Stay Salty (Matthew 5:13; Mark 9:49-50; Luke 14:34-35)

Sunday, October 9, 2016

            Several of our youth are into sports – ultimate Frisbee, soccer, basketball, gymnastics, parkour, and cross country.  This past Thursday I__ Tennant and J__ Baker competed in a middle school cross country meet.  The Bakers and Candy and I are very grateful that youth leaders from our church came out to see the event.  Kelly and Jared Heinly came and so did Enam and Carlin Jordan.

            On this course, the runners started on the football field, headed into the woods, ran a loop, and then came of the woods for a final 100 yard sprint across the football field to the finish line.  We gathered around field, watched them begin and disappear into the woods, and then 10-15 minutes emerged for the final sprint to the finish.  The first 5 or 6 came through – the top runners, and we cheered them to the finish.

            Then came the next group.  These are fast kids but not quite at the top.  A couple of theme came out of the woods, one from Culbreth Middle School, one from Smith Middle School.  As they sped up field, the Culbreth runner tried to get to a line where he’d have a straight shot to the finish.  In doing this, he shoulder checked the runner from Smith and sent him sprawling.  The body check would make a hockey coach smile.  I thought it might have been intentional until I saw what came next. 

            He took three steps and abruptly stopped.  He whirled around to check on the Smith runner and helped him to his feet.  The Smith runner quickly shrugged off the fall.  And a second later the two of them were furiously racing toward the finish. 

            How do you feel about what happened?  As I watched it, a voice inside me shouted, “No, don’t help him up.  This is competition and you’re losing time.”  It is good that in high school I played football, where knocking people down is sanctioned.  But, as a 46-year-old pastor who believes that while competition is valuable in sports but cooperation is more helpful in life, I have great admiration for what this kid did. 

Imagine the cross country meet as a metaphor for life. Two attitudes are in play.  One attitude is I must win at the expense of others.  If knocking someone down and even hurting them helps me, I’ll knock them down and hurt them.  Winning is the top value.  This attitude defines winning in terms of accumulation, accolades, accomplishment.  How many awards do I have?  How much do I own?  My winning stands on comparison.  In order for me to win, you must lose.  That’s the attitude of the runner who knocks the other over and never looks back.

            A second attitude is I must do my best while helping others do their best so that together we can create beautiful things.   And all can share in this beauty.  In this attitude, I will give up things – possessions, time, money; I will give of myself in order to help others flourish.  This is what I saw in the cross country meet.  The boy stopped, sacrificing his own time, in order to help his competition.  Then together, they created something magnificent: a photo finish as they raced hard down the final 100 yards.  It’s the highlight of any race, and it happened when a kid made a choice, the kind of choice a disciple makes.

            Following Jesus is awareness of and openness to the Holy Spirit.  And it is a series of daily choices; daily choosing to walk the path Jesus sets before us.  I mention the Holy Spirit before getting into us making choices based on who we are in Christ because we have to keep in mind that we are not generators of good.  God is the giver of good things and our daily contact with God is the ever present Holy Spirit.  Choosing the right actions and words is impossible without the Spirit’s help.  We have to keep our mind on God and listen to the Spirit constantly.  When we do, we are empowered to live in Christ.  The choices we make, like the choice to help a fallen runner, reveal that we are in Christ.

            One of the images of a disciple in the New Testament is salt.  Jesus told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth.”  The Gospel writers Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote 30-60 years after the resurrection.  Each one had sources: people they talked to who had been with Jesus; traditions that had become established in the early church; their own memories and experiences; and the Holy Spirit.  Each wrote his gospel with a particular audience in mind and with a specific narrative slant.  They weren’t just telling the story of Jesus.  They were telling it in a way intended to shape the church as the nascent body of Christ matured moving from the first into the second century. 

            Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all remembered Jesus’ statement about disciples being salt.  You are the salt of the earth.  They each remembered it differently. 

            In Matthew, Jesus is in the opening of his great Sermon on the Mount.  He has given the beatitudes.  “Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted; blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be filled;” and so on.  And then Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?” 

            Candy will be making something – she’s wonderful cook – and she calls me in the kitchen, shoves a spoon in my mouth, and asks, “Does it need more salt?”  I am the kind of eater that really doesn’t know the answer.  I just shovel food in.  I__ has a much more refined palette.  I answer her with a shrug of the shoulders.  He answers with great confidence.  Yes, more salt!

            Matthew takes Jesus’ use of salt to mean taste.  Does salt make the soup taste better?  Does a disciple make the world better?  With God speaking through our lives, how do we exert a beneficial influence in the world around us? 

            How do we add the flavor of heaven to situations of our lives? It could be a simple matter of doing something with honesty when everyone in the crowd cheats or takes shortcuts and calls you childish for not joining them.  You’re not behaving with integrity because you want to broadcast your own righteousness.  You just do the right thing because you are a Christ follower.  You don’t call attention to yourself.  But your choice indicates that something is going on inside you.  That “something” is God at work in you.  Whether the choice is integrity when others cheat, generosity when others hoard, the choice to turn the other cheek metaphorically or literally, or the choice to not do something like view a raunchy movie or laugh at a crude joke, the choice will season that entire situation with the flavor of heaven. 

            People around you might not appreciate such divine seasoning.  They may want to bask in being ungodly.  Jesus did not say, “You are the salt of the earth and will become rich and popular when you do the right thing.”  Being the salt might be hard sometimes but the flavor we add, the flavor of heaven, is sorely needed even by people who think they don’t want it.  Put plainly, people who don’t know Christ and those who do need to see how a Christ-follower thinks and acts in daily situations of life.  Know the Gospels.  Stay in tune with the Holy Spirit.  And sprinkle the flavoring of heaven all around.  Stay salty.

            Mark also includes Jesus’ teaching about salt in his gospel, but frames it differently.  Jesus says in Mark 9, “Everyone will be salted with fire.  … Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another.”  Salted with fire sounds odd.  Jesus is shamelessly mixing metaphors.  He has in mind preservation and perseverance.

            Salt is a preservative and Jesus wants the faith he’s planting in his disciples to last.  He wants them, as leaders in the church that will be born after his ascension, to preserve the community of his followers.  He has just finished saying “If your foot causes you to stumble [meaning sin] cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be cast into hell” (9:46).  Mark’s Jesus does not say “Be the salt or stay salty,” he says, “Everyone is salted.”  Everyone goes through temptation and persecution.  Do we come out of it stronger in our faith or do we abandon faith?

            I recommend adding the Voice of the Martyrs email updates to your own prayer life.  Voice of the Martyrs tracks Christianity around the world and especially in places where other religions are dominant, like Hinduism or Islam.  VOM sends accounts of the ways Christians suffer – job loss, imprisonment, physical attack, and even death.  VOM urges the church worldwide to persevere in prayer so that the church in areas of persecution may be preserved. 

A regular discipline of praying for persecuted Christians can do two things.  First it connects us to believers around the world and gives us a voice on their behalf as we go to our God for them.  Second, as we enter the stories of real, present day persecution, we are heartened to strengthen our witness when it feels like it is hard to be a Christian in our own lives.  Jesus says in Mark 9, “Have salt within yourselves.”  We’ve been salted.  We receive in order to build up the church’s witness in the world.

Stay salty and spread the flavor of Heaven.

Be salted and persevere when following Jesus is a hard thing to do.

What does Luke remember of Jesus when he remembers the teaching about salt as a metaphor for discipleship?

In Luke 14, Jesus says, “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?  It is fit for neither the soil, nor the manure pile.”  Luke initially sounds like Matthew, talking about lost taste.  But then he says ineffective salt is unfit for the manure pile.  What does that mean?

Religion Professor Anthony Bradley sites studies of agricultural uses of salt.[i]  This is not flavoring, nor is it a preservative.  The salt is needed for the fertilizer to stimulate growth.  The context in which Luke cites Jesus is a teaching about hard discipleship.  Jesus has just said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brother and sister, yes, even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (14:26-27).  Jesus doesn’t want us to literally hate our families or our own lives.  He uses extreme language to make the point that being true to Him has to be a top priority above else. In a world that will either ignore us, mock us, or harm us, remaining faithful is the mark of a real disciple. 

Moreover, by making the decision to follow Jesus no matter the circumstances, no matter the cost, we encourage other disciples and our perseverance stimulates growth in them.  In America, we won’t deal with physical harm because of our faith.  We mentioned this when we discuss Mark’s uses of Jesus’ salt image as a marker of perseverance.  There we join with our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, areas where faith may literally lead to risking one’s life or willingly losing one’s life.  In America, we are more likely to see Christian witness marginalized.  When that happens, we stand as disciples and speak out as disciples. 

We raise our voice so that the truth about Jesus – the truth that Jesus is Lord and Salvation can be had in Him – is told.  In this effort – the work of verbal witness and commitment in spite of marginalization – in this, we encourage the faith of others.  We become stimulants in the soil of fellow believers’ lives. 

I had a friend in the National Guard who was salt in my own life in the manners Jesus mentions in Luke 14.  Enlisted infantrymen in the National Guard use down time to tall crude joke and raunchy misogynistic stories, most of which aren’t true.  Or, in the down time, soldiers debate politics, argue about movies, and talk about religion.  Preston Willifred and I discovered each other, two committed Christians in the guard.  He never laughed at the dirty jokes.  If I did, he called me on it, harshly, in front of everybody.  Preston was younger than me, but his faith had a boldness that mine lacked in those days.  I admired the strength of his testimony, I tried to duplicate it in my own life.  He was the salt, I was the soil, and a more mature faith was the crop.  Many people in this church family have acted in this for me and for each other. 

Stay salty.  Add the flavor of Heaven to the world around you.

Be salted.  Persevere and preserve the faith of those who are persecuted.

We are salt.  We can stimulate growth in each other and other disciples we meet.

I talked with the young man after the cross country race, just to compliment him on his admirable act of helping a fallen opponent.  His mother told me a story.  In previous race, his legs tangled with another runner and he was the one to fall.  No one stopped to help him.  His legs were cut up pretty badly in the gravel and he was upset, but he finished the meet.  Afterward, talking to his parents, he was mad.  But they encouraged him.  Together, he and his parents decided if it happened in another race and if he had the opportunity, he would help his opponents.  He would do what no one did for him.

Here at church, we are like that conversation he had with his parents.  We are the community that encourages each other to go out into the world and be salt.  The opportunities are going to come.  We will be discouraged in life of following Jesus and we will meet other people who are discouraged.  Here, as we worship together, pray together, and encounter the word together, we build one another up.  Then when we go out we are ready for opportunities we know will come.  We are ready to add the flavor of Heaven, to preserve the faith of those under fire, and to stimulate growth in Christ in those who are discouraged. 

You’ve heard the silly beer ad which says, “Stay thirsty, my friends.”

In Christ, we are brothers and sisters.  “Stay salty.”

AMEN

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[i] A. Bradley (October, 2016), Christianity Today, p.72-76.

All Shall See Salvation (Luke 3:3-6)

Sunday, May 29, 2016

          I needed help with this sermon, so I turned … well, I turned to everyone.  If you were around the church office this week, I hit you with a question.  If I haven’t asked you the question yet, I’ll give it now and you can think about what your answer would be.  If I have asked and you remember answering, you can now think whether you would change what your answer would be.

          We say Jesus is our savior.  The Bible says that.  Salvation is a major and repeated theme in scripture and in the history of Christian theology.  If Jesus is savior, here is the question.  From what are we saved?  Ponder that.  If Jesus is our Savior, from what are we saved?

          Because this concept comes up so often in the Bible, one thing is absolutely clear to me.  Human beings and the world, the entire creation, need salvation and only God can meet this need.  However, salvation is discussed in so many different places, there is not one definitive word on this topic.  Salvation is a complex Christian idea and it is important that we understand it. 

Throughout this summer, that’s what we’ll try to do.  We will look at the history of ideas about salvation in way that shows the connection of the idea with the daily living of our lives.  Surprising?  Did you think of salvation as something that happens to your soul after you die?  Certainly eternal life is part of what we mean when we say ‘salvation.’  The saved spend eternity in God’s loving embrace, feasting at God’s banquet table.  Those not saved, the damned, spend eternity separated from God.  We call this condition Hell and the New Testament offer several metaphors to depict it. 

However, the Bible does not restrict the understanding of salvation to the afterlife.  What does it mean today to say, ‘I am saved?’

Luke chapter 3 stands at the turning point of history.  Luke mentions the Roman emperor of the time, the Roman governor in Judea, Pontius Pilate, and Herod, the Jewish ruler in Galilee.  Luke sets his tale in history because he believes he’s writing not only history – but a seismic shift in the historical landscape.  To accomplish his task of showing that with the arrival of Jesus on the scene everything has changed, he sets the time period and then quotes the prophet Isaiah. 

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” Isaiah says, and 500 years later Luke write.  Luke 3:4-5 is remarkably similar to Isaiah 40:3-4.  That portion of Isaiah was for the exile community; God’s word of promise to a defeated people.  God would again do a new thing and would again deliver His people.  Luke takes those words the prophet spoke in Babylon and announces that the day has come.  In doing so, he significantly alters the final part of the quote.

Isaiah told the exiles, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”  Luke saw that glory – God in the flesh, Jesus.  By the time Luke wrote this gospel, Jesus had died and resurrected.  Luke changed the final verse of the quote so that in his rendition it said, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  The glory of God means salvation for humankind and for the world God created and sin corrupted.  The coming of Jesus is the sign that the turn-around has begun. 

By changing the final verse of the well-known Isaiah passage, Luke introduced a new idea.  “All” flesh shall see salvation.  This idea is not only for priests, not only for Pharisees, not only for Jews.  Luke’s two works – the gospel and the book of Acts – insist that this salvation that comes from the Jews spreads over the face of the earth.  His message is to be taken literally.

John the Baptist, Isaiah’s voice in the wilderness, is said by some Bible commentators to be the last of the Old Testament prophets in the tradition of Isaiah and Amos and Jeremiah.  I see that.  I also see him and a pre-apostle.  Apostles were those who met Jesus in person and then carried the message of his salvation and coming kingdom throughout the world.  John met Jesus in person.  He baptized him.  And when he wasn’t baptizing he was preaching, proclaiming the gospel of repentance.  He was the forerunner to the age of the apostles.  Most importantly, he showed that the message of salvation is one to be shared.

He also demanded repentance and this gets us closer to that question which should stay on our minds throughout all of this.  From what does Jesus save us?  Repentance is acknowledging and confessing our sins, turning away from them, and in our guilt turning to God.  Oxford theologian Paul Fiddes calls sin a “failure of relationship between human beings and their creator due to rebellion from the human side.”  Sin is unbelief.  It is humans refusing to accept God’s purpose for His creation and substituting our own purposes instead.[i]

Sin wipes out the possibility of universal salvation.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  Everyone is saved.  We could even such an interpretation out of Luke’s altered Isaiah quote.  Doesn’t it see, all shall see salvation?  Yes.  But do all receive salvation?  Jesus is the embodiment of God and of what God wants to do.  Did all who met Jesus turn to God in faith?  No.  Some heightened their own rebellion by pounding thorns into Jesus’ head before nailing him to a cross, displaying him in shame, and piercing him with a spear.  Some people reject God and take that rejection to their graves.  On judgment day, God honors the choices we have made.

At the same time, God glorifies the accomplishment of Jesus on the cross.  He died for the sins of the world.  He died to defeat death.  He overcame the temptations of Satan.  He forgave those who taunted, tried, and killed him.  He welcomed back the disciples who abandoned him and restored the one who denied him.  He redeemed humanity and renewed creation.  All in his death and resurrection.  His victory is the final word on Judgment Day.  How this squares with the eternal fate of those who rejected God invitations in life is God’s business.  I don’t know how it all fits together and I will assert that the most brilliant of theologians doesn’t know either, not completely.

What we can say, because the Bible shows this, is that salvation is much more the verdict for individuals on Judgment Day.  It is also about God reclaiming his creation.  Listen to the comments of N.T. Wright, also of Oxford.  He says that the belief that the whole of Christian truth is about me and my salvation is the “theological equivalent of supposing that the sun goes round the earth.”  He continues, “We are not the center of the universe.  God is not circling around us.  We are circling around him. … God made humans … so that through them, as his image-bearers, he could bring his wise, glad, fruitful order to the world.”[ii]  When we are saved, it is to be agents of God’s order.  That’s our vocation as disciples.  More on that in a moment.

N.T. Wright’s expanded sense of salvation brings me to the question I threw in peoples’ faces all week.  If Jesus is the Savior, from what are we saved?

People don’t like it when a pastor steps to them with a question like this.  It feels like a pop quiz one is destined to fail.  Thank you, all of you, who humored me by answering. 

In the salvation we have from God, from what are we saved?  Eleven people said we are saved from “Sin.”  Some had a variation on this like, saved from the penalty of sin, or saved from sin and death, or saved from consequences of sin.  That’s a correct answer.  Nine people said we are saved from death.  One of the nine actually the word ‘destruction.’  Also a correct answer.  Seven people said some form of separation; we are saved from separation from God.  The cross bridges the chasm. Six people said we are saved from ourselves and one said we are saved from each other.  Many passages in the Old Testament show why such a salvation is needed.  Four people included “Hell” as part of their answer; we are saved from Hell.  Tw said we are saved from the world and one said we are saved from falling short of God’s standard.  One creative person said, we are saved from an ordinary life.  These are all correct answers.

A year ago, I put this question to my son I__.  This is what happens when your dad is a pastor.  He said we are saved from evil.  He’s the only one who said it that way.  This past week, I asked him the same question and forgetting what he previously said, this time said we are saved from sin.  I bet if I asked you the question in five years, your answer might be a little different than what you’d answer today.  These are all right answers.  They all tell part of the story.

I was having so much fun with this game, I took it to a group a pastors I meet with on Thursdays.  We spend a couple of hours each week debating theology and helping each other figure how to be better church leaders.  I asked these wise guys the question, and they had to turn it around on me.

They said, “No Rob, the question is not what are we saved from.  The question is what are we saved for.  Or, what are we saved to.”  I had to browbeat these guys into answering my question.  Then, I had to thank them for challenging me with a better question.  Remember N.T. Wright’s observation.  When we are saved by God through faith in Jesus Christ, we become agents of God’s order. 

We are sent by him to lost, hurting people, beaten people, mean, scarred people.  We are sent to tell them that their lives, which appear to be total messes, actually have purpose.  We are sent to show them that they are loved.  They feel horrible about themselves, which is why they are so awful to others.  We show them they are loved by God and have a future of walking hand-in-hand with God.  What are we saved to?

All summer we will dig into what ‘salvation’ means and how it colors, shapes, and animates our everyday lives.  For now, ponder this.

An old evangelistic technique is to try to shock people.  Put the urgency into the conversation.  Say to someone you think is not walking with Jesus, “If you were to die tonight and have to face God, what reason would you give Him for letting you into His Heaven?”  “If you were to die tonight … .”  That’ll get em!  That will convince people to turn to the Lord in repentance and faith.  Scare them into Heaven.  The truth is some people have become disciples through confrontational approaches like this one. 

It’s not a tact Jesus normally used.  More often than anything else, he told people they were forgiven and thus able to re-enter the worshiping community.  Or, he might say, “You are forgiven.  Go in peace.”  The words he spoke to how people would live faithful, God-honoring, God-filled lives the next day.

What if we undercut that “What are you saved from” question?  What if we inverted that “If you die tonight” approach to talking about salvation?

Not, “If you die tonight.”  No, instead this: “If you wake up tomorrow, how will you live the new day in relation to God?”

That’s this week’s assignment.  Each day, when you wake up, be aware.  You’re awake!  You don’t need to remember the entire sermon.  Just remember to look in a mirror and say this.  “OK, I am saved by the shed blood and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  What am I saved for today?  What I am saved to do in Jesus’ name today?”  This week, don’t fail.  Don’t miss a day between now and next Sunday.  Start each day in this way.  I am saved.  For what I am saved?  What will my relationship with God look like today?  And spend that day answering.  

AMEN

         

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[i] P. FIddes, Past Event and Present Salvation, p.6.

[ii] Wright, Justification (2009), p.23-24.

The Political Palm Sunday (Luke 19:28-40)

March 20, 2016

            “Make America great again!”

            “Feel the Burn!”

            Words.

            A political rally was canceled due to threats of violence and physical altercations between protesters and supporters.

            At a political rally, a supporter punched a protester in the face.  The candidate at least for a time considered paying the legal fees his supporter would face for committing assault.

            Response.

            In words and in the ways people respond to words and to events and to movements, we have a window through which we can gain perspective on our country’s political scene. 

In words and in the ways people respond, we have a window through which we see Jesus’ actions on that fateful Sunday prior to his crucifixion.  I will not talk directly about the political movements of our day.  I certainly won’t endorse a party or a candidate.  We will look at the Jesus movement and how Jesus forms us.  Who we are in Christ absolutely plays into our approach to politics today and it shapes our response to what happens in politics. 

We are called to praise God, even in trying circumstances.  That’s the end game of Luke’s depiction of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on the day we now commemorate as Palm Sunday.  The actions of Jesus, as told by Luke, are invitation.  We are beckoned into love and hope, called to worship and praise God. 

How do we get there? 

            As Luke sets the scene, there are many disciples following Jesus and the group has been growing ever since chapter 9, verse 51, when Jesus set his face to get to this point.  Through parables and teaching and actions, Jesus has over and over emphasized how challenging it is to be a disciple, yet people find him so compelling, they follow anyway.  They give up their money, they realign their relationships, they adjust their priorities, and they fix their lives upon following Him.

            A group, with Jesus in the lead, is nearing the city of God, Jerusalem.  He sends disciples ahead to the village on the outskirts of the city, Bethany.  They are to get a colt for Jesus to ride.  When they go to untie the owners ask what they are doing, just as Jesus anticipated.  They answer as he told them to.  “The Lord needs it.”  Nothing more is said or needs to be said. 

            This doesn’t appear particularly interesting, but in the Greek language the word translated “owners,” as in owners of this colt, is kurioi.  The word translated “Lord” as in the “the Lord needs it” is kurios.  It’s the same word. 

            The people who own the colt are the colt’s lords.  We might call them the animal’s masters or owners, but we wouldn’t say they are the beast’s ‘lords.’  We don’t use the word ‘lord’ that way.  However, when we see the contrast and also when we see how submissively the animal’s owners give it up when they realize who needs it, a deeper understanding comes into view.

            In our world, people are owners and masters, presidents and kings, CEOs and lords, lower case ‘l.’ Jesus is Lord with a capital ‘L.’ Everything in the world is under him.  He owns all including everything in my house, every penny in the church’s bank account, this building, everything in your pocket, and everything we can see or imagine and all that is beyond what we can see or imagine.  There are lords.  He is the Lord. 

            Words.  When we say “Jesus is Lord,” we are saying something significant.  We pray to God as Father and God as Savior and God as Lord.  What if we prayed to God as owner?  It feels weird to me, cold, impersonal.  But for us capitalists, it might make a lot of sense.  We recognize that however hard we might work to acquire capital so as to have an advantage in our capitalistic society, because we are Christians, we know Jesus is the Owner.

            Words.  Consider the words of the crowd as they herald the coming of Jesus to Jerusalem.  The crowd quotes Psalm 118:26, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  That is how it reads in the Psalm and that is how it is quoted in Matthew and Mark and John.  Luke renders the quote differently.  In Luke it says, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”

            Did Luke just make that up?  For his own purposes did he change the story, making it say “king?”  I don’t think so.  The wording is different in John, but John also makes the point that the crowd proclaimed Jesus to be king.  And I don’t think we’re dealing a contradiction.

            The gospel writers quote both Psalm 118:26 and Zechariah 9:9, which heralds the coming of the blessed king.  If crowds really line the roads shouting this prophecies like political slogans, they would have shouted over and over.  They would have conflated the quotations.  Luke selects a quote from many that were shouted as Jesus road into the city.  The question is not who was right, Luke or the other gospels.  The question what is Luke trying to convey in his decision to include the shout of the disciple who merged the Psalm and the prophet Zechariah as he praised Jesus?  What is about that word, “king?”

            There can only be one.  If Jesus is king, then Archaelus, the son of Herod is not king.  More significantly, if Jesus is king, then the Roman Emperor is not.  To declare the royalty of Lord Jesus is to declare one’s allegiance to the death.  And, after the resurrection, which is when Luke’s gospel was written and read, disciples were sent to the death because they insisted Jesus, not Caesar, is king. 

            Words.  Lord.  King. 

            Enter the Pharisees.  They won’t use these words for him.  “Teacher,” they say, “order your disciples to stop.”  ‘Teacher’ is an honorable title and they show respect in using it.  However, with this word, they view Jesus as their peer.  As his peers, as they see themselves, they assume the right of communal authority over him.  For the good the community, he needs to quiet this furor down immediately and they see it as their place to impose this.

            Word.  Lord – Jesus is to be worshipped and all belongs to Him.  King – Jesus is to be obeyed and given complete allegiance, even to death.  Teacher – Jesus is my peer and if he gets out of line it is my job to rein him in. 

            One more word demands our attention and it is tied to a response, so I will come back to it. 

            The disciples are the first to respond.  Jesus tells them to go ahead to the village, enter a yard of a home they have never visited and take a colt that is not theirs.  They respond in obedience.  I suspect the owners of the house and the yard and the cold were also his disciples, just unknown to those in his traveling party.  They also obeyed without question, giving up the colt. 

            Obedience is a response. 

            Praise is too – the response of the crowd.  They make noise as Jesus rides into Jerusalem because Jesus is worth the noise.  Their praise is not just a predetermined act of worship and political protest.  Luke says they raise their voices joyfully.  It is a response of the heart.

            The Pharisees offer a response of fear.  They hear how much noise the disciples are making.  They know that if they hear it, others will too: temple police; Roman soldiers in the area.  They fully understand the words they have heard, so they know any priests who hear this will fully understand it too.  They fear the powers that be – the temple, the puppet King Archelaeus, Roma – more than they fear God.  God is the one worshiped in the temple and the one who allows Rome to exist, but the Pharisees cannot see that God is in this man before them, Jesus.  So they try to shut the whole thing down. 

            Jesus’ response to the Pharisees raises the last word, the most important word.  We have seen that he is Lord and our response is worship.  We have seen that he is King and our response is obedience and loyalty.  We have seen an attempt to reduce him back to human size by calling him teacher.   He is teacher, but not now, not in this moment.

            Jesus tells the Pharisees if all were silent, the stones would praise him.  The only way the created order – animals, waters, trees, earth – the only way the natural world offers praise is if the praise is going to God.  That’s the only way stones shout out.  Jesus is God.

            He continues through the praises, through the Pharisees and their fears, and into the city.  And God weeps.  Jesus weeps and says to Jerusalem “You did not recognize the time of your visitation.”  God is here and you cannot see it. 

            Words:  Lord. King. God.

            Responses: Obedience.  Praise.  Worship.      

            We have confidence today in the truth in these words and responses to Jesus.  I don’t know if this past Tuesday’s primary results made you happy or fearful.  Maybe you believe Donald Trump can make America great again.  It doesn’t matter.  Maybe you are horrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency.  Doesn’t matter.  Maybe you feel burned because voters didn’t feel the burn for Bernie Sanders.  Doesn’t matter.  Maybe you are super excited at the thought of Hillary as president.  It does not matter.

            From the standpoint of America’s democracy, our presidential election is of course very important.  It always is.  But we are in church.  We have an eternal perspective.  We vote and play our part as law abiding citizens who contribute to society, but what happens in society, who is president, whatever crisis comes up, whatever war is going on – it does not change the fact the Jesus is Lord, King, and God.

            As despair mounts,  society crumbles, and people are at each other’s throats, we speak a word of hope amid the chaos.  The Lord and God and King who rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday died for our sins and then defeated death in the resurrection.  Our Palm Sunday politics transcend the temporary troubles that worry the world. 

Because of Jesus, we have a politics of life.  We know his visitation was a visitation of God and he brought salvation with Him – our salvation and the salvation of all who put their trust in him.  More than that, he came to save world including the rocks and stones.  No wonder they are ready with words of praise.  But praise is our job. 

AMEN 

Keep Hold of the Plow (Luke 9:51-62)

February 10, 2016 – Ash Wednesday

            Jesus “set his face” to go to Jerusalem.  Now, there would be no turning back and no diversions or distractions.  All that he does on this journey described in Luke chapters 9 – 19 is directed toward his final purpose; death and resurrection.  Along the way, Jesus’ teaching and actions show us how to be disciples.[i]

            Jesus would not be deterred.  But we are.  We say we want to follow Jesus, and I think we really do.  But we get distracted.  Social media; relationships – good and bad; work; past hurts and disappointments; the stuff of life; the dysfunction in life; the abuses we’ve suffered; so many things creep into our lives or burst into our lives and vie for our attention, our loyalty, and our hearts.

            Jesus and the disciples are on the road and a Samaritan village does “not receive him.”  The Samaritans refused hospitality.  With his intense focus on Jerusalem, Jesus did not notice the breach of manners.  His disciples James and John did.  “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”

            Do these guys see themselves alongside Abraham as he watched Sodom and Gomorra burn?  Jesus ignored the unhospitable Samaritans, rebuked James and John and moved on.  There’s no time to worry about the actions of Samaritans who don’t know God.  Jesus is on his way to hang from a cross for the sake of the people who don’t know God, like those Samaritans. 

Confession as a spiritual discipline helps us reckon with the things we allow to distract us.  Cancer; divorce; addiction.  We name the things that distract us.  We receive God’s grace.  Procrastination, unkindness, harsh words, withholding love; we confess.  Selfishness, greed, failure to help those in need; we admit our sins and receive grace. 

When we rebellion against God, it reduces us.  In rebellion we become something less than we were meant to be.  We were created in the image of God, made to be his stewards on this good earth he designed.  However, our sins have distorted and disfigured us so that the image of God in us is barely discernable.

Can we ever live into God’s purpose for us as his image bearers doing and making good things in His name?  Yes, if our sins are completely removed.  This is the accomplishment of Jesus on the cross.  I invite you to join me in journeying to the cross with Jesus in 2016.  This is a walk into God’s call for us corporately, as the body of Christ, and for each of us as individual disciples.  Together, we declare that will we turn to Christ, open our hearts to the Spirit, and renounce the things that distract us and draw our attention away from God.  This Lent our goal is to go deeper and reorient our worldviews, so that we hear the voice of God and see the world through the lenses he colors. 

The closing verses of Luke 9 give us our theme. 

There, Jesus sets his face for Jerusalem.  Samaritans fail to give hospitality, disciples want to hurl consuming fire as they ride their high horse, and Jesus has time for none of it.  Seemingly without stopping, he ignores the Samaritans’ social faux pas, chides James and John, and strides forward. 

Next, Jesus tells a would-be-disciple, “Foxes have holes, birds have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  You want to follow Jesus?  Are you sure?  He’s on a journey that ends with everything changed.  Are we sure we want that? 

Once we decide we’re on the move with Jesus, he calls us out of our weakness and out of our brokenness.  He calls us out of our pain and in spite of our losses.  He calls us to the path that he walks.  In Luke 9, that path led to the cross.

Today it leads us to die to self.  That peculiar phrase comes up throughout the gospels.  What does it mean to die to self?  To put it simply, it means I no longer matter because Christ is all that matters.  I won’t be a doormat for a bully.  I won’t try to be a people pleaser.  In Christ I will actually exhibit a stronger character and a more determined sense of purpose because the confidence I have comes from Him. 

To die to self is to say, I am no longer my own.  I belong to Him.  Can we live our lives that way?   Or do we prefer to have control?  That’s the question to wrestle with this year throughout Lent.  Who gets control in my life?  Who is the authority to whom I yield?  Who sets the standard by which I measure myself? 

We know we cannot measure up to God.  But living in grace, walking by faith, we know we don’t half to.  Our lives can be spent walking in grace, giving grace, and sharing the good news of the kingdom of God by inviting people to turn to Christ.  To live this life that God intends to be ours we have to keep at the plow and not look back.

Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).  What is causing you to look back instead forward?  What commitment is keeping you from a deeper commitment to God?  What past pain has you ensnared and makes it impossible to fully give yourself to the Lord?

We’re going to pass out rocks.  Yes, rocks.  Take this rock and let it constantly remind you of the distraction that has taken your mind off the plow.  This distraction has your attention – attention that really belongs to Jesus.  From now until Ash Wednesday, carry this rock.  Let it be a reminder.
            This rock reminds us of the things that distract us and divert us from the course Jesus has set.

This rock reminds us to practice spiritual disciplines during Lent – fasting, prayer, journaling, silent meditation, lectio-divina, prayer-walking.  Choose disciplines that will help you see your dependence on God and help you receive the grace of God. 

This rock reminds us that the Holy Spirit is with us even when our attention is diverted and our focus is on things that are not of God.  Carry this rock at all times.  Maybe even sleep with it.  Let it be the reminder that the Holy Spirit of God is present and beckons us to receive and enter God’s grace and love.

We’ll bring our rocks to worship on Maundy Thursday.  In that service, we will lay them at the cross. We will look at the things that draw us away from a devoted life in Christ, and we will take our eyes off the distractions and put them on the Lord.  We leave the rocks at the cross as way of saying that we want to become who Jesus is calling us to be.  We want to see the world through lenses he gives us.  As we do, we pray that the fruit of our Lenten spiritual disciplines will be a deeper, more focused life with God. 

Pray for this – that many in our church will take up this challenge, will face the cares of the world that draw them away from a life of devoted faith.  Pray that many will commit to keep hold of the plow and to follow Jesus with abandon.  Pray that the discovery of deep relationship with the Lord, made by many in our church, will have a long-lasting effect on our fellowship and on our church’s witness in this community.

AMEN

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[i] Fred Craddock (1990).  Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Luke. John Knox Press (Louisville), p.141.

Is this News Good? (Luke 4:14-30)

It’s the Sabbath day, Saturday.  We’re among the faithful of Nazareth, so we’re in the synagogue.  Where else would we be on the Sabbath? 

            But today, the crowd is overflowing.  Where have all these people been?  I haven’t seen that guy in worship in years.  I see him at the market all the time, but not here.  What’s he doing here?  Why today?  What’s everyone doing here?

            The Carpenter’s son has returned.  There is talk that he can do miracles.  A prophet from Nazareth?  That’s what they say.  He was baptized in the Jordan by the crazy man, John, the Baptizer.  Now he’s back and you wouldn’t believe what they’re saying about him in Capernaum.  

            Why do all those wonderful things there when he’s from here, Nazareth?  If Jesus is our prophet, why didn’t he come here first?  It is just as well.  He’s here today and we get to see the wonders and hear the wisdom. 

           

            This is the scene Luke sets.  Your experience of Jesus depends on your circumstances.  The reality of your life dictates whether or not you think Jesus brings is good news.

            He was called rabbi, so the leaders of the Nazareth synagogue invited him to speak.  They wanted to see what the fuss was all about.  They wanted to know why people were making a big deal of the carpenter’s son. 

Or, they could sense that Jesus truly possessed insight from God and these synagogue leaders wanted to bless the congregation by having a sermon from a charismatic speaker.

            In worship that day, both were present.  Gawkers and spectacle-seekers sat right alongside true worshipers and God-seekers.  Church has always been an amalgamation of people of genuine faith, people who are confused, and people who are there because someone else forced them to come.  There are always people in church who don’t know why they themselves are there.  There are judgmental people who can’t see their own flaws.  And there are broken people who cannot see their own beauty. 

It is that way here, now.  Some want to be here.  Some are not sure why we’re here.  Or, we’re here because we know that we need this.  We know how much we need God and we hope to meet Him here.  We have all of it.  Every church does.  And the experience of hearing Jesus – uplifting or troubling – depended and still depends on the situation of the worshiper. 

Let’s start with the poorest people who were in the synagogue.  The people with no money; the people with disabilities; the people of minority cultures who had no rights and rarely received justice; the people on the receiving end of the bullies’ taunts and slaps; the powerless; we begin with how they might hear Jesus.  They were certainly there.

Beginning in verse 17, “[Jesus] stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ¹⁸ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the 0ppressed go free,¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor’

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” 

            He quotes Isaiah where good news is promised to the poor.  Release offered to captives and freedom to the oppressed.  And, he mentions recovery of sight for the blind.  Everyone in that crowd would have been aware of Isaiah.  This was a popular scripture with immediate application. 

            Blindness was a common ailment.  We’re going to receive sight?  Remember, we are imagining who would find Jesus’ words to be good news.  The blind.  And the oppressed.  Most Nazareth Jews felt oppressed by Rome and by the poverty that was their life.  This was uplifting.  Furthermore, when is all this good news going to come about?  Today!  Today – with the arrival of Jesus – the scripture is fulfilled.

            Essentially, Jesus is announcing Jubilee.  This concept, Jubilee, comes from another scripture everyone would recognize, Leviticus 25.  “The fiftieth year you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.  It shall be a jubilee for you; you shall return, every one of you to property and to your family” (v.10).  All debt is forgiven.  If someone previously had to sell family land to get out of a financial pinch, in the Jubilee year the holder of the land restores it to the family that originally owned.  If someone sold himself into slavery to cover his debts, in the Jubilee year, the person who owns him frees him.

            For some people Jubilee means losing a slave or losing the advantage of being the only landowner in a community of poor tenant farmers.  If Jesus’ words in fact come to pass those who are in a superior social position because of their wealth lose their edge.  The neighbor they looked down upon is now at their level, looking them in the eye. 

            Jesus says, with his arrival, Jubilee has come.  What did the slave owners think when they heard this?  What about the debtholders?  Were there any curious Roman soldiers or officials in the crowd, just there to check out the Jewish worship practices?  Did they enjoy Jesus’ reading of Isaiah’s line about freedom from oppressors?

            Luke tells us everyone was amazed by Jesus’ preaching.  That would have been the perfect time to do the mic drop.  Jesus exits stage left to sound of deafening applause.   But, he didn’t do that.  Jesus kept preaching.  The amazement quickly turned into something else.  He could see it in their eyes.  They heard he had worked miracles.  The synagogue was packed because they wanted to see one! 

            “No prophet is accepted in his hometown” he told them (4:24).  Then Jesus regaled the congregation with more stories they would know all too well, stories of the great prophets, Elijah and Elisha.  In both cases, the men of God rendered God’s miraculous provision to people other than Jews. 

All those amazed people in the Nazareth synagogue put it all together. 

He’s known as a miracle worker and he’s from here.  He’s ours, but we stand condemned because we don’t welcome the poor.  We don’t love and help the blind.  We may be oppressed, but we step on the backs of those who have it worse than us.  He holds himself up like Elijah and Elisha.  The great prophets.  And he judges us.  He’ll help others and he’ll criticize us. 

“When they heard this,” Luke writes in verse 28, “All in the synagogue were filled with rage.”  A mob action happens next as they drag Jesus to a cliff intent on throwing him to his death.

            I don’t think there were any slaves or blind people or debtors in the lynch mob.  All those at the bottom, those who live in the gutter, heard Jesus promise them that his arrival meant rescue from their pitiable condition.  No, this crowd that is seeing red and breathing murder are those who got upset when Jesus said he came to heal and liberate and release.  Not only did they not need what Jesus offered, but they did not like it that Jesus would welcome and care for the lowest in their community.

You see how our circumstance colors how we hear Jesus?  Is his coming good news for us?  Are we happy when he pronounces Jubilee for those who suffer under the crushing load of debt?  What would economic justice cost us?  That depends.

If you are among the poor, the blind, the oppressed whom Jesus is here to save, then economic justice costs you your pain.  If you are among the wealthy in the world, and this includes the American middle class, so most people here, then Jesus’ announcement of Jubilee costs you – us – our prestige.  We give up our advantage. 

We’ve been talking about the way Jesus’ arrival surprised people.  Maybe the surprise to us is that Jesus didn’t come for us.  At least, he didn’t come for those who see themselves as “the have’s.” 

We don’t discover Jesus – as one here to save us – until we understand that we are as weak and as pitiable as the homeless man who has not changed clothes in months because he can’t.  We are as powerless as the undocumented immigrant who came here as a child and feels adrift in danger all time.  We are as helpless as the Syrian who has not eaten in days and is unable to move from the building he is in because he’s complete boxed in by ISIS and Syrian government forces. 

The most accomplished professional, the department chair, the lead surgeon stand before God as naked, exposed, and impotent as these examples I’ve shared.  Common sense would say that’s completely ridiculous.  It is absurd to juxtapose the leaders among us with society’s dregs.  But Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, the blind, the captive, and the oppressed.  We cannot understand or receive the blessing of God’s salvation until we understand ourselves as poor, blind, captive, and oppressed. 

Presuming we want the blessing of God, how do we do this?  First, we see sin for what it is – that which utterly destroys our souls.  In our popular culture, sin is something that elicits giggles.  Sin sell.  Movies with the highest box office sales are the ones rated ‘R’ for violence, sex, strong language, and nudity.  In our culture, sin is celebrated and purity is mocked.  We have to see sin for what it is – a killer.  We acknowledge sin, admit we cannot escape, and turn to Jesus as our only hope for rescue.  In sin, we are at the bottom until Jesus lifts us out.

Second, we stand with those people society would say are on the ladder’s lowest rungs.  A moment ago, I used the word “dregs.”  From where God is standing, there are no dregs.  The refugee, the illegal alien, the mentally ill, the poorest of the poor – these are all lost sheep.  They are beautiful people made in the image of God.  Jesus leaves the 99 healthy ones sitting comfortably in the sanctuary of HillSong Church.  He leaves us to go out and announce his Isaiah-fulfilling, freedom-proclaiming, belly-filling, life-giving news to the homeless and the downtrodden.  He came for them. 

If we want to receive what Jesus gives and experience it as good news, we admit our sin, and we sit arm-in-arm with them.  No wonder people in Synagogue crowd wanted to throw him off a cliff.  They came for miracles and got slapped by God’s truth.

In Luke 4, God’s truth slaps us with his truth this morning.  And the truth is there is greater joy in love and in sharing love than there is in prestige and wealth.  Do we have the faith to believe that is true?

What do we do now?  That’s up to you.  You can clench your teeth in anger.  You can bow before the cross and open your heart to the Holy Spirit.  You can start thinking right now about who you will love this week.  What disadvantaged person will you stand with this week?

We have heard Jesus’ words.  Each of us can decide who we are and then decide if this is good news.

AMEN