"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

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

Maundy Thursday Monologues - Simon the Zealot

Holy Thursday Monologue – Simon the Zealot

If you read your Bible in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 10, or Mark chapter 3, you will find there a list of the disciples who followed Jesus.  In that list, you find the name Simon the Cananean.   That’s me.  Luke lists me differently.  He calls me, Simon the Zealot. 

You think you know all the disciples.  James and John were fishing brothers.  So were Peter and Andrew.  Nathaniel, he was the straight shooter.  Whatever was on his mind, he said.  Philip, well, he was a kid.  He and John and Andrew, they were pretty wet behind the ears. I am not much older them, but I had seen things they had not. 

Thomas what a brain on that guy.  He was always thinking, always questioning.  I know he came to be called a “doubter.”  He was much more than that.  He was a thinker.

I think Matthew had the most fun of all the disciples.  That guy could party, almost as much Jesus. 

Of course history shows that Judas Iscariot was a schemer.  We didn’t know it at the time.  We thought he was a brilliant in practical thinking as Thomas was in theoretical thinking.  We deferred to Judas because he was so confidant. 

In some ways he and I were kindred spirits.  Both Judas Iscariot and I were committed to the overthrow of the Romans and the overthrow the corrupt leadership in the temple.  He talked and made strategies and argued with Jesus.  He always thought he knew better than Jesus what we ought to do.  And then Jesus would work a miracle and Judas would shut up and fall in line.

For my part, I was not interested in Peter’s outbursts or Judas’ scheming or Thomas’ philosophy or Nathaniel’s mouth.  I like Matthew’s parties, but even that, I thought, was the wrong priority.  Before I followed Jesus, I was party of a group of revolutionaries.  We weren’t Sicarii.  We did not commit assassinations.  But, we watched closely because we thought the Messiah was coming to call us to arms.  We were ready.

I was at the wedding in Cana when Jesus turned water into wine.  I knew what happened.  So, I left some of my Zealot pals behind and started following Jesus.  I didn’t even realize he noticed me, and then he asked me to be one of his 12 disciples – like the 12 tribes.  Yes, I was sure, he was going to restore Israel to the people of God.

But boy did I have trouble with some of his teaching.  Turn the other cheek?  Love your enemy?  I didn’t understand and he could see that.  He knew how frustrated I was.  He didn’t kick me out.  Neither did he make it any easier on me.  I did not confront him like Peter.  I did not question like Thomas.  I didn’t argue with him the way Judas did.  But sometimes I wanted to.

Things were really heating up when we came to Jerusalem for the Passover.  His confrontations with legalists and priests were edgier.  We were all tense.  Then, when we gathered for the meal in that upper room, well, I can’t describe it.  When he took the wine and said, “This is the new covenant that is my blood,” everything changed.  That night, I could not have told you how, but something happened when he said that and we were never the same.

Later on, when the soldiers came to arrest him in the garden, I just ran.  I don’t even know why.  I, who had been so eager to fight the Roman and fight injustice; when the fight came I ran.  Thinking back now to the wine, the new covenant, it is like I was empty and full all at the same time. 

I haven’t picked up a sword since.  Oh, I’ve used knives and axes, as tools.  But since I followed Jesus, I who had built my life on being a revolutionary, never again thought about fighting or killing anyone.  You follow him, it will change you.  It did me.

I think it about it every time I drink that wine.

Maundy Thursday Monologues - Simon Peter

http://captainsacrament.blogspot.com/2004/04/maundy-thursday-2004.html

My name is Simon Peter.

You know me from the stories about me in the Bible.  You know I was the one to walk on water to Jesus.  Well, I walked until I sank and Jesus pulled me out.

I’m the one Jesus trusted with the keys to the Kingdom.  It was also to me that Jesus said, “Get behind, Satan.”  He said that when I tried to talk him out of going to the cross.

When they came arrest him, I whipped out a sword and start swinging.  I was there, when Jesus said ‘turn the other cheek.’  But in that moment in the garden, I just forgot.  I started swinging the sword and Jesus healed the man I hit.  Then he was arrested and I ran.  To my shame, I denied knowing him just as he predicted I would.

After he rose, he forgave me.  He restored me as one of his followers.

Now, it’s been many years.  I don’t how I’ve survived this long.  James was beheaded by Herod.  John was exiled to Patmos.  Stephen was stoned to death.  I carry on.  Now, I lead the church at Rome. 

We tell a lot of stories this time of year.  We tell these stories to remember the death and new life of our King and to remember who we are. 

This night is Passover.  When we celebrate, we remember that we were created by God’s saving act. Our Master Jesus became the Passover lamb, sacrificed for us, and by his resurrection saved us from the darkness of sin. Many of you who were not of Israel became his because of this. We have been created by his saving act.

Tonight, I remember clearly that Passover before everything happened.  It was the night he was betrayed – by all of us. We gathered in an upper room to share the meal. Our feet had gotten dusty, and needed to be washed before we gathered at table. We were talking, cutting up and just enjoying being together. It had been a dark week, and we needed to celebrate.

But then we suddenly quieted; we could have heard a feather hit the ground. Not many things can silence a room of rambunctious fishermen. I looked about to see what had happened. Jesus had taken off his robe and put on a towel. He filled a basin and began to wash our feet. We were completely speechless, and I was incensed. We had gathered to celebrate our identity as the free people of God, and he was doing what would have been disgraceful even for a slave!

I asked him just what he thought he was doing. “You don’t understand now,” he said, “but later, you will.” I refused him: “You’re never going to wash my feet!” He was patient and adamant as always. “If I don’t do this, you can’t be my disciple.”

I was shattered. I had spent three years of my life with this man, given up everything to follow him. But... if refusing this meant refusing him, I had missed something. I loved him, so I obeyed, even though I didn’t understand.

As the rough hands of the carpenter cradled the rougher feet of this fisherman, I was struck by the tenderness of the act. Feet are very basic things, right? They’re just there. But as his fingers moved between my toes to wash, I was devastated by the intimacy. I began to understand. On that night in a little room in Jerusalem, just before all hell would break loose, this is what it meant to love us to the end. He was dedicated to me and to each of us. There were no lengths to which he would not go to love us, heal us, and set us free. This lowly service showed me the very heart of God.

He told us that this would be the pattern for our lives. This is a symbol of how he bears us up in all of our sins, failings and idiosyncrasies.

We remember this tonight. We confess our needs and submit to his washing—submit to his tenderness. We will leave and remember that our brothers and sisters have dusty feet also. We will wash them.

So in this story, learn who you are.  Let the Lord be with you in the weak places, in the dirt. Then go, take up your basin and towel, and be who you are.

In the name of Christ. Amen.

Maundy Thursday Monologues - Thomas

Doubting Thomas: Monologue

‘Doubting Thomas’? Yes, that’s me! Do I mind being called that? I suppose it could be galling to have gone down in history as a doubter, but in a way I’m glad, you know. How can I explain?

You see, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doubts. Oh, I’m not talking here about the excuses we palm off as doubts: it’s not the same as uninformed prejudice, a sense of guilt or the fear of change. No, I’m thinking about good, honest questions. There’s a lot to be said for them, in my opinion.

Some of the other disciples never really understood that. Maybe they were just upset with me for not believing them - but then they’d already seen Jesus alive, you see. I hadn’t.

Anyway, as I told them at the time, all this stuff about Jesus rising from the dead was just too important to accept uncritically.  What if it was all just a cruel joke, or they’d imagined it all, had group delusions or whatever you call it? We loved him so much, you see…We’d followed him; listened to him; eaten with him; shared our lives. Seeing him die was worse than anything I’d ever experienced – worse than anything I WILL ever go through, I dare say. And we were desperate: grief-stricken; lonely; terrified. Of course I WANTED it to be true! But how could I be certain without seeing him for myself?

Being a Christian is no bed of roses, I can tell you, and I could never have coped with the past few years if all I had to go on was a faded dream or a vague hope. But Jesus, he put up with me and my doubts.  He gave what I needed and took me beyond what I thought I could become.  I ended traveling all the way to the nation you know as India and establishing the Christian faith there.

That all came after the resurrection.  On the night of the Passover meal, before Jesus was arrested, none of knew what was coming.  He held the bread of Passover up before us and said, “This is my body, broken for you.”  What did that mean?  We didn’t know. 

He got on his knees to wash our feet. What was he doing?  Peter, as always, speaking without thinking, argued with Jesus and then did what he said.  Judas, slipped out after the foot washing.  I was never sure about what he was up to.  He always seemed to his own agenda on the side.  I had no idea he was set to betray Jesus that night.  No idea at all.

I didn’t have any side agenda.  I had side conversation.  That night Matthew had the misfortune of sitting beside me.

“What’s he doing?”  I asked Matthew.  He told me to ‘let it go.’ 

“What’s he talking about?” I asked when Jesus said the bit about not drinking the fruit of the vine again until he drank it in the Kingdom.  I was pestering Matthew with questions.   

That Matthew!  So good with numbers and money, but he never questioned anything.  If Jesus said he was the bread of life, Matthew just accepted it. I knew he didn’t understand it.  None of us did.  But not understanding didn’t bother Matthew. 

If I understood, I would go to the ends of the earth for Jesus.  And in the end I did.  At least India seems likes the opposite end of the earth from Jerusalem.  But that night, the night of the Passover, I lost all my boldness. 

We all acted so tough.  “No, no Jesus, we won’t betray you.  We’re with you to the end.”  We all said that.  James the rugged fisherman; Simon, the wanna-be rebel; the all-too-honest Nathaniel.  We were all so courageous in our own minds.  At least Peter picked up a sword before he fled into the night. But in the end, that’s what we all did.  We ran just like Jesus knew we would. 

But, after it was all over, he welcomed us back.  That’s what Jesus does.  He takes you at your worst and helps you become your best.  Now, whenever I lead a church in worship and I break the bread before the congregation and together, we drink the wine, I remember that night.  I also remember seeing Jesus a few days later.  And I remember him loving me in my doubts.  And I remember him changing the direction of my life. 

That’s Jesus.  He turns us around.  

Maundy Thursday Monologues: Martha

Monologue for Maundy Thursday

HillSong Church, 4-13-17

My name is Martha.

You may have heard of me.  But you probably haven’t heard from me.  When the Master, that is, Jesus, came to Jerusalem, he often stayed with our family.  That’s my sister Mary, my brother Lazarus, and me.  When he came, crowds came with him.  We were happy to be hosts, but it was a lot of work.  I felt like I was constantly cooking and then cleaning and then doing the wash, and then cooking again. 

Often, I felt like it was just me.  Lazarus of course reclined with the men to hear Jesus teach.  And so did Mary!  A woman is to manage the home and make sure everyone is cared for.  What did Mary do?  She sat with the men, taking in the Master’s teaching.

I complained to Jesus about – once.  He said Mary chose the better part, leaving me all the work.  She often has that faraway look in her eyes, like she knows something the rest of us don’t know.  It’s like there’s music playing only Mary can hear.  It might be true, but that doesn’t get the dishes washed or the meal cooked.  Jesus said Mary made the right choice.

See if I speak up again!  Actually, Jesus has always encouraged me to speak.  He treats us with a respect no other man have ever given woman.  I do love him deeply.  And like everyone else, I am amazed by him.  I was there when he brought my brother Lazarus back to life.  We all believed the resurrection would come for everyone on the last day.  He raised Lazarus and after he did that, I wasn’t sure what to think.

I know Jesus has tremendous power and I know he is very close to God.  But he says things I don’t understand.  He said to me “I am the Resurrection and the Life and who believes in me will never die.”  What does that even mean? 

Tonight, I am especially worried.  There’s something in the air.  Normally, this is the kind of thing Mary would fret about.  In fact she has been, not exactly fretting, but … She’s been staring into the distance, toward Jerusalem.  Her gaze pierces the wind as she goes away in her head.  Normally, I would say that’s just Mary being Mary, but here’s the thing.  I feel it too.

Tonight is the Passover meal.  We were going to have Jesus and disciple to our house, but he’s meeting somewhere else, in the home of a disciple I don’t know.  I thought I knew all who followed the Master. 

The disciples have been acting funny.  Yesterday, I asked Nathanial about it, but he just joked and complimented me on my soup.  This morning, I said something to John.  He admitted something is up, but he said he didn’t know what.

The Romans have increased their guard in the city.  And the high priest in temple is on edge.  Everyone can feel it.  Something is going to happen, tonight, and I know it has something to do with Jesus.  I just don’t know what.  I do wish he were having the Passover here.

I have to make bread and get the wine ready.  Our old uncle and some cousins are coming.  We have to get ready.

(Exits stage with a look of worry)

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.