Peace Community Church

Beware of the User Friendly Church
Luke 14:25-33
September 5, 2010
Steve Hammond

Here we go, again. This is another of those gospel stories that really throws people off. How could Jesus say such a thing? Why does he want us to hate our family members? Relax This is one of those passages where you need to stop and take a deep breath and think about it for a minute.

We know that Jesus made it clear that God is calling us to love one another. He says we should love our enemies. He says we should love our neighbors as ourselves. He demonstrated a love that reached beyond the boundaries and prejudices and customs of his day, loving the outcast, loving the stranger. So wouldn’t it be a little weird if Jesus came along and said God wants you to love everybody, even the most unlovable of people, except your family, of course? You are supposed to hate them. Doesn’t that kind of invalidate everything else he talked about? That doesn’t make any sense. We run into problems when we take a couple of verses or a story and isolate them from everything else. So that must mean that Jesus is trying to get at something else in this story that doesn’t contradict everything else he has ever said.

I recently read an article about a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who has been surveying teen-agers and young adults about who have left or are in the process of leaving the church. Teen-ager and young adults are leaving churches. Conservative churches. Progressive churches. Big churches. Small churches. White churches. Black churches. And the primary reason according to this study? They aren’t being challenged to do anything, to take any stands. They aren’t being called to live out their faith in ways other than taking vaguely personal moral stances on things like sexuality and drug use. As one kid summed up what many kids were feeling, “All they ask of you in church is to be nice.”

These are the same kids and young adults who are hearing all kinds of people from rock stars to the coordinator of the learning and service program in their schools challenging them to do something, to go out and make a difference in this world. And lots of them are leaving the church behind to do it.

It’s not just the kids, of course, who need to be challenged to make their Christianity mean something. It’s all of us. Jesus said following him has to mean something to us. There has to be something about it that costs us something, that makes demands of us. There has to be something to it that we have to think about, consider if it’s what we really want to do. Jesus said, It’s like building a house. You’ve got to sit down first and decide if you’ve got enough money, if you are really willing to make the investment to build it right for so it won’t fall over.

Jesus was nothing but serious about what it means to follow him. He knew that really following him would put us in conflict with the structures that shaped our lives. And in his day that was the family which, as we said a couple of weeks ago, was a much different thing than what we think family is about. Family is only one of the things that shape our lives, though it shapes us quite a bit. But in Jesus day, family was what shaped almost everything about people. Remember when we said that family in Jesus’ day was more like what we would call a clan or a tribe today? The family contained the real governing body you were accountable to. The family established the norms and customs you were obligated to follow. The family made the decisions about who you married, where you lived, what kind of work you did. The family determined who were your friends and who were your enemies. And in Jesus’ day, the challenge for the family was to continue to manage to do this with the demands the empire was putting on it.

So I think Jesus is telling us that following him may well put us into conflict with the structures that try to control our lives, including not only our families, but our government, our empire, our work and school places, our peers, our laws and customs, our traditions.

The kids have been asking if the church is really willing to do that. And too much of the time they look around and the answer is a clear no. We can’t challenge the status quo because we are the status quo. We bless the wars. We foster the prejudice and racism and sexism. We turn the stranger away. We fear the truth. We accept the lie. Why? Because if we don’t, it might cost us something. There might be a price we have to pay. Those folk that Jesus understood as family in his day might crucify us.

But what did Jesus say. “If you are going to be my disciple pick up your cross and follow me.” The kids see what we’ve done with the cross. Make it a decoration and a piece of jewelry.

There’s a story about the time Clarence Jordan, author of the “Cotton Patch” New Testament translation and founder of the interracial Koinonia farm in Americus, Georgia, was getting a red-carpet tour of another minister’s church. With pride the minister pointed to the rich, imported pews and luxurious decoration. As they stepped outside, darkness was falling, and a spotlight shone on a huge cross atop the steeple. “That cross alone cost us ten thousand dollars,” the minister said with a satisfied smile. “You got cheated,” said Jordan. “Times were when Christians could get them for free.”

The church was never meant to be easy, never meant to be user friendly. It was assumed the kind of cross Jesus knew would always cast its shadow. But the church was meant to change the world. And why would you want to be a part of a church, a lot of kids and others are asking, if you weren’t looking to change the world? If you weren’t serious enough about following Jesus for it to cost you something?

We are fortunate here. We have Kristen and Steve and Sunday School teachers and others of us who are helping our kids understand that following Jesus means something, and it’s worth paying the price. And we are all doing that for each other. We have taken some pretty risky stands around here and have been willing to pay the price.

But here’s the thing. Following Jesus is always about the future, not the past. The kids aren’t going to see what we have done in the past, but what we do now. Joining the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists with the full knowledge we might lose our building doing it is so five years ago. The risk we take to welcome folk now is what matters. And we never know what’s ahead, what price we may have to pay to follow Jesus. That’s when it will matter to the kids if we are willing to pay the price.

I think where we have failed the kids, and I mean all of us non kids all over the world and the kids we have failed are all over the world, is by giving them death. But Jesus came showing us that God is a God of Life. Jesus was willing to take on the cross, to take on death because he believed in resurrection. Do we believe in life that strongly? Are we willing to not only pay the price, risk crucifixion, but also risk resurrection for the sake of our kids?

Will our kids see us taking a stand for resurrection, see us bearing witness to the living Jesus Christ, see us being the body of Jesus Christ when it costs us something? It’s not a magic potion. It’s not going to get all the kids back in church or keep them all here. But it’s all we’ve got.

Do you know the band Rush? 80′s? Big hair? Loud guitars? One of my favorites. There is nothing about Rush that could be taken for a Christian band, except what they sing about.

If we burn our wings flying too close to the sun,
If the moment of glory is over before its begun,
If the dream is won and everything is lost,
we will pay the price, but we will not count the cost.

When the dust has cleared, victory denied,
a summit too lofty, river a little too wide,
if we keep our pride though everything is lost,
we will pay the price, but we will not count the cost.

And if the music stops, there’s only the sound of the rain,
all the hope and glory, all the sacrifice in vain.
And if love remains, though everything is lost,
we will pay the price, but we will not count the cost.
We will pay the price, but we will not count the cost.

It’s not the intention of the band Rush to be singing about Jesus and bearing witness to the gospel. But why are they doing a better job of it than we are doing in the church too much of the time? Why is this more like Christian music than so much of the music that is marketed that way?
Shane Claiborne in his book The Irresistible Revolution talks about the Palm Sunday stories in the gospels where the religious rulers tell Jesus to quiet down the crowds. Jesus replies even if he could quiet them down, the rocks would cry out. Shane Claiborne’s comment on that is that the because the church has quieted down it’s the rock stars who are crying out, challenging kids to work for peace, help the poor, take care of the stranger, comfort the broken hearted, find a spiritual mooring in their lives.

Do you know the name of this song by Rush? Bravado. Can we help our kids and ourselves be a little more brave in following Jesus? Can we be more willing to pay the price without counting the cost?

And that bravery is not simply about the dramatic sacrifices we are willing to make. It’s also about the day to day ways we can take a stand for and with Jesus. The times we can be brave and pick up the cross and make the ways of the God of life known where we live, where we work, in our families, and in our churches.

That’s all the kids and Jesus seem to be asking of us. Can we rise to their challenge?

Luke 13:10-17
August 22, 2010
Steve Hammond

Was Jesus dechurched? In Luke’s gospel there are five stories about Jesus going to the synagogue for worship. This is the last of those stories. We don’t know if that means Luke never bothered to record any of the other times Jesus went to the synagogue for worship, or if Jesus never bothered to go to services again.

Going to church was never really easy for Jesus. The first time he went, they tried to throw him over a cliff. Talk about not feeling welcomed. Jesus was used to getting pretty shabby treatment from the religious authorities. But was there something about what happened this time, that put Jesus over the edge? Not the edge of the cliff, but the edge of not going to church?

This is a pretty familiar story. Mary Meadows occasionally sings that song about the bent over woman that Ken Medema wrote. And Ken gets it right. There is a lot more going on in this story than simply about one woman being healed and able to stand up straight. It’s about all women who have been oppressed by a patriarchal system standing up straight, and about all people who have been oppressed by whoever or whatever finding the chance to stand up tall and look Jesus eye to eye.

Is the reason Jesus walked out of church that day never to return if, indeed, he never did go back because he was sick and tired of the religious folk not getting it?

Why should there be such an uproar from the synagogue officials when Jesus healed that women who had been bent over for 18 years? You would think they would join the woman and those who were rejoicing with her in proclaiming the mighty thing that God had just done. In fact, since they were the religious leaders, the one’s who said the knew most about God, they should be leading the celebration.

But they weren’t rejoicing over the great thing that had happened for the woman. They were mad because Jesus had violated the church rules and healed this woman on the Sabbath.

The madder they got, the madder Jesus got. How on earth had it come to this that the rules and regulations meant more than peoples’ lives? What kind of religion is that?

What do we read Jesus saying to the religious leaders in Matthew 23? “You’re hopeless, you religion scholars and Pharisees! Frauds! You go halfway around the world to make a convert, but once you get him you make him into a replica of yourselves, double-damned.” And “You keep meticulous account books, tithing on every nickel and dime you get, but on the meat of God’s Law, things like fairness and compassion and commitment—the absolute basics!—you carelessly take it or leave it. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required. Do you have any idea how silly you look, writing story that’s wrong from start to finish, but nitpicking over commas and semicolons?”

Maybe Jesus had just had it with those people and now he was going to go to the synagogue in the streets, where everyone was bent over and trying to catch a glimpse of God. He wouldn’t be the last one to give up on the church.

You know those bracelets people used to wear? WWJD, what would Jesus do? It’s a good question. I’m thinking about this story of the bent over woman and wondering if another question we might want to ask is Would Jesus Go to our Church? That’s WJGTOC. Would he walk in here and see bent over people helping each other to stand up straight? Would he see people who believe that the love of God is at hand, a love that transcends all our rules and regulations for the sake, not of the institution, but the people? Not only the people who are a part of our church but all people. Would he say, “Hey, these people are catching on to the Realm of God. They may not be very good at it, but they are trying.”

WJGTOC. What a great challenge for us. I think there are lots of churches Jesus would attend, and lots he wouldn’t. So I’m not suggesting that church has to be done any one way for Jesus to feel comfortable there. But there are surely some things Jesus would be looking for. You kind of get hints of some of that in the gospel stories when he went to synagogue. He was looking for a faith community where the people were more important than the rules. That stuff he said about loving God with all our hearts and souls and minds and selves, and loving our neighbors as ourselves probably would come into play if he were looking for a church. The last being first. The peacemakers being the children of God. People willing to take risks with each other and God. It seems to me these are the kind of things Jesus would have in mind if he were to become a member of our or any congregation.

The question isn’t would Jesus go to someone else’s church, but would he go to our church? We have all kinds of experiences with all kinds of churches. Some of us have had our own experiences of walking out of church, vowing to never go back, only to find ourselves back at it here with one another.

And we have to be careful to not make it enough that we are not like them. We can’t determine what happens in other churches. This is the church we’ve got to work with. The church we have the privilege and the grace to work with. I think, I hope, we have realized that God is calling us to help bent over people stand up. It’s more important what we are doing than what others aren’t doing.

We get bent over in all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s the weight that others put on us because of our race, gender, income, nationality, abilities, sexual orientation, or psychological or social inadequacies. Sometimes it’s the weight our families put on us.

And sometimes it’s the weight we put on ourselves because we believe stupid things about ourselves, others, and God. We get bent over by the sin of others and ourselves.

Happily, Jesus is in the sin freeing game. He wouldn’t have walked out of that synagogue if the leaders understood God was calling them to help people stand up straight, rather than piling more burdens on others.

And it wasn’t that the leaders were totally awful. Remember the guy said it would have been okay to heal the woman, to help her stand up straight on any other day. But that just seemed to make it worse for Jesus. It’s like the guy knew what was right, but felt there was a greater principle at stake than helping that poor woman. How could that man imagine that upholding the crazy Sabbath regulations they had come up with was something more holy than helping bent over people stand up? Was it enough to make Jesus walk out of church and vow to never come back.

Lots of people in that synagogue applauded what Jesus did that day and they walked out of church with him. And people have been doing the same thing ever since.

How do we get Jesus and all the rest back in our churches? WJGTOC. Would Jesus Go To Our Church? If we are making a church that Jesus would feel good about then we are on the right track. And some of those folk, like so many of us, just might give church another chance.

Luke 12:49-56
August 15, 2010
Steve Hammond

Three against two,
and two against three;
Father against son,
and son against father;
Mother against daughter,
and daughter against mother;
Mother-in-law against bride,
and bride against mother-in-law.”

Raise your hand if this story we read from Luke’s gospel today is your favorite passage of scripture.

This is one of those Jesus stories that really makes people uncomfortable. He was not the one everyone was excited to see at the family reunion.

There is, of course, the issue that family meant something much different in Jesus’ day than ours. If you plunged some folk from first century Palestine into our day and age and introduced your family to them, they would be so confused. What we call family would make no sense to them. They wouldn’t be interested in our kids or our siblings or parents or spouse. They would want to know who the patriarch or the clan leader is and be taken to him. He (and it would be a he) would be the only one that mattered because what they understood as family would all be built around him and his wishes and desires. And his wishes and desires would be built around the expectations of the village and all its customs and ways of doing things. He would be the one who decides who lives where, who marries whom, what jobs people in this large extended family do, etc. If it were a small family with no older male still around to run things, the village elders or a distant relative would have that responsibility. They would understand family as your clan, not the people you share a home with, or grew up with.

This is why all this talk about the Bible and family values makes so little sense. Do you know about honor killings? Well honor killing is a family value in parts of this world. Family members kill other family members because of the perceived dishonor a person has brought to his or her family. What they call family loyalty, and what we would call clan loyalty, is the bedrock of how some societies are structured. In those societies people aren’t allowed to make for themselves what we would consider very personal decisions such as who they marry, who they are involved with intimately, or what religion they practice. And if they try, those violations of family and clan expectations can be severely punished, including honor killings.

Imagine killing your daughter because she eloped with someone from another village, your brother because he was dating a girl from a lower caste, or your cousin because he converted to another religion. It might be a niece or granddaughter you kill because she ran off with the person she loved rather than marry the 50 year old guy she had been contracted to.

You hear stories about honor killings all the time. If a father kills his daughter and the man she ran off with to marry, it wouldn’t occur to him that he had just done something that seems so unimaginable to us, killed his own daughter. What he would be more likely thinking is that he had done a great thing by upholding the honor of the family or the clan. He has won back the respect of his kin and neighbors. He has defended the honor of the family, and the death of his own daughter pales in comparison.

People get rightly outraged when government officials in these countries seem to turn a blind eye to such things. But the problem is that the governments are up against entrenched societal norms about what family means. That’s a whole different understanding of family than we have. But it is much closer to the understanding of family people had in Jesus’ day.

This is why people were so shocked in that story when Jesus’ brothers go looking for him to bring him home. He’s been getting a little crazy, saying and doing some pretty outlandish things, and people in the neighborhood are starting to talk. Jesus’ response seems harsh to our ears when he appears to reject his mother and family by saying “my mother and brothers and sisters are those who do the will of God.” But what stunned the people who heard Jesus say this was not that he was rejecting his mother. Nobody cared about that since it was the head of the clan and the village elders who mattered, not any women or mothers. What got their attention was that he was rejecting the clan and family and village structure that shaped their whole way of living. He was saying his allegiance was not to that system, but to God’s system, the Realm of God. Whether it’s family, or nation, or race, or class, the cry to their demands for our ultimate allegiance is, as we read at the beginning of today’s service, “No, a thousand times, No!

We like Jesus to be the Prince of Peace and don’t know what to do with this Jesus who comes along and disrupts so many things. But Jesus understood that to be his job, and the way to peace. It is so easy for us to settle into the structures we are used to without questioning them. But Jesus comes along and asks lots of questions about our priorities, our commitments, our loyalties. And he will settle for nothing less than the realm of God being our primary commitment. That’s the fire on earth he came to start. “You know how to tell a change in the weather, so don’t tell me you can’t tell a change in the season, the God-season we’re in right now.” It’s a whole new ball game. Everything is changing and being turned upside down. Fires disrupt things.

It’s never a peaceful thing for even small disruptions in our lives, much less the massive ones that Jesus brings. I don’t know if Jesus would have exactly said it this way, “You have to crack and egg to make an omelet.” But he cracked lots of eggs with the hope of what could be created. It’s a risky thing to have all of our loyalties called into question, but the payoff is to begin seeing those loyalties in light of God’s Realm and what God wants for our country, our families, our lives. It’s a hard way to peace, but it’s the right way. What did Jesus say? “Peace I give you, my peace, not as the world gives.”

Now we might get uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus bringing conflict to our families, even if he was talking about something very different than family as we know it. But it’s not like conflict is new to our families. And most of the time it has nothing to do with Jesus. And where it does, the issue is often not so much that we are followers of Jesus, but how we follow Jesus. How many of us are from families where lots of people go to church, but the last thing you want to do when the family gets together is talk about religion? Some families can do that, and others can’t. So some of what Jesus is saying here really does happen, even in our context of family.

Last week those of us who went to Peace Camp shared some of what we had learned there. Peggy and Tony Campolo were two of the resource leaders for Peace Camp. Tony considers himself to be a somewhat conservative, though hardly fundamentalist, Evangelical. Peggy calls herself a Progressive Christian. They have differences over how they understand people ought to live out their faith. But they have obviously learned a lot from each other, and there is something suspiciously like the Realm of God going on in their marriage.

So when Jesus said he was going to bring a sword, bring conflict into our families and other structures, he wasn’t saying that was necessarily an end to them, but a chance for them to be transformed. Even if we can’t forge new ways of being family, being a community, or being a nation with each other, the call to follow Jesus is going to give us new perspectives on all of those things. We can’t be responsible to what people bring to all of those family and other relationships we are in, but we can be responsible for what we bring, our understanding of what Jesus wants of us.

This may be nobody’s favorite story from the Bible. But it reminds us so clearly of how we have to make sure we don’t assume Bible times were just like our times. The art of reading the Bible is understanding how stories like this one fit their own time and ours, and how they help us see this time for what it is; the God season.

Prayer Works?
Luke 11:1-13
July 25, 2010
Steve Hammond

Why do you think the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray?

I think it is because he prayed a lot. And they actually probably did too, given their religious culture. But I think they realized prayer meant something different to Jesus than it did to them. When he was praying, he was really praying.

Well I am here this morning to tell you that prayer works. Sometimes. And it is the sometimes that makes the whole issue of prayer as complex as it is. If God always answered prayers, or never answered prayers, this would all be a different story. But sometimes prayers are answered and sometimes they are not. It’s confusing. Sometimes my prayers are answered and sometimes they aren’t.

It is not helpful for me when people respond with something like, “Well, God answers every prayer, but the answers are just different than we were expecting.” It’s a way to try to convince ourselves that prayer works, even when it doesn’t actually seem to be.

I guess it is true that we would be in bad straights if God always answered our prayers the way we wanted them to be answered. One of the things I like about the universe is that God is God and I’m not. So I am willing to trust God’s ways and wisdom and will, because they are better than mine. But that only helps to a point.

The variation on that theme is that God answers all prayers that are in accordance with God’s will. Which, as far as I can tell, means that God’s says yes to the things God was already going to say yes to anyway. That makes prayer a puzzle to figure out. Just ask for the right things, and it will work.

Nor can I go along with the notion that prayer works if your faith is strong enough. If all of my prayers depended on my faith, that would be pretty sad. And if prayer being answered is a matter of our faith, then where does that leave God? Does God just pull out the old faithometer? If it’s in the green zone the prayer is answered? That makes God more of a technician, a meter reader, than the creator of heaven and earth. It makes it all about me rather than about God. But for Jesus prayer was, indeed, about God.

So if someone suggests to you that you should pray more because prayer works, don’t go down that path. Because if you do, you will find it a hard trail littered with rocks and ridges and broken walking sticks. Even if you make the hard slog to the end, it is not worth it.

And notice that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray. If the point is that prayer works, it would have made much more sense if they simply asked him to pray for them. Because if it is going to work for anybody, it’s going to work for Jesus.

But the disciples saw something much more profound going on for Jesus than simply that prayer works, even though his prayers were pretty effective.

There is no way around the fact that prayer is a mystery. It’s an invitation to those greater mysteries of God, and faith, and following Jesus, and ourselves. There are a lot of books about prayer in your average Christian bookstore. But they are not going to be of much help other than getting you praying. You just have to pray. There are no formulas that fit everybody. There aren’t right and wrong ways to pray. It’s just you and God and that community of believers you are praying with and for.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he didn’t pull out his power point presentation. I guess back in those days they had to do handouts. He was pretty brief. The Luke version of the Lord’s prayer is even shorter than Matthews.

God,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.”

There is not a whole lot there or there is much more than we will ever grab hold of, depending on what we are looking for.

Then Jesus talks about that person who went to a friend for bread. He was pretty persistent even though it was the middle of the night. But he went and asked because it was his friend, after all. And sometimes you have to be persistent, even with your friends. But friends understand even when it’s the middle of the night, and everybody could have probably lived without bread until the morning.

Whatever happens when we pray, we are going to a friend. Persistence is okay. Pound on that door. Cuss if you have to. Sit quietly, but waiting. Whatever you need to do, this is our friend we are talking about. Even if we embarrass ourselves, it’s okay. And even if the friend doesn’t get out of bed and unlock the door, that’s okay, too. She is still our friend. And it is still worth asking.

Some people have attitudes about prayer that, to be truthful, I don’t always understand. It’s been seven years since that cat bite about did me in. Imagine shuffling off this mortal coil because of a cat bite. How ridiculous would that have been? My own cat. I guess I was a lot closer to that reality than I thought, but thankfully they didn’t tell me that until I was a lot better.

Anyway, when I was recovering lots of people would tell me they were thinking about me, or even sending out good thoughts for me. Well, I appreciate it when people think about me. But, frankly, it is more helpful to have people praying for me. People’s thoughts about me are great, but they can’t do for me what God can do for me. God is the one who laid the foundations of the earth. God is the creator of life. God is in the miracle business. As nice as it is that others are thinking about me,I want God thinking about me and some folk reminding God to think about me.

People were praying for me and thinking about me. And I got better. There were some people in that hospital over those 17 days who didn’t get better, even though people were praying for them. And there it is.

I also talk with people who don’t pray for themselves because they think it’s selfish or something. I mean I pray for myself all the time. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Now if all I did was pray for myself, that would be one thing. But, I try to diversify.

I mean, Jesus prayed for himself. “God if you can take this cup from me, now would be the time.”

The writer Anne Lamott says there are really just two prayers. The first goes, “help, help, help” the second goes “thank you, thank you, thank you.” I agree with that in many ways. And I do wonder if we aren’t asking God for help, help from for ourselves, then what are we thanking God for?

I think people are sometimes reluctant to pray because it is so much of a risk. It raises all those questions about our own faith, it focuses all those struggles we have with what we believe about God, it leaves us open to all kinds of disappointment. You see it so profoundly when you are in a group and ask who wants to pray and most of the eyes go down. Jesus never said that praying is something we can only do when we know what we are doing. Only when we score high on that faithometer I talked about. And I feel like I benefit so much when others pray. It’s a great gift. And we all need gifts.

I think some of us have these great visions of the risks we are willing to take for our faith, but are scared to death to offer a prayer among friends. We feel so vulnerable.

And I think that is what the disciples saw. They saw that vulnerability Jesus brought with him in his life and his prayers. He was willing to lay it all out before God and take the risk. That’s why he could laugh and cry and sweat blood when he prayed. He had touched something real.

Jesus knew God would treat that vulnerability so very gently. What did he say“This is not a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider?” So is God going to mess with us when we pray?

Prayer is a profound mystery. But it fueled Jesus’ life. In prayer, like so many other things, he has much to teach us. All we have to do is ask.

The distractions, like the Realm of God, are in our midst.
Luke 10:25-37
July 11, 2010
Steve Hammond

There were three people who saw a wounded man on the side of the road. Only one stopped to help. What was with the other two?

I don’t think they were bad people. It seems to me they were more likely distracted. I can understand that since I get distracted quite easily. Just ask Mary. I can walk over to the phone to call somebody. I see something on the table and pick it up and read it, and then go back to what I was doing without ever making the phone call. I go to the grocery store to pick up milk. On the way I pass the pancake syrup. “Oh, we’re out of pancake syrup,” I say to myself, and grab the pancake syrup and proceed to the checkout stand. Then later that day Mary says, “I thought you got milk today.” And I go, “Oh, man. But I got pancake syrup. It was on sale.”

What did Jesus say our number one priority was? “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.” What did he know the challenge for us was? The distractions. All three of those men knew what the Kingdom or realm of God required of them. Help that man out. But two of them were too distracted. They could have been distracted by their fear. By their religious and family responsibilities. Maybe they were distracted by their ideologies or religious and political convictions. They may have been late for work, or promised the kids they would be home for supper.

We all are distracted. There are sick kids. There are bills to pay. There are conflicts at home, church, and work. There is the computer that’s not working and the lay off that has just been announced. The World Cup Final is this afternoon. The dog hasn’t been walked yet today. The homework assignment has to be finished. I haven’t done any practicing today. The car won’t start and where is the money to fix it. I know my mother is going to call this afternoon and I haven’t sent the thank you note. We’re still waiting to hear from the doctor. The distractions, just like the realm of God, are in our midst. And so we just walk by when the realm of God is staring us in the face, or lying on the side of the road.

Jesus didn’t tell us much about the Samaritan, because the fact he was a Samaritan was enough. Making the Samaritan the hero in this story was the most over the top thing he could think of, given how the Jews and Samaritans felt about each other. It would be like Jesus going into a big convention of some organization of the religious right and telling the story this way.

“One of the folk registered for this convention was beaten up and robbed on his way over here. His money was taken. He was stripped naked and left in the street to die. The preacher for that evening saw the man lying there, but hurried into the convention center. The President of Young Christians for a More Godly Nation didn’t stop either. He pretended he didn’t see the man because the executive committee had to get its statement done about the growing threat of Barack Obama to all that is good, and godly, and decent about America.

“The only person who stopped to help was this flaming gay guy, the head of the local chapter of the Coalition for Same Sex marriage. He called 911, and after waiting 15 minutes he put the wounded man in the back of his car and took him to the emergency room himself. When they asked who was going to pay for the man’s care he said, ‘my partner and I will go out and start raising the money.’” That’s kind of how that story sounded to those first people who heard it.

And the story surely took that rich young religious guy by surprise who wanted the call to love our neighbor to rule out people like the Samaritan. And ever since religious folk have been trying to figure out exactly who we don’t have to count as our neighbor.

The Samaritan shows us that everybody counts. And, if we can get past the distractions, there are opportunities everyday to find God’s realm, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

This story Jesus told also shows us that seeking God’s Realm is probably not as intimidating as we might think. Especially if we realize that Realm comes to us in little bits and pieces every day. Our call is not to save everybody’s soul. We don’t have to end hunger, create racial harmony, bring peace to the Middle East, or clean up the Gulf Coast, though it is good that people are trying.

When the Samaritan stopped to help that guy, he did not bring and end to violence. But he found God’s realm. He let go of the distractions.

Do any of you ever listen to the radio show, “Speaking of Faith?” Last week Krista Tippit interviewed, Shane Claiborne who has written this fascinating book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. If you get a chance, go to the Speaking of Faith web site and find that show from last week. Scroll down a bit, and it’s the one about the Monastic Revolution. I’ll send out an email later today with the details. You also may want to read that book.

But the ordinary radical part is his belief that finding the realm of God comes in the very ordinary stuff that can make radical followers of Jesus out of us. He quotes Mother Teresa. “We can do no great things. Just small things with great love. It’s not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it.”

Let’s face it. Helping one victim of violence isn’t going to make the world a safer place. And who knows, the victim may have been horrified, rather than grateful, when he learned it was a Samaritan who helped him out. But in that moment, the Samaritan was about the work of the Realm of God. He was doing God’s work.

I just saw an article this morning in the New York Times about the recovery, or lack thereof, from the earthquake in Haiti.

Here is how it starts. PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Hundreds of displaced families live perilously in a single file of flimsy shanties planted along the median strip of a heavily congested coastal road here called the Route des Rails.

Vehicles rumble by day and night, blaring horns, kicking up dust and belching exhaust. Residents try to protect themselves by positioning tires as bumpers in front of their shacks but cars still hit, injure and sometimes kill them. Rarely does anybody stop to offer help, and Judith Guillaume, 23, often wonders why.

“Don’t they have a heart, or a suggestion?” asked Ms. Guillaume, who covers her children’s noses with her floral skirt when the diesel fumes get especially strong.

Thankfully, there are lots of people who are trying to help some of the folk in Haiti. It seems overwhelming, I’m sure. But that guy who was beaten and left for dead along the road, was glad someone was willing to stop and help.

Some of you are going to be helping out with the Interfaith Hospitality Network this week. There will just be a few folk there out of the millions of homeless people in this world. But you will find the Realm of God there.

I assume that the Samaritan, after dropping the man off with the innkeeper, just went on with what ever he was doing before he encountered that poor man on the side of the road. He didn’t start an organization to help victims of violence. He didn’t organize a growing police presence on the road to Jericho. Jesus says nothing about him setting up a preaching mission to persuade robbers of their waywardness, and their need for Jesus. He went on to see him Mom, or deliver the present to his niece, visit his brother in jail, sign the contract, make the sale, or whatever he was doing. But along the way, he got past the distractions when he bumped into the Realm of God and discovered who his neighbor was. It’s a pretty good story.

Be Saved and Repent
Luke 7:36-8:3
June 13, 2010
Steve Hammond

“This is crazy,” the woman thought, as she made her way toward Simon’s house. But she had to do something to let Jesus know how he had changed her life and how grateful she was. So she grabbed the perfume. It was a gift from one of her regulars. He had spent a lot of money on it, but he had a lot of money to spend. She was only supposed to use it for him. But she didn’t care. He was going to have to take his business elsewhere, anyway. She was done with him and the others. She was done.

She knew the only way she could get to Jesus was to just walk right in to Simon’s house as if she belonged there. Of course, she was well aware that no woman belonged there, especially a woman like her. But even though she wasn’t that woman any more, she was still a woman.

The thought of it actually made her let out a little laugh. “I can’t wait to see the look on their faces. How am I going to get past Simon, though? That holy roller, that guardian of the law, has never paid me a personal visit. So he won’t come off like a hypocrite, anyway, if he tries to shoo me away. I’ll have to figure out something when I get there.”

It turned out, though, that Simon wasn’t about to stop her. This was perfect. He couldn’t have planned it any better himself. They were all looking for a way to put an end to this nonsense. Jesus said this. Jesus did that. That Nazarene, of questionable parentage no less, claimed to know more about God than the Pharisees, the priests, the teachers of the law combined. But look at that woman crawling all over him like she’s been there before. They will be talking about Jesus all right. But the things they are going to say now.

There she was, letting down her hair, no less. But as Jesus watched her it wasn’t with the lust and judgment that was in the eyes of her customers. But Simon didn’t notice any of that because all he was doing was waiting for Jesus to go slinking out of there. This was shaping up to be Simon’s best dinner party ever. Not only was Jesus getting knocked off his pedestal, but here was poor, righteous Simon forced to suffer such an indignity in his own home. He could make this go a long way.

Jesus wasn’t leaving, though. Simon couldn’t believe what was happening. “Why is everybody staring at me instead of Jesus and his pathetic little hooker. And now he’s speaking to me, looking me right in the eyes, as if we were some sort of equals. What? He’s telling me one of his stupid little stories. What nerve!”

Simon had Jesus on the ropes, but now Jesus had come out swinging. Simon knew he had to be careful. More than one of his colleagues had walked into these traps Jesus set.

At first hearing, though, Simon thought he did okay. Maybe he wasn’t the punch line of the story after all. It was a story about debts being forgiven. Everybody knew he hadn’t piled up the moral and religious debts like that woman had. She was the one who needed forgiveness, not him. But Jesus wasn’t done.

What was that accusation they often made about Jesus? “He eats with sinners. Wine bibbers, tax collectors, and prostitutes.” Well you can add another one to the list, Pharisees. Even though Jesus knew that Simon and his friends were hostile to him, he accepted Simon’s invitation anyway. Jesus was at that dinner as much for Simon as the woman. But she was the one who realized that.

“Simon,” Jesus said. “Do you see this woman? I came to your home; you provided no water for my feet, but she rained tears on my feet and dried them with her hair. You gave me no greeting, but from the time I arrived she hasn’t quit kissing my feet. You provided nothing for freshening up, but she has soothed my feet with perfume. Impressive, isn’t it? Pay attention to this Simon. She is the one who, like God, offers radical hospitality. Not you. It’s not enough to open your little dinner parties to a traveling preacher. She is the one tearing down the walls. She has figured out something about God that you haven’t.”

Simon was stunned. And the woman had forgotten about the other people. She was past caring about what they had to say about her. “But why is he telling me my sins have been forgiven,” she wondered. “I already knew that. That’s why I came in the first place. It must be for the Pharisee and his friends. If they would just pay attention to Jesus they would be down here washing his feet with me.” That image brought another smile to her face.

I don’t know if she was paying attention to that little story Jesus told about the two debtors and the banker. But unlike Simon, who was paying close attention to everything Jesus said and did, she knew what Jesus meant. This was a woman who knew what it was like to have the debt canceled, to know the freedom that comes with forgiveness.

I wonder, though, if Jesus isn’t getting it wrong here. I’ve always been told that God demands the debt be paid, big or small. It’s not canceled. God finds somebody else to pay it. Jesus. But not in the story Jesus told Simon. The banker doesn’t say to the two debtors I will go find some benevolent benefactor to pay your debts for you, so that I will get what I require. The banker just cancels the debt.

It kind of blows the whole theory we have been working with. You know, we confess our sins, our indebtedness, to God, and God has Jesus pay off the debt for us. Repent and be saved.

But that’s not the way it was in this story. The woman got saved first, and then the repentance came. She knew that what Jesus was talking about, what reduced her to tears and made her bold enough to let down her hair in front of all those men, was a lot more than a self improvement program. It was way beyond being a better person and cleaning up her act. It was about finding the life Jesus talked about, it was about believing in the God Jesus believed in, not the god Simon believed in. “How crazy is this?,” she thought, “Simon and I need the same thing. But he doesn’t know that yet.”

The story says that Jesus left that place accompanied by the 12 and many women. Maybe she was one of them. Who knows? It could well be. Where else was she going to go?

The same person who wrote this story in the Book of Luke also wrote the book of Acts and talks about how a great many of the Pharisees became followers of Jesus. Maybe Simon was one of them. Imagine Simon and this woman, church members together in Jerusalem.

Obviously, I don’t know that Simon and the woman were ever in church together. But I know that we are. And that’s an amazing thing. It’s enough to make you let down your hair and weep. We get to follow Jesus together, to be on the look out for God with each other, to find that thing that enabled that woman to take such risk to be with Jesus.

I don’t know if they ever finished or even started that meal at Simon’s house. The woman kind of disrupted things, and ended up causing all kinds of trouble.

Maybe that’s what we get to do too. Disrupt things. Cause trouble because we are so taken by the life we are finding in Jesus we don’t know what else to do but break the rules. It’s enough to make you cry.

Mama wisdom is knocking at the door
Proverbs 8
May 30, 2010
Steve Hammond

Who is that standing at the corner of College and Main streets shouting “come on you blockheads, pay attention to me!” Who is that lady?

Well Jesus might have been talking about her, or at least a lot of scholars think so, when he said this. “If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to God who will provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take her in because it doesn’t have eyes to see her, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know her already because she has been staying with you, and will even be in you! I’m telling you these things while I’m still living with you. The Friend, the Holy Spirit whom God will send at my request, will make everything plain to you. She will remind you of all the things I have told you. I’m leaving you well and whole. That’s my parting gift to you. Peace.”

They unwrapped that gift on the day of Pentecost. We weren’t here last week, but I think you must have talked about that. They call that book the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, but for those in the story it’s more like the Acts of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was right. They were not left alone. And they were being led into truth, though the Book of Acts, and the rest of the New Testament makes it clear they weren’t always easily led into truth. But Mama Wisdom was with them. They never knew when she would knock on the door and come blowing in. They learned that Jesus was right when he said the Spirit is just like the wind. You don’t know where it’s coming from or where it’s going, but if you lift your sail you will get quite a ride.

By most measures, the church should have never survived. The persecution was intense. They were a amazingly small minority of people scattered throughout a big empire in tiny churches, most smaller than this one. But, as their accusers say in the Book of Acts, they turned the world upside down.

And when they started they weren’t known for their great faith. Remember how they scattered when Jesus was arrested and wouldn’t come near his place of execution. When some of the women said that Jesus was alive, most of them thought it was nonsense. On the day of Pentecost, they were hiding out afraid they would be captured by the Romans.

But then Mama Wisdom came knocking on their door. The Spirit, like a mighty wind, rushed through that place and their lives. They went rushing into the streets of Jerusalem and didn’t stop proclaiming the life that is in Jesus Christ until they reached the ends of the earth.

They were filled with the Spirit, empowered. The word in Greek is dunamis, the word we use for dynamite. They were dynamited out of that room and out of their fear. And here we are today.

This, of course, is a big weekend in town. We are celebrating with people like Anna and Sarah the hard work of education. And, hopefully, we are celebrating some wisdom, too, though education and wisdom are different things.

Those first followers of Jesus were not, for the most part, highly educated people. The Apostle Paul was an exception. But when Mama Wisdom came knocking, they wised up real fast, and began learning the lessons of faith. Mama wisdom was leading them into that truth Jesus talked about. They learned that real wisdom comes from chasing after the things of the Spirit rather than chasing after money. That fearing God means hating evil. They learned that it’s not the arrogant and the proud who are wise.

Remember those stories about Jesus being baptized and Mama Wisdom, the Holy Spirit who leads us into truth, landing on his head? And what did he end up doing? Telling us the truth. The truth about God, the world, ourselves. It was radical truth. The kind of truth that brings life, though it can get you killed. Mama Wisdom was at work in him, and he promised she would be at work in them. He wasn’t about to leave them, or us, alone.

You read all the great stories in the Book of Acts and you have to wonder. Where’s the dynamite? What mess of porridge have we sold our birthright for? Why is nobody really afraid we are going to take Jesus seriously enough to turn the world upside down? How stupid have we become?

In his new book, The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox takes on these questions. If you don’t know who he is, Harvey Cox has taught at Harvard for the last 40 years or thereabouts, and was one of the prominent theologians of the 20th century. In this book, he’s showing us that Mama Wisdom is not done with him yet, and he is making his mark in the 21st century. He was ordained by this congregation.

When Harvey looks at the first couple of centuries of the Church he sees people who were caught up by faith, people who were propelled by the Holy Spirit in all kinds of ways. The dynamite was there and Mama Wisdom was leading them into truth that blew apart their assumptions about how you live in this world.

After awhile though, Harvey says, the church went from this age of faith to what he called the age of belief. We may use those words interchangeably, but Harvey Cox doesn’t. The age of faith was when people were looking for the moving of the Spirit, expecting things to be shaken up and blown apart. The Spirit was taking them to unexpected places and doing unexpected things, and in it all they saw the wisdom of God.

Some people weren’t quite so sure, though, what to do about this free-for-all of the Spirit. It’s hard to control the wind. And to be truthful, some of what was going on wasn’t really all that wise. So Harvey says people started thinking that even though Rome had been tough on them, you couldn’t deny that Rome knew how to keep things under control.

So the age of faith began to give way to the age of belief where conformity and control became key. Being a Christian was not a matter of faith but a matter of belief. Christianity became a set of beliefs rather than a way of life. So they started developing creeds. Harvey points out that creeds weren’t designed to show the differences between Christianity and other faiths, but the differences between Christians and other Christians. People wanted creeds so they knew who the heretics were.

Church hierarchy was developed. Hierarchy simply means the rule of the holy ones. The church was turned over to the bishops and elders and eventually the pope. It was the imperial structure. Harvey Cox points out that someone has suggested that the Catholic Church is the last vestige of the Roman empire.

It’s not just the Catholic Church, though, that has seen the appeal to doctrines, creeds, structures, ways of defining who is in and who is out. We all do it to some degree. Belief is much easier, much less risky than faith.

Today is Trinity Sunday on the church calendar. All over the internet preachers are lamenting the chore of trying to make sense of the trinity in one sermon. But when you look at the stories in the Book of Acts do you imagine the people really cared about the doctrine of the trinity? They just wanted to be caught up by the Spirit and discover some of Mama Wisdom’s wisdom. It was the wisdom Jesus knew about, the wisdom they knew could turn the world upside down.

Harvey Cox suggests the church is now in one of those back to the future moments. Are we indeed entering a new age of the Spirit that reminds us more of those early days of the church where we sense this thing is more about faith than our beliefs and formulations. We may have more education about Christianity, but are we any wiser than those first brothers and sisters who caught hold of the Spirit, or rather let the Spirit catch hold of them and build a church?

Mama Wisdom is right. Sometimes we are just a bunch of blockheads. But thankfully there is this thing we call grace. Then there are times we are wiser than we ever imagined possible. I guess that’s grace, too. It kind of makes you think about that old spiritual We’ve Come this Far by Faith. And it’s that faith in Mama Wisdom, the Holy Spirit who blesses our chaos by making something out of it, that will keep us on the road.

How Shall We Know?
John 13:31-35, Acts 11:1-18
May 2, 2010
Mary Hammond

There are such things as “window texts” in the Bible, those passages which become pivotal to how we understand the rest of scripture. The Beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel are a window text that illuminates the true meaning of “blessedness” in the understanding of Jesus. The Sermon on the Mount fleshes out the Beatitudes in the teachings of Jesus. The Book of Job is a window text which helps us to see how to remain engaged with God in the midst of cumulative, seemingly unbearable, suffering.

Today’s story in the Book of Acts is yet another “window text.” At first glance, this seems like a simple retelling of a powerful encounter between two people–a Jewish disciple of Jesus named Peter and a God-fearing Gentile army officer named Cornelius. In their own time, the two lived a world apart–there was nothing in their lives that naturally brought them together.

We have heard this story already today–Peter’s vision or dream, and his fierce resistance to its message; the request to visit Cornelius and Peter’s obedient response; the unexpected events that transpire when Peter begins sharing his testimony about Jesus with Cornelius and his family. Peter never expects the Holy Spirit to fall upon these Gentiles as on the Jewish believers. As the scales fall from Cornelius’ eyes, they also fall from Peter’s. Standing in the presence of divine action, Peter can no sooner deny Cornelius the grace of God than he can deny his own powerful experience with Jesus. That is what happens in Acts, Chapter 10.

Chapter 11 re-tells this story in the context of the push-back and fallout Peter faces as he acknowledges the movement of the Spirit and welcomes Cornelius and his family into the family of faith. When Jewish believers in Jesus who still adhere to Jewish law hear about the welcome Peter offers these Gentiles, they are upset. They challenge Peter, and this moment provides him with the opportunity to retell his story–just as he experienced it–not omitting the details of his own resistance and ultimate amazement. It is not scripture that convinces Peter–it is a vision or dream from God followed by the testimony of God’s work in a human being right before his eyes.

Instead of discounting these conversions, excluding Cornelius and his family, and persecuting these Gentile believers, Peter’s critics are persuaded by his words. They, too, can see the work of God. They respond in wonder and praise, welcoming the new believers in spite of all their deeply socialized reservations. They face their own prejudices and stereotypes. They open their hearts and minds to change that is very radical for their own day, time, and context.

This becomes a story for the ages, a “window text” through which we glimpse God’s continuing work in the world. Generation after generation labels one group or another “unclean.” Time and time again, we people of faith are called to challenge our prejudices and welcome the stranger, leaving our fears and stereotypes at the door of the Great Realm of God.

Let me share a 21st century re-write of Peter’s story, found in this week’s Oberlin College newspaper, The Review. The article is entitled, “Where Christianity Intersects with Homosexuality.” The student author, Emmanuel Magara, confesses, “I am a straight Christian who grew up in a highly conservative African society, so the idea of there being devout gay Christians seemed unimaginable to me. I naively thought that members of the LGBTQ community, by virtue of some of the Biblical scriptures against homosexuality, could not be Christian. It was only when I came to Oberlin that I learned otherwise.” He goes on to say, “Chase was one of the very first openly gay Christians I met…his personality undeniably reflected that of a true Christian. For the first time, I appreciated how it was possible for anyone, regardless of his or her sexuality, to explore faith in God…” (April 30, 2010 issue).

At the Peace Potluck last weekend, internationally acclaimed workshop leaders, Cherine Badawi and Arthur Romano illustrated a pyramid of attitudes and behaviors that ultimately leads all the way to genocide and war. The base of the pyramid is inhabited by a tragic reality: the lack of human connection. When we don’t know someone, or we don’t know that we know someone, it is so much easier to dehumanize that person or their group.

Oberlin College graduate, Megan Highfill, just recently posted an amazing blog entry entitled, Interlude: Do I Look Illegal?, where she speaks about people assuming she is Anglo-American when she actually has both Mexican and Japanese ancestry. Megan describes the number of racist comments she hears about Mexicans or Japanese from white people. When she reveals her ancestry, their response is often, “Oh, I didn’t know…” as if that somehow excuses their words.

Badawi and Romano note that lack of connection leads to fear and ignorance. These fester into stereotyping. As stereotypes harden, they become prejudice and discrimination. When transferred from attitudes into actions, prejudice and discrimination foster violence. As all hell breaks loose, genocide and war can result.

How do we, as peacemakers, do our part in re-writing this script? Badawi and Romano urge us to start at the base of this pyramid to begin undoing the lack of connection. Anyone can confront, challenge, and change this in some significant way. Peter’s narrative in Acts 10-11 is a testimony of alienation transformed into connection, connection transformed into community. Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Gospel of John before his death echo this same theme as he says, “This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples–when they see the love you have for each other” (John 13:35).

Hatred is on the loose here in the United States. According to an Intelligence Report of the Southern Poverty Law Center, almost 1,000 hate groups are currently active in this country (see Mark Potok’s article, Rage on the Right, at the Southern Poverty Law Center website). Anti-immigrant vigilante groups are up 80%, with 136 new groups in 2009 alone. The past year has witnessed a 244% rise in Patriot groups, along with their paramilitary wings, their militias.

When cultural messages fan the flames of intolerance, prejudice, hatred, and violence, love becomes counter-cultural, radical, and even revolutionary. The scriptures declare again and again that love is of God. Connection, where once alienation festered, is of God. Humanizing “the other,” “the unclean,” “the outcast” is of God. The sober warning of the Epistle of John declares, “The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love–so you can’t know God if you don’t love” (I John 4:8).

This all seems pretty basic, doesn’t it? Yet, the day I wrote this sermon I had two phone conversations with two people of two different races and wildly different denominational backgrounds in two different parts of the country. Yet, both asked me a nearly identical question: “Aren’t Christians supposed to love like Jesus loved?” And one also asked, “Some Christians tell me that one church may be given a ministry of deliverance, another one of healing, and another one of love–I thought all churches were given a ministry of love! Am I crazy?”

Today we are blessed with the opportunity to celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. What a beautiful table this is! Several years ago, I was so struck by the reality that those of us in this community would not know one another, would not be knitted together like we are, save for our common life in Jesus Christ.

Look around yourself for a moment at the faces you see. Would Linda know Lynn, and Adam know Jeff, and Phyllis know Sherri, and Heather know Paul, were it not for this place? As we share the Lord’s Supper with one another, we bear witness to the power of connection over disconnection. We proclaim the transforming nature of relationship and community, even in our midst.

This is always such a glorious part of serving Communion for me. If you wonder what I’m doing with my eyes closed as you eat the bread and drink the juice, I am praying for all of you, remembering our rich and deep histories with one another, whether short or long, and thanking God for this inestimable gift of communion and community.

As we join in this fellowship meal, I invite you to remember Jesus, who feasted with sinners like you and me. I invite you to remember Peter, who confronted his prejudices head-on with a lot of help and encouragement from God’s Spirit. Even Peter had his moments later when he slipped back, pandering to those who supported the circumcision, and was called on the carpet for his actions (Galatians 2:6-14). I invite you to remember God’s work in your own life as you continue to change and grow. I invite you to welcome others to your own table, whether literally or figuratively. I invite you to peer outside the safety of familiar relationships and take a risk to see God where you have never expected to see God before! Amen.

Psalm 23 and John 10
April 25, 2010
Steve Hammond

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” But what if God not only prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, but invited them to supper?

Most of us, I think, if we know this Psalm at all know it from funerals, for good reason; it is so very comforting. God leads us to green pastures and still waters. God restores our souls. God walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death. God’s goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives. And we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This Psalm tells us we can trust God when the going gets tough and we are not tough enough to get going.

But there are other layers to this Psalm for us to think about. Did you know, for example, that in other places in this world this Psalm is not read at funerals, but at political protests?

It turns out that in places like Africa and Asia, the political leaders, some of them quite corrupt and despotic, often describe themselves as shepherds who care for their flock. But the response from Christians in those places is “No, you are not our shepherd. God is. It says so right in Psalm 23.” That citing of Psalm 23 is a direct challenge to the rulers who oppress and swindle their people. The people aren’t looking to those so called shepherds for help, but to God. And it’s God, not those rulers, who has earned their allegiance. The 23rd Psalm, it turns out, like so many other scriptures is a revolutionary text.

And that line ‘God leads us in paths of righteousness for God’s name’s sake’ is translated differently in many other places. And they do a better job of helping us understand what is behind that verse when they translate it that God lead us in ‘paths of justice.’

In this Psalm people see that when we fight for justice in this world we are lifting up God’s name. We tread the paths of justice and honor who God is. It’s a Psalm of trust and action.

Jesus was not reluctant to call himself a shepherd, even the Good Shepherd. It was one of the things that got him in trouble. The accusation was he was claiming to be God.

We look back at all of this debate that has gone on in the history of the Church about what the exact nature of Jesus is. Is he divine? Is he human? Or is he, as the Nicene Creed puts it, very God and very man?

Those are our issues, but I don’t think they were issues Jesus had. “What you see in me,” he was saying, “is who God is.” He was saying nothing more, nor nothing less than that, which is a pretty bold statement all in itself without the arguments over the ontological nature of Jesus. I’m not arguing whether Jesus is God or not. I’m just suggesting Jesus wasn’t either. What I am arguing is that Jesus was saying what you see me doing is what God does.

What is it that God does? The scriptures that Jesus hearers were working with are not of one voice, they are ‘texts in travail,’ as the theologian René Girard put it. Is God this vengeful, unforgiving deity who will gladly wipe us off the face of the earth for even small infractions? Or is God the God of love and compassion who calls out for justice and rescues the widow and the orphan. Is God the God of the 23rd Psalm or the 74th which begins, “O God, why have you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?”

Jesus’ answer to that question of what God is really like is simply, “Look at me. I do what God does. God does what I do. We are one…heart and mind.” Jesus is focusing on behavior. The writers of the Preaching Peace Commentary put it this way. “Jesus does not come with power, he comes serving, he does not come with judgement, he comes with healing, he does not come with vengeance, he comes with forgiveness.” And Jesus makes the claim that’s the way God is, and also claimed he knew what he was talking about.

That’s why I think that when Jesus thought about the 23rd Psalm he would think, of course God would prepare a banquet for us in the presence of our enemies, because God cares for us and loves us that much. But God would also invite them to join us.

Jesus knew that the valley of the shadow of death was never far away; not only the death of these bodies of ours and the grief that we feel when people we love die, but also the lost jobs, the broken relationships, the crushed dreams, the fear and anxiety we feel about so many things, the oppression, the greed, the cruelty, the discrimination, the corruption. There are so many places where we encounter the shadow of death, we don’t need to bring any more.

And God isn’t going to lead us to any of those places but rather to places of green pastures and still waters, even if the shadow of death is just a stone’s throw away. We need God to walk with us through those valleys of the shadow of death and lead us to those green pastures and still waters. And God does it.

Jesus knew, though, that God doesn’t do it alone. When God prepares a banquet for us in the presence of our enemies, somebody has to set the table and clean up afterwards, not to mention share the meal. That’s us. That’s what the body of Christ is about, helping people find those green pastures and still waters, walking with them as God walks with them through the valley of the shadow of death. There are souls we get to help restore.

This afternoon is the CROP Walk. There are a lot of hungry people in this world and the CROP Walk is not going to bring an end to hunger. But can you imagine what it is like to be hungry but for a while, at least, there is food? It must feel something like green pastures and still waters. What if you didn’t have to worry any more about your children starving to death? Wouldn’t you feel like God has walked with you through the valley of the shadow of death? And all because we believe what Jesus believes about God, that God wants hungry people fed and for us to find ways to create structures and help the the hungry to develop the resources so hunger is not a constant shadow in their lives.

I think we need to hear this Psalm at funerals, peace protests, and so many other places. That Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd indicates, to me, that he sure thought about this Psalm. It tells us a lot about God, a lot about Jesus, and a lot about ourselves.

They didn’t read the 23rd Psalm at Jesus’ funeral because, like so many people in this world, he didn’t have one. But he lived believing that goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life. And he was right. This Good Shepherd not only showed us God, but he showed us who we can become because of the God who is our shepherd.

The Mustard Seed Conspiracy
John 20:1-18
Easter 2010
Steve Hammond

“I saw him.” That’s what Mary cried out on Easter morning. She didn’t expect to see him, not alive, that is. When she saw that empty tomb, she did what any of us would do. She went running to tell the others that somebody had stolen Jesus’ body. She came back, though. And then she saw him. He was right there in the garden in front of the tomb. She didn’t recognize him at first. But he recognized her. He called out her name. He talked to her. And cemeteries have never been the same since then.

In 1 Corinthians 15, the Apostle Paul writes about the resurrection appearances of Jesus. “Jesus,” according to Paul “appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time… Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one untimely born.”

On the blogsite ralphmiltonsrumors.com Jim Taylor points out something rather awkward about Paul’s litany of post resurrection appearances. Did you notice what it is?

In the gospel story we just read this morning, who saw Jesus first? It wasn’t Peter. It wasn’t the twelve. It wasn’t the 500 brothers or James, or all the apostles. It was Mary Magdalene. All the gospel stories say Jesus appeared to the women first.

It’s remarkable when you think about it, not to mention a bit infuriating. In those very first stories that got passed on about Jesus, nobody thought about leaving the women out. Highlighting the role of women in a world where such a thing was unheard of was pretty radical stuff. Too radical, in fact, as this new religion tried to find its place in the Roman empire. So they began to back off.

You can see Paul struggle with all of this in his writings. He knew the important role women played in the life of Jesus and the Church. He depended on lots of women who were pastors, prophets, apostles, and other leaders in the early church. But he also knew that highlighting it would mean that many would dismiss anything he said about Jesus.

The Gospels, though, are right out there. There are all kinds of stories in them that are embarrassing to the Church. That’s why the Church has had a long history of trying to make more than women disappear from the story.

We have to make sure we don’t also disappear from the story. Because we, too, have seen Jesus. He has brought dead places alive in us. We don’t have to be people of great faith, have the right credentials, have passed the Jesus proficiency exams to be his witnesses. We can let that inner mystic go wild. We can embrace resurrection. We can tell those resurrection stories, especially the ones about how we didn’t recognize him at first, but then he called our names.

I don’t think it’s the women seeing Jesus first that should embarrass us. When Mary, in John’s story for example, goes to the tomb of Jesus, she fully expects to find his body there. Who is going to roll away the stone so she can finish the burial ointments. Resurrection is the last thing on her mind. And it’s that way in all the stories. Jesus said time and time again God would raise him from the dead. But nobody, not Mary, not any of the other women, not Peter, not John, not any of them believed him. These were not people of great faith. And nobody tries to hide that fact.

Remember what Jesus once said about how that if you have the faith the size of a mustard seed, you could tell a mountain to move into the sea and it would? I’m not sure why anyone would want to do such a thing. And it is an odd little word picture. But the point isn’t rearranging large scale geographical formations. It’s just an over the top way of saying that when it comes to faith, a little goes a long way. Just like it takes just a tiny bit of yeast in a whole bunch of flour to make the bread rise.

We have an example of that mustard seed principle right here with the story of Mary Magdalene, and in the other resurrection stories in the Gospels. The Jesus movement was not carried on the back of spiritual giants, but rather through people like Mary Magdalene who if you had hooked up to a faithometer there would have hardly been a blip on the screen. But Mary, and the other women, and Peter, and John, and the 500 brothers, and James, and all the Apostles, and Paul, and all of us were invited to become a part of the mustard seed conspiracy, to put that tiny bit of faith, maybe hardly perceptible, to work.

Mary didn’t come to that garden expecting to find the living Jesus. Far from it. But he still called her name, and sent her to tell the others. And it’s that sending that makes all the difference in the mustard seed conspiracy. We’re the ones who are sent. And its not based on our faith.

I’ll bet most of you here know that old hymn, ‘I Come to the Garden Alone.’ You may regret, or be very glad, that it never gets into the hymn rotation around here. But it is based on this story. It’s sort of about Mary Magdalene going to the garden on that Easter morning. But it is much more about meeting Jesus in our own metaphorical gardens.

In the last verse it gets the Mary Magdalene part of the story right. “I’d stay in the garden with him though the darkness around me is falling.” That’s a whole day in the garden, from before sunrise to nearly sunset. “But he bids me go,” though not with a voice of woe. At this point Jesus must be pretty psyched. And he’s not looking to stay there. What did Jesus say to the scarcely believing Mary? “You can’t cling to me, you’ve got to go and tell the others.”

There is the tendency to want to cling to him in what is perceived as that wonderful spot such as the garden, where we can walk together and talk together and he tells us the we are his own. But this is not a place of tarrying for him, there is resurrection and a gospel to proclaim.

It’s not that we don’t need those times of walking and talking and sharing joy with Jesus, and all this hymn is trying to say. But it’s not Mary’s story on Easter morning.

Take that little mustard seed faith you’ve got and get out of here. Watch it sprout into this really big tree. Just see what happens if you go and start telling others that you have seen me. Resurrection will start popping up everywhere, just like a weed” (which is really what a mustard plant is in that part of the world). That’s the extent of their very short conversation.

And Jesus didn’t tell her to go and tell the others and bring them back so they can set up a little shrine in front of the tomb. Jesus wasn’t looking to do resurrection re-enactments every hour. There was no interest expressed by those first followers of Jesus to make that empty tomb and garden holy ground. That’s not where the action was. That’s not the place to look for evidence of the risen Jesus. Rather it is in his followers, amongst the mustard seed conspirators, the folk that the Apostle Paul calls the Body of Christ.

It’s hard to believe that Jesus could put so much faith in us when we so often respond with so little faith ourselves. But remember what Jesus did right before he was killed? He prayed for us. Mary and I get a lot of people asking us to pray for them because they think as clergy, we have a special in with God. We don’t. With Jesus, though, it’s a different story… He knew the risk he was taking with the likes of Mary Magdalene, the other women, Peter, John, and us. But he was able to trust us to God, though he did have to pray about it. And who other than Jesus would you rather have praying for you? He knew the power of stories, of our stories. And he is still praying for us.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes that if we remember that God has planted new life in us, “then there is nothing we cannot do: move mountains, banish fear, love our enemies, change the world. The only thing we cannot do is hold on to Jesus…. though we would rather keep him with us where we are than let him take us where he is going….into the white hot presence of God, who is not behind us but ahead of us, every step of the way.”

Jesus is risen! Alleluia! We have seen him! We have a story to tell. Jesus was right about resurrection. He was right about mustard seeds.