Sermon for Second Sunday of Advent, "Journey - What Brings You Here?: Joseph," Matthew 1:18-25

Sermon 12/9/12

Matthew 1:18-25

Journey – What Brings You Here?: Joseph

            Are you the kind of person who can remember your dreams? Some people seem to be able to recall them easily, and some people never remember their dreams. I usually fall into that latter category, not remembering anything other than blurry images from my dreams. Do you wonder what our dreams mean, if anything? Are they just leftover thoughts from our day, thoughts our full and busy minds could no longer hold? Some dreams seem pretty straightforward in meaning. When I first became a pastor, I prepared my sermons much earlier in the week than I do now. This wasn’t because I was so much more diligent or because I was so much less a procrastinator. No, this was because like clockwork, I would have nightmares about forgetting to write a sermon and being caught unprepared on Sunday morning, unless, in real life, I had already finished my work early in the week. Pretty easy to figure out what those dreams meant! Other times, I just have no clue. I once had a very elaborate, multi-part dream, that involved train tracks, coins falling, and chasing after a seminary friend. I was curious about it, since it was so vivid and I actually remembered it, so for fun I looked up in a “dream interpretation” book what each of the items in my dream might mean. Every single thing in my dream meant: money. Money, money, money. So much for that!

            Still though, dreams can be powerful. Shortly after my grandfather died, back in 1998, my mother had a clear dream, where my grandfather, no longer frail from illness, but healthy and happy, visited her at work, and assured her that he was ok. This dream gave my mom an incredible sense of peace, in the midst of the pain and grief. She felt like God was reminding her that her father was ok – more than ok – and she trusted the message she received and was comforted. What have your dreams been telling you?

            The scriptures are full of stories of God communicating through dreams. In Genesis, we encounter Jacob dreaming a vision of a ladder ascending into heaven, Pharaoh, dreaming of feast and famine in Egypt, Joseph, Jacob’s son, dreaming of his role that will set him apart from his eleven brothers. And the dreams continue through the prophets, and into the New Testament, where we encountered Peter, back in October, who experienced in a trance a vision of God opening the table to Jew and Gentile alike. Dreams can be powerful. And dreams play a significant role in the story of Jesus’ birth, as today, we turn our journey’s focus to Joseph.      

Now, you might think Joseph is a pretty significant figure in the New Testament, in the story of Jesus, and of course, he is: He is the husband of Mary, Jesus’s mother, and he is Jesus’ earthly father, the parent who raises him. But if you think about what we read about Joseph in the scriptures, you might be surprised to realize that other than passing mentions, like, “Hey, isn’t that Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph?”, and the scene where Jesus is twelve and stays behind in the temple while his parents, not even named separately, are searching for him, Joseph is only mentioned, only appears in relation to the birth and surrounding events of Jesus. That’s it. So, it is significant, too, for us to note that every scene in the birth story where Joseph appears, we hear about a dream he’s had that contains a message for him about God’s plan, how God will use Joseph to help usher in the birth of Jesus, the savior.

            We first encounter Joseph in the gospel of Matthew. Luke’s gospel tells the birth story mostly from Mary’s point of view, but Matthew focuses on Joseph. Matthew tells us that Mary has been found to be with child, from the Holy Spirit, and then tells us how Joseph responds. Joseph, we read, is a righteous man. We don’t know what Mary has told Joseph about her pregnancy – whether she told him the child was God’s, and Joseph doubted, or whether Mary even had a chance to explain at all – we don’t know how Joseph learned the news. But Joseph, preparing to divorce Mary, a legal step that would have to be taken even after an engagement, chooses to do so discreetly, wishing to shield Mary from the full punishment she could have received – death by stoning. Just as he is planning the divorce, he has a dream. A messenger from God tells him in a dream that indeed, the child Mary carries is from the Holy Spirit. They’re to name the child Jesus – which means savior – and he will be God-with-us – Immanuel. When Joseph wakes up, we read that “he did as the angel of the Lord commanded, and wed Mary, who eventually gives birth to Jesus. After Jesus is born, we encounter Joseph in Chapter 2, as twice more, a messenger appears in Joseph’s dreams, and directs Joseph where to flee, where to move to so that Jesus is safe from those, like King Herod, who would do him harm.  

            I’m amazed by what we don’t hear in these short passages with Joseph. We don’t hear Joseph ask questions. We don’t hear Joseph say, “Why me?” or, “I don’t think I heard you right,” or “I don’t believe you” or “that’s totally ridiculous, God,” or “that’s just not a practical way to have the savior come. Don’t you have any more sensible ideas?” Joseph dreams, and when he wakes, he acts. Throughout my ministry, a common question I’ve had people ask me is this: “Why doesn’t God speak to us as clearly as God spoke to people in the days of the Bible? Why don’t we hear God or see God in the same ways anymore?”

But let me ask you, if God spoke to you like God spoke to these biblical figures, would you believe it? Even as you are ready to say, “of course I would!,” try to be very honest with yourself. When Aaron and I went through the process to be ordained, we had to take a psychological assessment, with hundreds of questions, and several of them asked the question, “Do you hear voices?” in one way or another. Now, for pastors-to-be, that’s a loaded question! Do you mean the voice of God? But no, we knew that “hearing voices” was something that would be sign of concern, of mental health issues. If we encountered God in the ways folks did in the scriptures, I suspect we, and others, would mostly think we were crazy. I think God speaks to us in ways that we can hear God. And so if it is easier for us to hear God through careful study of the scripture, through prayer, through practices we somehow consider “logical,” God will speak to us that way.

            But what if our relationship with God could be so much richer, what if our discipleship could be so much deeper, what if the dreams we could dream with God could be so much more vivid if we could learn to believe what we proclaim: nothing is impossible with God! I recently took my nephew Sam to see a movie, “Rise of the Guardians.” The story is about Jack Frost, who joins Santa Claus, the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny as guardians over the children of the world. Deep stuff, right? The conflict comes when children begin, because of a villain, to stop believing in these guardians, causing them to lose their powers, and eventually to disappear altogether. Jack Frost eventually finds a way to help the children believe again, by helping them to use their imagination, have fun, and experience joy.

            What kind of imagination, what kind of believing did it take, do you think, to believe that the automobile could exist? The airplane? The television? The computer? The smartphone? Just yesterday, I downloaded an app for my phone where you can hum a tune into the phone, and the app will tell you what song it is. I was just marveling, awe-struck, that such a thing is possible, and it isn’t even new technology anymore! Sure, all of these inventions and innovations have hard science behind them, facts and figures. But without imagination, without believing there must be some way to make it work, we would never have all these things in our world. 

            Is God speaking to you? Is God trying to find a way to make God’s dreams into your dreams? Our aim is to be more open, more willing to hear and see God in unusual ways, so that we are ready, like Joseph, to acts, when God puts a dream – sleeping or waking – into our mind. There’s a brainstorming exercise that we’re going to try soon with our Visioning Team at Liverpool First, where you imagine all the ways you might build a better bathtub. There’s no restrictions. Every idea you think of gets written down, and no one is allowed to say, “Well, that wouldn’t work because…” A carpeted bathtub? Sure! A bathtub on wheels? Sure! A bathtub where you soak in peanut butter? Sure! No wrong answers! I’ve used this activity before, and you wouldn’t believe how hard it is for sensible adults to let loose and dream about a better bathtub. It is nearly impossible for people to refrain from trying to limit themselves to practical suggestions. Nearly impossible.

            Could a baby be the savior of the world? Impossible! …Nearly. Could Mary’s pregnancy be from the Holy Spirit? Impossible! At least you’d think. Could Joseph endure the scandal of staying with Mary anyway? He couldn’t stand it, could he? Could he believe in dreams? God’s dreams? Impossible? Essential. Life-changing. Life-saving. World-transforming.

            Let’s dream, friends, and be a bit impractical. Nonsensical. Unbelievable. Occasionally even a little ridiculous. Because God-with-us has a dream to share. Let’s make God’s dreams our reality. Amen.       

             

Sermon for Christ the King/Reign of Christ Year B, John 18:33-37

Sermon 11/25/12

John 18:33-37

In Between: Christ, the King

                       

            How many of you know what Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday is? If, by chance, you do know what it is, is it anybody’s favorite Sunday on the church calendar? I didn’t think so! Often, Christ the King Sunday gets a bit neglected, because most years, it falls on Thanksgiving Sunday, which isn’t technically even part of the liturgical calendar, but usually takes precedence for Christians in the United States. If we have to choose between Thanksgiving as a focus in worship and Christ, the King, we usually choose Thanksgiving! I’m not complaining – we don’t do enough of thanks-giving. But I am glad for these occasional years where the calendar falls just so and there is a Sunday left between Thanksgiving and the start of Advent, and Christ the King can stands on its own. It is the last Sunday of the year, in terms of the church calendar, and next Sunday we begin anew, with a new church year on the First Sunday of Advent.

            Actually, Christ the King Sunday is a relatively new addition to the Christian calendar. In 1925, Pope Pius XI announced a new feast day, the Feast of Christ the King. He said that he felt that the rise of atheistic communism and secularism were a direct result of people turning away from Jesus’ sovereignty, and of people denying the authority of Jesus and the Church. He saw it as a move away from Divine Order in favor of human order, which he called disorder. So, this Reign of Christ Sunday is about reclaiming Jesus’ place of authority in our lives. Throughout the scriptures, we hear God called our King, hear Jesus described this way. We have plenty of hymns in our hymnals that use this language for the divine. But what does that mean for us?

I think it is a particularly interesting and challenging question in our American context. After all, as a nation, we rebelled against having a king. No longer wanting to be under the absolute authority of a monarchy, but desiring instead to participate in a democracy, was a primary component of our founding. We fought wars over it, this right not to be ruled by a king. Sure, maybe lately, with the stylish, young, and admirable William and Catherine marrying last year, people are suddenly a little more intrigued by the idea of royalty. But mostly, we seem, as a society, to be more into Disney princesses and their costumes than in submitting to the authority of a king.

            Still, we all have to submit to forms of authority, right? Even if we don’t have a king, governments still exert authority over us. We pay taxes, right? We follow laws, or are punished or fined for our failure to follow. And we have authority figures in many other places too. We have bosses – or bishops! We have teachers and principals. We have parents and grandparents. All these people might be in positions of power over us, at least in some matters, able to tell us what to do. They have power. They have authority. We can push the boundaries of that authority – can and do. We can reject it, but usually not without major consequences.

            So when we talk about Jesus as a King – what does that mean to us? How do we, independent people, private, prizing our individualism and autonomy, let someone be our king? What does that mean, exactly? Let’s take a look at our text:

            Although next week we suddenly find ourselves thinking about the coming Christ child, a tiny baby at the center of everything, today we are inserted in our text right into the trial of Jesus, just before his crucifixion. Jesus has been arrested, and the religious leaders have brought him to see Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect who ruled over occupied Judea. They seek to use his authority to have Jesus executed. Pilate questions them, and asks what crime Jesus has committed, but they’re vague in their answers, saying only that they wouldn’t have brought him if he wasn’t a criminal. So Pilate goes back to speak to Jesus. “Are you the King of the Jews?” he asks. Pilate cuts to the chase. He only really cares if someone is trying to start a revolutionary movement that would usurp his authority, or at least threaten his regime and cause trouble, warfare, in the region he’s responsible for. He and Jesus have an intriguing exchange, where you sense that every question and statement is layered with multiple meanings. “Why do you ask?” Jesus responds. He essentially wants to know if this is Pilate’s own question, or if someone put him up to it. Pilate responds with his own question. “Am I a Jew? Your own people handed you over. What have you done?” Pilate gives off the aura that he can hardly be troubled by this internal strife of this small sect of people over whom he has power.

            Jesus answers, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” In other words, Jesus lets Pilate know that he isn’t out to start a revolution – at least, not a revolution that would result in Pilate losing his power. Not a military coup. In fact, just before this scene, Jesus stopped his disciples from fighting the guards who arrested him. Not a violent political overthrow – that’s not what Jesus’ kingdom is about, not how Jesus gets his power. But Pilate picks up on the way Jesus responds – Jesus has admitted that he does have a kingdom, and Pilate zeros in on that. “So you are a king?” Jesus answers carefully, making sure to say nothing he doesn’t mean, while aware that he and Pilate are talking about two different things, even if they are both talking about kings and kingdoms. “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Jesus is the king of truth. The authority of truth.

            Jesus is trying to convey the idea to Pilate that whatever idea of king Pilate has in his mind, whatever the people are saying about Jesus, they’ve got the wrong picture – the wrong understanding of king altogether. Jesus is something different than what people are saying or thinking about him. Jesus is unwilling, even when it is about to cost him his life, to let Pilate define him, or to let the crowds define him, or let accusers define him. “Are you the king of the Jews,” Pilate asks? “You might say so,” Jesus seems to be saying, “but the kingdom I’m bringing is a completely different one than you’re expecting, and I’m ruling with a different kind of authority.”

            That’s what I think we need to be sure of on this Sunday: What kingdom are we a part of? Who is our king? And, toughest of all: Do we accept this king as the authority of our lives?

What kind of kingdom? All the time Jesus is talking about God’s kingdom – all the parables, all the lessons, they all point to the kingdom of God. We can rightly assume that Jesus is some kind of king. But in everything that Jesus does, in everything he teaches, in the ways he lives, in all these things, Jesus is painting the picture of a kingdom that isn’t one people would recognize. We talked about this last Sunday: Jesus speaks of a kingdom where first is last and last is first, where those who are humbled are exalted, and the exalted are humbled. He talks about an order of society where the poor are the blessed, where the humble see God, where the peacemakers inherit the earth. He talks about a kingdom where typical dividing lines of race and gender and class and place of origin don’t matter as much as how one treats the other. He talks about a kingdom where one is meant to love even enemies. He talks about God as a Ruler of this kingdom who cares for and loves even – especially – the least member of the kingdom. He talks about a God as Ruler who will search for us at all costs, and considers us of extreme value. And for Jesus to be king of this kingdom, he dons a crown of thorns, submits to death on a cross, and asks us to follow, giving up the lives we know in order to claim the abundant lives God promises. When we celebrate the Christ, the King, we’re meant to remind ourselves of just what kind of kingdom we’re signing up to be part of. Jesus tells Pilate “My kingdom is not from this world.” I think our immediate response is to understand Jesus as saying that his kingdom is instead from heaven – it is otherworldly, godly, not earthly. But I think Jesus is saying that his kingdom isn’t part of the world we know – it isn’t part of the typical structure we recognize – it isn’t something that fits nicely into the world we experience. Instead, the kingdom that Jesus brings is one that transforms the world we know.

What kind of king? It is about putting the emphasis in the right place. This Sunday is perhaps not about the fact that Jesus is King, but about the fact that Jesus is King. Do you hear the difference? This Sunday is not about the fact that one characteristic of Jesus is his Kingship, his divine royal status, one characteristic among many others. Instead, this Sunday celebrates the fact that it is Christ who is supposed to be placed as King, or highest authority, in our lives. We spent the last several weeks talking about what is enough in our lives, and especially thinking about our money and our stuff. Sometimes we act as though it is our desire and drive for more that is actually the authority in our lives – when we let the want of more make our decisions. Addictions can become the authority in our lives. Personal success. Other people. Anything we make more important than God, than following Jesus, has become our true King. Who is your king, really?

Toughest of all: Do we accept the authority, the kingship, the reign of Christ in our lives? Is Jesus the ultimate authority in your life? How? In what ways does Jesus have authority over you? Jesus won’t force your obedience. Jesus doesn’t coerce us. Remember, this king is powerful in weakness, strong in humility. But just like with Pilate, Jesus always turns the questions back to us. Is Jesus king? Is Jesus your king? If not, then who or what? Who will you follow?

Amen. 

Sermon for Thanksgiving Sunday, "Enough: Defined by Generosity," 1 Timothy 6:17-19

Sermon 11/18/12

1 Timothy 6:17-19

Enough: Defined by Generosity

(The structure/content of this sermon is shaped by the book Enough (Stewardship Guide), by Adam Hamilton, and adapted for use in the context of Liverpool First UMC)

            A couple of weeks ago we celebrated All Saints Sunday, and I asked you to share the names of the saints in your life. I was deeply touched by all the names that you brought forward, by this great cloud of witnesses that you lifted up. How truly blessed we are to be so shaped by the people that God has put into our lives for different seasons. I have two saints in my life that I particularly carry in my heart with me. First is my Grandpa, Millard Mudge. Grandpa died fourteen years ago, which seems impossible, so vivid is his memory in my mind. And you’ll hear about him a lot over time, I suspect. But today I particularly want to share with you a bit about my Great Aunt Clara. She died in January after a struggle with lung cancer that caught us all off guard, because she was just a vibrant, full-of-life kind of person, and it was hard to believe she’d really gotten sick. My Aunt Clara lived a pretty colorful life, and at different times over the years she was either what I (as a child, at least) considered quite wealthy (something I measured as a child by the fact that she had an in-ground pool complete with a cabana for changing), and also quite broke, living in questionable apartments in questionable neighborhoods. But no matter what her situation was, Aunt Clara was always incredibly generous. There was just no way you could leave her house empty handed. She wouldn’t have it. If you came to her home, she had to give you gifts. It was hard to express your like of any of her possessions, because you would be afraid she would just give it to you, from the shirt she was wearing, to the sheets on her bed, or the curtain in her windows. When it seemed like she had everything, and when it seemed like she had nothing, Aunt Clara always had enough to give something to you, and it was clear that giving to you gave her incredible joy. Refusing her gifts would be the quickest way to hurt her feelings. Aunt Clara was defined by her generosity, a trait others could easily see and recognize in her. What a way to be remembered! How about you – what do you hope to be remembered for? What are your defining characteristics?   

Today, as we wrestle with this theme of “Enough” for the last week in our series, we are looking again at 1 Timothy, picking up where we left off on our first week with this theme. The text reminds us that our security does not come from our things, from riches, from accumulating stuff. Instead, our hope rests on God, who fulfills promises even beyond our hopefulness. We’re called to “do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,” so that we might store up the kind of treasure that is eternal, and take hold, the author says, “of the life that really is life,” rather than the cheap imitations of real life we are too often willing to accept. Are you living the life that really is life? What characteristics define who you are? Are you marked by the good that you do? Are you rich in good works? Are you always ready to share? Are you defined by generosity?  

            God has created us not only with a willingness to give, both back to God and to others, but with a need to give. We’re meant to give, to be generous. When we do give, the joy we experience is transformative. How many of you have had more fun, been more full of anticipation about a gift you planned to give, rather than a gift you were hoping to receive? And yet, we find, every day, that voices in our life tempt us, war within us, leading us to selfishness, greed, holding on tightly to what we have. There’s the voice of fear: we fear what might happen to us, and want to feel secure, and we think that accumulating money and things will make us secure, and so we fail to be generous. But our things, our money – none of that offers us any real security. None of it is guaranteed forever.  

There’s also the voice of self-gratification. Our culture tells us that our lives consist of our stuff and pleasurable experiences, and so we find ourselves thinking, “if I give, there won’t be enough left for me.” I’m reminded of a story I learned first as a camper at Aldersgate as a child – the story of warm fuzzies and cold pricklies. People had bags with warm fuzzies that they could give out – an endless supply of them. And you would never keep a warm fuzzy – you would always give it away – always share it. But eventually, someone convinced them that that they would run out of fuzzies, and so people started hording them, turning their warm fuzzies into cold pricklies. Of course, being a camp story, people eventually realized in this village that you had to give fuzzies away for them to stay warm fuzzies, and that you would never run out of them. But even though it’s a children’s story, I’ve always felt it has a message we need to keep hearing. We let our fears about not having enough for ourselves keep us from giving to God and one another – and then, everyone loses.  

            So how do we defeat these voices? How do we stop letting fear and insecurity overtake our call to be generous? Of course, we ground ourselves in Christ, seek to follow his example, and search the scriptures, which are full of guidance on these very issues. I find it interesting that we hone in on all sorts of controversial issues that the scriptures may address for a handful of verses, but we tend to overlook some of the major topics. Did you know that almost 40% of what Jesus talks about in the gospels is related to money and stuff and how we use it? It must be pretty important, don’t you think? Jesus speaks repeatedly about the way we are called to live, a way that flies in the face of the messages we find most anywhere else. The first will be last. The humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled. If you want to save your life, you have to lose it. You lead by being servant of all, not master of all. To be a disciple, you have to take up the cross, the symbol of the ultimate sacrifice, and follow Jesus.

            There’s a theme, isn’t there? In losing ourselves to God, we find life. Because our very lives are gifts – everything belongs to God. Very early in the Bible, we encounter people giving back to God. You’ve heard Pastor Aaron use the phrase “first and best tenth” when he is talking about the offering – that’s a tithe – giving our first and best tenth to God. It’s a practice we find in the Old Testament, when people would offer their first fruits to God – the first and best tenth of their flocks or crops or income. Not the last, and not what’s leftover. As followers of Jesus, living together under the new covenant, we’re not bound by the rule of the law any longer. But tithing is a pretty good guideline for us when we are thinking about giving.

            Do you remember a children’s sermon I gave back in the summer about putting God first, where I showed how rice, representing all the things in our life, could fit in the jar with a big rock, as long as you put the rock in first, and everything else after that? The point was that our lives could be full like we want them, as long as we keep God first, not try to shove God into our lives last. That’s what my own experience with tithing is like. When I first started in ministry, I made a pledge to tithe, but found that every month, I would need to spend more than I expected, and I would end up only giving a very small portion of what I had planned – whatever I had left over. So, instead, I started having my tithe directly withheld from my paycheck. And suddenly, because it came first, I no longer had an issue making my tithe again, giving to God what I meant to give to God. Let me show you this video from Adam Hamilton, and see if it resonates with you. *VIDEO*

            Tithing can be challenging. But it is a good biblical goal for us as we seek to be defined by our generosity. If you aren’t able to tithe right now, God understand where you are at, what you are facing, and perhaps you can take a step in that direction, a step towards deeper generosity. If you are already tithing, ask yourself if God is calling you to grow beyond a tithe, to offer your gifts to other projects in the community and beyond that are important to your faith.

            We are created by God to be generous, and our giving affects not just us, but our giving affects God, too. Adam Hamilton shares this story: Eight or nine years ago, our family took a camping trip to the Grand Tetons. We arrived on my birthday and set up our little pop-up camper. After we were settled, we told each of our daughters that they could have $20 spending money for the three days we would be in and around Jackson Hole. We then went to the gift shop before heading out on a walk around a small lake. We had no sooner walked into the gift shop than Rebecca started looking at ball caps. She found one, tried it on, and said, “Dad, what do you think of this hat?” I said, “Becca, it’s really cool. But all you have is $20, and that hat will take all of your money. Why don’t you wait and make your money last for the next few days.” But she said, “Dad, you told me it was my money and I could get whatever I want. And I really want this hat!” As hard as I tried to talk her out of it, and to convince her that she would have other opportunities to buy a cap in town, she would have no part of waiting. Finally, exasperated, I said, “Okay, Becca – but this is it. You’re not getting any more money the next three days.” I gave her her $20, and she bought the hat.

            We went for a walk around the lake, and then came back to watch the sun set from a park bench. That’s when Becca handed me the hat and said, “Daddy, I bought this for you. I love you. Happy birthday.” I sat on the bench, took her in my arms, and started to cry. That hat is among my most treasured possessions, my most often worn hat to this day because every time I wear it, I think of Becca’s sacrifice for me. All these years later it still touches me to think about how my little girl gave up all her spending money because she wanted to tell her daddy that she loved him.

            That’s how God looks at your offerings. They are not financial transactions or business deals. Your offerings are a way of saying, “God, I’m returning to you a portion of what I have and what I’ve earned to say thank you and I love you. I hope you’ll use this somehow to make a difference in the world.” When we give, we don’t give because God needs what we have. We give out of love, and God who loves us, loves our gifts because of what they tell God about how we feel, because of what they say about our desire to be in relationship with God, because of what they say about how we want to care for the other beloved creations of God in this world.

            We do not give because we think God will give us back what we gave with interest. Our giving to God is not a loan program to God, where we’ll get a good financial return on our investment. That’s an abuse of what it means to give with a generous heart! And frankly, it goes back to that issue of safety and security. God doesn’t guarantee that giving – tithing or beyond even – will mean that you will never lose your job in the future, or have struggles. But when we live lives that are defined by generosity, the “unmistakable blessings of God” of all kinds flow into our lives. When we give generously, our hearts are filled with joy. They grow larger through the very act of giving. And in turn, we are yet more generous! It’s a cycle that keeps us growing in faith and love, a cycle that leads us to taking hold of the life that really is life.

      Let us pray: Oh God, we thank you that you have given us life, that you sustain us by the power of your Holy Spirit and that you gave Jesus the Christ who showed us how we are to live in relationship with you and with our neighbor. We thank you for the abundance that we have in our lives. And we pray that you would help us. Help us, oh Lord, to honor you with our tithes. Help us to care for the poor and those who are in need. Help us to recognize that it is more blessed to give than to receive. We offer ourselves to you. Help us, oh Lord, to do your will. Lead us, we pray. In your holy name. Amen. (prayer adapted from Enough Stewardship Guide)

Sermon for All Saints Sunday, "Enough: Wisdom and Finance," Luke 15:11-24

Sermon 11/4/12

Luke 15:11-24, Proverbs 21:5 & 20

(Much of the structure for this sermon is suggested in Adam Hamilton's Enough Stewardship Guide, and adapted for use at Liverpool First UMC.) 

Enough: Wisdom and Finance

            The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most-loved of the parables of Jesus. I’m not sure exactly why that is, except that maybe we all pictures ourselves to be a bit like the prodigal, wandering away from God, making foolish choices, and hoping, and finding that God welcomes us back with joy no matter how foolish we’ve been. Personally, I would admit I am much more like the older brother in the parable than the younger son, and I suspect that is true for a good many of us, especially in the life of the church, but I’ll save all that for another sermon! Today, we’re really only focusing on the first part of the parable, and this younger, prodigal son. Prodigal is one of those words that we use incorrectly so often that most people are starting to understand a different meaning for it than originally intended. We often hear or use prodigal to mean wandering, or lost. A prodigal is one who has wandered away, gone off life’s intended course. But actually, the word prodigal means extravagant and wasteful, one who spends recklessly and without control. The parable’s title refers not to the son leaving home, but to the son squandering his inheritance. With the correct understanding of this key word, our focus on the parable might change. It isn’t primarily, perhaps, a parable about wandering away from God, but a parable about being wasteful with the gifts God gives us. With this reading in mind, perhaps we are all more like the prodigal son after all. What are you doing with the good things that God has put into your hands to have care over, to be stewards of?

            Last week we talked about Affluenza and Credit-itis – which I think we can sum up into wanting more, and wanting it now. And somehow, even we attain close to the degree of financial security we’re looking for, we are still not careful with our money, and actually waste it here and there and everywhere until we’ve lost the bit of security we thought we had. I don’t know about you, but I find that paying with debit cards instead of with cash sometimes makes me shockingly mindless of what I’m spending. Just a quick, easy swipe of the card. I know, I know, you’re supposed to be careful, save all your receipts, budget, balance, and so on. But, frankly, well, let’s just say those kind of details are not my strong suit. Not too long ago, though, my bank unrolled a feature online where I can look at a lovely pie chart that shows me what categories I’m spending my money in. It includes categories like utilities, gasoline, groceries, a new rather large category for me: mortgage payments, and then categories like restaurants, general merchandise, entertainment, and “other.” This month we’re working through Adam Hamilton’s book called Enough, and he suggests that the two primary ways we waste money are on impulse buying and eating out. He’s got me pegged, certainly. If I added up all the money I spent on eating out in a year, well, I shudder to think of the total. Do you find yourself wondering what happened to the money you had? Are you making wise decisions with what you’ve got? What would your pie chart look like? How much are you wasting of what you’ve been given? How much of a prodigal are you?

            Creating new patterns for ourselves when it comes to our money and resources starts with clarifying our purpose, our priorities, and our relationships. Why do we exist? What are we here for? Despite all the messages society shouts at us, we are more than consumers! Our purpose is not to consume and accumulate and spend. We were created by God, who loves us, to care for God’s creation, to love God, and to love one another, to care for those in need, to glorify God, to seek justice, and do mercy. That’s our purpose. And that means that everything that we do, everything that we have, is meant to help us fulfill our purpose. Our money, our gifts, our possessions – all this is meant to be used to help us fulfill our calling – “to serve Christ and the world through the church, missions, and everyday opportunities.” (1)

            What are your goals? Hamilton suggests that if we have a sense of what God is calling us to do, then we need to start planning to respond to that call. What is your purpose? What do you want to do for God? And how are you going to start doing it? If you are really compelled by these questions, Hamilton has some resources for seriously asking and answering these questions for ourselves, and I would love to see where God is leading us. I think we also need to ask these questions to ourselves as a congregation. What is our purpose? What is God calling us to do? And then what’s our plan? Are we using our resources in the best ways we can to serve God’s purpose for us?

            “Barbara Glanz is a motivational speaker who conducts workshops for large companies. One day she was speaking at an event for the employees of a grocery store chain. She talked to them about how they saw their life purpose, suggesting that their work was more than stocking shelves or ringing up customers' food purchases or delivering supplies. She told them that every person they met was an opportunity to bless someone, to live out a higher calling or mission.

The employees were inspired by her words, including one nineteen-year-old grocery bagger named Johnny. Johnny, who has Down syndrome, took her words to heart. He went home and tried to think of ways he could be a blessing to others. Finally, he came up with a plan. Each night he would search the Internet for a positive saying that would encourage people. Then he would print out 300 copies and carefully cut the sayings into individual strips. The next day, he would put one of the sayings in the grocery bag of each of his customers while saying, "I put a saying in your bag. I hope it helps you have a good day. Thanks for coming here."

A month later, the manager noticed that Johnny's line was much longer than the others. Even when he announced that there was no waiting in lines 2 and 3, no one budged. People wanted Johnny to be their bag boy. He touched them and filled them with hope. Johnny got it. He was pursuing a mission that was bigger than his personal satisfaction.” (2)

Can we say the same for ourselves? Are we pursuing a mission that is bigger than our personal satisfaction? Can we articulate our mission? Do we use all that we have been given to support what we’ve said we’d set out do? 

            Today, we are celebrating All Saints Sunday, a day when we remember members of our congregation, as well as the loved ones we carry in our hearts, who have died during the last year. It may seem like a strange combination – All Saints, with a conversation about how we use our resources. But maybe it’s not such a stretch at all. When I think of the saints in my life, I think of people who were remarkably content, regardless of how much they had stored up for themselves. I think of people whose lives were marked by giving of themselves freely for the sake of others. I think of people who were pursuing a mission in life that went beyond their own satisfaction.

            Today, our Chancel Choir sang an anthem, which is also a favorite hymn of mine in our hymnals, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God.” Listen again to the last verse: “They lived not only in ages past; there are hundreds of thousands still. The world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus' will. You can meet them in school, on the street, in the store, in church, by the sea, in the house next door; they are saints of God, whether rich or poor, and I mean to be one too.” Saints of God, loving to do Jesus’ will. God helping, let us mean to be Saints too, sure of our purpose, and striving, every day, to live in ways which let us carry out our mission of service in God’s kingdom.

Amen.

(1)   Hamilton, Enough Stewardship Guide, 73.

(2)   Hamilton, Enough, 48-49. 

Sermon for October 28th, 2012, "Enough: When Dreams Become Nightmares," 1 Timothy 6

Sermon 10/28/2012

1 Timothy 6:6-10

(The “Enough” Sermon Series is based on Adam Hamilton’s book Enough:  Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity. I use Hamilton’s suggested structure and major themes,  adapted for use at Liverpool First UMC.)

Enough: When Dreams Become Nightmares

In a quiet Mexican fishing village, an American who was on vacation saw a local fisherman unloading his catch. He decided to approach him. The American asked the fisherman, “why are you finishing your day so early?” The Mexican replied “Oh Senor, I have caught enough to feed my family and a little extra to sell for today. It is now time to go for lunch with my family and have a siesta. In the afternoon, I can play with my kids. In the evening, I will go to the cantina, drink a little tequila and play the guitar.” The business professor was horrified at the fisherman’s lack of motivation to succeed. He answered, “If you stay out at sea until late afternoon, you will easily catch twice as much fish. You can sell the extra, save up the money and in six months, maybe nine, you will be able to buy a bigger and better boat, and hire some crew.”

He continued, “In another year or two, you will have the capital to buy a second fishing boat and hire another crew. If you follow this business plan, in six or seven years, you will be the proud owner of a large fishing fleet.” “Just imagine that! Then you can move your head office to Mexico city, or even to L.A. After only three or four years in LA, you float your company on the stock market giving yourself, as CEO, a generous salary package with substantial share options. In a few more years  - “ listen to this!“ you initiate a company share buy-back scheme, which will make you a multi-millionaire! Guaranteed!”

The American got very excited at the prospect himself. He said, “I definitely know these things. I’m a well-known professor at a US Business School.”

The Mexican fisherman listened intently at what the animated American had to say. When the professor had finished, the Mexican asked him, “But, Senor Professor, what can a person do after getting millions of dollars?” Now, the American professor hadn’t thought that far. He was taken aback by the question. So he quickly figured out an answer “Amigo! With all that dough, you can retire. Yeah! Retire for life! You can buy a little villa with a picturesque fishing village like this one, and purchase a small boat for going fishing in the morning, You can have lunch with your wife every day, and a siesta in the afternoon, with nothing to worry you. In the afternoon, you can spend quality time with your kids, and after dinner in the evening, play guitar with your friends in the cantina, drinking tequila. Yeah, with all the money, my friend, you can retire and take it easy.”

Puzzled with the American’s suggestion, the Mexican fisherman replied, “but, Senor Professor, I do that already!” (1)

***

Even if we don’t mean to, most of us have a hard time not getting caught up in what we might call the American Dream, this concept that we work hard, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and eventually we will become successful, and have good things, maybe even be well-off. Comfortable. Not rich – I’ve met people of so many different economic backgrounds, and yet no matter what they earn, I’ve rarely met a person that will admit to being rich – but well-off. And we want our children to be more successful than we have been. To have a little bit more. Pastor Aaron has said the same thing in a slightly different way, but I’ve read somewhere that most people say they would be happy if they had just 20% more income than they do now. The trouble, of course, is that people say that no matter what income they are at. It is always 20% more.

A little more. It seems so safe, so innocuous, wanting a little more. But if the American Dream is to always have a little more, when are we satisfied? When are we content? When do we have enough? I preached my first sermon when I was a teenager, at my childhood church in Rome, NY, under, as I’ve told you, the guidance of my then-pastor Bruce Webster. The text was the parable of the Rich Fool. Jesus tells it in response to a man who wants Jesus to settle an inheritance dispute between him and his brother. He tells about a rich man who had so much grain stored up in his barns that he was running out of room. What should he do? Well, he tore down his barns and built bigger ones, and told himself he could be ready to eat, drink, and be merry. Only, God says to this man: “You fool, your life is required of you tonight. And all these things you’ve prepared – whose will they be?” Jesus says, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” All these things you’ve prepared – whose will they be? These words have stayed with me throughout my ministry. When I started my first pastoral appointment, after struggling as a broke seminarian, and for the first time was employed full-time, I felt rich beyond imagining. I could not fathom how I would ever need more money than I earned there. And yet, my salary has grown as I've added years of experience and changed appointments, and somehow, I seem to find ways to use it up. To feel, even, that I need it. Just a little more. I watched myself change from a person who moved into my first parsonage with stuff I could mostly load up in cars and a small U-haul, to a person who actually had to get rid of some furniture when I moved to Liverpool because I just had too much stuff to fit nicely into my new house. Am I living the American Dream, or am I just building bigger barns?

Rev. Adam Hamilton, who is pastor of a large United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Church of the Resurrection, wrote a series called Enough that is the basis of the sermon series Pastor Aaron and I will share with you in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and our Ingathering in late November. Rev. Hamilton writes that in actuality, the American Dream has become a nightmare, both because people can’t live up to the expectations of the American Dream, and the process of getting there, or even managing to “achieve” the dream doesn’t actually bring people the happiness they’ve been seeking.

Hamilton says the nightmare is the result of two illnesses we have: Affluenza and credit-itis. Affluenza is our “constant need for more and bigger and better stuff – as well as the effect that this need has on us.” Consider this: In 1973, the average new home size was 1660 square feet. In 2011, it was over 2400 square feet. And there is estimated to be above 2.3 billion square feet of self-storage space in the US. Credit-itis, says Hamilton, “is an illness that is brought on by the opportunity to buy now and pay later, and it feeds on our desire for instant gratification. Our economy today is built on the concept of credit-itis.” Today, for Americans who carry credit card debt, the average amount of that debt is in excess of $15,000 per person. But credit-itis isn’t just about credit cards. The length of car loans, student loans, and home mortgage loans are continuing to increase, and the savings of the average American is continuing to decrease.

But the problem is deeper than bank accounts and credit card balances. The problem is a spiritual problem. We have lost sight of our identity. We’re created in God’s image, and we’re meant to desire God, to put God first, above all else. Instead, we find ourselves desiring stuff. Pastor Aaron talked about commercials last Sunday, and suddenly feeling like he needed what he saw advertised. I went to pick up groceries at Wegman’s this week, and lost count of the number of things that caught my eye and caused me to say, “Maybe I should get that.” I didn’t, usually, make the purchase. But the desire, the want, was there. We’re supposed to find our security in God, but instead we find it in the accumulation of wealth. We’re called to be generous, but we find ourselves worrying about, obsessed with having enough for ourselves. All of this works to separate us from God, and that separation is sin, because we are led to make other things more important in our lives than God. And that is idolatry, and that is the sin that is mentioned most often throughout the scripture, beginning to end. What gets in between us and God? All the stuff we put there. As we read in 1 Timothy, “if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. ⁹But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”

So what do we do? How do we move beyond the dream-become-nightmare that we’ve been living with? We start with a change of heart. All through the gospels, Jesus calls people to repent. We don’t use the word repent very much these days, and if we hear it, outside of church, we might most likely picture someone with a cardboard sign yelling on a street corner about the end of the world coming. But repent is just a more formal word that simply means a change of mind. Or, to get at it better, a change of heart. Adam Hamilton suggests that each day we start with the prayer, “Lord, help me to be the person you want me to be today. Take away the desires that shouldn’t be there, and help me be single-minded in my focus and my pursuit of you.” Clear, simple, and powerful.

And, we allow Jesus to be at work within us. Jesus calls us to prepare for the kingdom of God, which is here, waiting for us to embrace, when we daily seek to do God’s will in the world. We are called to simplicity, faithfulness, and generosity, and with Christ at work in us, we can make a real impact with our time, talents, and resources. When we set ourselves free from chasing after the American Dream, we find that we can live God’s dream for us, as we live and act in mission.

God invites us to have a change of heart, to allow Christ to work within us, and to remember that we are people in need of God who offers us simple gifts, that we might live in joy and generosity. (2)

As we close, I invited you to put your hands in your lap, with your palms facing up, and I invite you to repeat this prayer after me, line by line: 

Change my heart, O God. 
Clean me out inside. 
Make me new. 
Heal my desires. 
Help me to hold my possessions loosely. 
Help me to love you. 
Teach me simplicity.
Teach me generosity and help me have joy.
I offer my life to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen. 


 (1, 2) Rev. Jan Wiley, www.cumchb.org/sermons/2010/101010_sermon.doc

Sermon for World Communion Sunday, "Room at the Table: The Table Is Set," 1 Corinthians 11:17-26

Sermon 10/7/12

1 Corinthians 11:17-26, (1 Corinthians 12:12-27)

Room at the Table: The Table Is Set

            Since the beginning of September, we’ve been exploring this theme of Room at the Table. We’ve heard about the feeding of the 5000, and manna from heaven, the parable of the great banquet, and about Peter’s vision of food declared clean by God. And through our music and liturgy and visuals and anthems we’ve been hearing about God’s table. I’ve had some of you mention that you felt like we should be celebrating Holy Communion – that’s what everything has been pointing to. And I hope that you feel that way, that today, you find yourself ready, longing to celebrate this Holy Meal, like everything has been pointing us in this direction.

If you had a chance to read my article in our newsletter this month, you read some of my personal reflections about Holy Communion, like about how my grandmother’s homemade bread was the communion bread at my childhood church, and how I could never separate the smell of her bread baking from the act of receiving the sacrament. But I left out one of my less compelling communion reflections from my teenage years. I used to get really excited for Communion Sundays when I was a teenager . . . because it usually meant that my pastor would preach either a very brief or no sermon at all! Oh yes, I would flip open the bulletin, scan the outline of worship, and be filled with delight when I saw that there was no sermon because of communion, or when the bulletin read “Communion Meditation.” I knew that Meditation was a code-word for a short sermon!

I knew that some faith traditions practiced weekly communion, though, and I couldn’t imagine that. I was sure that doing something every week like that would take away the meaning, the special quality of celebrating communion. Years later, though, when I was in seminary, I experienced living in the midst of a community of faith 24/7 in a way that I hadn’t before. And we had chapel services offered three times a week, with the biggest service, the best-attended, being the weekly celebration of Holy Communion. And I found that I loved it. I found that it was moving in a way I didn’t expect. It was a bond that tied us together as a community. It was a sacrament that drew me closer to God. It was a ritual that made the words that were preached just before make more sense. Over my years of ministry, I have found that celebrating the sacraments – baptism and communion – is one of the greatest blessings of ministry. There is nothing that compares with the blessing of baptizing someone, and there is such intimacy in saying, “this is the body of Christ broken for you. This is the cup of Christ, poured out for you.”  

Last week, we looked at Peter and some of his spiritual journey as the early church was developing. Today, we turn our attention to the teachings of Paul, and the instruction he was giving to one of the new faith communities – the church at Corinth – a community mostly made up of Gentiles who had become followers of Jesus. New Christians in the early church – they had to work everything out. Everything was new. Everything was a learning process of living out the faith of Jesus Christ. How would they be community together? What of their old ways of living had to be left behind, and what would they keep? Paul, the planter of so many of these communities, writes in detail to address concerns he has, teachings he feels each place needs, conflicts that already arise in the young churches. That’s the content of most of Paul’s letters in the New Testament.

            In our text from 1 Corinthians, Paul writes in particular about the celebration of Holy Communion. Churches – just a fancy word for the gathered faith community – met in the homes of church members. For practical reasons, they met in the homes of the richest members, because they had the largest houses and the most resources, and could provide the best setting for getting together. The church at Corinth met at the home of a rich man named Gaius. We can glean some knowledge from verses of scripture about worship and communion practices. They probably met weekly, on Sundays. They did many of the things that we do still – they prayed, both spontaneously and with ritual prayers. They sang. They read scripture. They shared testimony – their own experiences of God at work in their lives. They celebrated the sacrament. And all of this happened over the course of a meal. Worship was a feast – a full meal shared together. The bread, the Body of Christ, was broken early on. The cup was given after the supper. But the meal, the feast, and the sacrament intricately tied to it, were the primary, central acts of worship.

            Paul is writing to address concerns he has about disturbing practices that have come up in worship and especially in sharing the sacrament. In Paul’s day, like ours, people came from many different economic backgrounds. But proper roles for people according to their classes were more structured. We still have plenty of class differences. But in Paul’s day, when people of all different backgrounds came together to feast and worship – things got complicated. In an early Christian household of a wealthy person, like at the home of Gaius, the host of the Corinthian church, a home would have an open air center atrium, and a room called the Triclinium – a dining room with three-sided couches, and an open side for servants to bring in food. There were places for about a dozen people to sit – to recline actually. Imagine meals taking place while everyone stretched out on lounge chairs. But worship feasts would bring in many more than a dozen people. So everyone who couldn’t sit at one of the dozen seats had to be served their food in the atrium. Guess who got the dozen seats on the couch?

Of course Gaius, the wealthy host, and his wealthy friends. Not only that, but Paul indicates that he’s discovered that those seated in the Triclinium were either arriving before the working poor or slaves who were members of the church, to start their meal early, or actually eating in front of them, first, while the others looked on. And further, food of different quality and quantity was served to the wealthy church members. So Paul says that some members are getting drunk on good wine, while others are going home from a worship feast hungry. Can you imagine, at worship, if we sat according to economic status, and served better communion bread to those of a higher status. Outrageous, right? What a horrible distortion of the beautiful meal left to us by Jesus! But we can’t blame the people of the Corinthian church too much. They were only replicating in their brand new faith community exactly what happened in the rest of the social lives. In the other clubs, organizations, and associations they were a part of, this pattern was exactly how things functioned. You might all be part of the same group, but the societal divisions were still firmly in place.

Paul writes to remind the community what it means to be the one Body of Christ. He is passionate about this. He can’t say enough about how important understanding what it means to be the Body of Christ is. He says that if the Corinthians continue practicing the Lord’s Supper as they have been – well, it isn’t actually the Lord’s Supper at all. You can’t call the practices they’ve engaged in the Lords’ Supper. Paul says, repeatedly in his writings, that when we are in Christ, we are new creations. They are baptism words – in Christ, there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus. Paul means this with a sincerity, with an urgency that I find it hard to even convey to you. In Christ, we are new creations, and we are part of One Body. People were used enough to participating in religious ceremonies that had symbolic meanings. But Paul – he understood that the power of belonging to Christ was real change in your life and in the world. Real change. Real transformation. For Paul, that meant that your identity, so entrenched in societal standards – your gender, your ethnicity, your status – it was nothing, nothing anymore, because of Christ.

Paul wanted the community at Corinth to know that being a Jesus follower meant real, actual, concrete changes in the way you would live in the world and treat other people. If you come to the table together, if you feast together, if you share in the One Body of Christ together, you better expect some real changes in how you live. And so when Paul writes in the very next chapter, chapter 12, about us all being different parts of the body, hear the import placed by Paul’s repeated emphasis: we are one body, one body, one body in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t say it lightly. He doesn’t say it to sound pretty of poetic. He means it. We are part of each other if we are part of Jesus. And we can’t be part of Jesus if we won’t be part of one another, part of every other person in the body of Christ.

We still struggle to get Paul’s message. But on this World Communion Sunday, I want us to think about what it would mean if every time we celebrated the sacrament, we remembered that if we want to be part of Jesus, we’re part of each other too. Not symbolically. Not to be forgotten as soon as we leave this building, or even just this time of worship. Not to be forgotten when we’re stuck in traffic, or in classes, or at work, or at the store, or confronted with racism or poverty or bullying or divisions, not to be forgotten when we want to put up walls between ourselves and those who are Other. Because of Christ, because we are One Body, there is no one who is Other. There’s only all of us. What if we remembered?

Friends, beloved of God, the table is set. There’s so much room here. Come, come to the table.  Amen. 

Sermon for September 30th, 2012, "Room at the Table: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" Acts 11:1-18

Sermon 9/30/12

Acts 11:1-18

Room at the Table: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

            My older brother Jim is six years older than me, and when I was little, I idolized him, and wanted to be around him constantly. I wanted to dress like him, play with the toys he played with, and do what he did. But naturally, a 12 year old boy does not always want his 6 year old sister following him around everywhere, and sometimes there would be a bit of conflict between me and Jim. Sometimes, I might do something, like follow Jim around when I was instructed to leave him alone for a while, that would result in Jim taking the dreaded action: he would tell on me. “I’m telling!” Powerful words between siblings, aren’t they? Apparently, I started trying my own version of a preemptive strike, by running to my parents and saying, “Jim is gonna tell on me!” I guess I figured Jim would get in trouble if I could somehow tell on him first. But I couldn’t foresee the logical conclusion of my action, which would be for my parents to ask, “And why is Jim going to tell on you?” “Um…”

            My nephew Sam is an only child, so maybe you would think he would be exempt from this whole “telling on” phenomenon. No such luck. I remember when Sam was maybe three at the most, and my mom was babysitting him, somehow, she broke one of the blinds on the front window. Sam asked her, “What do you think Mom’s gonna say to you when she gets home?” And no sooner had my sister-in-law Jen arrived at home than Sam ratted out my mom: “Grandma broke the blinds!” When Sam started pre-K last fall, he started telling on his classmates rather a lot. His teachers cleverly instructed Sam that when he felt like he needed to tell on a classmate, he had to go speak to the giant toy frog in their classroom, and tell on his peers to the frog. That way, his teachers didn’t have to hear Sam’s complaints anymore. Jim and Jen tell me Sam spent a lot of time talking to that frog.

            Of course, you can get a pretty bad reputation for telling on people all the time. Tattle-tale is a name my brothers and I would call each other, in an effort to not get in trouble, hoping the bad name would make the tattler think twice before turning us in to our parents. We’d like to think that we’ve all grown up since our days of telling on one another, but I suspect we all find ourselves engaging in the time-honored tradition of tattle-taleing now and then. Sometimes I joke with friends and family that if everyone would just do what I told them to, their lives would be so much better. I like to tease with these words, wishing they would follow my good advice for them. But I also realize there is some truth to my words, in that they express a feeling I think many of us have at one time or another. We can look at other people’s lives and it is so clear to us what they should be doing that they aren’t, or what they shouldn’t be doing that they are. It is so easy to know what would be best for someone else, isn’t it? Hold that thought for a bit.

            Today, we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, a book of the Bible that recounts the actions of the disciples and other followers of Jesus when Jesus returned to God’s home after the resurrection. For those of you in Pastor Aaron’s Bible Study on Acts, you get a little sneak peak today of Chapter 11. As I’ve mentioned before, Jesus and his disciples were often at odds with the religious leaders of the day over appropriate rules about who to eat with, but in the early church, the apostles were actually at odds with each other over rules about sharing meals. Our text for today is part of this ongoing conflict.

The whole passage is sort of a flashback, and you can read about the events Peter describes here in the previous chapter, chapter 10. Peter, apparently, has eaten with some Gentiles – and the food the Gentiles ate was forbidden to Peter by Jewish law, laws that had very detailed dietary restrictions, laws that centered on purity and impurity, cleanliness and uncleanliness. So some of the circumcised believers, the ones who are following Jewish purity codes, want to know why Peter has eaten with these people. And so Peter must explain himself, “step by step,” we read, and that is where he flashes back to describe what has caused this strange behavior in him. He’s had a vision, he says. A large sheet, maybe like a giant tablecloth, was lowered from heaven by its corners. On the cloth were various kinds of animals, representing animals that Peter would not be allowed to eat according to Jewish laws, kosher laws. Surprising to him, he hears God’s voice telling him to get up and eat these forbidden foods. Peter refuses, insisting he would not eat anything unclean. But God responds, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This sequence Peter saw repeated in his vision a total of three times, which tells us and Peter’s audience that there was no mistake – he heard God in the vision correctly.

Right after this happens, three men appear who are Gentiles, and Peter feels the Spirit telling him “not to make a distinction” between himself and these men. So he goes with them and fellowships with them, eats with them. In his heart, Peter finally understands his vision. He tells the questioning apostles, “I remembered the word of God . . . ‘John baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that God gave us when we believed in . . . Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” And the apostles get it too, finally, after hearing Peter’s story: They praise God and say, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life!”

What, you might be asking, is it that they all seem to understand now from Peter’s strange vision? Well, as we encounter in this text and other texts in Acts and the epistles of Paul, Peter and the rest of the ‘original’ disciples and Paul and Barnabbas and the apostles working with them approached their ministry very differently. Paul, certainly a devout Jew, spent most of his ministry reaching out to those who were not Jewish – reaching out to the Gentiles. Paul had a complete conversion on the road to Damascus, and he was ready and willing to let go of all the old things in his life – so he felt free to tell others becoming Christians that they didn’t need to adopt all the commandments of Jewish life – they were new creations in Christ. But Peter and company didn’t see things Paul’s way: Peter and the rest of the Twelve focused their outreach and evangelism primarily on those who were already Jews, viewing God’s message in Jesus as directed only or at least mostly for the chosen people of Israel. He thought that those who were not Jews who wanted to follow Christ should at least convert first to the Jewish faith, and then become Christians. The two sides spent a lot of time disagreeing over this topic, and ultimately agreed that each would focus on their own special area of ministry. But here, here is Peter’s own conversion experience. Peter has already converted his life to be a follower of Jesus Christ – here he has a conversion of a different nature, when his mind is opened and he sees the radically inclusive and all-reaching nature of God’s love and grace in Jesus Christ. In his vision, he’s told essentially that only God decides what is clean and unclean, and that what God has made clean, we humans have no right to reject.

            Last week, we talked about the kingdom of God being God’s party, and we reminded ourselves that it is God, not us, who creates the guest list. I think this scripture passage in Acts builds on those themes. Somewhere, Peter crossed the line from trying to be faithful to the laws of Judaism that had guided is whole life, to actually withholding the good news about Jesus – the very news that had changed his whole life – withholding that from others so that he didn’t have to break rules about who to eat with. And suddenly, Peter is acting in the same way as the Pharisees Jesus was always criticizing. Peter was deciding who should and shouldn’t get to hear the good news, and deciding that only people who agreed to follow the rules he followed would be able to hear about Jesus. How quickly Peter messed up one of the main things Jesus taught and lived – God’s love is for everyone – and how quickly he started behaving in ways that added qualifiers to who got to hear the good news.

            And how quickly do we do the same thing as Peter! We started today by talking about telling on each other, being tattle-tales. Sometimes I think that our favorite person to tattle-tale to is God. If we are truly honest with ourselves, how much time do we spend tattling to God in our minds and hearts about what others are doing? What rules of ours we think they are breaking or ignoring altogether? Now we can dress up our tattling to God in fancy packages. We can pretend we are only looking out for one another, making sure someone isn’t going “astray.” But just like my parents almost always knew what was happening with us kids without the aid of any tattling on our parts, so our God certainly knows the hearts of each precious person made in God’s very image. When Jesus gave the Great Commission, sending his disciples out in mission and ministry, he didn’t say, “Go out and make sure everyone is behaving in the right way.” No, Jesus sent us out to share good news – God is with us always, and loves us always, so come, and follow.

            The rest, friends, just isn’t our responsibility. It just isn’t. Whether someone believes exactly the same thing as you do, or has the right understanding of a passage, or is acting in the right way: God does not ask us to monitor one another. We can help each other. We can work together to grow in faith, when we mutually try to live as disciples, certainly. But we can free ourselves of worrying about being the judge of right and wrong. God’s got it covered. It’s a task we can cross right off our list. Because when we, faulty as we are, try to decide what’s best for others, we end up building dividing walls, creating strife and hostility, and worse, like Peter almost did, holding back on sharing the good news of God because we never let ourselves build enough of a relationship with someone to do so.

Peter had a vision, one that God made sure Peter got, showing it to him again and again, that Peter was trying to be so right that he was actually getting in God’s way. And the last thing we want to do is become an obstacle between someone and God. Peter summed it up with a perfect line: “Who was I, that I could hinder God?” Who are we, to get in the way of God’s work, God’s mission, God’s love, God’s party? We’re God’s children. We’re beloved. And God is breaking down walls and boundaries left and right in our world, so that we will sit down together, all of us, at God’s table.

Your homework this week? Easy, and hard. Don’t hinder God. Serve God. Listen to God. Love like God loves. And praise God – for God has offered to all of us the way that leads to life. Amen.