"Dauntless Faith" - Palm Sunday 2017

                              Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017

            “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “if you have faith and do not doubt … even if you say to this mountain, ‘be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done” (Mt. 21:21).    I don’t know.  Do we really believe this?  Frankly, when I visit a mountain, I am usually hiking up it.  I am counting on it staying right where it is.  I want to stand at the top and marvel at the view.  What is Jesus really saying here? What do we make of the idea of mountain-moving faith?

            To go deeper into this, consider two factors.  First, consider who is in church on Sunday morning.  Who is here?  Who are we?

            Someone is here because this is his church home and it’s Sunday.  On Sunday, you go to church.  It’s what you do. 

            Someone else is here because today the conversation in her head went the other way.  She has been through more downs than ups, and her lows are much lower than her highs are high.  In her daily struggle, she has this weekly conversation.  I’m going to church.  This time I am actually going to do it.  She’s longing for hope, for community, for salvation … for something.  Week after week, she has the conversation and it always ends the same way.  At the last minute, she says ‘no.  Not this week.’  Today, that conversation went the other way and her she sits.  She’s not sure she believe a word of any of it.  She’s not sure there is a God and if there is, she’s not sure that God is any good.  But, for reasons she cannot explain, she’ here.

            Someone else is here because she thinks this church stuff is good for her kids.  She may or may not believe the bits about God and Jesus, but her kids get positive role modelling here.  Faith doesn’t have much influence in her life, but it’s good for her kids, so she’s here.

            Someone else is here because church offers the opportunity for power.  If he serves on committees long enough, he’ll be elected chairman.  He’ll have influence.  Maybe church can become his little fiefdom. 

            Someone else here wants to be 100 other places, but people in her life want her here and she wants to keep them happy.  So, here she is. 

            Someone else is here because he is employed by the church.  He’s got to be here.

           

            Don’t worry!  I know I haven’t described you.  I know you are here out of your love for God and deep desire to worship him.  I know that’s why you’re here, but overall, we’re a motley crew.  Each of us has our reasons for coming to church and I am not judging.  I’m glad you’re here.  I am glad I am too.  I want us to be real.  Among us are doubters, atheists, backsliders, hypocrites, the self-righteous, the bored, charismatics, contemplatives, and honest seekers. 

            The second factor to consider is God is here.  This might be harder, especially for the self-righteous.  The atheist, the doubter, the backslider –they all secretly hope God will explode into this place and change everything.  They came to church, for the faint possibility that that which they know to be false might actually true.  God might be real.  If the atheist or the backslider didn’t have the slightest hope of this, they be at brunch somewhere, or sitting on the front porch sipping coffee.  No, God’s presence is dangerous for the self-righteous because God’s presences exposes our sins.  Exposed, the self-righteous person loses all his power. 

            As we sing and smile and hug each other and read the Bible, please believe that God is among us, and God is never an ornament or a passive spectator.  If God is here, then God is going to do something.  What?  It’s Palm Sunday.  What is God going to do?

            Follow Jesus as he moves through the story in Matthew.  He rides into Jerusalem with great fanfare.  “Hosanna to the Son of David!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord” (21:9)!  Crowds cheer.  Palm branches are waved.  Then he enters the temple and sees that worship has become big business.

            People come from all over the Empire.  For worship in the temple, an animal for sacrifice is needed.  Can’t really carry a cow from Alexandria and make it in time.  So, you buy one upon arrival.  But, Roman coins are not accepted here.  Neither are Corinthian coins or Athenian currency.  Temple coins are needed.  Jesus watches as pilgrims, here to find atonement for their sins, first have to go the money changing station where they are fleeced.  Then, jingling the temple coins in their anxious hands, they go to the station to buy the animal for sacrifice.  In the eyes of the priests collecting money, Jesus sees greed.  The temple gets richer, but no one is getting any closer to God.  This won’t do. 

            The tables are turned over, the clanging coins spilling to the floor, the animals running to and fro.  Jesus doesn’t bring chaos to the scene.  He uses the chaos already there to expose the evil that oozes from the cracks of the house of prayer which has become deformed into a den of thieves.

            That’s when we find out who was in the temple that day.  As we meet them, we need to keep in our minds who is in church this day.  Who is here?  Each and every one of us needs to look into the mirror of the soul and ask ‘Why am I here?’

            The first temple worshipers we meet are the desperate.  Verse 14: “the blind and the lame came to him … and he cured them.” They were there because there was no one where else to go.  There were no social services for the blind and the paralyzed.  They survived off the mercy of family and friends, and often family & friends weren’t very generous.  They came to Jesus for healing.  It seemed to be a far-flung hope, ludicrous really.  But it was what they had.  Verse 14 says, Jesus cured them.  Cured, the ailments that defined them taken away, who would they become, now that Jesus healed them?

            Next we meet others at the temple: the chief priests and scribes.  The temple had hundreds of priests.  Some, Jesus had already sent scurrying to round up the money he scattered when he turned over the currency tables over.  These mentioned in verse 15, I believe, had been gathering outside the temple as Jesus rode toward it with cheering crowds all around him.  As the Hosanna’s crescendoed, Jesus’ rivals, religious leaders, huddled and murmured.  Verse 15 says, “They became angry and said to him, ‘Do you hear what they are saying?’”

            These are the self-righteous.  These are the church goers who do not want God showing up and doing anything new.  When God does new things, then God is in control.  These leaders wanted to be the ones in control.  They knew Jesus represented God.  Maybe they knew it more than anyone else.  But like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, these complainers wanted God to stay distant.  They were the despisers that resented Jesus for exposing their hypocrisy and empowering the weak by drawing them close to God. 

            At the temple on that day that Jesus rode in to shouts of “Hosanna” and turned over tables, there were the desperate and the despisers.  The desperate ran to Jesus in hopes that he could give them new life – life as healed, whole persons.  The despisers ran to Jesus to dethrone him.  They wanted to hold on to power as they destroyed anyone who threatened their position. 

            One more group was there, but we don’t meet them until the next day.  On the walk back into the city the next morning, Jesus cursed a fig tree that had not produced fruit.  It immediately withered.  The disciples were wowed and Jesus rolled his eyes.  They had seen him walk on water.  They were there when he fed 5000 with a few loaves and fish.  Now, this excites them, the cursing of a fig tree?  Listen to what Jesus tells them.  “I tell you if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.  Whatever you ask for in prayer you will receive” (21:21-22). 

            I think Jesus talks about mountains being tossed into the sea because he wants to remind his disciples that no prayer is too big.  Jesus paints this impossible picture, a mountain tossed about, to help the disciples pray impossible prayers.

            They did not get it – not at first anyway.  When it came time for his arrest, they all surrendered to fear and they fled and hid.  However, after the resurrection all Jesus’ words, including these, came back to them.  They learned how to rely on the Holy Spirit and pray mountain-moving prayers.  Without such dauntless faith, they never could have faced the sword the way they did.

            Stephen, one of the original deacons, was stoned by an unruly crowd in Acts 7.  Acts 12 reports the beheading of James, one of the 12.  Tradition tells us both Peter and Paul continued their testimony, preaching salvation in Jesus Christ, until each was finally executed for doing so.  The massive, mountain-moving faith needed to stand up for God in the face of painful death was given to these early disciples.  If those seeking healing in the temple on Palm Sunday were the desperate, and those criticizing Jesus were the despisers, those who followed him became the determined.  They would learn to testify to their faith in the most trying of circumstances.

            Of course, when I hold up the group at the temple on that day that Jesus rode into town alongside the Sunday morning crowd here on this Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017, it’s obvious what I will say next.  There were the desperate, the despisers, and the determined.  Which one are you?

            No, I am not going to say that because (1) the right answer is obvious; we’d all describe ourselves as the determined.  And (2) to do this would be dishonest.  On that day moving through the waving palm branches following Jesus, James was not determined.  He would later face Herod’s sword, but not on that day.  On that day, basking in the delight of the people, Peter was not ready to himself be crucified.  He would go on to deny knowing Jesus.  And then, he’d a leader in the church.  And then he’d be crucified upside down.  But not on that day.  He did not yet have mountain-moving faith. 

            The truth is we all start out as despisers.  We’re not all church leaders.  We’re not all hypocrites who speak one way and act another.  But each one of us has our own moment, just as Eve had hers in the garden.  She told the serpent God had said she would die if she ate the forbidden fruit.  The serpent told her she would not die.  The serpent told her God had deceived her.  She chose to believe the serpent, to accept what she knew to be a lie.  We choose to trust ourselves instead of trusting God.  We ignore the truth that our lives go better when we entrust ourselves to God.  We despise the thought that we are called to worship.  We all do it.

            We do it until life breaks us.  The weight of sin crushes us, and fallen, despairing, we come crawling on our knees to God because we know we have no other hope.  By the way, I didn’t know this as a teenager or as a young adult.  My life was relatively easy early on.  I didn’t realize my own brokenness or my absolute need for God or my own dependence until I was an adult. But then I learned.  I became one of the desperate.  We all do.  Peter and James and the rest of the disciples did the night Jesus was arrested.  It happens for all of us.  Broken, we come to the Lord only thinking about what he can do for us. 

            In his great love, he receives us in that condition.  Then what?  Once we’ve been healed and forgiven, restored and made new, what comes next?  If we are grateful and willing to live in dependence on God, the begins working in us.  Filled with the Spirit, we become determined to grow in Christ and to share the news of salvation with the world.  As we see God at work in the church and join the ranks of the determined, we are given a dauntless faith.  We are empowered to build the church in a cynical, self-centered society.  We are emboldened to take the Gospel to other place, to unevangelized peoples, and unchurched countries.  We entrusted with more difficult callings until we are even willing to embrace martyrdom and we do so joyfully. 

            In the story, both as it plays out in Matthew 21 and on Palm Sunday 2017 in our church and in our lives, we see the desperate and the despised, and then the determined who are given dauntless faith.  I began with a kind of caricatured list of who’s here.  I don’t actually know why you’re here or where you are this morning in your walk with God.  I pray that the Spirit will move you. 

If you are a despiser, a skeptic, I pray God will penetrate your soul and reveal the brokenness in your life.

If you are desperate, you know of the brokenness.  I pray God will ready you to receive healing.

If you have and are willing to live dependently, relying on God in all areas of life, I pray you will follow after Jesus with determination unknown to mankind.

If you are already determined to grow as disciple, I pray that on this day, Palm Sunday 2017, God will fill you with dauntless faith.

AMEN

Joy in the Waiting (James 5:7-11)

3^rd Sunday of Advent, December 11, 2016

          Work hard for God by sharing God’s love.  Use your resources to feed people who are hungry.  Through invitation and friendship and conversation, help people who have no knowledge of God come to know God through faith in Jesus.  Encourage Christians, friends who have gone through pain, by standing with them and helping them.  Help.  Provide.  Evangelize.  Work.

          On the other hand …

          Sit in silent, blissful stillness as blessings from God wash over you.  In the exultant triumph of music, experience the glory of God.  See God’s goodness in friends who bring happiness to you in the things they do for you.  Bask in God’s majesty as you meet God in creation, in nature.  Marvel.  Relate.  Listen.  Be blessed.

          Is the faith dynamic clear?  As we live in relation to God through Jesus, we live in a dynamic of reaching and receiving.  We reach for the Kingdom of God when we work for justice, when tell others about Jesus, and when we work to build up the church community and help the family of God be a community of love and welcome.  All of this takes proactive effort on our parts.  As an individual believer, being a Christ-follower involves complete commitment.

          At the same time, we know that the greatest blessings of life are those God gives when we have not earned them and sometimes when we least expect them.  This is very hard, because we are a hard-working people who like to think that we get by on our own capabilities.  We have to resist the urge to claim independence.  We are dependent.  We depend on God’s grace for joy, for spiritual and emotional fulfillment, and for eternal life. 

          We reach and we receive in relation to God.  When we think of who we are as a body of believers and as individuals, we understand the necessity of both.  We do not neglect the work of discipleship telling ourselves “God will take care of it.”  We go to work.  We study for the exam.  We pay our bills.  We raise our families.  We contribute to society.  We build up the church.  Through spiritual disciplines we grow and mature as disciples.

          At the same time, we do not count on our own efforts.  We work hard in all things, all the while knowing our best blessings come as gifts God gives.  We neither neglect work, nor do we deceive ourselves into depending on our own efforts.  We live in a reach-receive dynamic.  It is a beautiful way to live as we enter the story of the birth of Jesus.  In entering the story and reliving his birth we see that our lives don’t make sense apart from Jesus.

          Our family does not go to the mall or toy stores – never, ever.  But somethings cannot be avoided indefinitely.  My 8^th grade son I__ sings in his school choir and we want to support him.  So, when they do their annual holiday concert at Barnes and Noble bookstore, our family goes. 

          It seems like every time I am in there, Barnes and Noble has sacrificed space that used to be used for book shelves.  In that space, they sell other things, like toys.  I cannot imagine Toy ‘R Us selling more stuff for kids than what they had in the Barnes and Noble we recently visited for the choir concert.  It was plenty for my 2^nd grader and 4^th grader to look at and wonder at as they waited for I__’s concert to start and waited even more longingly for Christmas morning to arrive.

          “Daddy, come look at this!”

          “Oh Dad, you have to see this!”

          I thought maybe the two of them were going to rend me apart, rip me into two pieces.  And maybe they wouldn’t notice as long as each one had one of my hands they could drag to football card collector’s set or the American girl doll or the Lego this or the Lego Friends that.  It was fun to watch them, but it was also clear that my children, at that moment, were not interested in receiving blessings on Christmas morning.  They were reaching for what they wanted. 

          And it is OK.  It is OK that in that moment they expelled the holiday energy bubbling up inside because they know they have a mom and dad who love them and who want to give them good things.  On Christmas morning, they will be happy with what they receive.  They won’t dwell on the 55 things on their lists that aren’t under the tree.  They’ll celebrate the goodness they receive.  (I hope).  The reaching and the receiving are both part of this season.  So is the waiting. 

          Three stages of waiting have an accent that is unique to the Christmas season.  First we wait for the birth of Christ.  It’s tempting to say, “No, Jesus was born 2000 years ago.”  We wait for his birth in the sense that a part of our worship is to enter the story of God and human beings, and a key point in the story is the miraculous birth to Virgin Mary.  We know that her premarital pregnancy caused a scandal.  We know Joseph was a faithful and good and stayed with her in spite of the scandal. We know the Roman census forced them to make the ill-advised journey to the Joseph’s family town of Bethlehem.  We know they make it.  We know that so many people had to do this because of an imperial overlord unconcerned about how his edicts inconvenienced an entire populace and so there was no place to stay.  We know that this led to the Savior being born in a barn, a stable. 

          Knowing all of it, we enter the story.  Waiting for the birth is as much a part of the waiting of Christmas as is waiting for Santa Claus and presents under the tree.  We can’t hurry it along.  We put up our tree, we hang our stockings, we decorate our homes in lights, but no matter what we do, December 25 does not get here until December 25.  And Jesus is not born until we arrive in Bethlehem.  Ask Heather.  The baby comes when it is time and not before.  For all our reaching, the blessing is one we receive. 

          There’s another stage of waiting.  From Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year – we call this the holiday season.  But there’s a waiting that is beyond this, a waiting that hits us any time of the year throughout our lives.  We wait for God to act. 

          You’re a Christian, certain that the only way to have a meaningful life is to live in relation to Jesus as his follower.  And someone you care about has not committed to Christ.  Your dear friend is ambivalent about faith.  You’ve prayed.  You’ve witnessed to your friend.  Now, you’re waiting for God to reveal God’s very self to your friend in such a dramatic that like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, your friend cannot resist God any more.  You’ve done all you can, but you know you have no control over God or your friend’s responses.  So you wait hoping your friend will turn to Christ.

          You are at a decision point.  What comes next in your life?  You’ve made a list of pros and cons if you choose ‘A,’ and a list of pros and cons if you choose ‘B.’  You have researched.  You have thought it through and discussed it with close friends.  They are praying too.  But you don’t want to move until God shows you the way. So now you’re waiting for God to speak. 

          We could list numerous other ways we wait for God to act.  The young person trying to discern God’s call waits.  The horrible powerlessness in the room aptly named, the waiting room, where we hope the doctor will tell us our dad is going to make it, God has healed him.  Waiting for the birth of Jesus reminds of our lives spent waiting for God to act.

          Also we think of the ultimate waiting: we wait upon the return of Christ, which is promised in the Bible.  He who defeated death in his resurrection then ascended to the right hand of the father.  He will return.  We don’t know when, so we wait.  The New Testament story reveals that his return means wars will end forever.  Evil and death will be permanently defeated.  All who have died in Christ will rise as Jesus rose.  And we will live together in relationships of love in the Kingdom of God forever. 

          The New Testament book of James says, “Be patient beloved, until the coming of the Lord” (5:7).  The final judgment, the resurrection of all people, and the end of days is what is meant by the phrase ‘the coming of the Lord.’  James counsels patience because we have to live faithfully until Jesus returns. 

How are do maintain joy as we wait?

The word ‘patient’ connotes endurance.  The church James wrote to was under persecution.  They were minority group victimized by prejudice and sometimes terrorized by government officials.  The church told by James to be endure was at times afraid for its very survival.  In this context, they were to go beyond just surviving and actually called to thrive as witnesses that drew the world to God through knowledge of Jesus.  James and other early church leaders taught the church to share the joy of Christ with a lost and hurting world.  That divine mandate has passed to us

Thus in verse 9, he addresses the church members as ‘beloved.’  They are family.  They are not a group of like-minded individuals.  They are not an institution or a non-profit agency.  They are brothers and sisters in Christ.  Beloved. 

Think of our church family that way.  The United State government has classifications for us – non-profit; religious organization.  People on the street have notions of what goes on in here.  People in other religions will describe us in one way or another.  We know that we are a family, sisters and brothers linked in the heart because of Jesus.  When James writes “beloved” in verse 9, he’s writing to us.

“Do not grumble against each other.” 

Reaching for the Kingdom of God leads us to be too self-reliant.  Those who do more or accomplish more may have more recognition within the community of faith.  Maybe they appear more Christian or one might say they more advanced as Christ followers.  Retreat to a posture where we only wait to receive can lead to spiritual sloth where we never grow.  The waiting to receive might produce a person who makes a commitment to Jesus but after that never lives a Christ follower.  An outside observer would never know that person has anything to do with Jesus. 

We reach and we receive – the life of faith is both.  Waiting for the birth of the promised one; waiting for God to act in our lives; waiting for the final resurrection; throughout our waiting, we live actively, and we live gratefully.  We reach for the Kingdom while receiving blessings from God.  And we do this as a community of peace.

Much of James echoes the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and in other places.  In chapter 2, verse 8, James repeats Jesus’ royal law – “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Thus two instructions from James color our living as we wait: be patient and do not grumble against one another.  Waiting purposefully, as people who grow in our faith, and gratefully, as people who receive blessings, and waiting peacefully, we come to a wonderful discovery.  Joy is in the waiting.

We will end our worship singing these word.  “Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains: and the mountains in reply, echoing their joyous strains.  Gloria, Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis Deo!” 

Earlier we sang “Joy to the world.”  We’ve been singing these songs for three weeks now and will continue through the end of the year.  As a family together – a family of peace and love, not bickering and resentment – we wait, together.  The joy reaches its height in the manger, but it has already come. 

“Daddy, come and see this.”  That longing joy is there.

“My friend, come with me to church this weekend.  There are many nice people ready to welcome you and love you as you are.”  That welcoming joy is here and is growing.

With the eyes of our hearts fixed on God, the motion of present joy, coming joy, growing joy need not be unsettling.  The motion can actually be reassuring that God is present and at work among us.

The Christmas season has every emotion.  Every one.  I believe that when we are in Christ no matter what else we have, we can also have joy.  Reach for it.  Receive it.  Wait for it.  And do all of this in the embrace of the family of God, the body of Christ, the church.  In Christ, God beckons you to come to His loving arms.  Come to him today.

AMEN