church to be a saint. In fact, if there’s any real requirement for being a saint, its the admission that we are far from perfect. But Christ isn’t done with us yet.

Chances are, none of us here will ever be killed for our faith. Part of that stems from the fact that our nation and our faith are tied up with each other, contrary to the obsession with the separation of church and state. And another part of it stems from the fact that when we read these challenging words from Jesus we imagine them as some hopeful future instead of them being a command.

Because if we really lived according to these words, people would try to kill us.

Thanks be to God then, that all of us here have already died. The waters of baptism brought us into the very heart of Jesus’ crucifixion that we might come out on the other side of the tomb with him.

As the culture around us starts to turn toward Thanksgiving and an overly commodified version of Christmas, today we are reminded that those who are looking for happiness in a bigger house or a larger paycheck or a better spouse will discover that those things will never make us happy. There will always be a bigger house, more lucrative jobs, and people with power.

On All Saints’ we cannot ignore the great cloud of witnesses who have pointed us to a different way, The Way we call Jesus. We know not what tomorrow will bring but we do know that God in Christ is in the business of making all things new, of raising the dead, and only God can tell us us who we are. Amen.

Spooky

Posted on November 4, 2018 by taylormertins

Revelation 21.1-6a

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

I love Halloween. There’s just something about people, both young and old, getting dressed up in costumes that draws forth a feeling of frivolity that feels almost completely absent in the world today. This Halloween, in particular, felt like a great pause and retreat from the never-ending horrible news cycle; rather than having all of the same conversations about the same stuff over and over again, for one night, people put on the masks and let it all go.

And nowhere was this more present than in our parking lot for the Trunk or Treat. We had over 200 hundred children from the community make their way from trunk to trunk and our property was filled with laughter, wrappers being ripped to shreds, and the monster mash. But perhaps the thing I enjoyed most, even more than watching kids go down the Bouncey house slide, or my son dancing in his Luke Skywalker costume, was watching the parents.

I recognized a number of people from the neighborhood, and some of whom regularly gather in our lot for the Flea Market or for the food distribution, but during the trunk or treat they seemed different. Instead of the normal anxieties and frustrations, they appeared at ease. I saw smiles, and giggles, and even the occasional sleight of hand removing a Twix from a kid’s bucket for a quick treat.

Halloween is awesome, and it is good for kids and adults.

Underneath the costumes and the candy, beyond the Butterfingers and the “Boos!”, Halloween contains a recognition about the complicated nature of life, and in particular that life doesn’t last forever. On Halloween both the young and old are forced to come to grips with the often avoided truth: death is real.

But for as important as Halloween is, particularly for Christians, All Saints is even more important.

All Saints is the set apart liturgical day when we pause, remember, and give thanks for the dead. Some churches will highlight the Saints in their community, others will offer time for silent reflection, and other will simply name the dead and leave it at that.

There are lots of liturgical moves that can be made on this day, but All Saints also raises a lot of questions, in fact some of our most profound questions: Who and what are we really? Is there anything permanent in the universe? Do our lives have any meaning?

And those questions can be far more spooky and frightening than anything we might’ve encountered on Halloween.

Here’s a frightening thought to put it all in perspective: When was the last time you walked through a cemetery? What did you make of all the countless names you didn’t know or even recognize? Have you ever though about how many people will walk past your grave one day not knowing or caring at all about who you were?

Or mull on this: I have lost track of the number of families that have come to me with questions about what to do with the stuff of a person now dead. Sure, the big pieces of furniture will eventually find new homes, but what about the random box of newspaper clippings? What should we do with all the old notes and the brief sketches? Who wants all the sentimentalities that mean nothing to those who are still living?

Or still yet this: On Wednesday we drove our son to his godparents’ house so we could trick or treat with them around their neighborhood. Elijah loaded up on gobs of candy and he rejoiced in screaming “Happy Halloween” while he was still walking up the driveway before knocking on the door. But at the end of the evening, we loaded him and all of his gleanings into the car, and while driving home we encountered 5 different rescue vehicles with all of their lights and sirens blazing, all on their way to horrible accidents on what is supposed to be one of the most magical nights of the year.

Did you know that more pedestrian traffic fatalities occur on Halloween than any other day during the year? The majority of which happen to children under the age of 8…

No matter who we are, no matter what kind of life we’ve led, we all want to know the answers to some ultimate questions: Is death all there is? Do our lives have any real meaning? What happens if we die with things unresolved? Are we going to be separated forever from the very people who meant the most to us?

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Contrary to the Hallmark channel, or any of number of institutions and industries, the biblical view of humanity is that if we were left to our own devices, if this was all there is, then our lives would all end in emptiness and we would truly and irrevocably return to the dust from whence we came.

No amount of power, or wealth, or resources, can stop the inevitability of the end of our days.

And so it is here, from this spooky, frightening, and terrifying vantage point that I want to read our passage once more:

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

I hope it gave you some goosebumps, or at least some divine comfort made manifest physically and tangibly, particularly after thinking about graveyards, leftover items, and ambulances on Halloween.

Because the true depths of God’s promise in Revelation can only felt when we’ve actually considered the alternative.

Revelation can appear wild and weird but it is also wonderful. In addition to visions of beasts and flaming altars, it also offers moving images of comfort and hope to people like you and me who live in troubled times.

Though, of course, what we might consider “troubled” would pale in comparison to the early Christians. John’s letter was written from a place of exile to a growing community who were experiencing horrific persecution. The letter, in different ways, claims that despite all appearances to the contrary, the Roman Empire’s power was not absolute – it is only God who reigns supreme.

The differing visions and divine battles between good and evil offer a lens into the penultimate victory of God over and against everything else. No amount of physical abuse or religious persecution, no number of graveyards, or leftover belongings, or even ambulances on Halloween have the final word.

Sure, they will sting like nothing else on earth, they might derail everything we thought we knew, they can even bring our lives to an end, but they are not the end.

There’s a reason that this text, these words from Revelation, have been associated since ancient times with the rites involved with Christian burials.

There’s a reason we read these words when we bury our friends, our families, and even our children.

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They are words of hope for a people who feel hopeless. And, of course, it may be difficult for some of us to image what the persecution that necessitated the writing of this letter looked like – lives of fear and trembling, always on the run, always faithful, but never sure of tomorrow. It was a life of utter terror that the Roman emperor inflicted on the early Christians who passed this letter around.

They were the very first saints of the church, brothers and sisters who lived by faith, without whom we would not have these words. Those saints risked it all for one name – not the name on their emperor, but Jesus the Christ – the name above all names.

But maybe we know some of that suffering. Maybe it doesn’t come from some megalomaniacal leader who suppresses the words we read here today, perhaps we won’t ever fear for our lives because of our faith, but we’ve got plenty of things to be afraid of, we’ve got plenty of questions that keep us awake at night, we know what it means to be spooked.

And the normative response to this fear is a desire for control – we want to be the masters of our own destiny. But, to be very real, control is exactly what the Roman Empire wanted over the first Christians – it’s what led them to harm, and persecute, and even kill in the name of the country.

But the first Christians, they didn’t want control – they just wanted Jesus.

Brokenness is all around us, its in our schools, our churches, our government, our businesses, our national institutions – all of those things that we normally look to for stability, and hope, and even control… all of them fall short of the glory for which they were created.

And thus John has a vision where all things are made new.

And when he says all, he means all.

That includes the countless and unknowable bodies buried in our cemeteries.

It includes the families and friends and spouses and children that we placed in the ground.

It includes those who lives came to their end because of accidents on Halloween.

It even includes us.

To read and hear these words on a day like today is to be re-communed with every saint that has come before us, with those who risked their lives to get us these words, with every saint will will come long after we’re gone, with those who will hold onto these words in the face of as of yet unimagined persecution.

We belong to and believe in the communion of saints, past-present-future.

And so we can be afraid, we can lay awake at night asking those deep and profoundly existential questions, but being a Christian isn’t about adopting a certain set of ideas or beliefs that prevent us from ever suffering or wondering or even doubting.

Following Jesus is instead about being included among his friends.

In baptism we are washed with with the same water the Jesus washed his friends.

In communion we are feb by the same meal that Jesus shared with his disciples.

Our stories, whether long or short, whether filled with joy or pain, are taken up and become part of the great story that is God with God’s people.

And it is in recognition of the great and cosmic scope of what our stories become in the person of Jesus that our lives acquire a meaning that extends far beyond us.

And, most importantly, it is at that profound moment of new discovery that we know, or at least strangely remember, the end of the story!

When we know the end, everything that appears mundane or frustrating, the trivialities that keep us awake, and even the spookiest notions of our lives are outshined by the glorious Alpha and Omega who is, and was, and is to come.

“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” Amen.

Mercy > Merit

Posted on October 29, 2018 by taylormertins

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This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Kameron Wilds about the readings for All Saints Sunday [B] (Isaiah 25.6-9, Psalm 24, Revelation 21.1-6a, John 11.32-44). Kameron is an ordained elder for the United Methodist Church in the Virginia Conference and currently serves at Smith Memorial UMC in Collinsville, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including All Saints habits, the problem with stained glass language, really long communion tables, being mindful of the malleability of time, removing disgrace, holiness and hand sanitizer, open doors, funeral texts, and the universality of death. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: Mercy > Merit

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Devotional – Luke 19.1-2

Posted on October 26, 2016 by taylormertins

Devotional:

Luke 19.1-2

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.

In a few weeks many churches will celebrate All Saints Sunday. In the United Methodist Church we use it as an opportunity to prayerfully give thanks and reflect on the lives lost in the local church over the last year. Some churches will ring bells and read off the names of the dead, others will cover their altars with belongings from the deceased, and others will invite grieving family members to come forward and offer thoughts on those who died.

But when we think of the Saints of the church, we tend to think about incredible figures from church history: Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, etc. We think that to be saintly requires a life of such profound faithfulness that most of us will never come close to it. Therefore, the saints we daydream about are the ones also found in stained glass windows and famous paintings.

Saints, however, are the people who inspire us to be totally different. And more often than not, the truest saints are those who were once a lot like us, and were radically changed by an encounter with the living God.

Zaccheaus is a beloved and often overlooked person from scripture. The wee-little tax collector, despised by the town, wanted to catch a glimpse of Jesus, so he climbed a tree. Jesus, upon seeing the man up above, called him down and invited himself over for dinner. This interaction fundamentally transformed Zacchaeus’ life and propelled him to return what he had taken “even four times as much.”

Some of God’s truest and most peculiar saints are much more like the little tax collector who recognized his weakness enough to climb a tree to catch a glimpse of the Messiah. Zacchaeus was a strange man and his interaction with Jesus was equally strange. The result of sitting together for a meal was enough to radically transform his life forever. But even in his strangeness, we catch glimpses of the truth; we begin our journeys of faith by recognizing our need, but doing something in response to that recognition, and then discover that the love and power of Jesus has transformed our lives in ways that we never could have anticipated.

Zacchaeus is the kind of saint who could inspire us to change our lives precisely because he is so much like us. If we were only inclined to confront our brokenness, climb a tree to catch a glimpse of the Lord (or walk into a church on Sunday morning), we might just hear Jesus say, “I’m going to your house today,” and our lives would be transformed.