Amazed - Easter Sunday 2019

21 April 2019 – Easter Sunday

Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Acts 10:34-43; Luke 24:1-12

It’s been a wild couple of weeks for this congregation, hasn’t it?  Worship, prayers, and Bible study attendance have not been great, and we can pretty much pick our excuses – and we do in our skewed priorities.  Some have gotten bad news from a doctor, others good.  The national and international news has been, well … it’s hard to say, but from what I can gather, the sky is apparently still falling.  We’ve celebrated, we’ve grieved, we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve hated, and we’ve loved. 

Things happen – some good, some not so good – that we cannot always explain, though Lord knows we always try to find meaning in every little thing – maybe especially in the trivial things.  The truth is, we need meaning.  We cannot seem to fathom anything random, and we won’t say it’s just “bad luck” or admit that maybe a series of bad ideas and poorly thought-out decisions came full circle.  Some struggle through each and every day while others seem to glide right through.  Fortunes have been made, and fortunes have been lost.

But that’s life, isn’t it?  These are the things we deal with every single day.  And too often we take so much for granted that we do what we do out of habit or routine.  We know the “what” of what we do, but we don’t always consider the “why”.  We just do it because it has to be done, it’s what we’ve always done, or we just want to.  I think, though, that if we really evaluated our work-a-day and reconsider the “why” of the things we do, we might be amazed at how meaningful – or meaningless – the things we do really are.

Some 2000 years later, it seems the same applies to the Resurrection.  We know the “what” – that Jesus was raised from the dead – but thinking of the “why” has long been brushed aside because the “what” has become more important – that it just happened because it was supposed to.

Of course, the “why” of the Resurrection cannot begin at the Resurrection.  There is a lot to take in that will lead us to this point and will help the “why” to make some sense.  The Resurrection cannot be relegated only to “what” lest it lose its meaning – which it may have already. 

To be sure, come funeral time for a loved one, we do think of the Resurrection – not of the Messiah but of our loved ones; and we’re not so amazed as we are grateful.  It gives us a great deal of comfort to believe our loved ones are not truly dead; and were it not for the depth of our grief, we might even find real joy.

Again, however, the Resurrection did not just happen.  We have to get there.  We cannot go directly from Christmas to Easter without taking in all that took place in Jesus’ life on this earth because death always precedes resurrection.  We have to die; but if we wish to be raised in Christ in the Resurrection, we must first learn to live for Christ in this life.  To do this, we must die to self.  Only then can the Resurrection have any real meaning.

There is a twist in this, however.  Note Peter’s speech as recorded in Acts 10.  He said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power … He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him … they put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree …”

Who is “they” who put Him to death?  The Romans?  The religious leaders who falsely accused Him and handed Him over to the Roman authorities?  Or was it the many who hailed Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem with rejoicing – many of whom had been healed by Him - only to turn against Him a few days later?  Remember they called for His death over a known criminal (Barabbas) because of what they may have heard from the religious leaders and the crowds in general.

Over the centuries the Church had pretty consistently blamed the Jews in general for the death of our Savior without fully realizing how many actually had a hand in this travesty.  Yet as our Lord hung on the Cross, He called upon The Father to forgive them (all of them and perhaps us as well) in their ignorance.  They had no idea what they were doing, and Jesus didn’t specify who “them” was in His plea to The Father for mercy. 

Then on the third day, Peter – the only one whose active betrayal and denial is recorded for us – ran to the tomb to find only the burial clothes.  And as it is recorded by Luke, “He went home, amazed at what had happened”.

It seems to me Peter had to be included among those for whom Jesus prayed as He was dying because his denial indicated not only a profound fear for his own life but also a much deeper doubt about all Jesus had taught them.  How else to explain how easily Peter turned, this same Peter who had sworn to Jesus he would stand with Him even if it cost him his own life?

So in our perpetual hope that is the Resurrection – the only real hope we can have in this life – we hear the consistent cry of our Shepherd who was, and still is, determined to show us The Way; “forgive them, Father”.  For it is in our mercy toward others where we will find mercy for ourselves.  In this Mercy is the “why” of the Resurrection found, and it is in the depth of this Mercy where we will be utterly amazed.

The “why” of the Resurrection is hope and mercy in spite of our often willful ignorance.  We look to the Resurrection not merely because it happened but “why” it happened.  It is the depth of The Father’s love for His people; that despite the hatred of a world determined to eliminate all reference to Him and His glory, the Blessed and Eternal Father will raise up His own.  That’s you … and perhaps even me.

As the late John Paul II once proclaimed, “We are Easter people, and halleluiah is our song!”  So we proclaim the mystery of our faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. 

Glory to The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Misunderstood - Palm Sunday 2019

14 April 2019 – Palm Sunday

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 31:9-16; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 19:28-40

There may be no greater social curse than to be misunderstood – unless what may be worse is giving and giving of oneself only to discover few are giving back.  This is part of what it means to be willing to invest in another person’s potential but unwilling to engage in that person’s humanness – warts and all.  It’s sort of like receiving a new pastor.  Many get excited at first about the possibilities; but when it is discovered this new pastor is pretty much like everyone else, the excitement fades as quickly as the crowds.

Or demanding or expecting so much from the Church but offering nothing back.  I suppose the worst thing of all is to feel used.  That is, one is good for something as long as that one is giving something.  But ask something in return?  A little attention.  A little support.  A little loyalty.  Any reasonable expectation that our humanness will at least be acknowledged.  Because in the end, being used also involves feelings of having been abandoned, even betrayed.  Apart from these, there is no greater sense of loneliness or feeling of worthlessness.

There was a time – and may still be for some – when Jesus’ march into Jerusalem was considered a “triumph”, a win.  Even Jesus seemed to bill it as such when He told the Pharisees that if His disciples were to stop shouting for joy, “the stones would shout out”.  This seems to indicate there was something wonderful going on. 

Indeed it is written in Luke’s Gospel that, as Jesus was making His way down from the Mount of Olives toward Jerusalem, “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen …” (19:37). 

You know, back when Jesus was useful …

Yet when certain elements of the Christian faith believe what is wonderful about His arrival in Jerusalem is that Jesus was about to suffer a very painful, excruciating death, we have reached the point at which Jesus is once again being “used” – and when He no longer has any other purpose to serve, will soon be abandoned by the crowds and even His disciples who had seen or experienced or had heard or had read about these “deeds of power” – then and now.  With a wink, a nod, and a “Thanks, Man”, we leave Him to face the Cross alone because we have “stuff” to do – not realizing or seeming to care that the Cross He faced was, in fact, our own.

I have shared with you my aversion to “washed in the blood” analogies, and part of my disdain stems from the idea that all Jesus was good for were not the long-forgotten “deeds of power” showing that the Kingdom of Heaven had come near but for this incomprehensible torture and painful death He would endure.  As some (like myself) who have a difficult time wrapping their minds around all the animal sacrifices and the very bloody narratives of ancient Israel, I wonder why the very bloodied Jesus of Nazareth does not cause the same reaction or raise the same questions.

I think part of being so misunderstood is the inability – or unwillingness - to discern between what may be “foreordained” and what is merely “foretold”; between that which is commanded to take place, and that which is revealed to come.  Our first Scripture portion from Isaiah 50 as well as the entire 53^rd chapter of Isaiah have been quoted often in the New Testament as referring to Jesus and all He would endure, and there are too many parallels to ignore.

But were these things “foreordained”?  Or did The Lord only reveal our inevitable reactions when things don’t turn out the way we demanded or expected?

Ultimately, however, we need to know something.  We need to have a greater understanding of something.  We need to be assured of something.  We need to know how it can be that these many persons of the crowd and of His disciples had witnessed these “deeds of power”, celebrated His march into Jerusalem, but turned on Him only a few days later.  We can have none of this, however, if we are willing to celebrate the Gift of Messiah only because He was beaten to near death and then left to die.  Very.  Painfully.  On a Cross.

It is easy enough for us to say that crowd at that time was celebrating “the King who comes in the Name of The Lord” as the warrior Son of David come to claim His rightful throne.  The heavy hand of the Roman Empire had done its damage, and the people were quite fed up.  Clearly they misunderstood His intentions then – and perhaps as much as we do now. 

You see, we try to explain away the crowd’s reactions while keeping that crowd at a safe distance – but we refuse to see ourselves in or as that very crowd.  We refuse to hear Isaiah’s words in our own ears and in our own time – “… he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him … despised and rejected, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account” (53:2-3).

In other words, not useful to us … until He’s dead.

From whom “others” hide their faces – but not us.  Heaven forbid that we first be honest with ourselves so we can finally be honest with Him!  Heaven forbid that we would choose to be faithful rather than seek to be popular.  His teachings can be a real pain and devotion to Him downright inconvenient, but we are glad He was beaten to death, “wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities … and by his bruises we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

How barbaric.  How utterly uncivilized.  How animalistic of us to rejoice at His suffering and death but treat with disdain His teachings, His commandments … His very example of the Way we must go.  We won’t follow Him, we won’t study Him, we won’t adore Him, we won’t obey Him … but we will use Him, and we will teach our children and grandchildren to use Him – not for His purposes but for our own.

There is nothing worse than being misunderstood – and then turned on or ignored when we no longer suit someone’s purpose. 

This coming Holy Week must not be like every other one.  We can no longer treat Him as an afterthought.  We must not assume all is well only because we believe He existed – or revel in His blood.  Just as there is more to you and to me than that, there surely is more to Him than that; but we will never know until we actively “seek, ask, and knock”. 

He delivered … once … for all.  Now it’s time to get past the navel gazing and live into the Covenant established for us.  For real.  For now.  Forever.  Amen.

Righteousness Is as Righteousness Does - 5th Sunday of Lent 2019

7 April 2019 – 5^th Sunday of Lent

Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:4b-14

“For United Methodists, the ultimate goal of doctrine is holiness.  Right belief aims at righteous living.”  Rebekah Miles’ (associate professor of ethics, Perkins SMU) review of United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center, Scott J. Jones

I’m always inspired after watching a really good movie.  Last night I saw pieces of “Heaven is for Real”.  In the preacher’s sermon after coming to terms with his son’s near-death experience and visions of Heaven, he conveyed the reality of Heaven in the here-and-now; in the abiding love of parents, in the laughter of children, in the helping and healing hands of righteousness we experience in so many ways – when people put their lives aside, if only for a moment, to help others who have been beaten down by life. 

So if “Heaven is for Real”, then “righteousness is as righteousness does”.  These are not mutually exclusive concepts; they are intimately and deeply connected, but I think for too long the Church has gone for the cheap and easy in saying whatever is most “marketable” rather than to dig in for the long haul, do the hard work of discipleship, and simply Tell The Truth.

But what is “righteousness”, exactly?  It’s a big, churchy word that is used as often as “love” and “grace”.  N.T. Wright, retired Anglican bishop and highly regarded New Testament scholar, teaches the “righteousness of God” and “righteousness from God” are distinct concepts that have been confused and sometimes even blended together to the point that a clear doctrine, a concise and useful understanding, of righteousness has probably been lost to most of us. 

Bishop Wright uses the ancient Jewish court metaphor to make the point (“What St. Paul Really Said”).  In the ancient Jewish court there were three parties; the two in dispute, and the judge.  There is no prosecutor or defense attorney; the two parties make their case, and the judge renders a verdict.  In this verdict, one (the ‘winner’) is declared “correct” and is, therefore, “righteous”.

The righteousness of the judge (righteousness of God) is not imputed or imparted to the winner; rather, the term refers only to the judge in his role.  Righteousness from God refers to the “vindication” of the one whose case was ruled in his favor. 

What this means is we do not “receive” the righteousness of God through Christ nor is it “infused” in us.  The righteousness of God remains His alone, and our righteousness from God means we have been “vindicated”, “justified”, “saved” (I still say “called”, but that is another sermon). 

There is still more, however.  That is the moment, in Wesleyan theology, of justifying grace – still an act of The Lord, still His to offer and still His to withhold (“I will bless whom I will bless”).  As previously stated, in prevenient grace we have experienced a stirring, an awakening in having stepped upon the front porch of a house that is beckoning to us.  Once we knock (“knock, and the door will be opened to you”), the door is opened and we are invited in.

Once we enter through the door, we are invited to explore the house and make ourselves at home.  We go through every room, check every closet, open every cupboard, and come to know the house intimately.  Knowing we are welcome, we become of the house, an extension of the fullness of Divine Grace; and we order our lives according to how the house is built.  This is sanctifying grace; and as we grow more and more familiar with the house and learn to live within the house’s parameters, we take upon ourselves the righteousness of The Lord – when we participate.

That is, rather than to think the righteousness of the house’s Owner as becoming our own only because we are in the house, we learn to live into the house according to its rules (Divine Law).  And perhaps this is most important of all for us to understand: we do not take ownership of the house, thus we cannot choose to remodel according to our own demands, desires, or personal preferences. 

When Paul wrote, “I press on to make it my own” (Phil 3:12), he did not mean he would be magically infused with the righteousness of Christ with no effort on his part.  Rather, he was expressing the reality of having become one of The Lord’s own and learning to live within, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.  I press on to make it my own”.

What this means for us, and within a sound understanding of the doctrines of the Church, is our active participation is required of us in order to grow in faith and in a greater understanding of our roles in the house.  The house is still the house.

Here is why this is all important, mind-numbing though doctrine can sometimes be.  Through all this spiritual growth and maturity in the faith comes a greater wisdom that everything outside this house and behind us is transitory, more an illusion than the real thing simply because it is all fading.  What is in the house, however, is everlasting.  Inside this house, living into this redeeming and sanctifying grace is revelation.  More and more of the very Kingdom of Heaven is being revealed in every new discovery.

We always talk of Heaven being this wonderful place too profound and mysterious for human words and expressions, yet the Promise of the Kingdom having come near means there is an open invitation to see and experience more and more of Heaven’s reality.  The very idea that these visions will have to wait until we are dead denies the Promise of Christ’s presence in our day-to-day living for those committed to the work of Christ in the here-and-now.  Simply being a “good person” on one’s own terms is not good enough.

The righteousness of The Lord will not fall into our laps, and it will not be magically infused into our being if we do not pursue it, if we do not ask for it, if we never “knock on the door”, if we do not try to live into it.  What it boils down to is this: if we are unwilling to experience the Kingdom now and let the Light of Eternal Truth shine forth, Heaven will remain an unbelievable concept – and we will be condemned to the darkness of our own denial.

This is not what The Lord of the House wants!  Why else would He have sent His Messiah, His Anointed One, to bring us Good News??  Why else would He endure the limits of humanity if not to share in His Divinity, His Eternity?

But we must choose to live into it, or it will never become a part of who we really are.  And if it never becomes a part of who we are, there will always be a void in our lives.  We can call ourselves “saved” all we want, but if righteousness never does, righteousness never is and never will be our deepest desire.  In The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Over and Done - 4th Sunday of Lent

31 March 2019 – 4^th Sunday of Lent

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

One of the biggest doctrinal misconceptions about the often misquoted Bible is the idea of “free” grace.  Rather than being understood as the most wondrous and priceless of all gifts, a gift we are not entitled to, Grace more often comes across as cheap and easily attained when any preacher, teacher, or individual interpreter alludes to “free grace” rather than to understand it as coming from the One who offers mercy “freely” to those who repent.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way: “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market … The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.  Grace is represented as the Church's inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands without asking questions or fixing limits.  Grace without price; grace without cost!  The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing” (The Cost of Discipleship)

So while too many preachers have been quick to add “free” to the Bible (a profoundly careless, if lazy, interpretation), the essence of what is nevertheless freely offered to us by our benevolent Father has been cheapened to the point that repentance is no longer spoken of, sin is downplayed or relative, confession is a non-specific, communal, catch-all, recited prayer, the Church has been bullied into silence for fear of losing members or offending the culture, and the Cross is thrust into the abstract as having only the meaning we would choose to subjectively assign – having never seriously considered what the Cross means to The Holy Father.

This is not discipleship; it is consumerism – a buying and selling of goods according to what we are willing to pay.  Bonhoeffer called it “cheap grace” because it gives everything and yet asks nothing. 

“You were bought with a price”, St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1C6:20; 1C7:23), so our understanding of Grace must come from within that context so we can appreciate it for what it really is – a Gift rather than a transaction.  It was Grace which fed the Israelites in the wilderness with the manna as long as they were faithfully following The Lord through that wilderness, and it was Grace which received the Prodigal Son with open arms after he had come to his senses and confessed his failings.  He had hoped only for a place with the servants, and yet he was given everything in the fully restored relationship – no questions asked.  The son did not come with his own demands to negotiate a settlement; he submitted himself to his father’s terms and received more than a humbled heart would have expected.  As Jesus taught, “those who humble themselves will be exalted”.

Thus Grace itself, the unmerited and undeserved favor of The Father, was not free though it was freely given.  So it is important for us to understand the difference.  As it is so freely given from the Heart of The Father who bore the cost Himself, we must not get lost in a concept of “free” to the point of assuming it requires no response or comes with no cost. 

In our Wesleyan theology, there is the doctrine of prevenient grace.  It has been referred to as the front porch to the House of Grace.  It is the Act of The Father working in our lives before we are fully aware.  It is a stirring of the soul which comes to know something is missing from our lives and yet is fully present before us.  It is an awakening, a beckoning, an invitation.  It is a dawning awareness that what we only think is missing is only for lack of full awareness. 

We cannot earn this awakening because it belongs to The Father alone and is not for sale.  As such, it is His to give … and to give freely as He alone chooses; “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Exodus 33:19).  It is His act and His nature to call out to His own creation – but we must be willing to answer.  We begin to perceive it as an irresistible compulsion to find real meaning, real purpose, and real life as we come upon the “front porch” and are led to know the door of justifying grace is before us, the door through which Life is found, the door we come to know will be answered if we will but knock.

Make no mistake; it is not as easy as it sounds.  The life we once knew before we came upon the “porch” is equally compelling because it is familiar, known, and seems safer than what is unknown beyond the “door” (“Better the devil you know than the God you don’t”).  Yet we must become aware of the reality of cost: what is past must be left in the past. 

It is no longer the life we can go on living on our own terms.  It is expressed in the lyrics from Jesus Christ Superstar, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”, “In these past few days when I’ve seen myself, I seem like someone else …”, Mary Magdalene singing of her confusion in her transformation after having encountered and connected with Jesus.  She knew she could not go back to her former life, and yet she was unsure of how to go forward.

Conventional wisdom holds that we can never go back.  We can never relive the past because it is, quite literally, gone.  Try though we might, we are older and wiser and will always see the past through the lens of our experiences.  It can never be the same again. 

In Christ, my dear friends, this is a very good thing and is perhaps The Gift of gifts.  Perhaps it is the Father showing us that all we can have and all we can hope is ahead of us.  We can never erase good memories, of course, but neither can we completely erase the bad ones.  We will still bear the scars of an ungodly past, and we will live to regret every single sin we ever committed.

But that’s the human mind.  Our Father, through His Mercy, chooses to let it go even if we cannot; “I will remember their sins no more”.  He spoke through His prophet to His people during their Exile, and He still speaks to us in our own.  Yet what scares us is that He bids us come and die; die to the past, die to our mistakes, die to our own ideals, die to our own desires. 

Only then can we truly come alive.  Only then can we really begin to live into the Life we are each called to – as individuals and as the Congregation, the very Body of Christ.  Only then can we come to really know our past, in our Father’s Eyes, is “Over and Done”.  It is forgiveness for those who truly and fully repent.  In the Father.  Through the Son.  By the power of the Holy Spirit.  It is Life Eternal.  Amen.