June 17, 2012 - Pentecost +3 - Christ Makes Us a New Creation

Christ Makes Us a New Creation

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Pentecost 3 – June 17, 2012

Many of you know that my husband Andy has a curious condition. It started before I knew him, and really only got worse after we got married, especially during our first year of marriage when we were on my internship in Michigan, where a whole bunch of other people had the same problem. It's kind of contagious. Don't worry though – it's not a disease. It's just a bad case of motorcycle-itis! See, Andy had wanted a motorcycle for a while, and when we were in Michigan, he actually went and took the motorcycle saftey course to learn how to ride and how to do it as safely as possible – but he didn't have a bike to call his own.
But one day, I was at a breakfast with some other pastors, and one of them said he had an old, “vintage” Honda at home that he was looking to get rid of. It wasn't in great shape, he said, but with some new points and new tires and some cleaning up, he said, it'd be good to go – he just didn't have the time to fix it up himself – and he was willing to give away, free to a good home.

Well, good wife that I am, my ears perked up, and I said that Andy might be interested in something like that. So, lo & behold, we became the owners of a 1969 Honda CL175. Andy & someone from the church who had a motorcycle trailer went to pick it up and when he got it home, even someone like me, who has no real experience or interest in working on a motorcycle could tell that this bike would require more than just a little work. It needed a lot more than just new tires and new points to get the engine firing. It was dirty and rusty from sitting around, and the more Andy worked on it, the more things he realized would have to be fixed – not just to get it running, but to get it running well. You know the kind of project I'm talking about. The list goes on and on until it seems like you'll never be done.

Now someone without the motorcycle bug, like me, would look at this bike and just shake their head. It's a hopeless case! Why bother?! It's obviously going to take tons of time and money and effort to get it back into riding shape. Why not just spend your money on one to get a new or used one that works?” And truth be told, that bike is still sitting in our garage. It's still got lots of work to be done. And it's coming with us to Wisconsin – and I'm still shaking my head.

But Andy sees things differently. He loves this beat-up old bike. He knows all the work that's needed, but he also sees what it can become! He sees it the way it was meant to be, back when it had just come off the line, shiny and new and running like a dream. He has a vision of this old bike becoming new again, of it having a brand-new life, and so he's willing to keep at it – to put in the time and work and money to get it there.

The apostle Paul would have understood this kind of project. He speaks about the same kind of thing in our 2nd lesson today, as he writes his 2nd letter to the community of believers in Corinth. He talks in the very last verse of this section about a new creation. I love that line: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” Powerful and inspiring words, until you stop for a minute and realize what they mean. Because if a brand new creation is necessary, if everything old must pass away, that means that something has gone terribly, horribly wrong with the old. We're like that old rusty motorcycle. We don't just need a tune-up – we need a complete overhaul, from the inside out – an engine rebuild, new gaskets and seals, and on and on. This is total transformation that Paul is talking about! And that can be exciting, but it's also terrifying! If we had our say, we'd probably be content with a new coat of paint and some shiny new parts – the kind of superficial repairs that make the outside look good, but don't really get to the heart of the problem. Paul says in this letter that Jesus “died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them,” but truthfully, most of us are not living for Jesus – we're still trying to live for ourselves! We'd just as soon not have to go through this whole “new creation” business because recognizing our need to change, to grow, to become more than we are today is painful. Being taken apart and cleaned up and getting replacement parts is a long, challenging process – and who wants to go through all that work when most of the time, we think we're fine just the way we are?

Paul was being a little optimistic in this letter, I think, when he says that we now regard no one from a human point of view. I think that's usually how we see things; it's only once in a while that we get a glimpse from God's perspective. But Jesus sees things differently – and he loves the beat-up old bikes that we are. He knows all the work that has to go into each and every one of us, but in his eyes, we're so worth it. Because Jesus sees past the built-up grime and the rust, he sees past the clogged valves and worthless tires – and he sees in us what we can become. He sees us the way we were created to be, when we came off the line, shiny and new and revving our engines, before sin in all its many forms took its toll on us. He wants to get us back there – and he's willing to put in the time and the effort to make it happen. Jesus will stop at nothing to make us a new creation in him – and he proved it on the cross. That's how much he loves us. That's how much he loves you. He was willing to die so that we may have new life, so that we can become, in him, a new creation!

It's Christ's love for us that changes us, his love that transforms us into the people he sees when he looks at us. And once that happens, there's no telling where the transformation will end! But I do know that letting Jesus change us doesn't stop with us – through us, he starts changing the world around us, when we start seeing ourselves and others and God's whole creation from his point of view, we get a taste of what God's never-ending love is like and we want to share that! And other people get a taste of that love and they want to share it too, and it goes on and on! There’ll be no stopping it when we are truly living out Christ’s love for us in our lives & in the world. Then we will be able to say with Paul, “everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!” Thanks be to God!

Amen.

Pentecost + 2 - June 10, 2012 - Christ Welcomes All to God's Family

Christ Welcomes All to God's Family

Mark 3:20-35

Pentecost + 2, June 10, 2012

The classic children's book, Are You My Mother? tells the story of a just-hatched baby bird, in search of his mother, who left the nest in search of food for her baby just before he popped out of the egg. If you remember this book (I've read it a lot lately), you'll know that the baby bird leaves the nest – falling down, down – it was a long way down – and then sets out to look for the mama bird. As it happens, he walks right past her first thing; he doesn't see her. So then he encounters a kitten, and a hen, and a dog, and a cow, asking each one along the way, “Are you my mother?” only to have each one indicate, either with their words or in silence, they they are NOT his mother.

So the baby bird goes on, getting more and more anxious to find his mother with each passing moment. He passes an old broken down car, looks down at a steam boat in the river and way up in the sky at a plane, and finally, at the end of all his options, he comes to a Snort (which is a big ol' digging machine, with the big claw shovel on the front). And deciding this must be his mother, he races up to it, crying out, “Mother, Mother, here I am, Mother!”, only to realize – too late!- that this thing awful, strange, foreign thing is not his mother either. Too late, because the bird has hopped up on the shovel part and the Snort has lifted him up and is carrying him away somewhere, and there seems to be no escape. But never fear – this is a children's book, after all – and it turns out the Snort, as big and scary and loud as it appears, is really acting in the bird's best interest, taking him back to the tree, and gently depositing him safely back in his nest, just in time to greet his returning mother, who asks, “Do you know who I am?”

“Yes,” says the baby bird, going through the litany of things she is not, before finally concluding, “You are a bird, and you are my mother.” No doubt in his mind, or anyone else's, about who his family is, and who his family is not in this story. His mother is the one who looks and acts like him.

How often we act this way too! Not in terms of our biological families – in most circumstances we are only too aware of who they are – but in terms of who we welcome and accept into our lives – even and sometimes especially into our churches. Congregations often refer to themselves and their relationships that way – as a family. And there's definitely some good in that, but there is a tendency for us to develop church families that look like us and think like us and act like us, at least for the most part. It's hard for us to imagine, in a world where we are increasingly polarized in our beliefs, where we listen to and read and watch people who espouse the views we already agree with... and so it's hard to imagine that the whole wide family of God might just not be made up solely of people who think and act and believe the way we do. We isolate ourselves into homogenous communities, becoming ever more divided from those who seem different, instead of remembering and recognizing the strange ways that God works, and the strange people God works through! We can be like the baby bird, who sees the Snort, this strange, threatening-looking “other”, and want to run away in a panic, instead of seeing the heart underneath the appearance, instead of seeing what we have in common aside from what makes us different.

We see some of this playing out in the gospel this morning. We have this story that begins and ends with Jesus' family seeking him out as he is surrounded and swamped by the crowds, and sandwiched in between are the scribes who have come down from Jerusalem to check out the stories they have been hearing. Jesus has been busy in these first 3 chapters of Mark. Ever since he announced that the kingdom of God has come near, Jesus has been showing everyone what that kingdom looks like. He's healed a leper by touching him; he forgave a paralyzed man his sins, healing him in the process; he's eaten with tax collectors and sinners; and most recently, he healed a man's withered hand – on the sabbath! He's not behaving like a good devout religious Jew was expected to behave, and people have begun to talk. “He's out of his mind!” some say. Others, the scribes, think he's possessed, that he came by the power to do these miraculous things by going in cahoots with Satan himself. Jesus has upended everything they think they know about who God is and how God acts and who and what God values.

And so along comes his family, finally getting word through the thick crowd that they are waiting to talk with him, and unlike the baby bird, who responds with joy when his true mother finally shows up, Jesus throws even the established notions about family into question. “Who are my mother and brothers?” he asks. And looking around, he declares that all of those around him, those everyone else sees as Snorts – these are his true family. These are his mother and brothers and sisters – anyone and everyone who does the will of God.

It's quite an expansive family tree Jesus has, not limited to blood relatives or marriage relationships or looking and acting just exactly like everyone else. No, Jesus flings the doors of family wide open and invites everyone in, anyone who wants to follow him, anyone who wants to live out God's will in their lives and in the world. Jesus welcomes whoever is willing to move beyond self-importance and self-interest and self-security to risk seeking God's will before their own. Jesus' love, Jesus' acceptance is inclusive beyond our ability to see and understand much of the time – and he offers us a place at the table. Birds or Snorts, kittens, hens, dogs, cows – whatever we may be – he invites us to join his family, to live into our identity as children of God! And as crazy as it sounds, he calls us to treat one another as family and to work together in doing the will of God wherever we might be.

Amen.

June 3, 2012 - Holy Trinity Sunday - God Calls Partners for God's Mission

God Calls Partners for God's Mission

Isaiah 6:1-8

Holy Trinity Sunday – June 3, 2012

I'm kind of astounded by the lesson from Isaiah this morning. I must have heard and read it dozens of times before, but there's so much in it that I never really noticed, never really thought about or tried to imagine before. Here Isaiah is, in the temple. I can't really imagine what the temple looked like, I just know it was huge and majestic. So think of a place like that, whatever it is for you, and then think of meeting God there. God on a high and lofty throne, God who is so big that the hem of God's robe alone fills all of that space, a God who is too immense to be contained in a building, that's the God Isaiah is dealing with.

And not only is there this tremendously huge God, but there are these weird creatures, the seraphs, who we sometimes sing about in worship, but never really visualize. One description I read is that they look like winged cobras, fiery beasts with their six sets of wings – not quite what I ever thought of when I read this scene. And as they hover around God, they cry out to each other, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory”, making the ground around them shake at the sound of their voices. Smoke fills the house, getting in your eyes, filling your lungs.

This is a wild vision Isaiah has. Plenty there to inspire awe and fear and terror. One author suggested it was kind of like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the ark is opened and calamity hits all who dare to look on it. Remember Harrison Ford telling the woman with him – “Don't look at it. Keep your eyes closed.” There is a sense of danger in casting your eyes on anything so holy. - And yet Isaiah has, even though he is a man of unclean lips – his eyes have “seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” He knows what a precarious position he is in – it is a rare thing for a human being to look on God and live. Yet God does not reject him. A seraph comes with a live coal from the altar and cleanses Isaiah, removing his guilt and blotting out his sin.

It's at this moment that Isaiah hears the voice of God, looking for a volunteer, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” I don't know about you, but I'm shocked at how Isaiah responds. I can't believe that he answers. He's like the kid in class who knows the answer and really wants the teacher to call on him, “Oooh, ooh! Pick me!” Here am I; send me!

Whew! Not too many people I know, including me, are that eager to say yes to God's call. We're more like Moses, who gave God excuse after excuse, or Jeremiah, who protested that he was too young. We are filled with our own reasons and excuses about why God should go with someone else this time around, perhaps feeling, like Isaiah did at first, that we aren't quite holy enough to go on behalf this unfathomably holy God. Or maybe you have some other reason that you think disqualifies you from speaking or acting for God. Or maybe you just feel overwhelmed by the things that are already on your plate and can't even begin to imagine volunteering for one more thing, even if it is God who is doing the asking. It's easy to read these call stories in the Bible and think that God's call is for someone else, anyone else but you or me.

But that's not true. God's call is for everyone who seeks to follow. God has gifted you; God has set you apart from the moment of your baptism to go into the world. That's just one more amazing dimension to this story, because really, God doesn't need human beings to accomplish what God wants to do. God could figure out another way. But over and over, in the Bible and in our own world today, that's how God chooses to work. God invites; God calls; God asks for volunteers: people who are willing to step up and partner with God in going to a dark, hurting world; people who have stood in the place of God's holiness, God's power, God's majesty; people who have experienced the immense depth of God's grace and forgiveness and love; people who have been caught up in God's vision for healing and redeeming and loving the world. God is on a mission to save the whole world – and God wants us to be a part of that! God has a job for you to do, something that you and you alone are uniquely qualified for!

And it doesn't necessarily mean you have to start your whole life over in some new place to do it either. It could be that the world God is calling you to is the world you are already living in. The work God has for you could be the work of teaching Sunday school or leading the youth group. It could be the work of visiting the homebound and the sick or anyone else who needs to know they are not forgotten or alone. It can be the work of parenting children – little kids, teenagers, adult kids – of helping them trust in God's unconditional love through they way you love them. It can be the work of accounting or carpentry or waiting tables. It can be the work of teaching or fixing computers or answering phones all day. It may just be that God has called you to exactly where you are now. The trick is to be on the lookout for God, to learn to see the world around you and the people in it with God's eyes, so you can be ready to reach out with God's love wherever you are.

Are you listening? As we stand in God's holy presence in this place of worship today, do you hear God speaking? God's voice is calling you, me, all the people of God into action for the sake of the world God loves so much. How will you answer the call?