Wednesday, February 10, 2010
February 7, 2010 - Epiphany 5
The book of Hebrews says that the Word of God is living and active. As a reader & a preacher of that Word, I have always appreciated that – because it means that every time you come to a story, you can expect that you might find something new, that God might speak to you in a new way, that you might see it with fresh eyes. Which is a good thing, because otherwise pretty much every sermon there was to preach would have been preached centuries ago.
But I was thinking about that as I was reading this story from Luke's gospel. Because we've heard this story before. And most of the time when I read it, or when I've heard it preached, I think the focus has been on 2 main things. Either we talk about Jesus calling his first disciples, how he comes to them in the middle of their normal working lives and suddenly calls them to do something new, yet related – and how Jesus can call us right where we are to do new things with the gifts and skills we already have. Or we hear this as an evangelism sermon – that Jesus comes and calls Simon Peter and James and John and tells them that from now on they'll be catching people – that their new mission will be to spread the word, to cast the net of Jesus' love far & wide and draw people in to that love, and how Jesus calls us to do the same thing.
But as you know, this weekend, I was leading a retreat of St. John's people up at Graymoor. Our topic was stewardship – not just stewardship of our money, but of our whole lives. So we looked at things like stewardship of our time, of our relationships, of our bodies, of God's creation, in addition to talking about stewardship of our money. So it's probably not so surprising that when I reread this story, I found myself seeing stewardship themes written all over it.
Here we have Simon Peter and his business partners, James & John, and they've got this little fishing company. And as we enter the story, business ain't so good. When Jesus shows up at the seashore to preach and to teach, they're just about to call it quits. They fished all night out in their boats, and they've come up with nothing. They put down their nets over & over & not a single fish did they catch. So, they're done. They're cleaning out the nets – getting ready for the next go 'round, the next chance to go out and go fishing, hoping that tonight will bring better luck and lots of fish, because times'll soon be pretty hard for a bunch of fishermen who can't catch any fish. Pretty soon the business will be out-of-business and they'll find themselves out of luck, out of work, out of money.
And even though their world was so different than ours, we can all relate to those kinds of worries, those kinds of fears. We have our own economic uncertainties to deal with. If we haven't been directly hit by the recession ourselves, we have family and friends who have. We're starting to wonder if the waters have been fished out. We hope that business, in all its various forms, will pick up soon, because otherwise business will be out of business, and we could find ourselves out of luck, out of work, and out of money. It's discouraging, it's frightening. It's only natural to be anxious when we look at the waters around us and don't see any fish waiting to be caught.
And then Jesus, who hopped into Simon's boat so he could preach without getting run over by the crowd, finishes what he has to say & turns to Peter and says, “Put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Now pardon me if I read a bit of skepticism into Peter's response here – but that's the way I hear it. “Okay Jesus. You know we were out fishing all night, right? You know we didn't catch anything, right? You know that if there were fish out there to catch, we would've caught 'em, right? But if you say so, we'll go ahead and do it.” But I imagine Simon Peter wasn't really expecting anything to happen.
But then it does! Where just a little while before, there was nothing, suddenly the waters are teeming with life! Peter puts down his nets, and no sooner did they hit the sea than they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break! Never in his life had Peter seen such a catch of fish. So many fish that he had to call the other boat to quick come over & help haul in the nets & even with the other boat, there are so many fish that the boats just about sink from the weight. Abundance that they couldn't imagine, almost leaping into their boats! It just blows them away, and poor Peter pulls this “I'm not worthy” scene. Jesus simply tells him not to be afraid, that he's got bigger fish to fry, or rather, that from now on, he'll be catching people.
And it just strikes me, over and over again in the Bible, but especially in this story, how often God's people think they've come to the end of their resources, that there's no more, and we start to worry about the scarcity of the world, about the not-enough-ness of the world. And it is hard to trust Jesus when he says to us, put out your boat into deep waters and go ahead & put down your nets. Because we know there's nothing left there. We've done all there is to do and come up empty, and what does Jesus know about fishing anyway?
But just because we can't see it below the surface, doesn't mean that God's abundance isn't there! I've said it before, and I'm pretty sure I'll say it again, that we spend so much time looking at the things we don't have that we often fail to see the overflowing abundance that God has placed in our lives.
But here's the other thing about this story that really blows me away. Not only do Peter & James & John have this miraculous catch of fish, this beyond-imagining bounty that nearly sinks their boats. That would be quite a story all by itself. But you see what happens next, right? Jesus says, “From now on you will be catching people,” and when they get to shore, the 3 of them, they just leave it all there. They pull those boats up on the shore, weighed down with the biggest catch they have ever seen, and they leave it and walk away. They leave their boats, they leave their nets, they leave those fish. And I don't know about you, but the rational, practical, logical side of me thinks that's kinda dumb. At least go sell the fish & take the money along for the journey!
We tend to think of our stewardship, financial and otherwise, as this logical, rational kind of thing. We weigh out the options, we make the best decisions we can, we want to make the best use possible of the resources we have. But this story shows us another side. Sometimes, being a good steward means taking risks. Sometimes it means letting go of the things we thought mattered for the sake of something bigger, something beyond anything we could imagine. Sometimes stewardship means letting go of our attachments so we can follow Jesus wherever he leads – and you can't take boatloads of fish along for the ride – they weigh you down, and after a while, they just start to smell.
Stewardship is about learning to see the abundance all around us, and then learning to let it go, trusting that the one who calls us to follow will provide us with enough along the way. May God give us eyes to see God's abundance, and ears to hear Christ's call, and feet to follow wherever he may lead. Amen.
January 31, 2010 - Epiphany 4
About a month or so ago, Andy & I watched the movie Sunshine Cleaning. It's the story of Rose, a single mother, struggling to make ends meet for herself & her young son, Oscar, on what she gets paid as a waitress. Her son's dad, her high school sweetheart, who she's still involved with, even though he just happens to be married to someone else, is a cop. And at a crime scene one day, he overhears how much the people who come in to clean up after all the evidence has been gathered make. It's a lot of money, so he suggests that she look into it, that she leave behind waitressing and get into a new line of work.
Well, not surprisingly, Rose resists. Cleaning up the scenes of crime and/or death doesn't really strike her fancy. It's not something she's ever seen herself doing. It's not something she's ever even imagined wanting to do. Who would? But eventually, out of a desperate need to make more money to provide Oscar with what he needs, Rose stumbles her way into the bio-hazard clean-up business. And while she certainly struggles in the beginning, pretty soon, she realizes she has found her calling! She's got a knack for the business end and a stomach for the actual work itself, but beyond that, she realizes, as she's trying to explain what it is that she does to some old “friends” from high school, she realize that what she does makes a real difference in people's lives. In the face of grief and loss, Rose offers people dignity and compassion and closure in a very practical way.
It's funny how often you hear stories like this. The details may not be quite so unusual, but it's not so unusual to hear people talk about how they fell into a line of work, how it was nothing that they ever really saw themselves doing, that they might even have resisted it, and yet...
Take this story of Jeremiah, for instance. Who knows what he was doing up to this point, but one day, the Word of the Lord comes to him, saying “Guess what, Jeremiah! I've got a job with your name written all over it! I've appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”
Now Jeremiah's still a young man, “only a boy,” he says, with all of life's hopes and dreams and possibilities stretched out before him, and whatever it is he was thinking of doing with his life, “prophet” wasn't it. It wasn't on his list of career options to explore. “Me, a prophet, God? You must be kidding! I'm too young,” Jeremiah protests. “I don't know how to speak!”
Poor Jeremiah! This call from God comes out of left field for him. He wasn't prepared. He feels inadequate, not up to the task. You can almost hear him pleading with God, objecting - “You go ahead and find somebody else, somebody with more experience, somebody with more wisdom, somebody with more charisma – I'm not the guy you're looking for.”
Jeremiah resists, because God's call seems too big for him; this whole prophet thing isn't exactly in his wheelhouse, if you know what I mean.
You know, this objection to God's call is not unique to Jeremiah. Pretty much every time God shows up out of the blue to call someone to do God's work in the Bible, they resist. Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Jonah – they all felt like what they had to offer wasn't enough for what the job required. It's part of the pattern – God calls, people resist.
And I was wondering this morning, how many of us can relate? How many of us have felt God calling us to do something that seemed beyo nd us, that we have resisted. Maybe you have said to God, “I'm too young, I don't know what I'm doing.” Or “I'm too old, let somebody else do it.” Or perhaps, “I'm just too busy right now God – don't you see all the stuff I have to do from morning til night?”
Or maybe the issue it's more that you've never sensed that call on your life. Most of us don't have the big, dramatic, obvious moment that Jeremiah did, when God suddenly shows up and speaks to us in unmistakably clear ways to show us God's plan and our path. And the church hasn't always done a good job of helping us to realize that we are all called. If I asked you to tell me about your call story, my guess is that most of you would look at me with confusion, because we tend to talk about God's call only in regards to pastors or priests or nuns, people who serve in a church profession.
But we are all called by God to do God's work. You can be called into teaching or finance or plumbing or medicine, into painting or landscaping or mechanics or engineering or any number of fields. We don't usually talk about any of these things as a call from God. We figure we landed where we did because we had a special interest in it or a skill set that suited us for a particular role. Maybe, like Rose, somebody suggested a path to us & somehow stumbled into a situation that fit like a hand in glove. What we don't usually realize, until after the fact much of the time, is that God was working in and through all of those normal, ordinary things. God is the one who gave you that special interest or skill. Perhaps God was speaking through that friend or family member who pointed out a new way.
Part of what I want us to get from this story about Jeremiah is that God has called us all. God says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you” (Jer. 1:5). And that's true for us too. Before we even entered into this world, God knew us. God had a plan for us. And in the waters of baptism, God seals the deal. God claims us for God's very own children, and in the moment of baptism, we are commissioned. We are appointed. We are sent. God says to us, “I have a plan for you. There's something out there that is just for you.” And it's not just about a job or career or even a task you are specially equipped to do. It's more a way of being in the world, a way of looking at the world around us and seeing the possibilities to partner with God, to be co-workers with God at bringing God's kingdom nearer, here & now, in the places we find ourselves every day. It's about loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves, and then looking for the ways that we can show that love, in our daily lives. God may have plucked Jeremiah up out of his ordinary day-to-day life, and God may do that for some of us here, but for most of us, the big picture is that God calls us right where we are, to make a difference in the lives of people in the world around us – in our families and our friendships, with our neighbors, with our co-workers, with the teller at the bank, the waitress at the restaurant, the cashier at the grocery store. All around us are opportunities to live out the call God has given us.
So, how is God calling you?
January 17, 2010 - Epiphany 2
I don't know how many of you have seen this wine commercial. I'm not even what kind of wine it is, but it has a woman & a man outside. The woman is drinking a glass of wine, w/ the bottle on the table & somehow, the bottle gets knocked over, along with her glass, and it spills everywhere – and the woman breaks into song, this dramatic operatic style, singing about how there's no more wine, what will they do! Oh, the tragedy! The day is ruined.
But wait! Here comes her husband or boyfriend to the rescue! Seeing the situation, he reaches over & pulls out another bottle of wine and sings, “we have more!” and together they sing, “Life can go on!”
Well, even though I sometimes break out into operatic singing myself, I always think it's kind of annoying as commercials go. It's a bit over the top. I mean really, life wouldn't go on if you ran out of wine?
And yet, here we come this morning to the gospel of John, and we hear the tale of Jesus at a wedding. So far in this gospel, John has told us that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and then John the baptizer comes briefly on the scene, pointing out Jesus as the one who is more powerful than he is. Then Jesus himself shows up, calling his first few disciples. That's all in chapter one.
Chapter two opens with Jesus and his disciples and his mother, all guests at a wedding. And then the wine runs out! It really runs out! There are no bottles hidden out of sight in reserve, just in case. Mary comes to Jesus and says, “They have no wine.” What will they do?! There's no more wine! And again, there's a part of me that wants to say, “Really Mary? They ran out of wine, and that's the situation that you're gonna ask Jesus to deal with?” I get that they're at a wedding & all. I know that back in Jesus' day, weddings were feasts that went on for days, a celebration of joy & new relationships – just like they are today. I know that in that culture, hospitality was an even bigger deal than it is today, a real source for honor or shame, depending on how things went – that your standing in the town could rise or fall based on how good a caterer you got, or how well you planned for the amount of food & drink you would need for your guests. But it seems kind of a small matter to get Jesus' attention over, you know? No one will die if they don't get another glass of wine.
But even if the specifics seem a little funny to me, I can relate to the underlying concern, the anxiety that sits below the surface:
“We're running out, Jesus. There's not enough for everybody. It's almost gone & when it's gone, when will we get it again? Where will we get more?”
These questions of scarcity, of making sure we will have enough, nag at us. They've been on our minds for weeks and months and now stretching into years, as we have faced this struggling economy. Some of us have lost jobs & had a long wait to find a new one. Or maybe you're still out of work. You may just be waiting for the other shoe to drop as things get tighter & tighter where you are. As unemployment went up, and salaries stayed the same or went down, while we watched our retirement accounts shrinking, we've all been worrying about the same things. Will there be enough? It looks like we're running out – and where will we get more? What will we do? This is much more serious than spilling a bottle of wine. We're worried about our families, our homes, our futures – the big stuff. And like Mary, we come to Jesus, saying, “there's no more,” expecting him to do something about it.
Well, at first, Jesus resists his mama's plea for help; it's not quite his time yet. But she persists. “Do whatever he tells you,” she says to the servants.
Now here's the thing. At that, Jesus looks around, and where everybody else sees the no-more-wine-ness of the party, the not-enough-ness, Jesus looks around and sees 6 empty stone jars, and a bunch of servants. And Jesus says, “Go fill 'em up with water.” And the servants do.
Imagine that scene! Think about how much water that is! Each jar holds something between 20 & 30 gallons, & there's 6 jars, so that means they have to haul between 120 and 180 gallons of water to fill up those jars – fill 'em up to the brim, as it says. This is hard work! There's no faucet nearby, no hose that they can just turn on & wait while the jars fill – this is active, heavy, go-to-the-well-&-put-the-bucket-down-&-haul-it-up-over-&-over again kind of work. And when that's all done, he tells them to take it to the man in charge, the chief steward, & see what he has to say. And lo & behold, it's the best wine he's ever had! Somehow, Jesus managed to change the water into wine! And not just a little bit of wine; I did the math; it's something like 600 to 900 bottles of wine. I've never seen that much wine in one place! Do you get what happened here? Jesus takes this no-more situation & turns it to an abundance we can't even imagine, not just in quantity, but quality!
But what strikes me in reading this story this time around, is that Jesus didn't do it all by himself. It takes his mother telling him about the situation, and the emptiness of the jars, and the willingness of the servants to do a lot of grunt work before he can do what needs to be done.
And what an example that is for our lives & our world. I've been thinking a lot this week about the situation in Haiti. That was a country in dire circumstances long before this earthquake ever hit. Before the earthquake, 80% of the people there lived below the poverty line. They have struggled with not just the worry, but the reality of not-enough and there-is-no-more for way longer than this recession has been going on around the world. This past week's earthquake only served to make a desperate situation even worse. For many, what little they had has been turned to rubble, rubble that their country doesn't even have the equipment or infrastructure or government stability to dig out from, let alone start recovering from.
And I know many of us, looking on from a distance, have felt helpless this past week. I have one friend who said he couldn't watch any more scenes of people trapped – that it made him just want to go to Haiti with a pickax or a shovel or a saw or something, anything that could make a difference. And so we, with people around the world, have lifted the people of Haiti up in prayer, saying, “Lord, they have nothing.” No food, no water, no hope.
But Jesus looks around, and what he sees are empty jars waiting to be filled. And he says, “It's not true that they have nothing. They have me, and through me, they have you. Are you willing to do whatever I tell you? Will you look with me & see the empty jars of their need? Will you work with me to bring them food, bring them water, bring them hope? Are you ready to do the heavy lifting, to put your bucket down into the well that is my life, my Spirit, and draw up living water?
The deeper miracle here is not so much that Jesus changes water into wine, although that's certainly impressive. The miracle is that Jesus sees the needs of the world around him and he reaches out to meet those needs, whether it's helping out with the hospitality committee or saving lives hit by hunger and poverty and natural disasters.
But Jesus isn't a one-man team. He doesn't do it all alone. Jesus sees servants standing by, and he recruits them. He puts them to work to accomplish great things, to be signs of God's Rule breaking into our world.
And we can see it happening all around us. It's amazing, how even when we feel like we don't have enough for ourselves, when we see people who truly have nothing, people who are in desperate need, people respond.
We see it on a national & global scale when these big natural disasters occur, with Asian tsunami, with Hurricane Katrina, most recently with this earthquake in Haiti – people who just the day before felt like they didn't have enough realize that they have more than enough to share! I have seen it on a more local scale, right here in this church, with this year's Giving Tree, with our gifts to the Christmas-at-Sea program, with the baby shower, with donations to the food pantry.
And that too, is a miracle – not just that Jesus can change water into wine, but that Jesus can change us too, change us to see not just the no-more-ness of a situation, but the empty jars ready to be filled, and the well full of water that never runs dry, and the opportunity to be co-workers with him in the miracles he does in the world every day – the miracle of hospitality and hard work and hope; the miracle of generous hearts and helping hands; the miracle of God's work happening through our hands.
Amen!
January 10, 2010 - Baptism of Our Lord
Baptism of our Lord Sunday
My nephew Chase's baptism,
the reason I wasn't here 2 weeks ago,
to meet my newest nephew,
to celebrate God's gift of baptism,
to welcome him to God's family.
But also to welcome him into my family -
the 1st time I got to meet him, to hold him, to see him in person.
And so we all got dressed up in our Sunday best,
and off to my brother Rob's church,
the same church (Roman Catholic, by the way)
where he was baptized as an adult, just a few years ago -
Everyone beaming,
happy, excited, proud –
the way all families are at such a moment.http://http://
And to hear us talk afterwards at the family gathering...
how good he was during church,
how quiet, how he really seemed to be paying attention.
His other grandmother, Jen's mom, thinks maybe he's destined to be a priest.
He held his hands as if he were praying while they stood at the baptismal font at the front of the church.
This child who hates to get baths, not a real fan of water, I guess,
didn't let out a peep as the priest poured water over his head,
baptizing him in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Plenty of photo ops before and after,
wanting to capture this moment
filled with hope and promise and great expectations
of who Chase will become, what his life will hold.
It's how we all feel at a baptism,
whether it's a baby or an older child or a grown-up
– whether it's someone in our own family,
or someone we barely know.
The moment of baptism brings with it these great expectations
as we witness the beginning of a new life,
life given by God in Christ,
and we anticipate what could be.
We see that in Luke's telling of when Jesus was baptized.
The crowd is there at the Jordan.
Jesus is there too,
and he enters the river,
he feels the water wash over him,
and he comes up on the banks of the river
and stops for a time in prayer.
(Wouldn't you like to know what he said?)
Luke tells us that while Jesus was praying, the heavens were opened,
and the Holy Spirit comes down as a dove,
and a voice comes from heaven, saying,
“You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well-pleased.”
It's a powerful moment,
a moment filled with great expectations
for who Jesus is,
and who he will become,
and all that his life will hold.
If we knew nothing else about this story of Jesus,
we might think, here at this new beginning,
hearing these words of love,
hearing the voice of God claiming Jesus as God's very own Son,
that his life holds nothing but promise,
that surely with God as his father,
Jesus will experience nothing but sunshine and roses.
Because surely those who are claimed by God,
who have this special relationship with God,
will have nothing but good luck and good fortune.
Surely his life will hold happiness and love and joy.
That's what God must want for God's beloved son.
And yet, what lies ahead for Jesus is not all goodness & light.
It will not all be smooth sailing from here on out for Jesus.
We have this powerful, poignant moment,
but read a little further,
past the long genealogy that Luke lays out
that connects Jesus to a long line of God's people,
all the way back to David,
all the way back to Israel, and Isaac, and Abraham,
all the way back to Adam,
keep going just a little bit past these verses,
and what happens next falls short of those great human expectations.
Because Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, leaves that place
and is led by the Holy Spirit out into the wilderness
where for 40 days he is tempted and tested by the devil.
Go beyond that, and it is not long before he is being resisted
and resented and rejected
by the very people he has been sent here to redeem.
(the end of chapter 4 has his hometown ready to throw Jesus off a cliff!)
And you know the end of that story,
how the road Jesus travels leads to Jerusalem
and the cross,
how these great expectations will lead him to die.
It's not what we would expect,
if all we had to go on was this snapshot Luke shows us this morning.
It's not what we would expect if all we had to go on
was the picture of all the smiling people taken at our baptism,
or the baptism of our child or grandchild
or niece or nephew or neighbor or friend.
But this gift of baptism,
as much as sometimes we act as though it's just divine fire insurance,
our get out of hell free card,
is not something that leads to safety or security in this life.
God claims Jesus as God's beloved son,
but that claiming is also a commissioning.
That claiming is a call –
not to escape from the world,
but to enter even more deeply in to the world,
where he will be tempted and troubled and tried.
He will be sent into the heart of humanity's hurt – to heal us;
into the anguish of our addictions – to assist us;
into the struggle of our sins & our sickness – to save us.
And we who follow Jesus,
who are baptized in his name,
are claimed and called by the same God.
We are saved and sent into our world with a mission,
changed so that we might be agents of change,
given a tangible promise of God's love that will never let us go,
so that we might share that love,
set free by being joined to Christ in his death and resurrection
so that we might serve God and each other.
Because before we ever did a thing to earn it,
God claimed us in the waters of baptism.
God called us God's own beloved sons & daughters.
God opened up the heavens and said,
“I have called you by name,
and you are mine.” (Is. 43)
This is the promise God gives to each of us -
a promise we are meant to share.
Amen.
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