Letting Ourselves Be Bound

This was my sermon a few weeks ago on Jesus' parable about Binding the Strong Man. I've been reading the book Binding the Strong Man, by Ched Myers, and I worked to catch myself up to the point of this parable, only to be a little bit disappointed that Myers' interpretation didn't provide as much sermon fodder as I'd hoped (It's still a great book, though very dense on the hermeneutic theory). As for the story, I learned about Semmelweiss through the Freakonomics Podcast. If you want to learn more about that story, here's a link to the podcast:Freakonomics Podcast - Handwashing and Financial Literacy. And here's a link to Mark 3:20-35, the text for the sermon: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=207749696.

 Letting Ourselves Be Bound

 

Ignaz Semmelweiss was an obstetrician in Vienna in 1800s. Now there were two maternity clinics in Vienna at that time open to poor women, created to help reduce the rates of infant mortality and infanticide at the time.  One was staffed by medical students, and the other by midwives in training. And the clinic staffed by medical students had a mortality rate that was triple the midwive’s clinic. Semmelweis studied the problem, and found that the two clinics were nearly identical in skill, technique, and clientele.  The only difference he could find was that the medical students would spend their mornings in class, dissecting cadavers before going over to perform their shift at the clinic. 

This was long before anyone knew what germs were, but Semmelweis theorized that some “cadaverous particles” were traveling on the hands of the medical students, and that was causing the unusually high death rate. He proposed that the obstetricians wash their hands before going to deliver babies in the maternity clinic. It worked. The mortality rates dropped by more than 90%. And he was fired. Yes, fired. You see in spite of his success, nobody wanted to make the changes that Semmelweis suggested. His theories challenged the way that they looked at the world, and demanded that they change. They thought his theories about cadaverous particles were crazy, and they said so.

He was ridiculed. He couldn’t find a job, so he had to move. It continued to affect his life, and he was eventually committed to an insane asylum, all for suggesting that doctors ought to wash their hands after they’ve had them in a dead body. This kind of a thing is common. Frequently when people come up with an idea that challenges the status quo, they are branded wingnuts or crazies for their boldness. Relatively benign change faces a steep uphill battle, but change that challenges the powers that be rejected even more quickly.

Now if Semmelweis was crazy for proposing that doctors wash their hands before they deliver babies, what Jesus is proposing in the book of Mark is out of this world wack-o. It’s tinfoil hat, convinced that Elvis is living in your guest room, talking to martians in your head, off the wall bonkers. See, up to this point in his ministry (and in chapter 3, it’s really just beginning), Jesus has challenged all of the powerful institutions of authority in first century Palestine. He made a leper clean with his touch, challenging the monopoly the local priests held on cleanliness and uncleanliness, for which priests charged fees that weighed heavily on lepers and other second-class citizens. He ate with taxpayers and sinners, rejecting the Pharisaic rules of table fellowship that demanded that only “respectable” people be given access to power and status, and any who were different should be shunned. He declared to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven, challenging the scribes who kept records of people’s debts, who insisted that only through the Temple which they controlled could one find forgiveness.

Now when word got around that Jesus was doing these things, rumors began to fly. People began to say that he was out of his mind, off his rocker, a few crayons short of a box, a few fries short of a Happy Meal. And who was it who was saying such things?  It was those people whose control of the system he challenged. Scribes were sent up from Jerusalem to fan the flames, and they went even further than crazy, they said he was the devil. They declare that he has been casting out demons in the name of Beelzebul, ruler of demons. The fact that Mark uses Beelzebul in this passage is significant. It means “Lord of the dwelling,” or “Lord of the house.”

Jesus responds to this accusation with two parables about houses, challenging once again the world of the elites. “How can Satan cast out Satan?” Jesus asks. “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”  Simply put, their accusations don’t make sense. If Jesus was, in fact, a demon, why would he want to cast out other demons? 

But the parable goes deeper than just a rejection of the scribal arguments. Mark chooses to use the metaphor of a house for a reason. Throughout Scripture the Temple is referred to as the house of God. And God’s dwelling place should be where God’s justice, mercy, and peace reside. And when the people of God allow that justice to be perverted, allow that mercy to be forsaken, allow that peace to be overturned, God sent prophets to proclaim his displeasure. The prophet Jeremiah talks about this, the Lord commands him to stand in the gates of his house and condemn the people for their oppression of the orphan, the alien, and the widow, “Has this house,” the Lord says, “which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?”

It is these same words Jesus will say when he also stands at the gates of the Lord’s house, for it was, at that time, in fact divided against itself. The place where God’s justice was supposed to reign was a place of power, wealth, and politics, and where wealth was created and influence peddled among the wealthy and well-connected. The scribal and priestly authorities who were supposed to provide for the needy, widows, and orphans were creating new ones by the day. The temple authorities who were supposed to enforce the Sabbath or Jubilee year that prevented farmers from being crushed by debt and losing their land was carefully circumvented, and people in Galilee were being forced to give up the land that their parents and grandparents had worked and owned, and move to cities to find jobs, or return to the same place as tenants, and be charged nearly their entire crop for the privilege.

               

            Jesus was challenging the laws and interpretations that perverted God’s justice and mercy, he was rejecting the idea that a few powerful families could set the bar for righteousness so high that only they could achieve it, and then charge others for their sinfulness.

We need to be careful here, because historically, Christians have read these Scriptures and others and proclaimed that these things are Jewish things. But this reading is dangerous and scandalous in two ways. The first is that it leads down a dangerous path, for if we equate modern Judaism with the sinfulness of the wealthy absentee landlord classes, we declare that Judaism is a faith of legalism and oppression superceded by the law of grace, and we declare that God has broken God’s promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and that Jewish people are forsaken and evil. We have been down that path before, and we know where it leads.

The second way in which seeing this as a Jewish problem is dangerous is that it lets us off the hook. It lets us claim that this injustice which Jesus rejected was a Jewish problem, and not what it really is, a human problem. In our selfishness, in our me-first approach to life, we seek to create the best world for ourselves, and we fight to protect our own interests, even when they come at the expense of another. In our desire for control, we create rules for what it is to be an acceptable member of our society, and we deny the benefits of society to anyone who does not fit in. And yet, in our minds we are always the good guys, and we never consider that it might be us that have divided God’s house against itself. We never think that we might be the scribes and the Pharisees that Jesus so decisively rejects.

             

            But truly we also live in a house which is divided against itself, one in which God’s justice is rarely found. We proclaim ourselves to be forgiven sinners, but even in church forgiveness is rarely to be found. Anyone who’s been through a conflict in a church or been on the wrong side of a grudge knows that our past sins are never so easily forgotten. We hear reports of abuse at factories that make our products, yet we only pay lip service to doing something about the abuses that keep our prices low. Even more injustice, we just pretend not to see. We are a nation filled with Christians, yet forgiveness is rarely to be found. We proclaim ourselves recipients of God’s grace, blessed with Christ not because we deserve it but because God’s love is that powerful, but we deny that grace to others. Yes, if we say that we are different from the scribes and the Pharisees we testify against ourselves, for we see the same injustice in our world, and we do nothing to stop it.

             

             Jesus told a parable about a man who, having received forgiveness from the king of ten thousand talents immediately has someone thrown into prison for a debt of one hundred denarii, and is called again before the king and locked away for his cruelty. Yet we stand idle as banks who were forgiven debts in the billions foreclose on people for a few thousand. We proclaim that we are called to share the love of Christ given to us even though we do not deserve it with everyone in the world. But we surround ourselves with exclusive institutions, and work to narrow the paths to success to those who we feel deserve it.

           Jesus concludes our story with another parable, one that makes his intentions clear as it regards the house of God. “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered.” Jesus intent is nothing short of revolutionary. The house is divided against itself. It is controlled by “the strong man” the “Lord of the dwelling” who hoards its goods and controls its wealth. And Jesus intends to plunder it.  By denying the authority of the Temple to withhold the forgiveness of sins, Jesus binds the strong men who controlled the population by controlling accounts of their debt, by eating with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus rejected the strong men who hoarded their status and influence and extended his peace and fellowship that all might have hope of success, in cleansing a leper he plundered the priestly power to control people’s access to God and charge them for it.  Jesus sought to bind the strong man, to shatter the earthly, sinful powers that sought conquest and control, influence and access. 

           What does this mean, for us strong men, who have succeeded in this world, who have found ourselves with financial security, with power and influence in our community, with the ability to make our future more just, more merciful, more grace-filled? What does it mean for us who have hoarded status to ourselves and our friends, who have withheld healing from those in need, who have denied fellowship with sinners and social outcasts? I struggle with this every day. When we are so deeply ensconced in systems that oppress, in dividing the house against itself, how do we get out?

           And while I don’t think there is an answer, no one-off solution that will bring justice to an unjust world, salvation to all who need saving grace, hope for all who despair, I do think that it will begin with those of us strong men realizing that the house needs to be plundered, that the bounty and blessings of God must be shared, and letting ourselves be bound.

            Letting ourselves be bound by a desire to be the body of Christ in the world, bound as faithful ministers of God’s grace to extend healing hands, listening ears, and helpful hearts to those in need. Letting ourselves be bound by those blessed ties which bind our hearts in Christian love. Letting ourselves be bound by our conviction that God’s grace comes not only to those who are righteous and good, but to those who are flawed, broken, and sinful.

Worthy and Redeemed

Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights, over Bear Lake in Alaska. via

This is my sermon from last Sunday, the third of June. The text is Isaiah's call, and it can be found in all its NRSV glory here: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=206352410. The sermon is about the doctrine of total depravity (but read it anyway).
 

Have y’all ever heard of the Northern Lights? They only happen that I know of, along the northern edge of the United States and in Canada. Supposed to be one of the most beautiful things you’ll ever see.  I had heard of it before, also known as the Northern Lights, but I’d never seen it, nor had my roommate Stacey. When we heard, we went out from our room onto the fire escape of our building, and looked out and could see something faintly, but the light from the building was too bright to see clearly. So we went down the fire escape and down the road from school into the cornfield next door. Everywhere you looked, people were stopped, on their way back to the dorms or the library or wherever, just staring up at the night sky. 

            When we finally got far enough away from the lights to see it clearly we were amazed. I had always heard of the Northern Lights as streaks of white light, but on truly good nights for it, the lights show up in different colors, as if someone streaked glitter highlighters all over the night sky. We stood outside in awe, staring at the majesty of creation, suddenly aware of our own size relative to the world we live in, the universe around us. 

            It is moments like these that we suddenly find ourselves confronted with the majesty of God.  I’ve experienced it most often outside and alone, whether watching a sunset from the patio or wandering around on a hike, but I’ve often been struck by this feeling of awe, at the wondrous work of creation that God wrought. 

            Rudolf Otto talks about this feeling. He refers to it as the creature feeling, when we are seized with fear and trembling, suddenly aware of our own mortality in reference to the immortal. It is in a moment like this that we find Isaiah today. Isaiah sees a vision of the powerful presence of the Almighty. The hem of God’s robe fills the temple, smoke fills the house, and the voices of the seraphs in attendances praise the Lord so powerfully that it shakes the very foundations of the building. 

            And Isaiah’s response is purely natural. He is suddenly filled with awareness of his own sinfulness, his own shamefulness, his own overwhelming creature-ness, standing before one who is supreme over all creatures. It is as if, like Adam and Eve, suddenly he is aware of his own nakedness, his own weakness, his own enfleshedness. He finds himself in want of a fig leaf. And he declares, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” 

            He’s like Peter, who sees Jesus’ miracle that filled his fishing boat with fish beyond number, and declares, “depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” Or Like Abraham, who says, “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. The presence of such greatness makes us realize how little we are in comparison. As Otto explains it, “It is the emotion of a creature, abased and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to that which is supreme over all creatures.”[1]

            This is the root of a classic Presbyterian doctrine that has obtained a bit of a bad reputation over the years. It is the doctrine of total depravity (it’s the T in the Reformed acronym TULIP). It’s received a bad reputation because people who don’t understand it in relationship to God think it’s a little harsh. They accuse reformed believers of telling people that they are worthless, and in a world where self-esteem is prized over logic, this seems a great sin. But what these people don’t realize is that the doctrine of total depravity can only be understood in the greater reality of the greatness of God. We are not worthless and alone, as people who misinterpret this doctrine would say, but all of our worth is given to us by the Almighty.  

Now this can be taken too far. The critics do have some ammunition. There have been, and probably still are pastors who preach our sinfulness so much they never have time to get to the grace part, or they have us believing that we are worthless. But the idea of total depravity must always be balanced with the Scriptural proclamation that we were made in the image of God. We have worth, our lives are not empty, our spirits not crushed, because God, in God’s infinite goodness, has seen fit to give it to us. 

            How radical an idea this is, in a world where we are constantly seeking the approval of others. We want someone to tell us we’re beautiful, we want to be recognized as good leaders, as important people in society, as good parents, good teachers. We spend our lives hoping that someone will declare us worthy, obsessing over what other people think of us, and God’s grace comes to us and tells us that we are already worthy, we have been made worthy by our Creator, and we need not worry. What an incredible thought!

            And so it happens with Isaiah, standing in the presence of God, feeling all too creaturely, all too unworthy to be in this great presence. Just as he is brought to confess, as we are, that we are insignificant compared to the power of God, one of the seraphs brings to him a live coal, touches it to his lips, and declares to him that his guilt has departed and that his sins have been blotted out. In spite of his unworthiness, his overwhelming smallness in the face of the Infinite, the Almighty, God cleanses him, counting him as righteous, erasing his sinfulness and making him worthy to stand before the Lord. 

            This is the greatness of God. God’s love is so great, God’s mercy so infinite, that God can come down even to us, lowly and insignificant though we are, and make us worthy of his love. God’s love for us runs so deep that God took on flesh, and all of the creaturely limitations there in, that everyone might experience God’s grace, that all of us might have our sins forgiven, our wounds healed, our hearts uplifted. 

            As Jesus explains to Nicodemus, in our Gospel message for today, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” Friends we stand before God as sinners, unclean and unworthy, like Isaiah, lost and alone. But the good news for today is this: God does not condemn sinners. God welcomes us. God redeems us. And God calls us to lives worthy of the grace which we have been given, that we might stand in the presence of the Almighty, as sinners redeemed, and say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me”

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[1] Otto, Rudolf, “The Idea of the Holy” Trans. John Harvey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. p. 10.

Follow Where God Leads - A Sermon for Pentecost (A few weeks late)

I'm still a few weeks behind on putting up sermons, and I have no excuse (it's not like I'm not just copying and pasting these into the blog). I just returned from Presbytery this evening, and in spite of all the bureaucratic wranglings, I still return excited about all the ways the Spirit is moving among Presbyterians across Mission Presbytery. The sermon illustration comes from a sermon by Tom Long, called "What's the Gift" that you can check out if you click on the footnote. He's a much better preacher than I am, so you may want to just skip to the bottom and go for it. Hopefully it will help remind everyone that God is here in the midst of our bureaucratic wranglings, and that we should be prepared for God to fill us, inspire us, and upend us, as we seek to listen for what the Spirit is doing, and try to keep up.

Follow Where God Leads

When Reverend Tom Long was first beginning his ministry as a young minister at a small church, he started a pastor’s Sunday School class on the basics of Christian faith. He invited anyone who was new to the faith or would like a refresher course to come.

            When the class began, he entered the room expecting it to be filled with people. Instead, he found three elementary school children, little girls, waiting on him to begin the class. Over the next several weeks, he tried to hide his disappointment, and teach these young girls about what it is to be a Christian. The week before Pentecost Sunday, he asked, “Do you know what Pentecost is?” None of them did.

            “Well,” he said, Pentecost was when the church was seated in a circle and tongues of fire came down from heaven and landed on their heads and the spoke the gospel in all the languages of the world.”

            Two of the girls took this new information with nonchalance, but the third’s eyes grew wide and jaw dropped all the way too the floor. When she finally pulled herself together enough to speak, she said, “Reverend Long, we must have been absent that Sunday!”

            The beautiful thing, Long says, is not that the girl misunderstood. The beautiful thing is that she thought it could have happened there, in that little church, that God’s Spirit could have come down and given them a word to speak that the world so desperately need to hear.[1]

            It is easy to get cynical about the church, especially in this day and age. It’s easy to wonder if God’s Spirit is still alive in the church. Church, for many people, has become one more activity in a schedule that is already too full. One more committee meeting to go to, one more batch of cookies to bake, set of phone calls to make.  It’s easy for us to no longer believe that the Spirit could be alive in the midst of budget cuts and volunteer burnout, of never-ending committee meetings and never enough relaxation. The Spirit of God can be hard to find. And often we don’t realize it, but we’ve stopped looking for it. We’ve gotten so tangled up in all the work that we have to do that we’ve begun to think that it’s all about us doing it. 

            Now some people might tell you that this has not always been the case. That bureaucracy has not always entangled us, or that the Presbyterian desire for decency and order has not always conflicted with the need to be Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. But I offer up today’s text as an example. We have, today, a beautiful and familiar story of God’s Spirit entering the people like a mighty rushing wind, and alighting on them as tongues of flame, filling them with the Holy Spirit that gave them words to speak and new ways to speak them so that everyone was able to hear. It declares that the Holy Spirit was alive and well during those times.

            What we often forget, is that this story is situated between two dry, very orderly stories of church bureaucracy. The story that immediately precedes the story of Pentecost is the election of new officers, in which the community gathers together to select a representative, just as we do in our church in electing session members. They elect Matthias as the new 12^th disciple, and likely immediately commission him to chair several committees. After the story of Pentecost come more stories of the inner workings of church.  In Acts 6, a task force is created to provide for the widows of the community, in response to a complaint by the Hellenists that the food was not being distributed equally by other factions. The entire chapter of Acts 15 is given over to a deeply divided council meeting regarding that standards of membership in the community. Does any of this sound familiar?  The reality we experience in the book of Acts is that God is not only present even in the inner workings, the seeming endless tedium of what is involved in real ministry, but God is working in and through each of us towards the manifestation of God’s kingdom here on earth.

             The book of Acts tells of incredible miracles of the Spirit that we hardly believe could happen anymore. But it does so in the midst of telling us stories of the church working out what it is to follow the Spirit in committee meetings, task forces and general assemblies. And the underlying theme within that is that God’s spirit is alive wherever its people are gathered, and even in places where God’s people have not yet gathered. It is found in the midst of working together, negotiating the conflicting visions of where we think the church is going, praying and listening for the Spirit in our lives, going to meetings, making phone calls, and looking over financials. God’s Spirit is present among us, . God is present among us.

            This is incredible news for us. Not only because it declares that God will be with us even in the tedium of our ministry, but because it proclaims once again that God will be at work in the world whether we are or not. As Jesus told us in the gospel of Luke, if we were to stop proclaiming God, even the rocks and the trees would rise up to give glory to the Lord.

            What a relief it is to know this! What a relief it is for us who often feel the weight of the whole church on our shoulders, who take on the burdens of worrying about the church’s future, who take on the responsibility for the church’s successes and failures. To know that the church’s future does not depend on us! 

            The story of Pentecost is the story of God’s Spirit coming down amidst the day to day practicalities of working together as a community of faith. The people gathered together in that place did not bring the Holy Spirit with them. They did not call it up with just the right words or hand motions or any act of their own. They were waiting, as Jesus had told them, in Jerusalem. And when the Spirit of God came to them, with the sound of wind and as a vision of flames upon their heads, they welcomed it.

            This is our call. Not to build the future of our church, or shape where we will go over the next few years, for these will be done by God as God sees fit whether we want them or not. Our task is to listen for the Holy Spirit, to hear where it is calling, to follow where it is leading us, and to welcome it, and try to keep up.

            As you go out this week, into the world and all of the obligations therein, I encourage you to ask yourself. “Where do I see the Holy Spirit moving in my life?” What sort of a future does God have planned for me?” “How do I get myself in line with what the Spirit is doing?”

            That perhaps some day, when we hear someone telling us a story of the day that the Holy Spirit came among the people of the church, and filled them all with the words which they needed to say, the courage they needed to go out into the world as vessels of God’s grace, our eyes can go wide and a smile will cross our faces as we say, “Yes, I remember that Sunday.”

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[1] Long, Thomas G. “What’s the Gift” Day1.org, May 27, 2012. http://day1.org/3822-whats_the_gift

A Mother's Love

         In the past few weeks I’ve come face to face with my own vanity. I’ve been hiding sermons that I didn’t think were as good as some of the ones I posted earlier. However, after reading this post on Jamie the Very Worst Missionary’s blog, I’m trying to be a little bit more open, and get back into posting. This was my Mother’s Day Sermon, from almost a month ago. It includes one of my favorite images for God, that of a mother hen sheltering her chicks through a fire. Hopefully we will be reminded that the love we get from our mothers is Godly, and our mothers and fathers are both Godly when they reflect God’s love for us.

A Mother’s Love

            The passage previous to this one, in John 15: 1-8, is one of the 7 famous, “I am” statements in John. “I am the true vine,” Jesus says, and my Father is the vinegrower” “Abide in me,” he says, as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.”

            In our passage for today, which begins with verse 9, Jesus builds on these verses, helping us understand what it means to abide in him, and to be rooted in Christ.

            We’ve talked a bit before about the community to whom the Gospel of John and the letters of John were written. There are two major conflicts that define this community. The first is a conflict with the authorities in the synagogue. They had been thrown out of their synagogue for claiming that Jesus was the Messiah. The second conflict is an internal one. It’s nature is unclear, perhaps it was people giving into the persecution from other people in their community and abandoning the face. Or it may have been a theological disagreement, on whether or not Jesus was truly human, or a purely spiritual being. Nevertheless, the letters of John seem to make it clear that there are strong disagreements within the community. When we read today’s passage in the context of these conflicts, Jesus’ commandments take on new meaning.

            See, Jesus discusses in verses 1-8 that He is the true vine and abiding in him will lead us to bear good fruit. The implication of course is that there are other vines to which we can attach ourselves, and there are. Vines of ideology, vines of selfishness, fear, and pride, all have the ability to lead us down pathways that do not bear fruit. Jesus makes some contrasts between those who bear good fruit and those who do not.

            And then beginning in verse 9, Jesus talks a little bit more about what it means to bear good fruit, what it means to abide in him. In verse 9 Jesus explains what it means to abide in him, what it means to be connected to the true vine and bear fruit. “Abide in my love,” he says. He continues, by saying that to abide in his love you must obey his commandments. And then he gives us a commandment. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

            Now we seem to live in an era of unprecedented polarization. The rhetoric of the pundit class has become nearly unconscionable, as they seek to tar the other side with broad strokes and cruel words. And I don’t know about you, but I get caught up in all of this very easily.

            And we have this problem in Church as well. One of the things I love about Presbyterians is that we are a very diverse bunch theologically, and historically we have tended to trust each other. One of the essential tenets of our system of governance is that “God alone is Lord of conscience,” which proclaims that unlike some churches that force a rigid adherence to the doctrines of whose in charge right now, Presbyterians are encouraged to study and understand the Scriptures, and believe them as they understand it, trusting that their understanding is guided by the Holy Spirit. We’re not called to some blind obedience to doctrines that don’t make sense, and we’re not kicked out of the church if we disagree with the pastor. But what that means is that on occasion, things can get a little tense. Indeed it is only the Presbyterian love for decency and order that has kept some of the Presbytery meetings in the last decade or so from turning into shouting matches.

With the intensity of our disagreements, it is no wonder that sometimes people outside of the church don’t want to come in. As Gail O’Day puts it, “The world is not likely to be impressed by Christian love for outsiders, however expansive, nor compelled to join the company of believers, if those who call themselves Christians exhibit hatred for one another.” (O’Day, Gail. “John.” The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. C. A. Newsom and S. H. Ringe. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992. p. 302)

            Now as I mentioned before the evangelist wrote this Gospel with a particular community in mind, a community that was experiencing serious disagreements, even, perhaps schism, over issues of theology and behavior. A community a lot like ours. And of all the things that Jesus had said and done in his three year ministry, the evangelist chose this one to record for us, in which Jesus, calling us to abide in him, and to live by his commandments gives us this one commandment, to love one another as He loves us.

            The other Gospels give us the Golden Rule, when talking about how we should treat our neighbors. You should love your neighbor as yourself. But the Gospel of John goes far beyond that. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Christ loved us so much more deeply than we can love ourselves. As we read about elsewhere, Christ, the good shepherd, loves us so much that he lays down his life for us. He chooses death, that we might have life. Jesus loved us so much that he mourns when we make bad choices. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he cries (that’s us) “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

            This is the kind of love that we are called to have for each other. The love of a hen for her chicks. The love of a mother for her child. This love that seeks to shelter us, to protect us, to care for us even when we do not want to be cared for. We could use a little bit more of that love in our world right now.

            Tom Wright, in talking about God’s love, tells the story of a fire in the barnyard. Fires are scary for us, but for animals penned or trapped in, it can be difficult to survive.  But in the midst of the danger all around, a mother hen gathers her chicks beneath her wings, shelters them, comforts them, and loves them. After the fires die down, people sifting through the wreckage find the mother hen, scorched and blackened. And beneath her wings, chicks, still alive, protected by the mother hen who laid down her life.  We don’t often find better metaphors for what Jesus love for us is like than this. He lay down his life for us.

            Jesus’ love for us is like this mother’s love. And we could stand to remember that in the midst of our conflicts and disagreements, Jesus’ commandment is this, that you love one another as He loved you. Not only with the people on the other side of the aisle, or country, or theological spectrum, but with the people we see every day as well. It can almost be easier to get along with our enemies who we don’t see very often than the ones with whom we rub shoulders every day. With everyone, we’re called to love as He loved us, to love as a hen loves her chicks, as a mother loves her child.

            This Mother’s Day as we seek to honor the mothers among us, I’m reminded of the many ways in which mother’s sacrifice to take care of their families every day, and how God’s love is reflected in that. Our society encourages this in our mothers, to the point that self-sacrificing can come very naturally, almost to the point that we can lose ourselves. It is more difficult for those of us who were not so encouraged or well-trained. For men, it can be easy to let the women get all the self-sacrificing glory. We become, to use blood type terminology, universal receivers, accepting the sacrifices of the women around us, the universal donors, in our lives. So for those of us who are not as traditionally encouraged to lay themselves down for others, it can be even more of a challenge, to love others as deeply as Christ loves us.   We’ve been wired to let others do the sacrificing, because that’s how those roles have traditionally worked.  But Jesus encourages all of us to love with the love that he has for us, a love that shelters us, protects us, welcomes us, saves us and redeems us, through laying down his life.

            Let all of us, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, Christians, friends, are all called to share with each other the love that Christ has given us. We’re called to lay down our lives for each other, to live and die for each other, that each of us may abide in Jesus’ love, may abide in Jesus’, connected to the true vine which gives us all life, and leads us to bear good fruit. For no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

To Be Continued...

Here is my Easter Sunday Sermon, I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to get it up here, but I've responded to the business of late March/early April by slowing down for the last week or so, and haven't gotten around to getting things posted. It's title is "To Be Continued..." and the passage is Mark 16:1-8.

     

In the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, there’s a funny exchange about the famed pirate ship the Black Pearl. Upon hearing the ship arrive and attack, Captain Jack Sparrow says,  “I know those guns! It’s the Pearl…”

The man with him replies: “The Black Pearl?  I’ve heard stories. She’s been preyin’ on ships and settlements for near ten years. Never leaves any survivors.”

            “No survivors?” Jack replies. “Then where do the stories come from, I wonder?”

            In the earliest manuscripts of Mark, the book ends with our passage for today. Two women, fleeing from the tomb, and the phrase, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” This is a particularly unsatisfying ending. It’s a paradox, of course, for if the women really didn’t say anything to anyone about it, then how did Mark come to know what happened to tell us? But Mark leaves the story right there. Like when you are watching a television show, and just as they seem to be about to resolve the drama, it freezes, and “to be continued…” show up at the bottom of the screen. This drives me crazy, the realization that I’ll have to wait until next week for them to resolve this plot line.

But in this case, it’s even worse, because in spite of the incomplete nature of Mark’s gospel, this giant “to be continued…” at the bottom of the screen, nothing else is coming.  It’s unsatisfying, to us, because the story seems unfinished. 

            So unfinished, in fact, that later scribes added their own endings, which you will find in your Bible in brackets, the shorter ending of Mark, and the longer ending, which began appearing on copies of Mark about a hundred years after it was first written. Each of them wraps the story up a little bit, adding on resurrection appearances which occur in the other Gospels, and closing up the loose ends given in Mark’s “to be continued…”   

            I can see how this would happen. A scribe, laboriously copying the Gospel by candlelight, gets through verse 8 and looks for the next part and realizes this is the end. And he says, that can’t be right, and adds a few verses, based on what he remembers from the other gospels. These later endings relieve us of the tension, relieving us of the logical paradox and giving the story an ending so that it wouldn’t seem so incomplete, missing any appearance of the resurrected Christ. But I think Mark wants to leave us with an unfinished story. I think Mark wants us to be a little bit uncomfortable. Mark wants us to feel the tension of the unfinished “to be continued…”

            See, this kind of uncomfortable situation happens often in Mark.  The people who ought to see and believe somehow do not. In spite of being told over and over again, Jesus’ disciples didn’t get it. [Peter, the first disciple mentioned in the book of Mark, denies Jesus three times. James and John, who were brought up to the mountaintop to see Jesus transfigured with Moses and Elijah, request extra glory in the kingdom of God. ]

            It’s not as if Jesus is unclear about the plan. In chapter 8, verses 31, it says, “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Immediately after that, Peter pulls him aside and rebukes him, telling him not to spout that kind of nonsense around.

             

            Jesus tells the disciples again, in Chapter 9, verse 31, which says, “for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’” But the disciples spend the next few minutes arguing over who is the greatest, as if their teacher hadn’t just declared that he would be rising from the dead sometime in the near future. 

            It happens a third time, and I’m not even sure I need to tell you about it, because by this point it is so clear to you, but it is not to the disciples, so here goes. Jesus, in Chapter 10, verse 33, says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” Immediately after this story, the disciples still don’t understand. James and John come to request extra glory in the kingdom of heaven.   

            It’s like when I was a freshman in high school I had to read the Charles Dicken’s novel, Great Expectations. And I hated it. It wasn’t Dicken’s writing, wordy and hard to understand, though it was. It was that every single time the main character, Pip, would come to a point in his life where he needed to make an important decision, he would make the exact wrong call. And it was incredibly frustrating. As I worked my way through the book, I got angrier and angrier at Pip, watching him make mistake after mistake, almost yelling at the book, “Pip! Are you kidding me! There’s no possible way that could work out for you! What are you thinking!” 

            Or when watching a horror movie, and someone is alone in the house, and the power goes out and spooky things start to happen, and then they hear a noise and decide to go down into the basement to check it out. Don’t go down into the basement! How can they not see what we see? How can they not understand what is so obvious to us?

            This is what the disciples do over and over again in the book of Mark. It’s almost frustrating to watch, as Jesus becomes more and more clear about what is going to happen, and the disciples still manage to misunderstand or ignore it. It makes you want to grab them by the shoulders and say, “Peter, come on, dude! He’s telling you the answers!  It shouldn’t be that hard!” 

            But this is how Mark writes his gospel, all of the ones who should see, do not. And the ones that do see, are exactly the ones you wouldn’t expect. There are the demons legion, who proclaim, “I know who you are,” as Jesus casts them out. But they can’t exactly be counted on to proclaim the story of Christ. There was the Roman centurion, who said, as Jesus was being crucified, that truly this is the son of God. But he was crucifying Jesus when he said that. And as a Roman soldier, he’s not exactly the one to go proclaiming to the world that Christ is the Messiah. 

            The reason Mark does this is to call us to a greater response to the resurrected Christ. Mark intentionally leaves us in these unsatisfying situations so that our dissatisfaction might turn into action. He uses the failure of those who ought to see, and the unlikeliness of those who do see to call us to the realization that someone must see, and understand, and follow. And who is left? If the ones who ought to see and understand do not, and the ones who do understand are Romans or demons (which, at the time of Christ, were roughly equivalent in social stature for people living in Palestine), who is it that can tell of what happened there? If the women who saw the empty tomb do not tell of what they saw, who can proclaim it? If Mark leaves his gospel unfinished, with a “to be continued..” who will finish the story?

Us.

This is the point of Mark’s gospel. This is why it ends abruptly, unfinished, with a sort of “to be continued…” that does not get resolved. Because Mark is calling on us to see and understand, to recognize the significance of what has happened and to act on it, to continue the story. 

            It is our calling to finish the story that begins with the empty tomb. It is our calling, to proclaim what we have seen and heard, to be the resurrection in the world, to go out into the world with Christ in our hearts and on our lips, forever praising God that Jesus Christ is risen, and so shall we be also. 

            Listening to the declaration from the man in white, sitting inside the tomb helps direct us as to how we should do it. . He tells us to go to Galilee, and expect to find the risen Lord. The end of Mark’s Gospel points us back to the beginning. Galilee is where Jesus did ministry. Galilee is where people who were blind received their sight, where demons were cast out, and people were healed by the touch of Christ’s hand. Galilee is where Jesus preached a Kingdom of Justice, Righteousness and Reconciliation. 

            This is what we are called to. We are called to go to our Galilee, and continue the story. To give sight to those who are blinded to the ways of salvation. To cast out the demons of sin and selfishness and despair. To heal people with loving hands and warm embraces. To preach Christ’s message of justice and righteousness and reconciliation. To proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand.  We are called to go out to our Galilee, the place in our lives where we are called to minister, and be Christ’s body to everyone we meet, continuing the story that begins in the empty tomb.

            We’re called to go to Galilee and prepare ourselves for the arrival of the risen Christ, and fill you up with the glory of the resurrected Christ, with joy, and power, and passion, and eternal life, for just as the stone was rolled aside from Jesus’ tomb, so have the stones been rolled aside from all that entombs us in our lives, from sin, and death, selfishness and weakness, hopelessness and despair. 

            Friends, Mark’s gospel ends abruptly with the empty tomb, but this is where our story begins. Christ is Risen. The Stone has been rolled away. The kingdom of God is at hand. Believe it, and proclaim it to the ends of the earth. Continue the story of Christ in your lives, in wonder and amazement, in excitement and joy, in celebration of what happened on this day thousands of years ago, that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, and we will meet him in Galilee.

Holy Week

This is a homily I gave on Holy Wednesday. It comes out of a story by Carol Howard Merritt on Christian Century (or really on www.christiancentury.org) . You can access that story here: http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2012-03/love-and-lent. The text that I used for this particular homily was John 13:1-20.

Carol Merritt was 15 years old. It’s that age where you’re old enough to know that something is going on, but not old enough that anyone would ever consider telling you what it is. But there was definitely something going on. 

Carol hadn’t been in church that morning, but she knew that people at church were very upset. Her mother was on the phone all afternoon. She heard snippets of conversation, and slowly began to piece together what had happened. “I think he wanted to get caught” she overheard her mother say on the phone. 
“I saw him in the parking lot with her the other day.”
“What are we going to do?”
“He said in the sermon that he wants to “move on” 
“There’s a meeting tonight, elders and leaders. No, I won’t be there. But my husband will.”
Slowly, Carol began to piece together the story. Their pastor had had an affair, and confessed it in his sermon that morning. He said that he’d succumbed to “temptation,” as if it were just another obstacle in his path, instead of the reality, that he’d thrown his family and his church family into chaos. He said that he was ready to move on, but the congregation was only learning what had happened. They wanted facts, details, explanations. The scandal would not soon be over.

Carol wrote about this experience in the Christian Century magazine a few weeks ago. She talks about how her mother paced around the kitchen that Sunday, after her Dad had gone to the elder’s meeting. And then, she says, her mother picks up a big basin, and puts some of the family’s plushest towels in it. And she shouts. “Car-o! Let’s go!” And piles the kids into the car.

The parsonage is about 30 minutes away. Her mother let herself in. Margaret was sitting in the living room. She’s sitting quietly in the dark room, breathing deeply. Carol’s mother silently goes into the kitchen and fills the basin full of water. She sets it down beside Margaret, and takes off Margaret’s slippers, placing them gently on the floor beside her. Without a word, her mother takes Margarets feet, slips them into the warm water, and begins to wash.

The tears begin to flow immediately. They all know what will happen tomorrow. Being the spouse of a pastor involves living in a spotlight that you never asked for, accepting attention and expectations that you never sought. Working through a spouse’s unfaithfulness is a daunting assignment. But when it happens publicly, in a spotlight you never wanted, the betrayal is much greater.

People would talk about Margaret tomorrow. The most intimate aspects of the affair would be public. People would wonder what was wrong in the relationship. They would declare themselves too smart for this to happen to them. They would imply that Margaret was too cold or uninteresting to keep the attentions of her husband. They would say that she was weak for staying, or cruel for leaving. Tomorrow. In the midst of a painful family drama played out for the whole world to see, Margaret would have to evaluate everything. His lies, her reputation, his job, her financial situation, her children, even who were her friends. Tomorrow.

But tonight, Carol’s mother took Margaret’s feet, lifted them out of the water and dried them of water and tears, then placed them on plush towels. Tonight, she wanted Margaret to know that she was loved, even in the midst of painful betrayal, cherished to the ends of her toes.

    On the night that Jesus died, he gathered a big basin and tied a towel around himself. He knelt down before each of his disciples, even the one who was to betray him, and washed their feet. This was a common practice in the Mediterranean world, where sandals were the most common form of foot protection, and the dust from roads and streets would cling to people’s feet. But it was for servants, or slaves to do, not teachers. The master of the house did not wash the feet of the slave, nor the teacher his students. But Jesus did. Though he was their master and teacher, he knelt down before them as a servant, and he taught them to do the same. Peter fought it, he argued  with Jesus, and I think we understand him. One of the hardest things to do in life is sit back, and let yourself be loved. And so Jesus washed his disciples feet. He knew what would happen tomorrow. The wounds, the suffering, and worse, the betrayal. But that night in the Upper Room he declared that they were loved, cherished to the ends of their toes.

Friends, we’ve seen what people can do to one another, even in church. We’ve seen people get hurt in the church, or be hurt by the church. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that most of us, at some point or another in our lives have been on both sides of it. We’ve been hurt, and we’ve hurt others. And if not, we’ve heard stories about it,
 “So-and-so doesn’t go to church anymore since they said that about her son” or
“We appreciate the suggestion but you know after what happened we can’t put those two on a committee together.”
And even more often you don’t hear about it, people bear their wounds silently, slowly drifting away from the community, until eventually their gone.

Why do we do this to each other?  I don’t know. The Calvinist in me says that it’s because we’re inherently broken. That as humans, we’re selfish, and we behave carelessly with each other’s feelings because in our limited human nature it’s hard to see beyond our own troubles to understand another’s. Or perhaps it’s that the world is just so dirty and messy, that we can’t help but track some mud into our churches. And perhaps, just as Mom would make my brother and I take our shoes off before coming into her house, Jesus is telling us to take off our sandals, and wash each other’s feet, because we are standing on holy ground.

There is an intensity and a power to what Jesus did in the Upper Room that night. He takes on the role of a servant, and tells us that we should follow his example. That we should wash one another’s feet. He does so not only for his favorite disciples, or the most righteous, but each and every one, including the one who was to betray him. Jesus tells us that in the midst of pain, in the midst of suffering, we are to wash each other’s feet. We are to serve each other, to love one another as Christ has loved us, even to the ends of our toes. If we do so, perhaps we can find it within ourselves to see past our own hurts to the incredible mercy of Christ’s saving grace.

There is an intensity and a power about the way Carol’s mother goes to Margaret’s house when the rest of the congregation is going to a meeting at the church. While others clamor to figure out what has happened, to piece together details into a story, to assign blame and judgment, she goes to where the wound cut deepest, where it hurt the most, bringing nothing but love, a big basin, and soft towels.

It’s a reminder, of what Jesus did for his disciples on his final night, of how we are called to minister to those who need it the most, to go where others do not think to go, to be reminders that no matter what happens tomorrow, you are cherished, down to the ends of your toes.

Carol says her faith was formed that night, a fifteen year-old-girl watching her mother wash Margaret’s feet. Not by sinfulness and accusation, but by the love between two sisters in Christ, and the reminder that no matter what happens tomorrow, you are loved to the ends of your toes. So let us also be formed by what has happened, in Margaret’s sitting room and in that Upper Room. As Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

No matter what happens tomorrow, let us serve one another as ministers of Christ’s grace to each other. Let us love, even in the midst of betrayal. Let us go to where the wounds cut deepest, tending the wounded in our church and in our world. Let us let each other know, through our actions today and every single day, that as God’s children we are cherished, even to the ends of our toes.

By Grace, Through Faith, For Works

This is the sermon I preached last week. In it I talk about what it means that we are saved by faith, and to what purpose our salvation has been given to us. The text of the sermon was Ephesians 2:1-10.

        My wife’s granddad was an engineer in Texas City. Grandpa Wally moved there just after the explosion in 1947. The Texas City Disaster is known as the deadliest industrial accident in United States History. A ship, the S.S. Grandcamp carrying 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate bound for Europe to help farmers there rebuild after the war, exploded. The explosion was massive. It was as big as an atomic bomb. Though the ship was a mile out into the harbor, the devastation it wrought on land was intense. It leveled nearly a thousand buildings, including, among others, the Monsanto Chemical Company plant. Grandpa Wally was brought in to rebuild the plant, and while he was there he heard the other engineers tell stories of what had happened in the aftermath of the explosion. Wally was struck, with the bravery and heroism of ordinary people facing this extraordinary disaster.
        I was visiting Grandpa Wally last week, listening to the family tell stories about Wally and about the explosion in Texas City. Anyway, listening to these stories that Hannah’s family told, one of them stood out to me as an incredible metaphor for what our passage in Ephesians talks about today. For it is by the grace of God that we are saved, through our faith, which is not just belief but belief in action, for the purpose of good works, which God has prepared us for.

          One of Grandpa Wally’s coworkers was there, at the Monsanto Chemical Plant, when the explosion happened. It was Hannah’s Aunt Pat, who was telling us this story, and she couldn’t remember his name, but I’ll call him Jim, to make it easier for us to hear and understand the story. Jim was in the refinery when it caught fire. The initial blast was massive, shaking the building to its foundations. Shelves collapsed, tables fell over. Chemical containers spilled everywhere. One of these containers spewed something straight into Jim’s face. After he recovered from the initial blast, Jim tried to wipe his eyes clear, but it was no good, whatever it was that had sprayed him had blinded him. He couldn’t see.

        For a blind man in a burning building the chances of survival are slim. The blast threw furniture everywhere, blocking passages, and obscuring familiar routes. Navigating obstacles would be practically impossible. Jim began to try to feel his way out, knowing that he probably had no hope. Only a miracle could save him. On his own, he wouldn’t be able to navigate all of the obstacles and passageways to get out in time.

         The author of today’s passage from Ephesians begins by telling us that we were dead. “You were dead,” he says, “through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world.” The author here is talking about what life was like before his readers knew God, when they lived, “in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses.”

         Humanity on its own is fundamentally flawed. We’re sinful. Selfish. Broken. And it’s not really working for us. We can eat great food, have big houses and even bigger trucks, have good jobs and go on expensive vacations every year. But it’s not enough. Somehow we are all left wanting. We’re all seeking something more. Something fulfilling, something that makes us so satisfied that we say, as the Psalmist did, “my cup runneth over.”

          Without God we’re hopelessly incapable of finding it. We’re too easily tempted by the promises that the world offers us. We’re suckers for empty promises. Just look at how much attention we pay our politicians, all the news we watch, the campaign speeches, the debates, and the commercials. And the weird thing is that all of us know that when the campaign ends the promises will be forgotten. We know the promises are empty, but we chase after them anyway, blind to the one Promise that will truly fulfill us.

         In a sense, without God we’re like Grandpa’s friend Jim. Out on our own, trapped by our blindness, with no way of finding a path out, and really no hope of doing so. Like Jim, only a miracle could save us. Like Jim, we’re feeling our way around, trying to find our way out, but completely helpless to do so.

         But the miracle of God’s grace is that we are not alone in our world. As our passage tells us, “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.” God saves us from ourselves, from the things we do that condemn ourselves, from chasing after empty promises. God raises us up, together with Christ Jesus, making us righteous where we were unrighteous, clean where we were unclean, filled where we were empty and alone. God gives us exactly what we need. It doesn’t matter how far away from God we have become, how deep we find ourselves in the rabbit holes of empty promises and material things. God’s grace gives us exactly what we need to find our way out. Truly by the grace of God our cups runneth over. We were once blind, but now we see.

        As for Jim, his blindness did not go away. But I tell you that God’s grace saved him as it saves us. Not able to see, Jim was fumbling around, trying to find his way out, when he heard a voice. He wasn’t sure he heard it at first. But he stopped fumbling around for a moment, and above the noise of the fire there was a still, small voice, calling out. It was calling out for help. And Jim started moving towards the voice.

        Now that right there, is faith. It was a great leap to give up seeking to save his own lives and turn away to help another. He turned away from seeking his own needs, his own desires, his own dreams to go help someone. And faith is what makes the difference. See, when we have faith we can stop for a moment, we can let go of frantically feeling for the exit, we can let go of chasing empty promises, and listen for that still small voice, calling out, prepare the way of the Lord. And only in seeking the Lord, can we find the fulfillment and salvation that our hearts so deeply desire. Faith calls us to turn away from trying to save ourselves and to let ourselves be saved by the grace of God.

         In modern times we talk about faith as belief. In fact, many of us would say that they are synonyms. But this was not so in the New Testament. The word for faith is pistis, and though it is sometimes used as a synonym for belief, it also holds something more. Faith is belief that has been acted upon. In the Gospel of Matthew, for example, some people carry a paralyzed man in on a bed, to be healed by Jesus. The passage says, “when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Jesus did not see their beliefs; the passage does not say that Jesus knew what they had been thinking as Jesus does with the rich young ruler. He saw their actions, and it was through their actions, through acting on the beliefs that they held, that their friend was saved.

         Here’s another example. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus casts out demons, and one of the demons he casts out yells, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” Even the demons believe in Christ, but they do not have faith, because they do not act on their beliefs. In fact, they act against them.

          And Jim was saved through his faith as well. When he heard that voice calling, he went towards it, in spite of his own blindness. When Jim finally reached the source of the voice, he found a man, lying on the ground, crippled by the blast. He couldn’t walk, couldn’t get out on his own. But God’s grace works in mysterious ways, for although this man could not walk, he could see just fine. And so Jim hoisted him up upon his shoulders, and the man gave directions, and with one pair of legs and one pair of eyes between them, they slowly made their way out of the building.

           Our passage tells us that we are saved by grace, through faith. But our passage does not conclude with our salvation, for our salvation is not the end. Our salvation does not occur for our ends alone, but God’s. The passage tells us that God has created us in Christ Jesus for good works. Jim and the stranger he carried out that day were uniquely suited to the tasks which they had been given. Each of them was exactly what the other needed, at just the right moment, that they might both be saved from the fire.

           Each of us has also been given exactly what we need. And each of us as well has been given the gifts to be exactly what others need. Each of us is a member of the body of Christ, working together to further God’s will here on earth. We are not saved by works, but for works, that we be ministers to God’s children throughout the world. See, each and every one of us is a minister of Christ.

          Each of us was created and blessed with the gifts necessary to do our ministry. Some of us who are teachers are ministers to the children and adults that we teach, sharing with them God’s love and God’s gifts of knowledge, encouraging and enabling them to minister to others. Some of us who are listeners are ministers to those who come to us in sorrow, and in listening they help to share the other’s burdens and lighten their load. Not all of us are good with words, but we make food for someone who is sick or in sorrow, or we fix homes for people who cannot do it themselves. And when we do so, we not only fulfill a physical need, but also remind those in need that there is a community of people who loves and cares for them. Each and every one of us has a calling. Each and every once of us has been saved for the purpose of being ministers of Christ’s body to the world, going out to love and serve the Lord. Police officers are ministers that I admire greatly, for they are often the first people to respond to an incident, to minister and care for the victims.

         This is what the Word of God is to us today. That as we stumble around looking for answers, by grace we are given exactly what we need. Faith calls us into action, turning away from ourselves and towards each other. And when we do so we find the fulfillment of God’s promise of grace: new life in Christ and participation in the resurrected body. And we are saved with a purpose in mind, given exactly what we need to accomplish that purpose. We are saved by grace, through faith, for works. Truly, our cups runneth over.