Now I appeal to you, brother and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.
We were in the middle of nowhere North Carolina and I was receiving a tour of the town from a local clergy person. He pointed out the local watering hole, the 7-11, and the mortician’s brick and mortar funeral parlor.
From my vantage point in the front passenger seat of the aging preacher’s beat up truck it looked like every building was slowly falling apart and no one was bothered to do anything about it. Until we got to the end of the tour and there was a huge, recently leveled, field and construction equipment was strewn about in every direction.
“What’s this going to be?” I asked.
The preacher said, “The new baptist church.”
“What happened to the old baptist church?”
“It’s still here, we passed it a few blocks back. The church got into a big knock-down-drag-out fight about the color of the carpet in the sanctuary. So half the church left to start their own.”
Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “I appeal to you, brothers and sister, in the name of Jesus, that you all be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, that you be united in the same mind with the same purpose.”
In other words, “For the love of everything holy, please stop being so stupid and start getting along with each other!”
It’s notable that, since the very beginning of the church, we’ve been in conflict. The book of Acts is filled with one vignette after another of the church being churchy with their disagreements. All of Paul’s letters, in some way, shape, or form, beg the recipients to start acting like the body of Christ into which they were baptized.
And the church comes by it honest.
For, to start, the church is filled with people like us: a bunch of no good dirty rotten scoundrels (even if we don’t want to admit it). But, more importantly, conflict is actually what makes the church the church!
Jesus’ mission and ministry in the world was filled with dissonance. The Pharisees and religious elites were quick with their accusations of blasphemy, the powers and principalities thought the only way to stop Jesus was the cross, and even the disciples were forever rebuking the Lord for his various proclamations and actions.
If there’s one thing we can count on in the church, it’s conflict.
No church has even found a way to follow the crucified God free of fiction.
And yet, friction is, often, what leads to transformation!
Case in point: the early church struggled with the rapid rise of Gentiles in their midst and had to figure out how expansive God’s kingdom really was. And, at the so-called Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the church formally stated that no matter what scripture said, Christ’s salvation went beyond the bounds of Judaism. Therefore, matters of religious law such as circumcision, sabbath observance, and dietary restrictions were no longer required for those who followed Jesus.
Today, Jesus still refuses to leave us to our own devices and thoughts and even dreams about who the church is for. Jesus delights in sending people into our lives that we would never have picked on our own. And then, because he has a sense of humor, Jesus will see fit to make sure we read some of his words in church on Sunday like, “Love your enemies.”
We know that Jesus is at the center of what we call the kingdom of God, but we cannot know the circumference of the kingdom. In other words, we can’t decide who Jesus is for.
Or, as Barth put it, “This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before.”
Or, as John Wesley put it, “Salvation for all!”
God’s grace is ever expanding and never-ending. Remember: Jesus commands us to go to the ends of the earth proclaiming the Good News. And, as such, we can expect arguments, differences, and even divisions to sprout up again and again. Perhaps that’s why God keeps inviting us back to the table, pardoning us for our mistakes and shortcomings, and offering the body and the blood that makes all of this possible in the first place.
It’s not easy being the church, but nothing important ever is.
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).
Here, toward the beginning of the calendar year, I’ve been doing some thinking. We’re in the midst of a sermon series titled “New Year, New You” and I’ve come to realize some essential truths.
Things are not as they ought to be.
We can listen to the talking heads wax poetic about how politically divided we are, and how we just need to reach across the aisle and all that. But I think it’s far more insidious.
We are so obsessed with our financial gains and economic prosperity that we’ve allowed capitalism to become our dominant religion. We worship money and the accumulation of it. And the evils of capitalism, of which there are many, are as real as the evils of militarism and the evils of racism.
Did you know that, as a nation, we spend more money on national defense every year than on all of our programs of social uplift combined? Surely, that is a sign of our imminent spiritual doom.
We perpetuate a culture in which 1 out of every 3 black men can expect to go to prison at some point in their lives. The price that we must pay for the continued oppression of black bodies in this country is the price of our own destruction.
There is so much injustice in this country – racial injustice, economic injustice, gender injustice. And they cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.
Something’s gotta change.
Now, let us pause for a moment. How did all of that make you feel? Do you agree with what I said? Do you disagree? There’s a better than good chance that saying what I said left most, if not all, of us feeling uncomfortable.
And yet, nearly everything I just said is not original to me. I stole those bits of proclamation from another preacher, one by the name of Martin Luther King Jr. And it was because he was willing to say things that made people uncomfortable that he was murdered.
It’s been almost 55 years since Dr. King’s assassination. Tomorrow, businesses and schools and all sorts of institutions will close to observe a holiday given in his name, and yet I wonder what it is we remember about Dr. King. Perhaps our minds move to his “I Have A Dream Speech,” or maybe we remember his calm demeanor in the midst of such a perilous time.
However, a year before Dr. King was killed he was widely regarded as one of the most hated men in the country. 63% of respondents in a poll right before his death admitted to being vocally opposed to his words and works.
It’s hard to remember this, let alone acknowledge it, because everyone today loves Dr. King. We celebrate his transformative work in documentaries and school projects. But we love him now because it’s so much easier to celebrate someone when they’re no longer challenging and upsetting the status quo.
In other words, it’s easier to love a hero when they’re dead.
John says, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
For both Johns, the gospel writer and the Baptist, the image of the Lamb of God is central to their understanding of Jesus. We might talk about and think about Jesus as our teacher or our example or some other identifier, but for the Johns, Jesus is the Lamb of God.
And not just a lamb, but the Lamb – the Passover Lamb.
The church today is very comfortable as a safe and sanitary space where the realities of life, and by that I mean things like suffering, are kept at bay. We are good to mention the plight of Ukrainians in our congregational prayers, we will ask for volunteers to help with Family Promise, and all sorts of things. But when it comes to church, we like things neat and clean and ordinary.
We’re not comfortable with death or illness or questioning the status quo.
However, the church, weirdly, is called to be different. The church takes our over-manicured lives and says, “You’re a mess! You don’t want anyone to know it, and you don’t even want to admit it yourself, but things are falling apart!”
Behold the (Passover) Lab who takes away the sin of the world.
The church is a far cry from where we started. When God first gave specifics on how to worship to the people Israel it was messy: Build a temple, and take animals likes doves and bulls and slaughter them there. Take their blood and pour it over all sides of the altar.
Why? Because there is no transformation without sacrifice.
Moreover, before God’s people made it to the banks of the Red Sea, waiting on a miracle, they had already experienced their miraculous deliverance from Egypt with Passover.
Take a lamb for each family, God says, a perfect and unblemished lamb, and bleed it out completely before you hang it to roast, make sure that none of its bones are broken. The lamb shall be divided in proportion to the people who eat of it. This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and you shall eat it hurriedly.
I’m getting you out of Egypt, says the Lord. Take the blood from the lamb and mark it on your doorposts so that I will know to passover as I bring my vengeance upon the people of Egypt.
It’s not for the faint of heart!
And, though we avoid it today at all costs, we still rely on blood for our worship. We no longer slaughter animals every week, but only because Jesus became the final sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Jesus was without sin and was innocent of the charges lobbed against him, just like the Passover lamb is supposed to be perfect and without blemish.
Jesus was beaten to the point of death and stabbed in the side shortly before his death, just like the Passover lamb is supposed to be bled before being hung to roast.
Jesus was hung up high and though beaten his bones were not broken, just like the lamb’s bones were to remain intact.
I know this is a lot, it’s gruesome and frightening and messy.
But that’s what church is all about. It stands in stark contrast with so much of what we want our lives to look like. We want people to think we are perfect even though we are far from it. We want everything to be nice and orderly even when life is tearing at the seams.
Church, in different ways, is God’s way of looking at the mess of our lives and saying, “I know you deserve this not at all, and yet I’m going to save you anyway. ”
Some of John’s disciples are there when he makes his radical proclamation. They understand, somehow, that the new Passover Lamb is right there in front of them. So they leave John behind to follow Jesus.
They sacrifice whatever their lives might’ve been to follow the Lamb.
The life and ministry of Jesus who they follow is neither neat nor clean. Notably, Jesus is forever spending time with messy people and their messed up lives. His ministry is among and for the last, least, lost, little, and dead.
Even today, we worship the God who willingly chooses to enter into the muck and mire and mess of our lives, which means things are liable to get messy along the way of our own discipleship.
And yet, that is Good News!
It is Good News because God comes to us in the brokenness of our health and the shipwreck of our family lives and the worst of our mistakes.
Or, as the liturgy puts it, Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that proves God’s love toward us.
Do you see? God saves us in our messes, not from them.
When John says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” he means it. He, somehow, knows the future in his present, he knows what will happen to the incarnate God when the holy encounters the unholy.
Notice, the Lamb of God has not taken away the sins of some – of only the good or the cooperative or those with perfect Sunday attendance in church.
The Lamb takes away the sin of the world, all of them.
That’s why we can sing, “My sin oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more!”
And yet, the very next verse says, “And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, even so, it is well with my soul.”
What is the Lord descending to do? The Lord comes to judge the living and the dead.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We are redeemed by the Lamb already. And yet there’s a bit more to it as well. Even now Jesus is taking our sin away. Like Dr. King, the Lord speaks words of comfort to the afflicted, and affliction to the comfortable.
It’s a both/and. We are set free from the foolishness of our past while at the same time we are called to live new lives here and now based on that redemption.
Jesus is the exodus for the rest of us, he delivers us from our captivity to sin and death into a strange new world we call the Kingdom of God.
And in its messy in the Kingdom.
I started the sermon with stolen quotes from Dr. King, a man committed to seeing and bringing about a different world. His commitment cost him his life. And I think he knew that it would. For, the night before he was killed, he delivered one of his most moving speeches. Notably, Dr. King was in Memphis in support of a new union for sanitation workers.
That final night he stood before a packed auditorium and ended with these words:
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight, I’m not worried about anything, I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
The next day he was dead.
The Lamb of God brings a kingdom the world doesn’t want – the blood of the Lamb makes a difference and that difference means we are now different.
God does not accept the current realities of the world. God is still contending against the powers and the principalities. God will get us to the Promised Land.
It’s like God is saying to us today: “Come and see what I can do – come and see what we can do together. It’s going to be messy, but change always is.” Amen.
I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to not other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.
The church has always had a “problem” with looking backward. And, we come by it honest. The scriptures are ripe with stories of God’s people remaining stuck in the past (“At least we had food back in Egypt!”) and refusing to see how God makes all things new.
One of the reasons we’re content with looking backward is the fact that the past feels under our control whereas the future is totally unknowable.
Or, as Jesus bluntly put it, “No one who puts a hand on the plow and looks back is fit for God’s kingdom.”
But, as Christians, we are called to the dance, one that becomes manifest whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table, between remembering and anticipating. We remember God’s mighty acts in Jesus Christ as we feast on the bread and cup because they point us to the ways in which God is moving in our midst here, now, and in the future.
There’s a story about a church where a concerned group of members called for a meeting about new ministry opportunities. For hours they went back and forth about each new possibility but they were all struck down because they seemed impossible.
An older man from the congregation sat in silence throughout the meeting until, when he could no longer stand it, he raised his hand and said, “If I hear the word impossible one more time, I will leave this church forever. Have you all forgotten? Nothing is impossible with God!”
Here, at the beginning of a new calendar year, it is good and right for us to wrestle with the impossible possibility of God. The Lord shouts to us through the scriptures, “The former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare!” God is in the business of making all things new. Even the church.
Or, as Will Willimon puts it, “God’s future is for those who ask tough questions, come up with surprising answers, and dare better to align themselves with their core identity and purpose as the Body of Christ in motion.” “The church,” he says, “for any of its faults, is Christ’s big idea to put right what’s wrong with the world.”
In Luke’s Gospel, on the day of Easter, two figures walk toward Emmaus with their heads stuck in the past. Along the road they talk only of what happened to Jesus and they no longer have any hope. That is, until the hope of the world shows up on the road right in front of them.
“What are you talking about?” The strange figure asks.
Clops responds, “Are you the only fool in Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that happened?”
“What things?”
“Jesus is dead! Locked up and forsaken in a tomb. We had hoped he was the one who would save us.”
The strange figure spends the rest of the walk preaching, reinterpreting the scriptures, and (sadly) the two are no wiser than they were at the start. Until they get to Emmaus, and decide to share supper together. They break bread, share wine, and suddenly they see.
They race all the way back to Jerusalem with nothing but hope.
Every Sunday is a little Emmaus. We gather with all of our worries, fears, and hopelessness. We can’t help but only look backward. And then, as we open up the strange new world of the Bible, Jesus encounters us proclaiming the scriptures anew. We gather at the table, receiving the gift we do not deserve but so desperately need. And our eyes are opened to God’s new future.
When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ And, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them. When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair on your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”
“A Modest Proposal For Peace: Let The Christians Of The World Agree That They Will Not Kill Each Other.”
The Mennonite Central Committee came up with that slogan many years ago and started printing the words on posters. My former professor Stanley Hauerwas was quite taken by the sentiment of the poster, and hung one on his office door more than twenty years ago.
He also hung it up because he likes to stir up controversy whenever possible.
For, over the last twenty years, countless students (and professors) knocked on his door with anger and frustration. Each of them, in their own way, would barge into his office and declare, “Your sign makes me so mad. Christians shouldn’t kill anyone.”
And Hauerwas would reply the same way every single time: “The Mennonites called it a modest proposal – we’ve got to start somewhere.”
The disciples were walking by the temple, like a bunch of tourists with their eyes in the sky, taking in the beauty, and the large stones, and the gifts dedicated to God. And Jesus said to them, “The days are coming when not one of these stone will be left upon another.”
And, of course, the rag-tag group of would-be followers follow Jesus’ proclamation with a question, “How will we know this is taking place? What signs should we look for?”
It’s easy to knock the disciples for their hard-headedness. They’ve had the benefit of hearing and seeing and witnessing Jesus day after day for three years and they still can’t get it through their thick skulls what he’s all about.
But we’re no better.
We’re still obsessed with signs that will clue us in so that we might catch a peek behind the curtain of the cosmos.
The ever-enduring “next thing” demands our attention and allegiance. The next politician. The next prophet. The next program. We hope that one day, the next big thing will finally get it right and set things right. We pour our trust into these fleeting and flawed figures and we are disappointed time and time again. And, worse, we are led astray.
And Jesus warned us this would happen!
Listen – Many will come in my name, Jesus says, and they will lead you away from the kingdom of God. They will tell you that the end is near. Do not listen to them. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom; there will be great earthquakes, and famines, and pestilence, terror, and great signs from heaven.
We well-meaning Methodists are not necessarily familiar with this type of language, at least in the church. We can hear all about it on the news at night. But here, on a Sunday morning, no thank you. We’re accustomed to hearing about God’s love and the need to be a little kinder toward our neighbors. We’re used to hearing about the relative comfort of the present, rather than being concerned with the terror of the future.
But Jesus, when asked about the possibilities for the future, was upfront about the end. Stones will be thrown down, wars will be waged, famines and plagues. It’s right there in the Bible, and it’s on our televisions, and it’s in our doom scrolling on Twitter.
And we can’t look away.
Paul Zimmer was 19 when the US Army sent him to Camp Desert Rock in 1955 to do something he was totally unprepared for. He wrote about his experience with these words:
“I’d seen pictures of Hiroshima, I knew it was bad, but I thought getting to watch atomic explosions would be kind of cool, a story to interest girls. I had no special training and the first time I had no idea what to expect. We traveled by bus at night out into the desert, chain smoking until we were ordered into the trenches. We wore steel helmets, and our fatigues, but nothing else. I did not become fearful until the countdown was broadcast.
And I only became terrified when I saw the flash; a flash so bright that, even with my eyes closed, I could see the bones of my hands over my eyes. A shockwave crashed over us, and we were ordered out of the trenches. We saw the mushroom cloud, glowing purple and changing colors, rising and rising. I saw 8 atomic blasts in total. Some from the air, some from underground. Some created such massive shockwaves that we were buried in our tenches and we had to claw our way out from our own graves. When clearance was radio’d over, were were ordered to march forward into the blast area and bear witness. As far as I could tell, bearing witness was the only reason we were there. Ozone hung in the air. Maimed animals in every direction. Houses were splintered and scattered. Total devastation. We never had to write reports, nor did anyone ask us what we saw. Because, it turns out, they were watching us. They wanted to see how young men reacted to an atomic blast. Lately, I’ve begun to realize that I am one of the last people living in America to have actually experienced close up explosions of Atomic bombs. Now, in my old age, when I can conjure that brief and surreal period of my youth I try in vain to make sense of it. It has become my responsibility to share how that great flash and blast permanently reached into my young mind and heart. How the sounds still ring in my ears even today. I feel it my duty to tell of the reckless absurdity of it all. We keep threatening to use these weapons, and I am sure that one day we will. Most of us have forgotten what we are capable of, I have not.”
I heard Zimmer’s story years ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. To have experienced what he did, to turn on the news like we do every night with nothing but bad news, it’s easy to feel like the end is near.
And yet, it isn’t.
The end isn’t near, it’s already here. Our faith is predicated on the notion that we have already seen “the end,” that the world has come to a decisive crisis in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
In Jesus’ death we believe that the whole history of the cosmos reached a turning point. At that moment, as the sky turned black, as the temple curtain tore in two, as he was nailed to the cross, the conflict between life and death, good and evil, was resolved in favor of Jesus’ lordship over everything.
We know the end because we know Jesus Christ and him crucified. We read the last chapter before the introduction. We heard the postlude before the anthem.
God establishes a new kingdom through the cross and it is not dependent on us getting everything solved, or by getting the right person elected, or by finally making the world a better place.
Do you know what the mission of the church is? Our denomination says we exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. That’s fine. But it betrays the central claim of the Gospel. God has already transformed the world in the person of Jesus Christ!
The kingdom we live in is based upon what God has done and is doing for us, rather than upon what we do.
The church doesn’t have a mission – we are the mission. Our being is based on the presumption that we are witnesses first and foremost to Christ who is the difference that makes all the difference. We bear the marks of his life that gives life to us and others. Jesus has already made us different.
We, then, don’t exist to make changes, but living in the world made possible by the cross will, naturally, lead to transformation. It will lead to transformation because we embody the joy that comes from being part of Jesus’ body. It will lead to transformation because we can’t rest easy while the world is flushed down the toilet. It will lead to transformation because we know the truth (his name is Jesus) and that peace comes through weakness, not violence.
Paul Zimmer was commanded to bear witness to the power of our self-made destruction. We spend our days bearing witness to the brokenness of the world around us. And yet, more often than not, we dare not question why things are the way they are!
Jesus tells the disciples they will be hated because of his name. I don’t know if any of us here today have ever felt hated because of our discipleship. But I can assure you, the world will hate us if we call into question the powers and the principalities. To question our wanton disregard of the environment, or our obsession with weapons of mass destruction, or our never ending political industrial complex, will put us at odds with the world.
Put another way, in order to bring it a little closer to home, Thanksgiving is coming up, that hallowed occasion to gather with family and friends over a shared meal. Imagine, while seated at the table, when you are up to your elbows in mashed potatoes, what would happen if you said, “Can we have a conversation about our nuclear arsenal?”
I don’t know if you will be hated, per se, but you might not be invited back next year. And yet, to raise such a subject would be, at the very least, faithful!
Hear the Good News: the power of Jesus’ love is such that, even though we will be hated, we will be carried by his love through life. Even in distress we can trust, even in times of fear we can rejoice, because Jesus Christ is Lord.
I heard someone on the news a few weeks ago who expressed a total lack of hope for the future. They waxed lyrical about how politicians keep failing to live up to their promises, how we spend so much money on our military might all while kids go to bed hungry at night, how we willfully ignore the devastation we are wreaking on the environment, on and on.
And I thought, “No wonder they don’t have hope.” They could only imagine their hope being in us, in our ability to make things right. Let me tell you, we are hopeless. We’ve known, for longer than we care to admit, what we should and shouldn’t do, and yet we still continue to do things we shouldn’t and we avoid doing things we know we should!
We don’t have a hope in the world, unless the hope of the world comes to dwell among us. Which is exactly what Jesus did.
Jesus says we will be hated because of his name. And yet, we should rejoice because in those moments we will be given opportunities to testify, to bear witness. Which, in the end, is nothing more than living according to the world made new in the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord.
The old hymn is right and true: Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. Christ is the solid rock upon which we stand, and all other ground is sinking sand.
Wars and rumors of wars will come. Churches will be built, and churches will crumble. Families will grow, and they will fall apart. And even though the world will change, we can hold fast to the truth, we can tell the truth, because we know how the story ends.
When Christ shall come with trumpet sound, O may we then in him we will be found, dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne… On christ the solid rock we stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand. Amen.
When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, “Why do you raise such questions in your hears? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’, or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins” – he said to the paralytic – “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go home.” And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
“They didn’t teach me that in seminary,” is a favorite line among clergy-types. When the pandemic came in earnest, I heard countless colleagues make that remark with regard to moving church online. It shows up turning denominational turns as we’re tasked with communicating bizarre elements of our polity with our laity. And it’s the go-to expression whenever something goes wrong with a church building and all the eyes turn the pastor for direction.
And yet, the irony is, there is no type of schooling that fully prepares someone for their vocation. Imagine how boring our lives would be if we knew everything we needed to know the day we graduated.
However, I must confess, the words “they didn’t teach me that in seminary” left my mouth the very first time I was tasked with a committal to the grave.
Grief counseling? Services of Death and Resurrection? Theological proclamation in Bible study? No problem. But then, after my first funeral service, I found myself driving to the cemetery without knowing what I was supposed to do.
When we all arrived, we stood around the casket of the recently departed, and all the eyes turned to me. And then, because God provides, a story from the scriptures appeared in my mind.
Listen: Jesus returned to Capernaum shortly after calling the disciples to follow him. It was reported among the community that he was home and crowds began to gather. Rumor had it that this particular son of a carpenter could make the impossible possible.
Soon, so many people arrived that they were spilling out onto the road, waiting for their turn.
And, it came to pass, that a group of friends caught word of the Word’s arrival and they put together a plan. Their friend was paralyzed, and so they carried him through the streets of Capernaum until they arrived at the house. Upon discovering the size of the crowd, the climbed up on top of the house, used shovels to dig through the roof, and they lowered their friend to the Lord.
When Jesus saw their faith… notice, not the faith of the paralytic… when he saw their faith, he said to the man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”
If the story ended there, it would already be radical enough for the Gospel. It’s got all the markings of a remarkable tale: friendship, hope, overcoming adversity, and a delightful conclusion. And yet, Jesus forgives the man his sins.
Isn’t that strange?
If this were a proper story, Jesus would’ve reached out to the man, and healed his legs.
But instead, Jesus forgives his sins.
Of course, the story keeps going because some scribes were near by, the do-gooding religious types. Perhaps they couldn’t help but hope for a glimpse of heaven on earth, even if they didn’t really believe everything they heard. And they grumbled.
“Who does this guy think he is? It’s blasphemy I tell you! No one can forgive but God alone.”
And Jesus said, “Check this out: Which is easier, to tell him he’s forgiven or to tell him to walk. But so that you may know heaven is standing here right in front of you, I’m going to do both.”
He looked over at the forgiven paralytic and said, “Go home.” And the man stood up and left.
Everyone was amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this!”
The family stood staring at me, pondering why this story, of all stories, was the one I proclaimed at the grave. And then I said, “Gathering here, we are like those friends who carry the one we love to Jesus. With our faith, we witness to the promised truth that this is not goodbye, this is, “until next time.” Until we gather together at the Supper of the Lamb that goes on without end.
And then I reached down to the dirt, laid it on the casket, and I sang: Softly and Tenderly…
It is a strange thing to be a Christian. There was a time, of course, when it was expected or assumed that Christianity was a normative experience for people. But now, today, the church is a rather radical witness to the work of God in the world. In short, we approach the throne of God with a trembling hope because we know that we cannot take any of this for granted.
To be a Christian is to know that time is now fleeting the moments are passing. It is to know that we are defined not by our mistakes but by the grace of God. It is to know the great Good News that Jesus Christ is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.
Those descriptors might not sound strange to our ears, but to the world they are as confounding as can be. The world tells us that, so long as we purchase certain products, and dress a particular way, that we can hang around forever. The world hangs our mistakes around our necks and compels us to carry them everywhere. And the world forces us to believe that we are completely alone and can only ever depend on ourselves.
To be a Christian is to be different.
We worship a God who became one of us, who arrived in the muck and mire of our lives, to be the difference that makes us different! We follow the Lord Jesus who is not only capable of forgiving our sins, but also of raising the dead!
The fundamental difference between the world and the church, is that the world assumes we can earn or achieve everything we need, whereas the church reminds us that the everything we really need has already been finished for us in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, the church exists to mediate Christ to us through sermon, song, and sacrament. The church teaches us who we are. The church proclaims the Good News to a world drowning in bad news.
Notice, the friends from scripture today bring their friend to Jesus and they won’t let anything stand in their way. The do something wild and reckless: They trust that this 1st century rabbi can make a way where there is no way, and they’re willing to dig through a roof to see it happen!
And then, when Jesus does his Jesus thing, the crowds glorify God and say, “We have never seen anything like this!”
When the church is at her best, we all depart with those same words, either aloud or in our hearts, and we can’t help ourselves from living differently because of the Good News.
Today we’re talking about, and thinking about, witness, the final aspect of church membership. When someone joins a United Methodist Church they make a vow to support the church with their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. It’s all too easy to take the theme of witness and boil it down to something like a church growth strategy.
Put another way, we often confuse witness with evangelism.
There’s a church, not too far from here, that is busting at the seams. Each week they have to pull out more and more folding chairs to make space for people. And, when the pastor was asked to what he could attribute the increase, he said, “It’s our iPad giveaway program.”
You see, at this particular church, they raffle off an iPad every single Sunday, and you receive more raffle tickets depending on the number of people you bring to church with you.
Those people are being converted to something, but I don’t think we can call it the kingdom of God.
Notably, in our denominational neck of the woods, there’s a rather sobering statistic that haunts me: Today, the average United Methodist invites someone else to worship once every 38 years.
And even so, the location of the church today is a great gift! For, it gives us the space and opportunity to rediscover how unusual it is for us, Methodists of all people, to be the church of Jesus Christ.
The early church grew, despite all the reasons it shouldn’t have, not because they gave away tablets, or went door to door, or handed out tracks in downtown Corinth.
The early church grew because the witness of Christ in the world was life-changing.
Rich Mullins, who I’ve been quoting a lot recently, once said, “I am a Christian, not because someone explained the buts and bolts of Christianity, but because there were people willing to be nuts and bolts.”
In other words, people carried him to Jesus.
The God we worship is a healer of broken things. And yet, the brokenness that God heals is not just our broken bodies. God heals broken hearts, broken spirits, broken promises.
In the cross and resurrection of Jesus we see how the one who said, “Your sins are forgiven,” had the power to do exactly that.
Notice, the paralytic did absolutely nothing to earn his forgiveness. Save for the fact that he had some good friends. And those good friends were already living according to the difference that Christ makes.
All of us this morning are here, whether we know it or not, because someone or some people carried us to Jesus. We are products of those who made Jesus real for us, those who were willing to be nuts and bolts.
And, in the end, that exactly what it means to witness. It’s living according to the Good News of God in the world as if our lives depended on it, because they do.
Whatever Christianity is, it is at least the discovery of friends we did not know we had. Friends who are possible only because Jesus has gathered us in for God’s great parable to the world we call the church. Friends who are willing to carry us to Jesus over and over again because Jesus is the difference that makes all the difference. Amen.
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hands and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
“Love” has got to be one of the most overused and therefore underwhelming words that we use on a regular basis. What was once reserved for the intimate connection between individuals, and for the divine, is now the word we use to describe any affection toward anything.
I tried to keep track this week of how many times I heard the word and I lost count rather quickly. I heard of the love of our fall weather, the love of a certain gritty Star Wars Disney + series, and even, I kid you not, the love of Taco Bell.
Even in the church, we drop the “l” word all the time. We talk about loving God and loving neighbor, we sing of the gift of love, we participate in missional work in the name of love.
To quote a popular movie from a season that is just around the corner, “Love actually is all around.”
And yet, if love is actually all around, what difference does it make?
Notably, according to the strange new world of the Bible, love is not found in affection, or hallmark cards, or Romantic Comedies. Instead, love is found in service.
I love the thunder brothers: James and John. Peter is often seen as our proxy in the New Testament, always rushing in and saying more than he knows, but the thunder brothers are the perfect paragons of pathetic performance.
Jesus teaches his disciples about the mysteries of the Gospel, he offers them miraculous food when they see nothing but scarcity, he even spells out the whole death-and-resurrection business, the exodus for the rest of us, as literally as he can, and the thunder brothers still don’t get it.
They approach Jesus and demand cabinet positions in the kingdom of God.
They want power while God in the flesh has just told them, moments before, that glory comes in weakness. For the third time.
Perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt – maybe, confronted with bad news, you know the whole “the son of man will be handed over to the chief priests, he will be condemned to death, and they will murder him” thing, maybe the thunder brothers would prefer to stay on the sunny side of things.
“Excuse us Jesus, it’s all nice to hear all about the Son of Man stuff, but can we talk about what it will be like when this is all over and you’re finally in charge? We have some ideas we’d like to share with you. We think we’d be good for positions in upper management. What do you think?”
And Jesus, ever the good rabbi, answers their question with his own:
“Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”
“Lord, we are able! Our spirits are thine!
“Okay, okay, you don’t need to sing it. But let’s be sure we’re all on the same page. Remember, I’m in the death and resurrection business. I’m here to turn the world upside down. So, for God’s sake, literally, pay attention as I say this one more time: if you want to be first, you have to be last. If you want to great, you have to be the least. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. Got it?”
Are you able? Are we able?
It’s a great question. And the answer is yes, and no.
We are able to follow the Lord, but we do not know where following the Lord will take us.
The thunder brothers want glory, power, prestige. In short, they want what we all want. They want the easiest way to the top in the shortest about of time with the least amount of resistance.
But glory, real faithful glory, isn’t what we often imagine it to be. We might picture the corner office, or the perfect stock portfolio, or the kids going to the right colleges, or going to seminary so that people will call you Reverend one day.
But this is how Jesus describes glory: service.
And Jesus serves the sinful who seek glory by the wrong means for the wrong reasons. You know, people like us.
Discipleship, which is just another word for following Jesus, is a strange and wondrous thing. It is strange because we really have no idea where we’re going, and it is wondrous because we do know that God in Christ is with us for the ride.
Contrary to how we might imagine the faith, it is not made up of theological propositions or lists of righteous behaviors. The marks of the Christian can actually be summed up rather simply: Are we following Jesus or not?
And yet, the simplicity of that question betrays the magnitude of discipleship.
Whatever our faith may be, whatever it may look like, it is found in the following. In the end, discipleship is often nothing more than stumbling behind the Lord on the roads of life, going from one adventure to the next, with the knowledge that Jesus is leading the way.
Which means, oddly enough, we never really choose to be Christians.
Discipleship is something done to us.
I’ve never not been a Christian, I’ve only known this life. Credit to my parents, church has always been part of my reality. But even to those who come to faith later in life, we do so not by choice. We do so because something happens to us and we eventually finds ourselves in a place like this.
That something is named Jesus Christ.
Jesus gathers people like us in on a journey that we might not have ever chosen on our own, and Jesus drags us places we might not have ever discovered on our own.
And, more often than not, service is the crucible of discipleship.
Put another way, following Jesus eventually brings us toward opportunities to serve, and to be served.
However, serving others, putting the needs of others before our own, doesn’t actually make us righteous. Service is not a salve and it definitely doesn’t earn us any reward in heaven. No amount of good works can make up for our lack of goodness. The only thing service does is rightly orders our disordered lives.
Rich Mullins poignantly put it this way: “Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect family and your perfect little house where you never encounter anyone with any problems. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken.”
Jesus says to his disciples, then and now, “Take up your cross and follow me.” And Jesus spends his time among the last, least, lost, little, and dead.
Notice, Jesus rightly rebukes the thunder brothers and their request. Even after all the miracles and the parables and the public displays of religious affection, they still don’t get it. And yet, Jesus also makes them a promise in this moment! Jesus’ promises them, and all of us, that we need not live in fear, we need not worry about what tomorrow might bring, we need not even scheme to accrue as much power as possible. Jesus doesn’t promise protection, safety, or power. Jesus promises us the cross!
Jesus’ ministry, from beginning to end, was not about power, or at least not about power as defined by the world. Again and again throughout the gospels we are bombarded by Jesus’ work of bearing the suffering that always comes as a result of caring for the weak and putting the last first.
Flannery O’ Connor once said, “Most people come to the Church by means the church does not allow, else there would be no need their getting to her at all.”
Which is just another way of saying that Jesus meets us where we are, not where we ought to be. But then Jesus takes us somewhere else.
That journey might look like spending a week helping out with Vacation Bible School showing love and grace to kids who might not know what those words even mean. Or it might look like working hard in the kitchen week after week to make sure bellies are full here at the church and in the community, particularly for those who do not know what it feels like to have a full belly. Or it might look like serving in worship whether singing, or reading, or praying, helping others experience God’s profound mercy. Or it might look like contributing to the financial aspects of the church, making a way for ministries where there is no way.
Or it might look like something we haven’t even thought of yet! If it is guided by grace, or moved with mercy, or filled with faith, then it is probably some part of the journey we call discipleship.
To love is to serve. To serve is to love.
And yet, at the same time, to receive love is to receive service.
This is often an under-discussed part of our faith. It’s all good and fine to talk about all the things we can do, all the differing ways we can serve the needs of our community, and so forth. It’s another thing entirely to put ourselves in the position of receiving service. Of mustering of the humility to recognize that we, ourselves, need help.
But we do. All of us. No matter how much we like to pretend we have it all figured out, the truth is we’re all making it up as we go and we can all use all the help we can get.
Thankfully, God chooses to become weak in order to dwell among us, God chooses to serve a people undeserving, and God gives God’s life as a random for many, including us.
If, and when, we serve, it is only ever because God first served us.
Put another way: we love because God first loved us.
Discipleship is an adventure – there’s always more to do and more to receive. Which, in the end, it what makes it so much fun. Amen.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures from themselves but are not rich towards God.”
Someone interrupted Jesus one day, “Lord, tell my brother to divide up the family inheritance.”
The man probably has just cause for his request, even though the conventions of the day dictated that the eldest son would receive the inheritance. But, don’t we agree it would be a good thing for Jesus to make everything fair?
Jesus replies, “Hey, what’s the deal? Who made me a judge over all you people?”
Apparently, Jesus has more important things to deal with than the incidental patching up of a intra-family dispute over finances.
But then Jesus does what Jesus does best – he tells a story.
There was a man who had it all. At first, he used the excess cash to fill his house with all sorts of trinkets and wares that served only one purpose: showing others how wealthy he was. It started with some paintings, until he ran out of wall space. Next he redid his wardrobe, until his closet was full. And then he bought an extra luxury car, until he realized there wasn’t enough room in the garage.
What was he to do?
And then the man had a vision! Why not tear it all down, and build an even bigger house to fit even more stuff inside?
So that’s what he did.
And it came to pass, after months of deconstruction and reconstruction, of differing architectural bids and various contractors, he looked at all he had and he said to himself, “You’ve done well old boy! Time to eat, drink, and be merry!”
Suddenly a booming voice from the heavens shatters all the new glass in the windows: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you spent your life obsessing over, whose will they be?”
Jesus sure could tell a story.
And yet, I don’t know if this story has “worked.”
And by “worked” I mean, I don’t know if we’ve changed all that much in response to this particular parable.
Throughout his earthly ministry, Jesus talked about money and possessions more than any other subject. And for good reason: we’re just as obsessed with what we have now as we were back then. Even a couple hundred years ago John Wesley was addressing wealth with the early Methodists: “In seeking happiness from riches, you are only striving to drink out of empty cups.”
There’s a great irony with Jesus’ parable of the rich fool: We all know that it’s true, and yet we live as if it isn’t.
It’s a bonafide fact that we can’t take anything with us when we die, but that hasn’t stopped us from trying. ($10,000 caskets…)
Everything in the world, and even the church at times, runs on avarice. Extreme greed for wealth and material goods. It’s the lie we were fed as children, and it’s the lie that we give to our children. It’s reinforced with every magazine cover, every instagram post, and every commercial we encounter.
Happiness is yours, if you can afford it!
And it’s all one big lie.
The world will tell us over and over and over again that we are defined by our bank accounts, and the clothes we wear, and the cars we drive. But in the kingdom of God it’s through poverty, not wealth, that God saves us.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though fully God, did not regard divinity as something to be exploited, but emptiedhimself, being born in human likeness, and was obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.
Why does God do this? Because we need all the help we can get.
Whether we’re rich or poor or somewhere in between, all of us are sin-sin with our insatiable desire for more.
And not just more, but more, more more!
We clutch at all that is around us rather than opening our hands to ever being open to anything else.
We’d rather receive than give.
We lay awake at night worrying about one thing and one thing only: money.
And then Jesus has the nerve to tell us this parable!
Notice: the man in Jesus’ story does with his avarice what we all do: We congratulate ourselves on all we have accomplished.
The wealthy man sees only himself: “He thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to mysoul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
He’s living in a monologue.
And yet, all of the things we have in this life, all of the things we think we’ve earned or deserved, every one of them is actually a gift. We are products of what is done for us more than by what we do for ourselves.
Jesus sets up the man as the paradigm for everything we think is good, and right, and true in this life. He’s fiscally responsible after all. He’s earned his good fortune. And yet, the man is only a master of a life that is completely and radically out of his control – the rich man is nothing more than the captain of a ship that has been taking on water since it left the dock.
The man lives only for himself, talks only to himself, sees only himself, until the Lord knocks him to the ground for being a fool.
He is foolish because no matter how much he talks to himself, and congratulates himself, and rejoices in himself, he neglects to recognize that his crops, or his stock portfolio, or whatever the good thing is was always first a gift.
And gifts require givers.
The land that our food comes from, the institutions that give us the space and knowledge to grow, the families that provide our basic needs, the friends that support us in times of pain and grief, on and on and on.
And yet, we are far more possessed by what we think we possess. Our possessions possess us!
We keep acquiring more and more hoping we can control our lives or, at the very least, to make it appear like we have our lives together.
We spend most of our lives in pursuit of wealth, material and immaterial, only to come in the end to the greatest poverty of all: death.
Jesus’ parable ends with that frightening final note, one that lingers long after the Lord calls us fools: no matter how much we make, no matter how much we accumulate, we all die in the end.
John Ortberg tells this great story about how for years he and his grandmother played monopoly. She taught him the ins and the outs of the game, differing strategies, and she always always won. Until one day, after countless games, he finally beat her. And as he celebrated is victory, dancing across the living room, she said, “Don’t forget, when the game is over, it all goes back in the box.”
All the money, property, houses, hotels, they never really belonged to him. They were in the box before he started and they returned when he finished.
A challenging aspect of Christianity is our profound willingness to stare death in the face. It’s why we have crosses in our sanctuaries. We know, better than most, that time is now fleeting the moments are passing, passing from you and from me. And when the bells tolls for us, what will happen to all our stuff?
And yet, again, the “our” in “our” stuff betrays the Christian understanding that all of it, the money, possessions, talents, they are not “ours.” They are given to us by God who trust us to be good stewards of the gifts we’re given.
This church is a product of your stewardship, and the stewardship of those who came before us. Our sanctuary windows are marked with the names of those long gone who believed in God’s working in the world that they returned to God the gift they were given.
Even today, your gifts are what makes this church possible. The gifts of your time, showing up for worship and prayer and study and service. The gifts of your talents that you share with God and with one another. And, of course, the gifts of your finances.
Giving is normative in discipleship. It’s how we live into God’s mission of transforming the world.
But it’s also how we keep the lights on, and keep the building warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It’s how we are able to welcome and provide space for so many outside groups. It’s how we pay the salaries to support the livelihood of our staff and their families. It’s how we live into the strange and even foolish (at least according to the world) Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Because, in the end, the parables are stories Jesus tells about himself and Jesus is the one who doesn’t store up his life on earth and, instead, freely gives it for you and me. Rather than clinging to his own life, Jesus mounts the hard wood of the cross for people undeserving, us.
This parables stings, and it frightens, perfect for the month of October, even better for stewardship! But it is Good News!
Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, not our money or lack of it, not our possessions or our minimalism, not our goodness or our badness, not our lives and not even our deaths.
We might not see it, or even believe it, but there is greater wealth in the salvation of Christ than in every bank account in the world.
And it’s ours for free.
We can’t earn it.
We don’t deserve it.
It’s not cheap, nor is it expensive.
It’s free.
It’s free for you and me and every fool the world will ever see.
–
Wesley said, “In seeking happiness from riches, you are only striving to drink out of empty cups.” Thankfully, we worship the God who never stops giving. Which is why the psalmist can sing, “our cups runneth over.” The only question is, what are we going to do with what we’ve been given?
Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem of rite festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
I would like everyone to close your eyes for a moment, find a comfortable posture, and I would like you to imagine the perfect church…
What does it look like?
What kind of people are in it?
What are some of the things the church does?
–
It’s a little terrifying how easy it is to imagine “the perfect church” only to open our eyes and be stuck here with each other. It’s so easy to picture a particular church in our minds because that’s what life has conditioned us to do. We usually curate everything we can to benefit our own tastes, and leanings, and hopes, and dreams.
If we don’t agree with someone else on Facebook, we can just block and unfollow them.
If we start watching a movie and within ten minutes it’s boring we can push a few buttons and watch something else.
If we’re hungry for a particular meal, we need only open an app on our phones to have it delivered right to our door, despite all the food we might already have in the pantry.
Basically, we are consumers living in a consumable world. We choose exactly what we want, take what we want, and move on with unlimited choices and unlimited speed.
And, frankly, we bring this understanding of reality to the church as well. That’s why there’s every flavor of Christian denominationalism on Grandin Road. If you encounter a church that doesn’t give you what you want, there’s always another one to try.
The only problem with that is the fact that what we want is not often what we need.
An example: We are blessed in this church to have visitors nearly every Sunday. That is something worthy celebrating, but a very strange phenomenon when taking in the scope of Christian history. Up until the last 100 years, you went to church where you could. Now we go to church where we want.
Anyway, we get a fair number of visitors here, those church shopping for a new church home. And, every once in a while, visitors come back again and again and I will meet with them to talk about what it might mean for them to join or become more involved. During that conversation I always ask about where they were attending church before.
And, more often than not, someone will describe their last church, usually somewhat local, and how they attended for years until something particular happened. A too-political sermon. A unfortunate song choice on a Sunday morning. A stinging stewardship season. And that was enough to say goodbye.
According to the world this is a normal thing that happens. We can move on over and over again.
But in the realm of the church this is downright strange.
Charles Spurgeon, 19th century preacher, put it this way:
“If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all; and the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it. Still, imperfect as it is, it is the dearest place on earth to us.”
Strangely enough, the church is where we discover the comforting gospel of Jesus Christ that leads us to live uncomfortable lives for him. Uncomfortable because, living for Jesus means living for the people in the church around us too.
When someone joins a United Methodist Church they covenant to support the church with their prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness. To support the church by presence is literally that, it means being present.
Part of our discipleship is a willingness to be present with God and with one another. We gather week after week to remember the stories of God and to be re-membered into the body of Christ. We break bread with one another in worship, and during the Garden, as a recognition that the Christian life is one that is meant to be shared. We show up for Bible studies, and outreach programs, and all sorts of other things because, on some level, we understand that being present together is at the heart of what it means to follow Jesus.
Luke’s Gospel has all the best stories. Mark is short and brief, Matthew is theological, John is all over the place, and Luke’s got the stories. And the story of Jesus at the temple is just so good.
It’s got drama and intrigue, family strife, and youthful rebellion.
And when we read it we tend to fixate on Jesus teaching the elders. He’s a 12 year old boy and everyone is amazed at his teaching. And so people like me stand up in a place like this and say things like, “Our youth are not the future of the church, they are the church right now.” And a 3.5 minute story will usually be shared about a youth and how they understand the kingdom better than we do. And so on.
And that’s all good and fine.
Jesus does say that if we want to get into the kingdom of heaven we have to act like children.
And yet, I fear we miss something else in the story when we emphasize Jesus’ teaching in the temple alone. What we miss is the fact that this is also a story about horrible parenting!
Listen to it again: They traveled all the way to Jerusalem for Passover, a six days journey by foot, and when they were done they returned home Mary and Joseph did not know that they left their son behind.
What? How does that happen? It’s one thing to lose track of a wayward child in the grocery store, but leaving them behind in a foreign city? C’mon!
And that would be bad enough. But then it says they traveled a whole day before they noticed. AND THEN once they turned back it took them another 3 days to find him!
Jesus was in the Temple teaching and his parents were astonished and Mary said, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
Which is the Bible’s version of, “Boy, you had us worried sick! You are grounded from now until eternity!”
And how does Jesus respond? “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Must is a strong word. In life all of our must and shoulds don’t muster up to much in the kingdom of God, but Jesus’ response is notable.
It is good and right to be in the house of God. Honor and keep the sabbath, that’s 1 of the 10 commandments.
The psalmist writes, “I was glad when they said to me, let us go to the house of the Lord.”
To be in the house of God was as necessary to Jesus as it is to breathe.
And yet, there are a few more staggering details in this story that really bring it all home. The Holy Family went to Jerusalem for Passover. Some 21 years later, on Passover in the same city, Jesus will take a loaf of bread and a glass of wine and share it with his friends. He will become the Passover Lamb for the them, the exodus for the rest of us.
Mary and Joseph abandon Jesus in the city, much like the aforementioned disciples will abandon him to the cross the day after Passover.
It take Mary and Joseph three days to find their son, much like Jesus sat in the tomb for three days before the resurrection.
And notably, after the family’s confrontation in the Temple, scripture says that Jesus returned home and was obedient to his parents and Mary treasured it in her heart. Which is another way of saying that Jesus forgave his parents for what they did to him, much like Jesus returns to his abandoning and denying disciples on the other side of Easter.
A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the claim that salvation does not come to us by natural inclination, by birthright, by earning, or deserving. Salvation is a gift from God. And because it is a gift it can only be received on God’s terms, not ours. The church is the witness to the gift of salvation, reminding us time and time again what we have been given even though we deserve absolutely nothing.
That’s a hard truth to swallow, the “we deserve nothing.” But it’s true. We all do things we shouldn’t, we all avoid doing things we should. We are imperfect people. We might not be the type of people who forget our children back in Jerusalem and wander around for a few days before we find them, but we do have a lot more in common with Mary and Joseph than we let on. What’s more, even though we fail to be an obedient church, even though we fail to love God and one another, God offers us grace anyway.
Therefore, the perfect church is actually an imperfect one, constantly reminding us of our imperfections and the great Good News that someone has come to help us. And that someone has a name: Jesus
Without the church how can we know that grace is given to us, how can we discover that we are caught up in Jesus’ story, how can we receive the sacraments?
We need one another, because you can’t baptize yourself no more than you can give communion to yourself. We need someone to give those gifts to us. We need the church to tell us again and again, “The world will only ever see you through your faults and failures, but God loves you.”
We need the church because it holds us together even when it feels like everything else is falling apart.
Rich Mullins once said, “Nobody goes to church because they’re perfect. If you’ve got it all together, you don’t need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning. Every time we go to church we’re confessing again to ourselves, our families, to the person in the pew next to us, that we don’t have it all together. That we need direction, we need accountability, we need help.”
The reason for being present in church is the strange fact that this is the only community that is consciously formed, criticized, and sustained by the truth. Which is Good News for a world that runs by lies.
Church is the last vestige of place where we willfully gather with those who are not like us, this is the fellowship of differents. And though we are different, the truth that is Jesus Christ, somehow makes us one.
I often wonder why I kept going to church throughout my life. At first I was present in church because my parents made me – they couldn’t leave me home alone as a child even though Mary and Joseph clearly would have.
But then, around my teenage years, I started running the sound system so I had to be present in church. And then I left for college, and there was a church that needed a drummer so I was still present in church. On and on and on.
And when I look back now, I know the answer to why I kept showing up for church: Jesus.
Jesus churched me. The church is how God dealt with me. I am who I am because of the church. Through sermons and sacraments, through friends and even foes, I was shaped into who I am.
God is in the business of remembering us. That is, God re-members us, puts us together, like pieces from a puzzle. And yet, have you ever pulled out a puzzle and worked away on a rainy day only to realize that one or two of the puzzle pieces we missing?
The picture isn’t complete.
The church is complete, the body of Christ is complete, when we are together. Your presence here makes the church the church. When we are present before God’s presence, we live God’s future in our present and it actually changes things.
So welcome to the perfect church! It’s perfect because God does God’s best work with imperfect people like us. Amen.
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six month it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
It was a typical Sunday morning with the typical Sunday crowd. We read, we sang, we listened, we gave, we received.
I announced the final hymn and we all started singing.
Over the horizon of my hymnal I took a glance at God’s church. I saw the woman who had recently confessed to me that she was about to divorce her husband, who was standing and singing right next to her. There was the teenage girl who was accepted to every college she applied for and was currently experiencing the paralysis of analysis as she had to make a decision about which one to attend. And I saw one of the ushers dart out the back door for a cigarette, a habit he shared that he was trying desperately to drop.
But before we had a chance to make it to the second verse, Don keeled over in his pew with a loud thud.
There was a panicked moment as everyone turned toward the pew in question. I ran from the altar, and gathered around the man with a few others. We, thankfully, had a few nurses in attendance that morning and they went quick to work – one of them checked his pulse, another stretched him out to help open his airway, and other was on the phone with the rescue squad.
I leaned close and asked if there was anything I could do, and one of the nurses shot me a quick glance and declared, a little louder than I would’ve liked, “You could start praying preacher.”
And so I did.
Right then and there I closed my eyes and feel to my knees and I started praying. Soon I felt fingers wrapping around my own on both sides, and when I opened my eyes at the end of the prayer, the rest of the church had joined in a large circle and all of us were praying together for Don.
The rescue squad arrived with my amen, and they took Don to the hospital.
And then we did the only thing we could, we finished the hymn.
An hour or so later I drove to the hospital to check on him and when I walked into his room he, miraculously, treated me with a big toothy smile and he said, “I learned my lesson preacher, no more skipping breakfast before church.”
For as long as I can remember, I have been my family’s designated pray-er. Whenever we get together, and the timing is appropriate, all eyes will shift in my general direction and I am expected to lift something up to Someone, namely God.
Going into the ministry only made it worse.
But, let me confess, I’ve never found prayer to be an “easy thing.” I’m not even fully sure how I learned to do it other than picking up the language while spending so much time in and around church. Over the years I have come to find the prayers of the church, that is those written on behalf of the body of Christ, to be absolutely necessary to the fiber of my being. I find great solace in offering words to God that have been offered by so many so many times before. And yet, to stand in this place week after week leading us in prayers is just as bewildering as praying in this room day after day when none of you are here.
What I’m trying to say is this: Prayer is at the heart of what it means to follow Christ and yet we so rarely talk and think about what prayer actually is.
James, the brother of the Lord, writes of prayer almost as if a foregone conclusion. If you’re suffering you should pray. If you’re cheerful, you should pray. If anyone is sick, they should ask for prayers. It’s as if the community called church to which James writes knows nothing except a life of prayer.
And yet, for many of us, myself included at times, we view prayer as a last resort.
When push comes to shove, we are far more inclined to take matters into our own hands, than we are to lay them before the throne of God. If we are the masters of our own destiny, who wants to bring God into the situation and run the risk of messing everything up?
And yet, prayer is about more than just offering up a laundry list to God.
Prayer is the expression of a relationship, it is (to use a seminary word) a dialectic. It is the back and forth between Creator and creature. Prayer is where Christianity becomes practical. Prayer is something we do. It is, oddly enough, who we are. We, the church, are God’s prayer for the world. Prayer is what separates us from any other communal organization.
But perhaps that’s getting a little too heady.
On a fundamental level, there are three types of prayers that can be summarized with three words: Help, Thanks, and Wow.
Prayer happens when we cry out for aid when there seems to be no aid around at all, it is the plea for help when we can no longer help ourselves.
Prayer also happens when we are able to take a look around and realize how amazingly blessed we are, it is the communication of gratitude toward the One through whom all blessing flow.
And prayer also happens in those remarkable moment of awe. The Wow prayer is more than thanks. It is more like, “I can’t believe what God was able to do considering the circumstances.”
Sometimes prayers are made possible through a lot of work and reflection. And sometimes they billow forth without us even really thinking about what it is we are doing when we are praying.
Karl Barth believed that to be a Christian and to pray were one and the same thing. Prayer is as necessary to a Christian as it is for a human being to breathe.
Faithful prayers are those that offer us up to possibility because prayer is the ultimate recognition that we are not in charge. Prayer deconstructs all of our preconceived notions about what is, and isn’t possible.
And, frustratingly, prayer teaches us what it means to be patient. Nobody likes being patient but life isn’t possible without it. Our world is based on speed but prayer is based on patience. Prayer is the reminder that God’s time is not our time, that God is God and we are not.
Put another way: Prayer is not about getting what we want, but what God wants.
I spent a lot of time this week asking people from the church and the community about answered prayers. And, wonderfully, every single person had an answer. I heard of job searches, and relationships, and children, and parents, and homes, and healings. On and on.
To me, this church is an answer to prayer…
The Good News of prayer is that God listens, God answers. Sometimes it occurs in ways we cannot know for a long long time. Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers, at least not the way we want. But this community is constituted by our prayers. Prayers is the fuel that makes the church the church.
But why continue talking about prayer when we can do it instead?
In just a few moments we are going to pray for one another. I know this won’t be easy, or comfortable, for a lot of us, but the church that prays together is, indeed, God’s church for the world. So we’re going to do it.
As you are able, I encourage you to find someone else in the church, you don’t have to wander too far, but find someone that is not part of your normal church orbit. And, if we have an odd number, whoever is left will have to pray with me, so that should encourage you to pair off speedily.
Once you find a prayer partner, I would like each person to have an opportunity to share something they need prayers for. There are absolutely other people in other places experiencing other things who need our prayers, but for the moment I would like us to be more personal. It doesn’t have to be an ultimate confessional moment, maybe the thing you need is more patience with your job or children, or maybe you feel confused about a decision and you could use some discernment.
Whatever the thing it, I want you to share it, and the person who hears it will pray about it. The prayer can be as simple as, “Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.” Or it can be filled with other words.
The point is, I want every person here to pray and to be prayed for today.
I know this is uncomfortable, but sometimes the most faithful things we do as disciples are born out of discomfort. So, let us pray…
The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”
I have a conflicted and tumultuous relationship with church membership.
I went through confirmation as a tween-ager in my home United Methodist Church and became a member at the conclusion, though we never once talked about what that meant. Instead we watched the 6 hour long film Jesus of Nazareth over 6 different Sundays and talked about what prayer was supposed to look like and feel like.
But covenanting to support the church with my prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness? Nope.
Additionally, when other people joined the church it would take place like this: The pastor would occasionally announce, right before the concluding hymn, that if anyone felt the Spirit moving them to join the church, then they could come forward and do so. And, occasionally, people would march forward, share their names and vocations before the benediction, and that was that.
Moreover, I am part of a generation that is deeply suspicious of joining anything.
Therefore, when it comes to church membership I often let people come to me with their questions rather than pushing people to join.
And, after serving the UMC for nearly a decade, I think I’ve been wrong.
My wrongness stems from the fact that I have treated membership to the church like membership to any other number of organizations, whereas to join the church as a member is actually a profound witness to our faith.
For example: There’s a bishop from another denomination (thankfully) that often tells a story about recruiting for a local seminary. Over the years the bishop would meet with candidates and at some point in the conversation he would say, “Why should I join the church?” And the candidates would often wax lyrical about the music program, or the value of community outreach, or the fellowship that is present on Sunday mornings, but not a single candidate ever said anything about Jesus.
The church is not the local symphony through which you can experience dynamic music every once in a while. The church is not yet another social agency through which you can feel better about making other people’s lives better. The church is not a country club through which you can meet people of a similar social strata.
The church can be like those things, but the one thing the church is and has that nothing else does is Jesus.
Therefore, to join the church as a member is a remarkable thing. It is a strange adventure that is made possible only by faith.
Notably, when the Lord teaches the disciples about forgiveness they can’t wrap their heads around it. It would be one thing if Jesus told them they should try to forgive one another but instead he tells them they can never stop forgiving one another. That runs against everything the world teaches us. But forgiveness is the currency of the kingdom, and of the church.
If we insist on being right and perfect and only ever surrounding ourselves with right and perfect people then, according to the Lord, our lives will be miserable and boring.
The church, then, stands as a dynamic witness to the power of the Spirit. The great gifts of the church include connecting us with people we would otherwise never connect with, the sacraments that make our lives intelligible in the first place, and the promise of the empty tomb that offers us a new past where we are no longer defined by our mistakes and a new future where resurrection is reality.
I didn’t know what I was getting into when I became a member of my home church, but it was the difference that made all the difference in the world. It was the difference because, week after week, the church gave me Jesus.
In the end, the church is a miracle and, like the early disciples, we need all the faith we can get for it to be the blessing that it is and can be.
Therefore, if you are not (yet) a member of a church, I encourage you to prayerfully consider joining. It will take faith, but even faith the size of a mustard seed is enough in the kingdom of God.
think and let think 