"Return" (Zechariah 1:1-17)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJMCSvMKLms&t=11s

Sunday, February 7, 2021

 

            Who are we? Who will we be?  Beloved movie heroes entertain us for 2-3 hours, trying to answer these questions.  Elsa in Frozen; who will she become, now that everyone knows she has super powers?  Luke Skywalker in Star Wars; will he ever become a Jedi Knight?  If he does, what then?  Steve Rogers in the Avengers; once the skinny weakling takes the super-soldier serum, what then?  What does he become? 

            As much as I love these stories, I find your more interesting because, (1) I can see you and talk to you.  You’re real!  And, (2) you don’t have super-soldier serum, you can’t shoot icicles out of your hands, and you can’t control force.  What you have going for you is the Holy Spirit!  I want to hear your story once the Holy Spirit enters your life.

            I want to find out who you are when you are ‘in Christ.’  I want to find out who the church will become.  The pandemic has rattled the church’s sense of itself.  Potlucks; bedside hospital visits; raucous laughter shared around the front hall coffee pot before the worship service; laying hands on someone being commissioned or ordained; embracing a friend; these things make the church and we can’t hardly do any of them.  Thanks, COVID-19. 

            What’s more, our church had just changed our name to “Hillside.” At the end of 2019.  We were coming out of two years of bumpy transition.  We were in the process of rediscovering our identity before COVID came along!  Does that mean we were ahead of every other church that had to deal with re-evaluating itself in light of COVID?  Or did it mean we were set back a year in the work we were doing to once again hear and answer God’s call.  I think it’s a little of both.

            More and more people are vaccinated each day.  The end is coming and when it does, we’ll have to be ready to understand our identity so we can be God’s witnesses here, drawing people in our town to Jesus.  But really, we have to begin that work before the pandemic ends.  Right now, today, we are called to be witnesses who tell what we have seen and experienced in following Jesus Christ.

            I had us begin 2021 in Haggai and now in Zechariah because these prophets spoke the word of the Lord to the covenant community in Jerusalem after the exile.  Exile had diminished them, displaced them, and broken them.  None of that changed the call.  Israel was to be God’s chosen people through whom the entire world would know and worship and serve the only true God. 

Exile had been the means by which God had punished his people for failing to answer that call and live his way.  When we get to Haggai and Zechariah, we find that the exile is over.  It’s time to start over, rebuild, and once again turn to the Lord and then draw the world to the Lord.  These prophets speak God’s word to a rebuilding people.

We are a rebuilding people.  The “who” question is an identity question.  Zechariah is not part of the answer to the “who” question.  Zechariah is a guide.  Listening to his truth, it sinks in.  We are the answer to the “who” question.  Who is this story about?  It’s about God as God is revealed in a rebuilding congregation, Hillside Church, emerging from years of transition and seemingly endless months of social distancing.  Who will we become as God’s people in Chapel Hill?

In this story, we are the “who”. God’s church.  What about the “what” and the “how”?

Who will Hillside Church be when we live into the identity God gives us?  “What” is the next question.  What needs to happen for us to be ready to live into our God-given identity as a people? The prophet Zechariah tells us in chapter 1.

“Return to me,” says the Lord of hosts in verse 3.  Zechariah warns the people not to repeat the mistakes of their parents, the exile generation.  God invited them to return, but they continued in their rebellion.  Now, they were gone. God’s word remained.  And so, the invitation is once again given.  “Return to me” (1:3).   

Zechariah writes in verse 6 that the people repented.  They turned away from injustice. They turned away from the worship of idols, false gods.  They turned away from sin and turned to God.  In their broken state, they accepted God’s justice, including the punishment.  With exile over, they were ready to return to God.

After this initial call to repentance and report that the people answered by repenting, Zechariah shares the first of his seven “night visions.”  At night, in a grove of myrtle trees, he sees a man astride a horse, and behind them several horses of different color, typical colors for horses. 

These horses act as God’s emissaries patrolling the earth.  The vision depicts for the prophet what he and we already know.  God can see the entire earth.  He is all-seeing and all-knowing.  The angel reports in Zechariah 1:11 that all is calm, the earth is at peace.

How can this be so?  How we say “all is well” when God’s temple is a pile of rubble and God’s people live as exiles?  Thus, the angel, not the prophet, confronts God asking accusingly, “How Long, O Lord” will you withhold mercy” (1:12)?  We can relate.  We know people refuse to wear masks, gather in close quarters, and ignore good pandemic behavior.  We know part of the reason this contagion has persisted and dogged us as it has is that people don’t do what is necessary to curb it.  Still, like Zechariah’s angel in chapter 1, we look to heaven, shake our fists, and through our tears bellow out, “How long will this go on, O Lord?” 

Zechariah 1:13 shows God as an understanding counselor, a patient therapist.  It says the “Lord replied with gracious and comforting words to the angel.”  In this same chapter, God is angry and God is understanding.  Both are true because God is perfect love. In verse 16, God says, “I have returned to Jerusalem with compassion.” 

Human suffering breaks God’s heart, even when we bring the suffering on ourselves.  God’s compassion is always for us.  As Jesus says in Luke 15, “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (15:10b).  God wants us to be free of the pain sin imposes and God offers us that freedom.  We need to turn to Him.  We turn from the sin, acknowledge our absolute need, and turn to God.

Thus the “who” – our identity is defined by the “what”; what we do.  We see understand that we can only live dependent on God.  We turn away from putting our faith in people, things, dreams, and systems.  We turn from that and we turn to God.  The “what” is our need for His grace, for the Spirit’s empowerment, for forgiveness, and energy to start again. 

What about the “how?”  Who?  What?  How?  How do we begin living into the identity God has given to us? 

This part of the story is God’s work.  God says, in Zechariah 1:16, “I have returned, with compassion.”  More than once in Haggai God says, I will be with you.  The Gospel of Matthew ends with Jesus’ promise to his disciples (and to us), “I am with you always to the end of the age” (28:20).  In Revelation, we know that at the end of the age, Jesus returns, we are resurrected, and we live forever with him in our resurrection bodies.  The presence of God ties this all together. 

Just as Zechariah prophesied the temple building in Jerusalem, 515BC, we will build Jesus’ church right here in Chapel Hill.  God is with us, so we can do it.  We can encourage each other, feed the hungry, share good news, love all who come, and grow our family because God is here, filling us with His empowering spirit. 

Furthermore, in Zechariah 1:17, God declares, “My cities shall again overflow with prosperity.”  We will flourish as God’s church because we stand in our need, as a broken people who have been healed by love, a dead people born again, a repentant people made new.  It’s the story of God and us – us returning to the God who loves us.  That repentance is our act of acknowledgement and faith.  And the story ends in joy and peace because God is present.

At the communion table, we take a necessary step in the story.  We come to the table as we are.  We don’t put on a false front, no facades.  We don’t hide behind masks of respectability, false presentations of our best selves.  We wear our warts, pimples, scars, wrinkles and dried tears.  This is us.  We come name what we have lost.  We hold out our mistakes.  We have in mind those we have hurt either by our actions or our failure to act. 

On our way to the communion table, a table welcoming all, we stop at the cross.  There we lay down everything – our entire story.  When Zechariah says “return,” this is the repentance we ought to have in mind.  All are welcome, but we can’t get to the table without a stop at the cross.  We meet Jesus at the cross, and he guides us to take our seat at the table where we gather with brothers and sisters, a family, united by God’s love. 

Take your place.  Bring your story.  Open your heart to God.  Receive the grace and forgiveness he gives.  And the prosperity.  He makes us new.  Even as wrong as things seem in the world, he makes things right.

AMEN

"Everybody Drink" (Matthew 26:26-39)

 

October 4, 2020

 Watch here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0DPHMCqOq8

            I hate the sound of silence at the dinner table.  Several people sit together, but the only sounds are the clinking of silverware and the crunching of croutons and lettuce.  No one talks.  In this tension-filled quiet, you can hear someone’ gulping throat as they swallow their drink.  Much more pleasant is the loud intimacy of us chatting as we eat.  We talk, maybe about important things, maybe about nothing.  Either way, the meal is sacred time we share with one another. 

            “Drink with me.”  It could be a coke, a coffee, a beer; “with me” is the important part.  “I want you with me.”

            “While they were eating,” we read in Matthew 26.  The “we” is Jesus and the 12 disciples.  Having stayed with Matthew for 26 chapters, we know something important is coming.  Jesus has spent three years showing that the Kingdom of God is breaking into this present reality. 

            At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, in chapter 28, the resurrected Jesus instructs the disciples he has trained to go to all nations.  Last week, we stressed, from John 3:16, that God loves the world; that’s all people.  Now, we see, as Matthew closes, Jesus send his hand-picked disciples to all nations. 

            In this supper, where he breaks bread, “while they were eating,” he indicates what the disciples will do when they go to the nations.  They will grow communities of disciples.  Across the globe, they will multiply what Jesus has built because God so loves the world.

            He broke the bread and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”  They could see him, the bread in his hands.  They weren’t eating his actual body.  He did not say he would turn himself into bread which they would eat.  Yet, somehow in future meals, when they ate bread, they would remember that he lived in them and they in Him. 

            A mystery, to be sure; these disciples would always be individuals made in the image of God.  Yet in Christ, they and we become one.  We talk about dying to self, dying in sin, being born again, becoming new creations; we pray that others would see Christ in us.  Eating that bread, we remember.  We are a part of Christ.  We affirm that He is in us and we are in him. 

            Next, he pours that dark red wine.  He calls it his blood, and he mentions covenant and forgiveness.  God made covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and David.  Each covenant affirms that God is the Lord and that humans are invited into relationship with God; God is master, Lord, Father, Savior; we are sons and daughters, forgiven and redeemed, new creations. 

            Jesus’ blood, the “blood of the covenant” as he calls it, is “poured out for the forgiveness of sins.”  To sin means to miss the mark.  When we sin, we reject God as Lord of our lives.  We put ourselves in God’s place.  We declare ourselves to be masters of our own destiny.  We hurt others because we see our own desires as more important than another’s wellbeing.  Sin takes countless forms, but generally speaking our sins can be categorized.  In some way, we violate one of the 10 commandments.  When we sin, we fail to love God and love neighbor.  It is a disruption in relationship. 

Forgiveness acknowledges that the relationship has been disrupted, but the acts of disruption, the sins, will no longer be held against us.  Forgiveness means relationship has been restored.  Our sins no longer count against us and community is possible once again.

Jesus then makes the point that the promised harmony is eternal.  “I tell you, I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s Kingdom” (26:29).  They watch him die on the cross, remember his words, and all seems lost.  But then, he comes to them, resurrected, and breaks bread with them, and drinks wine with them.  The risen Lord is with them in a tangible body, takes in food, and touches them.  His resurrection is the sign!  The eternal kingdom is inevitable and imminent. 

The promised unity of “while they were eating;” the removal of sin and restoration of relationship; the new era where death is defeated; it all comes to this.   Jesus dies out of faithfulness to God and our of love for us.  He is raised in the power of God.  And we know we can count on him.  What he promised will come to pass.  We will eat and drink with Him in the Kingdom.  He says to us, “I want you with me.”

Take another look at verse 27.  Jesus says, “Drink from it all of you.”  We hold these words from the Bible in our hands and in our hearts.  “All of you” meant the disciples.  “All of you” includes the people the disciples would meet when they went out into the world.  They made disciples who in turn passed the faith on to the next generation and then the next, continuing on down to us.  “All of you” includes all of us and all the people who will come to faith in Jesus through our witness.

The Lord’s table summarizes the entirety of the Gospel and encapsulates the narrative of salvation, yours and mine.  The Lord’s table is an instrument of unity.  Every person sins, causing a rip in the relationship with God and with neighbor.  The Lord’s table holds the promise of forgiveness and new life.  The Lord’s table is open to everyone.  “Drink from it all of you.”  Humanity comes together in Jesus. 

I don’t know if you watched the presidential debate this past Tuesday.  I don’t know if you read the reporting or commentary following the debate.  One conclusion I take from it is an image of a hard, unmovable line drawn right down the middle of America, and you have to fall on one side or the other.  You have to be red or blue.  Moreover, you have to demonize those opposite you.  This hard line dictates that we hate all those not on our side.

The air we Americans breathe fills us with tension and anxiety.  We’re set on edge, pushed into conflict.  Nothing could be further from Jesus’ command to love our neighbor than the current political climate in America.  We’re defined by what we’re against.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ offers another way of seeing and another way of living.  We are invited to take our seat at the Lord’s table and to love whomever sits down next to us.  Whoever it is, we have the freedom to say to that person, “I want you here with me.  Drink with me.”  There’s no enmity at this table; that which disrupts relationship – sin – has been forgiven.  Jesus said so.  There’s no exclusion at this table.  God so loved the world.  Drink from it all of you.  All are made in God’s image, all are welcomed, and all are loved. 

At this table, it’s not my job to judge anyone else.  It’s not for me to even judge myself.   We come to the table receiving from God.  We sit as forgiven sinners among forgiven sinners, and we are invited to love those on our left and right.  I believe Jesus offers the solution to every human problem, relief for every struggle.  More specifically, I believe a dangerous threat faces America right now: political polarization.  It is tearing us apart.  Jesus brings us back together.  Jesus unites us.  The only thing Jesus destroys is death.

“While they were eating;” you are invited to the Lord’s table.  “Drink from it, all of you.”  You are invited into the covenant, to be the people of God, sons and daughters of God living in relationships of peace and good will with God and with your neighbor; your Asian neighbor and Arabic neighbor, black and white; Latinx and Native American; red and blue. 

When the anxiety and tension of our times start to engulf you like choking smoke, and you feel your heart tremble and your courage fail, remember.  You are God’s child.  God’s got you.  God’s makes you new.  Our Lord Jesus tells us who we are.  He wants us at his table.  He says to us, “Drink with me, sit, laugh, talk.  I want you.”

We know God wins.  So, have hope and good cheer.  At this table, you have a place and nothing gets in the way of peace.

AMEN

 

 

The Last Supper Commandment - Matthew 26:26-29

            ‘Mandatum’ is a Latin word that means ‘commandment.’  The Anglo-French rendering is ‘Maundy.’  We call this day, the Thursday before Easter, the day we commemorate the Passover meal Jesus had with his disciples before he was arrested a crucified, Maundy Thursday.  English words ‘mandatory,’ and ‘mandate’ come from this Latin word.  Jesus sits at the table with his closest followers, gives them bread, and says, “Take this,” and “Do this in remembrance of me.  It’s not a suggestion.  It’s a commandment.  Gathering for the Lord’s Supper is mandatory for his followers. 

            What exactly is the commandment?  What does it mean?  And when does it take effect?

            What exactly does Jesus command his disciples and us to do when he tells us to take the bread and drink the wine?  From the writings of Paul and the practice of the very first Christians, we know all in the church were invited to the table for the bread and wine.  The Lord’s Supper was not reserved for elites within the Christian community.  There were not to be elites.  Regardless of one’s social status, rich or poor, powerful or unimportant, all were welcomed as one family at Jesus’ table.

            The assumption is that anyone who desired to follow Christ or claimed to be a follower of Christ would join with the church for communal worship. There was no such thing as a solitary, individual Christian.  In the earliest Christian Communities, the Lord’s Supper happened within worship.  When Jesus commands, “Take this bread, drink this cup, do this to remember me,” he’s commanding us to worship with one another in the gathering of the church.

In the tradition of the practice of the first century Church, when we gather for worship and come around Jesus’ table, we are to welcome all as equals.  Here, there are no rich or poor.  People of all racial and ethnic backgrounds are welcomed in love.  Jesus commands it to be so.  Come to worship.  Remember him by eating the bread and drinking from the cup.  And tell of the salvation he gives by inviting people you know outside the church to come with you.  This was recorded in the gospels.  All four gospels were written with the intention that they be read publicly and repeatedly for the purpose of telling Jesus’ story and drawing lost people to him.  

It’s Maundy, mandatory: gather with the church family; worship; eat and drink; remember; and, bring others with you.

What does it all mean?

Jesus says, “Take, eat; this is my body.”  It sounds bizarrely cannibalistic.  In some worship traditions, believers are certain the bread literally becomes his body as we eat it, and the wine literally becomes his blood as we drink it.  Such thoughts would not have occurred to the disciples at Jesus’ table or to the earliest Christians.  They were eating the Passover and as they did, Jesus transformed it.

The unleavened bread hearkened back to the meal the Jews ate when they were slaves in Egypt and the angel of death killed the firstborn in each Egyptian family.  Moses instructed the people to kill the lamb and spread the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their houses.  The angel saw the blood and passed over the homes of God’s chosen.  The lamb each family sacrifice died in their place.

Jesus is the final sacrifice covering not only Israel’s sins, but the sins of the world.  Remember, we’re commanded to take this supper.  It means we are all sinners, every last one of us. We are cut off from God because of the sins we have committed and there is nothing we can do to atone for our mistakes.  Sin has stained our souls.   Without Jesus, we’re eternally lost.

But, we’re not “without Jesus.”  He has come, died on the cross, and rose.  When he says, “Take, eat, this is my body,” he means he is going to suffer violence on our behalf.  In Paul’s rendering of this passage, 1 Corinthians 11, Jesus says, “This is my body that is for you.”  Jesus is for us.  He - God in the flesh - came for our good, our benefit.  However hard life might be, and life can be pretty trying, God loves us.  Jesus gives himself for us.  We’re not alone.

Nor are we trapped in our sins.  “He took a cup ... saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant which poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).  In Jesus blood shed on the cross, sin loses its hold on us.  All are invited to drink, but Jesus knew not all would.  Even though this is a command, Jesus knew not all who heard it would obey it.  Many people meet God, receive his invitation to relationship through the forgiveness of sins, and reject that invitation.  God honors that response and those who meet Him and choose to turn away from Him, are cut off, separated from God by their own choosing.  Those who obey and turn to Jesus and take the bread and drink the cup are forgiven.  Our sins are washed away and we become new creations. 

We’ve said what Jesus commands.  We are commanded to worship with God’s church treating all people as equals, as brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to come and worship, take the bread and cup and receive forgiveness, and to tell the story of salvation to others who have not heard.

We have said what Maundy Thursday means.  God is for us because God loves us.  Thus our sins are forgiven.  That which would cut us off from God has been removed.  In Christ, we have access to God.  Nothing stops us from living in relationship with God as His sons and daughters.

When does this story take effect?  That happens when we respond to the grace of God, the Holy Spirit speaking to our hearts, and step to God in faith.  The original disciples took this step after they met Jesus in resurrection.  Shortly after this Passover meal, the last supper, Jesus would be arrested, and his disciples fled in terror.  They abandoned him and went into hiding. 

However, when he rose from death and they met him and touched his resurrected body, they were changed.  From fear to courage, they went through dramatic transformations.  Tradition tells us that the disciples became so determined to tell the world about Jesus that most of them ran afoul of the Roman Empire.  Under the governance of Rome, the law dictated that all subjects acknowledge the emperor as divine.  “Caesar is Lord,” was the decree.  The disciples could not abide by such a sentiment because they knew that Jesus is Lord.  Most of them died deaths as gruesome as Jesus because they would not recant and acknowledge the divinity of Caesar.  They didn’t care what Rome did.  They believed and insisted that Jesus and only Jesus is Lord.

We mostly likely won’t be threatened with death as our forebearers were.  It doesn’t happen that way in our culture.  So how will we know we have obeyed the command of Jesus?  Obviously we are all here in this worship service, singing songs of faith, confessing our sins and turning to Jesus as we prepare to take the bread and cup.  In that sense we are actively obeying his command.

How we will know this obedience has taken hold in our lives once Holy Week has passed and we are away from the church family?  We become self-giving, following the example Jesus set.  We look out for others and give of ourselves for their benefit.  This happens 100’s of ways, from donating blood to investing in someone else’ life to giving generous monetary donations to works that help people who need it.  The giving of ourselves happens in relationships with people we’ve know all our lives and in interactions with strangers.  We become love-banks extravagantly doling out the love of God to everyone we meet.

In addition to becoming self-giving, we also become storytellers and the story we share is the Good news of forgiveness of sins people can have in Jesus.  God is building the kingdom of God through His church.  Every time we share the story of Jesus, a brick is put in place.  Every time we invite someone to church, a brick is put in place.  Every time we help someone see what the life of a disciple of Jesus looks like, a brick is put in place.  God is building the Kingdom.  He works through the work of the church and the witness of individuals in the church; people like you and me.

Are we saying all that stems from the dinner we call the “Last Supper,” a simple remembrance in bread and wine?  Yes, that’s exactly what has been said. 

Tonight, perhaps you needed to put it all together, the connection from what the 12 went through that night to the life of faith you are currently living.  

Or, perhaps, you’re in a different place. You needed to be reminded that yes, you are a sinner, and yes, your sins cut you off from God.  However, Jesus has covered your sins and opened the way.  The pathway is clear for you to walk into God’s loving embrace.  Tonight, maybe communion is time for you receive forgiveness and begin truly living as God’s daughter or son.

Or, maybe you’re getting a sense of this entire story for the very first time.  You never knew what it all meant, but now you do, at least a bit.  Now that you know, you realize how much you need Jesus.  Tonight, for the very first time, you want to ask Jesus into your heart to be your Lord and Savior.  You can do that as you come to eat and drink.

Everyone is invited to come and meet Jesus in this bread and cup.  Take a few moments in silent preparation.  Pour out your heart to God and ask Him to reveal his love to you.

After we’ve had silent contemplation, join in as we gather at the tables to receive what Jesus has for us.

AMEN

Called to God's Table

          In angst-ridden poetry, thinkers, whose ponderings pour out beautiful verse or angry verse, express their questions, their frustration, and their confusion.  In those questions see this: see a person desperately seeking God.  Even if his language is raw and strewn with bitter, atheistic sentiment, deep down he – the critic, the skeptic - needs what only God can give, and he or she, the poet knows she needs it.

God smiles and invites that person.  “Come, drink.  Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.” Thirsty for truth?  Come.  Thirsty for hope.  Come.  Are you literally thirsty because you live where clean water is hard to come by?  Come.  Come to the living waters of God.  Everyone who thirsts, come.

          I saw a man crawling along the sidewalk.  He has some kind of degenerative condition either in his legs or in his back.  His body is contorted in a shape that doesn’t appear human as he uses his hands to drag himself, useless legs and all, up the street.  He’s extremely poor in a country that is, for 95% of the people, extremely poor – Ethiopia.  So for him there is no treatment, no surgery, no physical therapy, no wheelchair.  His condition begins as a pain in the back or legs and then gets worse and worse until his legs no longer work and he has to continue on by dragging himself through the dirt, using his hands as his feet.  He’s poor.

          To him, God says, Come!  Come buy wine and milk.  Come, and without money, eat your fill.  Delight yourself in God’s rich food. 

          Through his prophet Isaiah, God reminds the world that He is a God who calls and invites.  Noah was called to be part of the story when God started over.  Abraham was called to a place he did not know.  Moses was called to face the enemy and lead God’s people to salvation.  Jonah was called to lead the enemy to salvation.  And in Isaiah 55, God calls the thirsty to drink God’s living water and the hungry and starving to feast at God’s table. 

          God calls us – each one of us.

          When I was a college student, I remember receiving invitations from theological seminaries.  We were invited to attend weekend programs with titles like, "Come Explore your Call."

Or, "A Weekend of Discernment."

Or, "What Plans does God have for your Life?"

Nearly every seminary had a program where they recruited college juniors and seniors who studied in religion departments or participated in campus ministries.  The recruitment was based around the question Are you being called into vocational ministry?

          Now, some 25 years later, I have to ask, is it only "vocational ministers" who are called by God?  Is it that someone decides to be a lawyer or a teacher or an accountant, but is called to be a pastor?

          I think all who turn to Jesus are called by God.  I believe God even calls people who have not put their faith in Him.  In Luke 15, it says he seeks the lost.  God goes out of His way to draw those far from Him into His embrace.  Maybe in terms of one’s profession, people wait tables or hammer nails to pay the bills not because God called them into food service or construction.  I am under no illusion that everyone is working in a job to which God called him or her. Sometimes we do jobs because we need to work.  That was my story when I was high school substitute teacher many years ago.

However, all Christians whether pastors, waiters, truck drivers, nurses, or college professors are called by God.  Furthermore, table-waiting or trash collecting can indeed be a call for a season of life even if not for a life time.  Every person who is part of the body of Christ is called by God.  In most jobs, we have the opportunity to live as called persons who give witness to the love of God and the life we have in Jesus’ name.

          At HillSong, we are going to spend five weeks in a church-wide emphasis exploring God’s call on us.  Specifically, we will consider what it means to live our lives as part of a bigger story.  We will look at the story of God and how God calls us to be part of it.  What do our lives look like when we live daily with a sense that God is summoning us?  Who are we as a people and as individuals when we live in God’s calling? 

Each of our small groups will be given thought-provoking questions to include in their prayers times as they engage with what we do on Sundays. 

I described the man I saw in Ethiopia, the one crawling along with a back and legs bent in ways I have never seen.  Can any two people be less alike than me, a healthy, educated, middle class American, and this Ethiopian man who lives in a completely broken body – mangled because no medical care is available to him? We literally and figuratively are worlds apart.  And yet, he and I share this.  The water we both need for life and the food that makes us both rich beyond the dreams of the wealthiest people on earth cannot be earned or acquired but only received from God as a gracious gift.  In Isaiah 55, God declares that He wants to give that gift.  He wants to give both me and that man and also you the living water and the sumptuous food set on Heaven’s table; moreover, he calls us to that table!

God does not silently sit at the crossroads and hand out blessings to whomever happens to stop.  God proactively reaches out and invites.  We are summoned to God’s table.  In fact, in Jesus Christ, the eternal God, steps out of Heaven and into our time-bound world as he takes on himself all the pain of the fall and of sin and death. Jesus coming in the flesh is how God hand delivers the invitation to each of us. 

Two ways we live in our calling and enact the gift of God are the Lord’s Supper and communal meals.  Of the Lord’s Supper, also called the Eucharist, James K.A. Smith says, “it is a normative picture of the justice of the kingdom of God.”[i]  The broken Ethiopian man and you and I and Donald Trump[ii] and any other person we can envision all have an invitation and we each have equal standing.  We each come to God’s table unworthy.  We are not invited because we deserve to be there.  We’re invited because we don’t deserve it.  Jesus died for us while were yet sinners.  The broken bread evokes the reality of his broken body.  The dark juice is his spilt blood – shed for us.  The justice of the kingdom; here, all come because of God’s grace.

Smith also says the Supper constitutes us as an eschatological people.  With that fancy theological verbiage he means we are directional – living toward the end and then toward resurrection.  In the resurrection, the broken man will not be broken.  I will not be a rich American in the present sense, where I am wealthier than most people in the world.  In Christ we are all called to inherit the riches of God.  Participating in the Supper reminds me of where we are going and it reminds me to work for justice while we are on the way there.  In the case of the man I saw on the street, I did not work specifically to empower him other than through my prayer.  But I was in Ethiopia as a part of a HillSong trip to join in an effort to help other people who are materially poor, but relationally filled with abundance. 

At the table the justice of the kingdom sets us all – the crippled man, Trump, the people we visited, you, me – as equals and we all, in Christ, look forward to eternity at God’s table where Isaiah 55 is no longer a prophetic anticipation, but an eternal, literal reality.  We go from working for justice to living in perfect justice in God’s physical presence.  We go from praying for that time when we can eat and drink without cost or limitation to eating and drinking without cost, enough for everyone.  We are called to God’s table and we enact that call by taking communion in worship with other believers.

Another way we enact and anticipate the call of God is by sharing table fellowship; eating together.  After worship today, we’ll have lunch together.  We’ll eat food prepared by us and provided by us.  We each bring something to share.  Is it clear that this is much more than a biological act?  All animals take in food and their bodies convert that food into energy needed for life.  When we sit together, we eat food that has been carefully, lovingly prepared. We sit with old friends and new friends.  We laugh, reminisce, retell old stories and hear other stories for the first time. 

In all this we enact, or “live toward,” the community in which we will spend eternity.  We could reduce the significance of it all by saying, “Well, it was a nice potluck at church this past Sunday.”  That would be a true statement, but also an incomplete one.  The “nice potluck” is a gathering of the people of God in joy.  We don’t come just because it’s the best choice among many options for how to spend a Sunday afternoon.  We come and eat together and join our hearts to each other because we are called to this.

The enactment is also anticipation.  We are called people – called to have lunch together but also called to spend eternity together.  When our bodies and our souls feel things we would describe as “contentment” or “happiness” or “satisfaction,” those words are the best we can do in communicating what is happening.  But those descriptors fall short in portraying the feelings we’ll have when we sit at God’s table in the resurrection.  What we do today in taking communion and then in sharing a meal together whets our appetite for the table God has set for us. 

Smith calls the Lord’s Supper a meal “to go” because it is but a “foretaste of the feast in the Kingdom.”[iii] As persons called to God’s table we spend our lives moving toward God and bringing others with along the way.  Three spiritual practices of answering the call to God’s table are (1) participation in communion with the church, (2) participation in community meals like today’s potluck in a community of brothers and sisters in Christ, and (3) the offer of hospitality to one another and to strangers outside of the worshipping context. 

Two of these spirituals practices can be done within the next hour – the Lord’s Supper and a meal enjoyed together.  The third, hospitality, is one I pray each of us will explore in the week to come.  Hospitality can take countless forms.  Experiment with it.  Discover how you will extend hospitality to another person.  I think you’re called to this. We all are.

And the words of the call come from God through the prophet Isaiah. 

“Everyone who thirsts, come.  You that have no money, come, buy, and eat.”

“Listen carefully and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food.”

AMEN

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[i] J.K.A. Smith (2009), Desiring the Kingdom, Baker Academic (Grand Rapids), p. 201.

[ii]This reference specifically to Donald Trump comes as he is most likely to be the Republican nominee for president in the 2016 race.  His polarizing campaign has been viewed by progressives as dangerous as with great bombast he continuously says xenophobic, racist things.  The Republican establishment has gone to great lengths to defeat him, yet he continues to win primaries.  At this point, just mentioning his name in a sermon, especially suggesting that he would sit at a communion table, is enough to raise hackles in the crowd.

[iii] Smith, p.200.

Rituals of Holiness - Maundy Thursday (based on John 13)

March 24, 2016

            Has Jesus become a brand or a cultural-political mascot?  Theologian Michael Horton suggests as much in his Christianity Today article analyzing why people who call themselves ‘evangelical Christians’ give their votes and support to candidates who curse, advocate torture, don’t attend church, don’t confess sin, and remain unrepentant in spite of numerous divorces and affairs.  How is it that such candidates can use Jesus’ name for their own purposes and supposed Christians line up behind them and declare them to be Godly leaders?  Horton, professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in California, thinks pragmatism is the reason believers tolerate and even promote for president individuals who are antithetical to ways of Jesus.  They think certain people “get things done.”

            Jesus got things done, but he also paid attention to how he did things.  He did not surrender compassionate methods to achieve Kingdom results.  Every act portrayed the new reality God was in the process of creating. 

When Jesus knelt and washed his disciples’ feet, he demonstrated life in the Kingdom of God.  We are humble before one another. We serve one another for the sake of love of the other.  Michael Horton writes, “Jesus enacts a performance parable about power.  … Taking off his out garment, he wraps a towel around his waist and begins to wash his disciples’ feet.”[i]  Horton refers back to John 10 where Jesus asserted that there is no power that takes life from him.  Rather, he lays his life down (10:17-18). 

Horton then points out that the kingdom of God is founded in blood, but not the blood of the people, the subjects.  This kingdom is founded in the shed blood of the kingdom who led through compassion and sacrifice.  This contrasts the stance of many in American politics who claim the name Jesus, but then grasp desperately for earthly power that is divisive, destructive, and temporary.  “When Christian leaders are drawn to breath-taking expression of ungodly power, it raises questions about which kingdom and which sort of king they find most appealing.”[ii]

Our practices this evening are rituals that show what sort of King has our allegiance and what kind of life will be lived when the Kingdom comes in full.  We sing in worship.  In this way, our voices are joined to one another’s so that the worship we offer comes not from me but from us.  It is a communal act that says our hearts are joined out of love for Christ and for those around us and we are one in Christ.  We are invited into mediation – quiet prayer in which we invite God to fill us.  We don’t empty ourselves for the sake of being empty.  We empty our minds of the noise of the world in order to be filled with the peace of God. 

Also we have opportunities to see the story of our faith through windows, also called icons.  There is art – creative use of photography and other mediums that invite us to see Jesus washing the disciples’ feet.  There is creative writing, a practice that helps us awaken our own imaginations as we pray.  Our cultural currency sways back and forth from the gut to the intellect back to the gut – head and heart.  Both matter very much, but so too does the emotion, and our imagination awakens our emotion.  The creative writing station gives voice to another part of our selves as we pray.  And then there is enactment – as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, we wash one another’s.  The story comes alive.

Finally, the offering and the receiving.  We have stones, the burdens we carry, and we drop them at the cross, offering our sins, our hesitations, our doubts to God.  We give God our mess and God takes it.  We receive from him bread – the broken body of Jesus, the removal of our sins.  We receive from him juice – the shed blood in which we have eternal life.

What do all these rituals reveal about the kingdom of God?  When we sing, when we pray, when worship through art and writing, when we wash feet and release burdens as we drop stones in a bucket at the cross, when we eat bread and drink juice, when we do all these things, what of the kingdom is seen in these experiences? 

The Kingdom is a place of space – space to be and grow in Jesus.  The Kingdom is a place of beauty.  We serve each other.  We honor and care for each other.  God is present.  There are no presumptions, no prerequisites, and no regrets because we are free and made new in Christ.  All are welcome, all are forgiven, and all have life because Jesus has made a way.  Our participation in the worship practices is one way God prepares us to live in His kingdom.  I think we’ll find that this Kingdom is richer and more joy-filled than any kingdom we might build.  How could it be otherwise?  This is the kingdom of a loving God who desires to welcome us into His embrace.

AMEN

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[i] M. Horton (2016) - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/march-web-only/theology-of-donald-trump.html?start=2

[ii] Ibid.

Maundy Thursday Message - 2014

Jesus the Giver (John 6:35-51; 13:1-11)

Thursday, April 17, 2014 – Maundy Thursday

            Nelson Mandela spent years and years in prison in South Africa, yet he survived that ordeal, made it out, became president, and forgave those who unjustly imprisoned him.  He gained a reputation for courage, grace, focus, and great inner strength.  Martin Luther King Jr. is known for non-violence.  He dreamed of an integrated America before it happened.  He spoke with charisma and people wanted to follow him; or kill him.  They did both.

            Here in our own town, there are stories of men and women of great character and integrity.  One example of many is former basketball coach Dean Smith.  He is known as much for his faith and social conscience as his brilliance as a coach.  He is respected for his character.

            I could go on with examples.  The one thing others cannot take away is integrity, yet people compromise their own values far too often.  Though it cannot be taken, we give our integrity, we forfeit our reputation, and as a result we struggle to trust one another.  Jesus’ character was never in question.

            This may sound like an example of stating what is ridiculously obvious – Jesus was a good man.  Well, no kidding!  Was that even in question?  And yet, to look closely at why we accept this without question helps us know how to stand before Jesus.  We take up a vulnerable posture in which all we can do is present ourselves fully exposed, our souls completely bare, and then receive whatever he dishes out.

            Why?  It begins with what Jesus did in gathering his disciples for a meal the night he would be arrested.  The gospels indicate strongly he knew what was coming.  Whether he knew it would be that evening or sometime very soon, he knew.  His actions were intentional, done so that after the crucifixion/resurrection dust had settled; his disciples could look back, remember, and learn from what he did.  

            They would have reclined around a table kind of at the height of a coffee table.  And Jesus washed their feet.  I thought why is it such a big deal that he washed their feet?  Along with that question, I wonder, why do I feel compelled to wash feet just because Jesus did it?

            In his culture it was an act of service done by a servant or in many cases by a slave.  It was a lowly chore.  That was a world where people traveled by foot; they walked dirt roads; and they wore sandals.  I would guess those feet were a kind of dirty we rarely see, we of shoes, sock, carpets, pavement, and bathtubs.  It was lowly and here the master lowered himself in a shocking way.

            In our culture the issue is intimacy and self-reliance.  I’ll wash my own feet, thank you.  I’ll do it at my house and then I’ll hide them.  If you must look down there, notice my shoes.  I love you, but I don’t know if I want us to move to that level of intimacy in our friendship.  I’m not sure I want my foot in your hands.

            In Jesus’ day, they did not want to wash the feet of others.  In our day, we don’t want others to wash our feet.  In both cases, the act is a significant step out of normal.  And there’s the genius of it.  Jesus said to his contemporaries in this act, you are no better than the servant who washed feet.  In our day he says to us, you need to open your hearts and let me in and let your brothers and sisters in Christ in. 

            Sure, we are capable of washing our own feet.  But are we vulnerable enough to let people into our hearts to the point that we truly are a family in Christ.  Will we allow him to smash down the barriers we erect to keep everyone, sometimes even our spouses, at a safe distance?  Can we invite Jesus so deeply that we have the intimate love here in our family of believers that Jesus insisted be what defines us?

            In the account of the foot washing in John 13 and in our acting it out, we see Jesus character.  He, the Lord, is a servant.  He models servant-love and demands that we give servant love to one another, to those society would call the ‘least of these,’ and to our enemies.  The foot washing is one way Jesus breaks us down so he break into our lives, our hearts.

            Because of his willingness to show servant-love as he calls us to servant love is one reason we admire Jesus’ character.  Another is his sacrifice.  When we gather around the communion table, we take the bread.  We hold it up and say, ‘this represents the body of Christ.’  We eat it because he said, ‘do this in remembrance of me.’  The broken bread is his body, broken by our sins.  The wine or grape juice represents his blood – the blood of the New Covenant.  Because he died for us and because we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, we have life in the New Covenant. 

            The Gospel of John is abundantly clear that Jesus the man knew exactly what he was doing.  Yes, he was fully God.  At the same time, he was fully human.  When nails drove through his hands, it hurt as much as it would hurt you or me.  Yet, he knew it was coming and went to it for the world, for you and me.  In chapter 10, he says, “I lay down my life.  … No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord” (10:18). 

            In John 19, having been arrested, the beaten, poor Galilean rabbi stands before the splendor and might of Rome, an inquiry from Governor Pontius Pilate.  Yet, Jesus seems to control the entire dialogue.  Frustrated, Pilate asks, “Do you refuse to speak to me?  Do you not know that I have the power to release you and the power to crucify you?”  Already bloodied from the thorns and the whip, Jesus says back, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (19:10-11). 

            Jesus chose the cross.  It was God’s plan from the start.  I don’t think God forced Judas to betray him or forced the chief priests to hand him over to Pilate.  I think each player in the drama made his own choices.  But God knows the human heart and the human weakness when it comes to sin and temptation.  Jesus took the sin on himself. 

            When we talk about his great character, we can say many things.  I have chosen to focus on how he expressed servant love, and how Jesus gave of himself as an act of sacrificial love.  Service and sacrifice:  these attributes are what Jesus is all about and they indicate how we are to stand before him. 

            When Jesus knelt, Peter protested.  “You will never wash my feet,” he told his master (13:8).  “Unless I wash you,” Jesus responded, “you have no share with me.”  There is nothing we do.  We present ourselves as we are in all our dirtiness, shame, and failure before God.  There’s no initiative from us; no skill or exceptional achievement.  There is no gain or hard work that gets us there.  Broken, we come and Jesus is the actor, the doer.  He washes.  If we do not come in this way, receiving what the giver gives, we never can be one with him.

            Similarly he says, “Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  Nothing in any of the four gospels means literal cannibalism.  Joined with the bread and cup accounts in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we know that here in John 6, Jesus meant we eat the bread and cup as a symbol of us taking him into ourselves.  But when I say, “taking in,” I mean receive.  We accept that we are sinners, but that his body scarred and blood spilled make a way for us.  If we do not, then we do have the eternal Jesus gives. 

            At the foot washers’ basin and at the communion table, we are receivers and Jesus the giver.  Our hands are open as are our hearts.  Nothing is held back or hidden.  We come acknowledging that we belong to him.  We are his and the best that is in us is what he gives. 

            This is not necessarily easy.  People who work hard and achieve a lot want take pride in standing on their own accomplishments.  Taking on the posture of receiving may be one of the biggest obstacles blocking the path to life-changing faith.  We are forced to trust.  Many will not.  Pride is a root cause of sin, yet many of the proudest people in the country sit in churches every week.  We are proud of our children, proud of our families, proud of churches, and proud of ourselves.  Nothing any pastor says will dent that pride in the least.  That entrenched pride produces unmovable wills which is sad because it means people bearing the identity of a Christian are in fact keeping themselves from God.

            I pray tonight, Maundy Thursday, you and I would not be among the proud.  I know we have been.  I wrestle with pride and tonight, I am asking God to help me let it go.  Would you do that?  Would you ask God to free you from having to stand on your own?  Would you look to Heaven and in your spirit confess your sins and your helplessness?  Having confessed would you then open yourself to Jesus and receive what he gives?  In washing feet and being washed, we honor our servant God and we are cleansed by him.  In eating bread and drinking juice, we take him into us as we admit that we are nothing without him.

            He is the great giver, giving life to all who will die to self and receive from him.  Can we do that tonight?

            We will have silent prayer and then be invited forward for the Lord’s Supper.