Christ the King

Jeremiah 23:1-6

Luke 23:33-43

On Christ the King Sunday we celebrate and remember that Christ had many roles and functions, and that one of them is as King, King of us, King of creation, King of all.  But the underlying question is, Who is this Christ?  Who is this king? 

When we think of royalty, when we think about rulers of any kind, we have certain visions in our minds.  We have certain understandings of the kind of strength, power, and authority that it takes to lead a world, a country, a state, a city. 

But always, always, when it comes to God, when it comes to Christ, we are handed a vision and understanding that does not,  and frankly cannot, be anything like what we think.   In order to understand this king, I think it can be helpful to return to our original Biblical stories of what a ruler and king are. 

The Hebrew people were told, from the beginning, that God was their God.  They were told that because of who God is, God’s strong presence in their lives, God’s overarching leadership and most of all, God’s amazing and faithful love, that the Hebrew people needed no other ruler, no other guide.   But the Israelites were scared.  They were scared to be a nation without a clear leadership who could defend them, lead them into battle, show them as a united and strong people.  They insisted, they asked for a ruler.  God gave them judges, people who could help them make decisions and interpret right from wrong.  But again, these were not what the people wanted.  They were afraid.  They didn’t believe they could rely on God alone against other nations.  We hear the rest of this story in the book of 1^st Samuel, chapter 8.   “Now when Samuel got old, he appointed his sons to serve as Israel’s judges. ² The name of his oldest son was Joel; the name of the second was Abijah. They served as judges in Beer-sheba. ³ But Samuel’s sons didn’t follow in his footsteps. They tried to turn a profit, they accepted bribes, and they perverted justice. ⁴ So all the Israelite elders got together and went to Samuel at Ramah. ⁵ They said to him, “Listen. You are old now, and your sons don’t follow in your footsteps. So appoint us a king to judge us like all the other nations have.” ⁶ It seemed very bad to Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us,” so he prayed to the Lord. ⁷ The Lord answered Samuel, “Comply with the people’s request—everything they ask of you—because they haven’t rejected you. No, they’ve rejected me as king over them. ⁸ They are doing to you only what they’ve been doing to me from the day I brought them out of Egypt to this very minute, abandoning me and worshipping other gods. ⁹ So comply with their request, but give them a clear warning, telling them how the king will rule over them.”  Then Samuel explained everything the Lord had said to the people who were asking for a king.  “This is how the king will rule over you,” Samuel said: “He will take your sons, and will use them for his chariots and his cavalry and as runners for his chariot.  He will use them as his commanders of troops of one thousand and troops of fifty, or to do his plowing and his harvesting, or to make his weapons or parts for his chariots.  He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, or bakers.  He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves and give them to his servants.  He will give one-tenth of your grain and your vineyards to his officials and servants. ¹⁶ He will take your male and female servants, along with the best of your cattle and donkeys, and make them do his work.  He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and then you yourselves will become his slaves!  When that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you chose for yourselves, but on that day the Lord won’t answer you.”   But the people refused to listen to Samuel and said, “No! There must be a king over us  so we can be like all the other nations. Our king will judge us and lead us and fight our battles.”   Samuel listened to everything the people said and repeated it directly to the Lord.  Then the Lord said to Samuel, “Comply with their request. Give them a king.”

So the people were given kings.  And we’ve had those kings as models for us ever since.  We have come to expect that rulers are people who provide us at least a modicum of stability or protection, but that do so at a very high price.  We expect this.  No matter where you stand politically, or who you support or what kind of government you value, we all know that there are costs we’d rather not pay to having human leadership, human rulers.  Still, we don’t feel “safe” without them.

And yet, God continues to show us another way.  God continues to show us God’s way.  And God’s way is different.  And when we could not see it from what the judges had to say, and when we could not accept it based on what the prophets had to say, and when we could not live it based on what God said to us through scriptures and stories and people and history, God finally sent God’s son to us.  God sent Jesus to show us this other way, this different way.  Jesus came, the real king, the ultimate king, who acts nothing like we expect or understand rulers or leaders to behave.  He doesn’t walk around with body guards protecting his every step.  He doesn’t insist on taking from us to increase his wealth or to pad the pockets of his friends.  He doesn’t take from the poor to give to the rich and he doesn’t take from any of us for his own need or his family’s need.  He doesn’t build a strong defense system or any kind of defense system at all.  Instead, instead he shows us something very, VERY different.  He feeds anyone who comes to him hungry.  He heals anyone who comes to him sick (and sometimes even the dead such as Talitha and Lazarus).  He listens and allows even the most rejected, the least “acceptable”, the least “worthy” to physically touch him.  He includes children, women, people of different nationalities and backgrounds such as the Serophoenician and the Samaritans.  He doesn’t reject them because they aren’t “the chosen ones” or part of his nation.  He includes tax collectors and prostitutes and doesn’t reject them because their behavior is wrong and isn’t what we deem acceptable.  He doesn’t take their wealth and live in a big mansion with servants or luxury items.  He lives poorly, simply, and asks for nothing in return.  He relies on the kindness of strangers and does not worry about his own survival or well-being.  He leads with truth rather than threats or fear or negotiations. 

And when THIS king, this king that we cannot understand, this king who acts completely differently from what we want or expect or demand from our human rulers, when this king is killed, as of course he would inevitably be, this king still, on the cross, in his dying moments, behaves completely differently from any king we can imagine.  He doesn’t send for his troops to rescue him.  He doesn’t call for a start of war or revenge.  He doesn’t threaten the end to those who did this to him.  He doesn’t shout out “you will be sorry”, and he doesn’t fight back in any way.

Instead, as he hangs there on the cross, as he dies, as he suffers the deepest pain, and he continues to think about others, others who are suffering.  And again, it isn’t the “good” people he worries about in that moment.  It is anyone, anyone at all who is suffering.  He is hanging on the cross next to two people who have done terrible wrongs, who are being killed as criminals for some atrocity or another.  Maybe they were both murderers.  Maybe they killed children.  We aren’t told.  What we are told is that in that moment Jesus doesn’t ask.  He doesn’t care what they have done.  What he cares about is that they are scared and suffering.  And in that moment, this king, who does not “rescue” them or himself, even when he is goaded on to do so, instead, in that moment, as he suffers, hanging on the cross – he offers to the criminal crucified next to him the promise of paradise.  He reaches out with the strength of knowledge and love that goes beyond any personal suffering, and he offers life, real life, to the scared and dying human, imperfect person next to him. 

This is the KING that we are given, the REAL king, the savior, our God.  He does not jump off the cross to save himself, despite the pain, and the inevitable death that he faces.  He does not “negotiate” or buy popularity or play politics.  He lives life following God to the fullest, and he pays for it with death, a death he accepts even while he loves and cares for those around him, even those whom, like this criminal next to him, we would probably not deem worthy of that love or care.

Walter Brueggermann said it this way – “Every (government) regime is frightened…..  It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing alternative futures to the single one the (earthly) king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”  Well, again, the king that we see, the king that Jesus presents is not this kind of king.  This is the king who IS the prophet, who IS the artist…who takes all of our understandings of rulers and leadership and what it is to command people, and he turns them on their head. 

This week is Thanksgiving.  And then we begin Advent.  And all of them, Christ the King, Thanksgiving, and Advent connect… all are about seeing God in the unexpected places, being grateful because we have seen God, and expecting that God, Christ, King, Jesus as a baby – will not be what we expect. 

I struggled with the sermon this week.  I struggled to write it because I am saying the same thing that is being said across the country on this Christ the King Sunday.  That Christ the King is nothing at all like the kings and leaders we think we need.  That instead Christ the King is the King GOD wants us to have – a king of love, compassion, service, selflessness, faithfulness – God wants us to have nothing else but God for our king, our leader, our ruler.  What is new in that?  What new word can I bring that you have not heard every year on this Sunday?  What stories can I possibly tell you to illustrate this reality?  But then I thought, the thing is, we need to hear this every year.  Because we are still, STILL looking for that earthly king to lead us.  We still are.  And that is not the king God calls us to have lead us.

So how will we recognize this Christ?  How do we recognize this King?  As we enter Advent, as we come to God with thanksgiving in our hearts for all we have been given, how do we know our loyalty is to the right king?  How do we know we have found Christ again?  

We will know him, as we always do, by his love.  By his unfathomable, unimaginable, kind, caring, unconditional and all-encompassing love.   We will know him by the people he includes, which is everyone, and by the fact that he loves even those who offend us deeply.  We will know him by his unexpected appearance among those we don’t usually count, or see, or care for.  We will know him by his love. Amen

Two steps forward, one step back...

       I posted about a month ago in my article entitled "Value, Worth, Esteem" that I've been in a period of time where my own sense of self has felt more solid.  I've been in a time of greater confidence, less self-attack, less struggle with esteem.  I wrote in that essay that I thought the primary reason for this change within me had to do with the way I'm choosing to see other people, viewing others with less judgment and more compassion, and that I felt the decision to see others with eyes of love was affecting how I saw myself as well.  I also stated that a secondary cause of this change might be that I am more carefully choosing who I associate with: I am no longer seeking out people as companions who make me feel small, less worthy, less valuable.  I have been choosing my friends and companions better, and have surrounded myself with people who see me, value me, and treat me with respect rather than disdain.  They treat me as equals, not superiors or inferiors, and that has been both affirming and grounding.
         This grounding, this re-centering has also allowed me to make some choices.  I've thought more about who it is I want to be in the world, and I've been able to step into that with more courage, strength and compassion.  I choose to be a person of reconciliation.  I choose to be a person of courage.  I choose to be a person who is kind.  These decisions about who I want to be and who I choose to be have allowed me to step into some actions and behaviors with a strength that I have not previously had.  They have also allowed me to feel good about my actions and my choices, regardless of how those actions and choices have been met in the world.  One example: as a person who is choosing to be a reconciler, I have stepped out and reached out to several people with whom there had been a breach.  In one of those cases I was basically blown off.  But what is interesting to me was that it was okay with me.  I was clear that who I wanted to be in the world was someone who reached towards reconciliation.  This is who I choose to be.  The response of the other is up to the other, and is, frankly, about the other.  I feel very clear about that.  I understood that the other person would have to choose what was best for them.  And that I knew I would be fine regardless of their response, as indeed, I have been.
        But all of that is leading up to the place I am today.  Today has been a different week.  I have been thrown back into spending significant time with people who do not value me in the same way, who certainly don't see me.  I have been spending time with those who do not know me as well, but who have specific ideas of who I am in the world and who judge me as "other," and (more importantly) as "less".  And what has surprised me is how easily I, too, then stepped back into that place of being the person struggling to be grounded, struggling for esteem, struggling to be accepted and acceptable.
       I share this, but not from a place of wanting sympathy or pity or even compassion around this.  Because there is a difference this time.  This time I see it for what it is.  This time I am aware of it happening and I'm aware of the effect of it on my self-esteem.  I am watching it happen, and I'm choosing to stay with it for a short time, to see if I can reclaim who I am, even as I stand amidst those who do not see it and do not value it.  Next week is a different week and I will be in a different place again.  But for now, I am watching, observing, learning, and doing the things that I know help me to stay grounded in its midst.  I'm breathing.  I'm walking.  I'm contacting those who do know me and love me.  I'm taking care of me, even as I struggle to remember who that is at times.  All of this is a gift of learning, a gift of faith that what life hands me is an opportunity to grow, and an invitation to go deeper.
        Thank you for your "listening" ears as well.  I am grateful.

The Future: Good or Bad?

Isaiah 65: 17-25

Luke 21:5-19

Today we read two different passages talking about the future for the faithful.  What happened in the first passage from Isaiah?  The Isaiah passage describes a glorious future - creation of a new heaven and a new earth.

No more weeping.                               

No more infants dying after a few days.                                       

People living to be a hundred on a regular basis.

People living in the houses they build - (no foreclosures?)

People eating the fruit of their vineyards.

They will survive and enjoy their work.

Their children will do well.

Wolf and lamb will eat together - and the lion will eat straw now: no more stalking prey.

Serpent still cursed (eating dust) but no hurting or killing.

The Luke passage is also talking about the future but what does it say? 

The temple will not stand: those beautiful things built as an offering to God will be destroyed.

Wars, insurrections.

Nation rising against nation,

kingdom against kingdom,

earthquakes, famines, plagues

dreadful portents and great signs.

And before this...you will be arrested, persecuted,

handed over to synagogues and prisons, brought before kings and governors.

Betrayed even by parents, siblings, relatives and friends.

You will be hated.

But.... your soul will be saved.

Two very different versions of what the future looks like.  Why do you think these descriptions are so different?

They were written at different times to different groups of people and reflecting on different events. The passage from Isaiah was written to a group of people who were exiled and to whom Isaiah is declaring that once the injustices have been punished, once the pain they have reaped upon themselves is done, once Israel has repented, arrogance and hypocrisy confronted, and Israel has been cleansed and made new, THEN a new day will dawn, a day of life, a day of hope, a day in which the damaged relationship with God caused by the corruption of human hearts will be bridged by God God-self, made whole once again, made new, and made beautiful.  This is the promise of comfort after the fall, after all that we have done and failed to do, it is the promise of redemption, of grace, and new life, given to a displaced and suffering people.  God has not left them, they are still God’s people, and God will make everything right again.

The passage from Luke, was also written to a suffering people at a time of pain and persecution. But the strategy of Luke here, also wanting to offer comfort, is very different.  Luke has Jesus foreseeing their suffering and declaring that it is not meaningless.  Those Christians suffering persecution after Jesus’ death needed to know that their dedication and commitment to Christ in the face of pain, loss and even death was purposeful and powerful and important.  Their comfort then comes in a different form. Unlike Isaiah’s promise which is of a better life on earth for the faithful and their children, this is instead a promise that their current pain has deep and everlasting meaning, that God has not abandoned them but is with them to the end.  There is the promise of future relief here too, but it has more to do with the immortal soul and less to do with relief from the physical struggles of life.

While appearing to offer very different images of the future, both of these passages are seeking to offer the promise of God’s presence, God’s comfort, and new life.  Both passages are also offering a deep challenge....As commentator R. Alan Culpepper states “in every generation there are those whose religion is simply a form of escapism into the fantasy of futurism, every generation has also had its courageous and prophetic visionaries who devoted themselves completely to Jesus’ call to create community, oppose injustice, work for peace, and make a place for the excluded.  Every generation, therefore, is called back to the teachings of Jesus by the examples of those who have suffered persecution and hardship because they dared to strive to live

out Jesus’ call for a community that transcends social barriers, that cares for its least privileged, and that confronts abuses of power and wealth....(the Luke passage) calls for such a commitment in life that those who dare to embrace it will find themselves persecuted by authorities.”  We know this is true.  Who are the martyrs of our time?  Who are the people in our lifetimes who have really stood up to injustice, really made a stand for others to lead better, more full, more fair, equitable, humane lives?  Not all have been martyred, but many have.  Rosa Parks.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Both of these passages are addressing the need to act for justice, despite all costs.  The entire book of Isaiah offers the challenge to the elite of Israel to stop using and abusing the less well off: to seek justice, knowing that if they don’t everything they have taken will be taken from them, and that if they do, if they repent, if they work for justice, then they will find new life far better than the one they are abusing others to get.  The challenge for those hearing the Luke passage is to walk firmly in the footsteps of Christ, again working to conquer injustice, working for a better world for all, knowing that the cost may be persecution, but that the gain is your very soul. 

Where are we in this?  As Culpepper said it, too many Christians come to church looking solely for the comfort - or as he said - the escape.  How many of you have heard people pray something along the lines of “as we come to this place, let us leave our troubles behind us, let us forget about our worries, let us be relieved of our burdens.”  I’ll own it, I’ve prayed similar things.  It’s present in some of our music, too.  There is a lovely song in our hymnals,  “you are my hiding place.”  But that very line is an example of this escape theology.  “You are my hiding place.”  Is God supposed to be a hiding place?  A place where we HIDE from the world and our problems?  Is our faith about escaping our difficulties?  Because we are called to exactly the opposite.  We are called to stand up to injustice - to be so much a part of making this world a better place for others that we risk persecution, even death.  Our faith if anything should throw us into danger, not pull us into a “safe” hiding place.

Instead of praying to be relieved of our burdens, we need to pray for strength, wisdom and courage to face them.  Instead of a hiding place, maybe we need to pray for places of peace where we can be renewed to face the battle of life again.  Instead of escaping into God, we need to ask God’s guidance for ways in which we can bring God’s kingdom to earth, making it a safe place for all people, making it a just place for all people, making it a good and Godly place for all people.

How do we do this?  By confronting whatever injustices and barriers come before us.  Sometimes this happens in large ways.  My study leave this year involved going to Alabama and learning more about the Civil Rights movement.  It was unbelievable to me how many people risked and lost their lives to stand up for African Americans to have the vote, to be allowed to sit anywhere on the bus, to be able to attend the same schools with the same quality of education that white children were given.  People who simply walked across a bridge who were beaten and killed.  People who simply stood near a school who had fire hoses and dogs set on them.  People who said, “no more” and stood up against injustice.  Again, during this season of voting, I think about the women who also stood up, demanding their right to vote.

As you know, Jack, for example, went down for many years to the US/Mexico border in AZ with a group of Christians who, despite differing political beliefs about immigration issues and laws none the less felt called as “neighbors” to help the large number of people - children, youth, adults of all ages, who die crossing the border because of dehydration.  They went to the border during the hottest weeks of the summer and simply set up a camp to provide water for those who otherwise would die in the heat.  They did nothing else.  They did not “aid” those trying to get into the country, nor did they turn them in.  But they saved lives by being present, being loving, providing water.  And while they were “persecuted” - harassed by the border patrol, threatened with arrest and worse, they stood in their faith and in their belief that we are called to love all people, to care for all people: in doing so they stood up for their faith. 

The ways in which we stand in our faith do not have to be so dramatic.  Serving food, providing shelter at the Winter’s Nights or Loaves and Fishes programs.  Recycling and composting so we are not contributing as much to the earth’s destruction.  Voting in ways that work to end homelessness and poverty in this country and others.  Being present at vigils, protests, assemblies: standing up for what we believe, but more, standing up for God’s people who do not have voices in the ways that we do....we are called to do that, to be part of that in every way that we can, with every opportunity that presents itself to us.

Is there comfort here?  Of course.  Both today’s passages were offering comfort though in different ways.  The Isaiah passage reminds us that God is by our side and that the other side to hard times is a life of renewal and refreshment - following the repentance and the work towards wholeness.  The Luke passage reminds us that when we do struggle for others, in the name of God, in the name of Jesus, in the name of love for neighbor and enemy alike, that we gain our very souls.  It is in this that our lives have meaning.  It is in this that we find real love.  It is in this that we meet God.  Amen.

Thin Places

         There is a phrase that the "religious" folk I know use to describe places where one encounters the Divine.  We refer to them as "thin" places: places where the barrier between this world and something more sacred, more spiritual, more mystical becomes thin.  These are places where you can feel God, whatever it is that God means to you, where you can touch something beyond this world, where the presence of the holy becomes almost tangible.  There are specific places around the world that are often described as these thin places, places where the Divine seems to hover, play, reach down to us, or simply to be more accessible.  Four of the thin places I have visited are Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, Zephyr Point in Lake Tahoe, Iona in Scotland, and Asilomar Beach near Monterey, though there are many other such places.  These are enchanting, almost magical areas where the beauty of nature seems to stretch out forever.  When you are in these places, you feel the ruach, or Spirit through every single breathe you take. There is a sense that time stops, or moves differently, while you are there: clocks have no meaning and the only thing that is important is being, is existing, is breathing.  In each of these places it feels that you not only see and breathe beauty, but you become part of it.  There is a thinness not just between the sacred and mundane, but between yourself and all creation.  It is easier to understand at these sites that everything really is just ONE and that you are a small part and yet an essential part of the rhythm and movement of life, of love, of existence, of being.
        Perhaps it is harder to feel this amidst the craziness of the cities and suburbs where many of us live.  When people are rude, angry or unkind and you have to watch with an incredibly alert eye driving around because of the craziness of those who are focused solely on their own needs, their own schedules, their own desires and worries in this life, it is harder to open yourself to connection with all things.  I shrink from taking down the wall between myself and those who cannot see me as anything but a barrier, an unfortunate obstacle on their path to rush to wherever they are going next.  Being open in those moments means being vulnerable to another's anger and angst and that is uncomfortable, to say the least.  It is harder to maintain a strong sense of the presence of God in the face of so much busyness that tends to have greedy and self-serving aspects to it.  
        But this weekend I found myself reflecting that "thin places" are not just physical places where we might go.  I attended a concert Saturday evening where a piece was performed that was so incredibly beautiful that I found tears running down my face before I was even aware of it.  I was moved beyond myself and into that place of "thinness" where I wanted to literally be part of the music, where I was enveloped in something beyond this world, where I was transported beyond the journey we walk and into the Presence in which we live.  Recently someone told me about a sunset she had seen that was so beautiful that she wept because she wanted to be in the sunset, to be enveloped in its beauty beyond just the visual experience of seeing it.  Each of our senses can bring us into that place of thinness: the song of a bird, the beauty of a forest, the smell of the mountains, an unexpected and wondrous taste, the ocean waves lapping against our feet: all of these can bring us into a sense of the eternal, into a deep connection with all that is awe-some and profoundly lovely, into a timeless place of pure being.  Experiencing or witnessing acts of kindness can also move us into those places of realizing there is good, that we are surrounded by something that encourages generosity, care, openness and love when we are open to it.
        As the piece of music that touched and deepened in me as a "thin place" came to a conclusion, I glanced around me at the other people attending the concert.  While many appreciated the music, not all had been moved in the same way.  Not everyone in that space had encountered the Divine, a transcendent moving, a connection to the beyond.  And I realized that thin places are not universally so.  When I was on Iona, those we travelled with did not experience it in the same way.  It was "very nice" but not transformational for everyone, as it had been for me.  When I am at Lake Tahoe, I have heard people snipping at their children or complaining about their lodgings: for them, too, that place may be a nice place to visit, but it does not always refresh, reform and renew in the way it does for me.
         The truth is that encountering a thin place is much more about how we stand in any particular moment.  We have met people who radiate "holiness," for lack of a better term.  These are people (like the Dalai Lama, Father Chacour, Maya Angelou, Ben Weir, Mr. Rogers) who, when you stand in their presence your breathing changes.  You slow yourself and are present despite whatever else is going on with you.  They call this out of us because of their stance in this life.  They see the holy that is there around them all the time.  They live in the wonder of the transcendent, and they are unafraid of the vulnerability of being open to the reality of our deep connection and unity to everything around us.  They create thin places around them for all of us who encounter them simply by standing in that thinness themselves.
        And the thing is, this is a stance that all of us can cultivate.  It takes intentionality, a willingness to be open to seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling and experiencing where God is in any one moment.  It requires breathing differently, moving with purpose rather than rushing around, taking time to not be human doings but to be human beings.  But, as we see with the people and places who are "thin" around us, when one is willing and able to do that, it is not just a gift to the persons being in that Divine presence, it is a gift to all around them too: one person's stance can cause others to also breathe differently, to move, hear, see, and experience our world differently.
       I am grateful for thin places, both physical places and the thin places that are created by art, by beauty, by kindness, and by courage.

Fear and Trust

Haggai 1:15b-2:9

2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17

Luke 20:27-38

               All of today’s lectionary passages speak to us about fear, and remind us that God is a God of life who tells us “be not afraid”. 

In the first passage, Haggai is speaking to the Israelites at a time following their return to Jerusalem after their exile.  The returning Israelites believed their well-being was intimately connected with the well-being of the temple, which their tradition told them was literally the house of God.  During the time of the exile, the temple had been destroyed, but now the Israelites have returned to Jerusalem, and the temple has been rebuilt.   For outsiders this would appear to be a time of great celebration and renewal.  But for the Israelites who knew the original temple, who remembered its former glory and believed that it and it alone was worthy of housing their God, this new temple in no way matched up with their images of what was due, it in no way matched up with the old temple.  For them, what should be a time of great joy and new beginnings had instead become a time of despair, and more, of fear of what this portended for their future.  What does it mean that the temple, the house of God is not what it should be?  Will God be angry?  Will their future be half what their past was, as the temple is half what the old one was?  It is within this context that Haggai is speaking to the Israelites and reminding them that they do not need to live in this new existence with this new temple in a state of anxiety.  He tells them that poor beginnings do not mean poor endings if you go forward holding onto and trusting in God.  God is a God of life.  God is all about bringing new life out of any death.  They can, therefore, go forward without fear because God is with them still.

               The passage from 2 Thessalonians gives a similar message.  The people in Thessalonica are also living in fear and anxiety about their future.  They are afraid that the day of the Lord has already come and that they have missed the boat, they have missed the second coming, they have missed out on ultimate life.  Paul, too, is telling them to not be anxious about what is to come, that God is the God of life and that their faith will keep them tightly in the loving arms of God.

               And finally the third passage from the book of Luke also shows a group of people in the midst of fear.  In this passage it is the Sadducees who are afraid.  They are afraid of Jesus, fearing the influence he is having on the people, fearing how Jesus’ radical messages of love might influence the people, their faith, and as a result, their actions.  Jesus is in no way a legalist.  And the Sadducees (and Pharisees) retain control of their world through the Jewish laws.  With Jesus teaching something broader but less containable, less structured, the Sadducees are terrified.  Their reaction is to try to trick Jesus, to trip him up, to catch him in an unacceptable position that will discredit and harm him  by asking him questions that it appears he cannot answer without alienating part of the crowd, part of his following.  Among and within the Jewish people were different groups with different beliefs about the resurrection, among other things.  If Jesus agreed with the Sadducees and said there is no resurrection, he would have alienated those Jews who did believe in the resurrection and visa versa.  So they confront him with a question designed to destroy the unity and size of Jesus’ following that they fear.  This question they pose to him is the third in a set of questions intended to trick Jesus, intended to get him into trouble either with the law or with his followers so that Jesus will be discredited, rejected, or worse, brought to trial.  All of their questions have been motivated by fear, and all three are intended to help them regain their power and control.

               To Jesus’ credit, and what gives us huge insight, once again, into the nature of God, is that Jesus  did not flee from or avoid any of these questions.  He also didn’t seek revenge or retribution.  Instead, Jesus chose to respond to these fearful people.  He engaged even those who were attacking him with their fear and trickery.  In answer to the trickery that we read about today, he basically stated that those who asked the questions didn’t understand what they are asking.  He backed this up by stating that they needed to look at their own scriptures to see where they were wrong in their own beliefs.  And while his answers, his lack of “falling into the trap” may have inspired even more fear in those who tried to trick him, still Jesus’ message, too, was one of letting go of fear, of trusting in God, of seeing that God is “the God of the living”, the “God of life” and not a God of death and destruction.

               We live in a fear based society, and I believe this is becoming more and more true.  We see this in every aspect of our lives.  The news is not just telling us bad things, but filling us with fear about what is to come.  They know that fear sells and they capitalize on that.  No matter what side of any issue you are on  you are told to be afraid, very afraid.  Each side fears different things, but still we are each told to vote out of our fear, rather than out of our hope.  Our fear culture includes more than this, though.  People are afraid to trust each other so we set up fences, walls, security cameras, alarm systems.  We have background checks for everything and we put into place outrageous airport security checks.  We surround ourselves with police and emergency call systems and the many, many other “things” and systems in our lives that are supposed to protect us and keep us safe.  Our business choices, who we give to, IF we give at all, how much we feel we can spare to share and care for the world – these too are usually reactive and fear-based responses.  We know the result of acting out this fear.  We no longer have any privacy in this country, for one thing.  We alienate and separate ourselves out from our brothers and sisters who are at all different from ourselves because we are afraid of them, afraid “they” will take what is “ours”.  In the extremes, we have all heard of people who won’t even leave their homes out of fear, or who are so germ-aphobic that they can’t engage life normally.  But even for those of us without that kind of extreme fear, we are governed in so many ways by our fears.

At some point we have to decide if we are going to live in the world or live of the world.  If we choose the values of this world, if we choose to trust our methods of security and if we choose to trust those things that we set up to protect ourselves in a scary world, we are not trusting God.  And what’s more, we are not really living.

How many of you have seen the movie “French Kiss?”  The movie begins with Meg Ryan’s character, Kate, acting as a typical middle class person, saving money, planning for the future, working hard to make the dreams of many a typical middle class person come true.  She is engaged to a Doctor, and living in a home away from home, which for her is Canada, hoping to become a Canadian citizen.  She has saved enough money to buy a wonderful house and she is dreaming and planning for the family and kids she hopes to have.  She seems happy and excited about her life and the only clue we are given that things are not all that they seem is that she is terrified of flying.  So when her fiancé invites her to go with him to France, she declines, despite all his urgings.  The crisis in the movie comes just a few minutes later when her fiancé calls from France to tell her that he has met another woman in France and that he will not be returning to her.  She feels the secure walls of her life begin to crumble and she pushes herself to fly to France, despite her terror, in a desperate attempt to “get him back!”   When she arrives in France, it seems she is met by a number of people who block her attempts to connect with her fiancé and finally, everything she has with her in France is stolen from her.  So now she is across the world from her home, without fiancé, without possessions, without security, without her passport or any other form of id, and on top of that because she left Canada to fly to France before her resident visa to live in Canada was approved, neither Canada nor the United States will give her a new visa.  She has, in the span of a day, gone from being a complete “has” to being a total “has not.” 

At first, she is devastated.  But as she later explains, “I thought, there is no way that everything I was building for could be destroyed (by some stranger... and so I bought a plane ticket, got on the plane, somehow made it over the big blue ocean,... and then the most extraordinary thing happened.  Everything went wrong.  I was wandering the streets of Paris, penniless, without a hope in the world.  And let me tell you, you can do a lot of soul searching in a time like that and I realized that I spent most of my adult life trying to protect myself from exactly this situation.  And you can’t do it.  There is no home safe enough, there is no country nice enough, there’s no relationship secure enough.  You’re just setting yourself up for an even bigger fall and having an incredibly boring time in the process.”

While it makes sense to be cautious and to not be stupid or fail to do what needs to be done in this life to take care of things, the reality is that choosing to live in fear prevents us from living at all.  God’s message again and again is “be not afraid for I am with you.”   Another consistent message is that we are freed by our faith in Christ.  And yet when we continue to live in fear, and when we continue to live in slavery to our fear of losing all the things we have, when we spend all our time working for things that will “protect” us from whatever it is that we fear so much, we fail to really live.  The very things that we set up to protect ourselves, keep us from living.  I think about this when I look at the way that we now protect our children.  I remember hearing one of our favorite comedians say that my generation was the last generation of children allowed to be children.  In my own childhood I wandered in the foothills of Mt. Diablo on my own.  At very young ages we were allowed to go out from homes to play with neighborhood children and we would be out and about most of the day before coming home.  We had play equipment at parks like those spinning merry-go-rounds and monkey bars.  This is no more.  All of this play equipment as been deemed “unsafe” but the reality is that most parks and cities are just now afraid of being sued.  We no longer let our children run around and explore and get scraped and banged up and hurt because we fear it.  But those bumps and scrapes and even breaks are what gave us the greatest lessons and frankly, the greatest experiences too.  More than that, they strengthened us for what life really is, the prepared us for adulthood in so many ways.  I am sad that my kids never got to try to build a fort out of wood they found laying around as I did, or face wildlife in the same way I did as a kid, running into huge spiders and even snakes on the hill and needing to make decisions about how to handle it.  Yes, our kids are protected.  But the result of this “protection” is that often when they are faced with the real problems of the world, they no longer know how to handle them, they no longer have the strength of having faced hardships as children to know how to handle hardships as young adults.

We can think of so many other examples of the damage that our fear has done in the world.  When we become afraid of our money being lost in the bank, a “run” on the bank is disastrous, as we know.  When we fail to take the risk of trusting in our relationships, our relationships can’t deepen.  When, out of fear, we set up protections against others, defining them as “enemies,” treating them as enemies, we make them into the very enemies we fear them to be.     

               The movie French Kiss ends when Meg Ryan’s character, Kate, learns to let go of her fear.  At the end she is still without country, she is still without her fiancé.  But even in this place, she makes the decision to help an outcast whom she has befriended.  She gives to a man who has also isolated himself from his family and friends, who has been acting out his own fear, who seems to be beyond hope and redemption – she makes the decision to give to him her “nest egg” of $45,000.  She does so in an anonymous way that he will never know she has given him this money, and she does it believing that she will never see him again.  She gives away all of her “security” and “protection”- out of love - just because. 

In freeing herself from her fear, Kate frees herself to really live.  And while at first there is some sorrow and grieving for her, in the end, letting go of her security and choosing to live in a sense of openness and trust allows her finally to really live the life she wants.

Fear leaves no room for anything else.  Like Truth.  Like Beauty.  Like Love.  It leaves no room for trying new things, making new friends, living with fullness.  It creates no space for seeing God or for hearing the words of the angels.  We have a choice to make.  Do we choose to live in fear?  Or do we instead trust in the God who loves us beyond anything, the God who came to be with us, who died because of us, who rose out of death into life: do we trust instead the God who says through the voices of the angels, “Do not be afraid.”

Living and Giving as the Saints

John 5:24-27

Joshua 3:7-17

 There once was a strongman at a circus sideshow who demonstrated his power before large audiences every night.

Toward the end of one performance, he squeezed the juice from a lemon between his hands. He said to the onlookers, “I will offer $200 to anyone here who can squeeze another drop from this lemon.

A thin older lady hobbled up the stage. She picked up the lemon and clamped it between her two frail, boney hands. She squeezed. And out came a teaspoon of lemon juice.

The strongman was amazed. He paid the woman $200 but privately asked her, “What is the secret of your strength?”

“Practice,” the woman answered. “I have been treasurer of my church for forty-two years!”

The Wired Word had an article entitled “25-Year- Old Makes All He Can, Gives All He Can” that described a young man who, rather than volunteering for things like the peace corps, felt the way he could best give to the world was by making as much money as he could and giving almost all of it to charities.  It described the fact that most people say the best thing they could do would be to save a life, and yet it is within our power to do exactly that: to save lives through our donations of money to charities that provide medical necessities, food, shelter, clothing, jobs, opportunities.  Sometimes these services are offered over-seas so they feel so far away that we don't see them, but the opportunities to give and to really make a difference for others are there.  But people in the United States do not give much.  Percentage wise, we donate very little of what we believe we have "earned" through our work to the service of others.

            Today we honor the Saints, we remember the people who have gone before us who have created the way for us to be who we are and to do what we do and to live the way we live.  Today is also the day that is scheduled for our Stewardship sermon.  It is probably the sermon of the year I hate to give most, as it often becomes a lecture and a begging for money to support church programs in a diminishing community.  But I found that as I thought about All Saints day and Stewardship, that there was a deep connection between the two that is providential, at least.  While these two things may seem to have nothing to do with each other, in fact they are deeply related. 

            We as a culture focus a great deal on what is new and exciting.  We are thrilled with the latest technology, the newest iphone, the latest gadgets.  We like the comforts that our homes now have that we couldn’t imagine having when we were kids.  Personal computers, phones we can take with us anywhere with apps that tell us where our kids are at any moment or what the score is in an on-going sports game, or when and where the next earthquake will take place at any time.  We love our machines - dishwashers, clothes washers, coffee makers, microwaves.  We are thrilled to have seat warmers in our cars and hundreds of channels on our TV sets, and international music channels in our cars.  We depend on our GPS systems and we love our pads, our Kindles, etc.  Maybe you don’t use all of these new gadgets, but I am certain that everyone in here uses at least some of them.  We want to move forward in these ways, and we should. As we talked about just last week on Reformation Sunday, change is imperative and a calling from God to seeing in new ways, growing more deeply in our faith and our commitments, being the church this day in this world.

            But we also lose something by a focus on what is new and innovative and amazing when we fail to also learn the lessons from our past, when we fail to find value in honoring what was, when we fail to lose connection with tradition, with history, with the things our ancestors valued and held dear.  In failing to honor what went before we lose deep values, we lose the lessons learned from history, and we often lose a sense of meaning and purpose.  Life becomes so much about NOW that we fail to care for the future, or respect and value the past that has made us who we are.    

            Sometimes, in the midst of the fast-paced changes of society, the rituals and traditions can bring a comfort, a stability that would not otherwise be found.  But it is more than that.  Mitch Albom in his book, Have a Little Faith (New York: Hyperion, 2009) shares about Rabbi Lewis, when he lost his young daughter to an asthma attack found

“The very rituals of mourning that he cursed having to do – the prayers, the torn clothing, not shaving, covering the mirror – had helped him keep a grip on who he was, when he might have otherwise washed away.  He told how the words of the Kaddish made him think, ‘I am part of something here; one day my children will say this very prayer for me just as I am saying it for my daughter.’  His faith soothed him, and while it could not save (his daughter) from death, it could make her death more bearable, by reminding him that we are all frail parts of something powerful.” (182)

Mitch Albom continues, “..ritual was a major part of the (Rabbi)’s life.  Morning prayers.  Evening prayers.  Eating certain foods.  Denying himself others.  On Sabbath, he walked to synagogue, rain or shine, not operating a car, as per Jewish law.  On holidays and festivals, he took part in traditional practices, hosting a Seder meal on Passover, or casting bread into a stream on Rosh Hashanah, symbolic of casting away your sins. 

Like Catholicism, with its vespers, sacraments, and communions – or Islam, with its five-times-daily salah, clean clothes, and prayer mats – Judaism had enough rituals to keep you busy all day, all week, and all year.

I remember as a kid, the (Rabbi) admonishing the congregation – gently, and sometimes not so gently – for letting rituals lapse or disappear, for eschewing traditional acts like lighting candles or saying blessings, even neglecting the Kaddish prayer for loved ones who had died.

But even as he pleaded for a tighter grip, year after year, his members opened their fingers and let a little more go.  They skipped a prayer here.  They skipped a holiday there.  They intermarried (-as I did).

            I wondered, now that his days were dwindling, how important ritual still was.

            ‘Vital’, he said.

            But why?  Deep inside, you know your convictions.

‘Mitch,’ he said, ‘faith is about doing.  You are how you act, not just how you believe.’ (p.44)…”My grandparents did these things.  My parents, too.  If I take the pattern and throw it out, what does that say about their lives?  Or mine?  From generation to generation, these rituals are how we remain…connected.”

We too, honor the past, we honor the saints who have gone before in part by keeping alive the things that they valued and also by giving to the causes and purposes that they valued.  We honor our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors in the church by honoring Church, by valuing it enough to keep it vital and alive, with both our money and our service. 

We also honor them by remembering the sacrifices they have made.  I’ve found myself thinking this week especially about the women who sacrificed health, community and sometimes their lives in order for us to gain the right to vote.  We honor them by using that right that they won for us by voting and remembering their sacrifice.  We honor the work of the civil rights movement by working to make racism a thing of the past, by encouraging our communities to grow in diversity, inclusion and belonging.  We honor those who served in WWII by making sure it never happens again that some people are not seen as full human beings or treated with less than full humanity.

I believe God puts us here, in this place, at this time and in community, for a reason.  We retain purpose through everything that we do, through every interaction we have, through every choice we make.  We also are called to serve and to give not out of obligation but out of gratitude, out of love for God and God’s people.  Until we are called home, we are invited, every day, to find in what ways God calls us to be God’s people.  And we honor what has gone before us by continuing to seek those purposes and reasons out.

These can be hard values to retain in a society that is increasingly about the comforts of “me”, of “I”.  If something does not serve us NOW, we tend to turn away from it.  And giving to others?  That can be especially difficult when we are told that we deserve everything good we can get for ourselves at this moment, NOW.  There was a wonderful article posted recently in a colleague’s blog that was called “7 reasons Church is not for you”.  It went on to list all the things we complain about in church – the music, the preaching, the staff, the communication, the building, the pastor, and the people including the visitors who sit in our pews and come with different ideas and ways to live or dress or be.  It talked about how we expect things to please us, to serve us, to entertain us, to be what we want and when they aren’t exactly to our liking we just don’t choose it.  The article ends with these words, “Sometimes we forget why we are ‘The Church’ in the first place. Sometimes we treat the church like all the other things we consume daily in our lives, and so we try to shape and form the church in our own image. We want a church that meets our preferences, like personalized settings on our computer. Yet, despite all that – despite us – God is still using The Church for God’s purposes.  God is still doing God’s work in world, with or without us.  Sometimes we just need to be reminded of that.  Sometimes we just need to hear again: Church isn’t for you. You are for the Church.”

There is a praise song that often echos in my mind entitled, “Let them see you” by JJ Weeks Band.  The lyrics are:

Take away the melodies

 take away the songs I sing

 take away all the lights

 and all the songs you let me write

 Does the one I am today

 say the words you need to say.

 Let them see you, in me

 let them hear you, when I speak

 let them feel you, when I sing

 let them see you,

 let them see you, in me.

 Who am I without your grace?

 another smile, another face

 another breath, a grain of sand

 passing quickly through your hand

 I give my life, an offering

 take it all, take everything.

 (chorus)

 With every breathe I breathe

 I sing a simple melody

 but I pray they'll hear more than a song,

 In me, in me

 Let them see you, in me

 let them hear you, when I speak

 let them feel you, when I sing

 let them see you,

just let them see you, in me

 let them see you.

We serve God with all we are, all we give, and all we do.  I would challenge each of us to consider that when we think we are done or finished, that we are not honoring the call God gives us to show our gratitude and love of God, we are deciding that God is done with US, and God is NEVER done with us.  God is all about giving your life purpose and meaning, from day one to the day you die.  We honor the saints by living their legacy, giving as they gave, serving as they served, in whatever capacity we can, from the beginning through to the end.

Two men were marooned on an Island. One man paced back and forth worried and scared while the other man sat back and was sunning himself.  The first man said to the second man, “Aren’t you afraid we are about to die.” “No,” said the second man, “I make $10,000 a week and tithe faithfully to my church every week. It’s Stewardship Month at my church. My Pastor will find me.”

So much can be done with what is given out of gratitude and in a spirit of love.

Amen.