Week 2 of my 4 week sermon series on Philippians. This week: Phil. 2:1-13.
Our index fingers: we use them to do a lot of things. We turn the pages in the magazine with them. We open up cans of pop with them. We scratch our head with them. In conjunction with our thumb, we pick things up with it. We use an index finger to put in our contacts. We use an index finger to tickle our grandchildren. We press buttons with it. We use it to point out the ring under the counter that we want a closer look at. In our house, we use it to point out which piece of cake we want – that one, the big one! Maybe that’s why the index finger is often also called the “pointer finger.”
Yep, it’s our finger for pointing. We use it to point out the funny clothes other people wear. We use it to point at people as we order them around. We point the finger, both literally and figuratively, to assign blame. It’s very useful for that.
“That’s him, that’s the guy that cut in line!”
“Who threw that?” “She did!”
“You lied to me!”
“It’s his fault we lost that client!”
“She broke it!”
“The offensive line stunk! It’s their fault we lost!”
Yes, what fun it is to point the blame. It’s a time-honored tradition, almost as time-honored as pointing the finger at ourselves in smug praise.
“Yeah, I got an A.”
“Anything you can do I can do better.”
“I’m not the one who screwed up that sale.”
“It’s a good thing I was there to bail us out with that game-winning touchdown catch!”
Now, Paul tells us to look not to our own interests, but to the interests of others. But I’m pretty sure all this accusatory finger pointing and self-congratulating was not what Paul meant. In fact, he tells us to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than ourselves. Paul wants us to reverse the trend – to use our pointer fingers in the opposite way we’re used to. Instead of pointing at others for blame and ourselves for praise, Paul wants us to direct positive attention, not negative attention, outward.
As some of you know, I watch a lot of football. So I’ve seen players react in every way imaginable when they score a touchdown. Touchdowns are moments when a lot of positive attention is on the player, and end zone celebrations always serve to direct that positive attention to one of three things. The first way they may celebrate is by directing that attention at themselves – think Terrell Owens or Chad “Ocho Cinco” Johnson. These players revel in their own glory, in their moment of greatness. Sometimes they even literally thump their chests, pointing all the accolade, all the attention, at yours truly.
The second way to celebrate is to point at those who got you there. Wide receivers point at their quarterback as a thank you – an acknowledgment that it was a great throw that allowed them to score. Running backs often give a little thank you tap on the helmets of their lineman – thanks for paving the way, guys.
And then there’s a third way to celebrate. Many players take the attention given to them and direct it upwards, towards God. Many people criticize this gesture, thinking the players are merely pretending to be religious, or that it’s silly to think that divine intervention helped them score. But I like to think that at least some of these players are trying to tell everyone that it is God, not some flashy football player, that should get all our praise. To God be the glory, they seem to be singing as they lift their pointer finger heavenward.
Well, I don’t have to tell you which of these celebrations are pleasing to God, and which aren’t. But these gestures of praise are merely exaggerations of how we live each moment, for when we really stop and think about it, a lot of life is about finger pointing. Where are we directing our attention, and is it positive or negative attention? What are we focused on? The focus of attention drives most human interaction.
So far, I have not found an instance where Jesus pointed the finger at himself for praise. Maybe I missed the day in Sunday School when they told us the story of Jesus telling everyone how awesome he was. Even in the times that Jesus does reveal his true identity as the Son of God, we find that he reveals it by focusing the attention on who sent him. Jesus deflects all praise, all attention, all worship of himself as Lord and Savior, and points heavenward to God the Father.
This is the example of humility that Christ lays out for us. He empties himself in humble service to others, focusing attention outward and upward instead of inward. And this is the example we are to use if we are, as Paul says, to “work out our own salvation.”
One of John Wesley’s most famous sermons, titled “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” is on this passage of Philippians. And one of Wesley’s major points centers on Paul’s phrase, “For it is God at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for God’s good pleasure.” Wesley says that many people misinterpret this text, asking, “If it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do, what need is there of our working?” If God works in us, then can’t we just sit back and relax and let God take control? Can’t we just let God be our puppet master?
Friends, God as puppet master pulling all our strings while we do nothing is, to put it bluntly, not Wesleyan theology. It's also lazy theology -- lazy in the sense that it gives us no motivation to live or do anything. John Wesley tells us that “first, God works, therefore you can work. Secondly, God works, therefore you must work.”
Yes, God is at work in us, therefore we can work. God works in us by offering us salvation by grace and grace alone. We are saved by the grace of God which comes to us through God’s son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And that grace that has been given to us by God’s work frees us to share grace with others. It frees us to be God’s servants in a world so desperately in need of grace.
Secondly, God is at work in us, therefore we must work. What this means is that all who accept the salvation given to us by the grace of God will necessarily allow God to work in and through them. It is the mark of a Christian that the grace which is given to them is used for the advancing of the gospel message for the transformation of the world and the coming of the kingdom. Wesley says that “no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath.” Thus, what it means to accept the gift of grace is to show that grace through our actions. When we fail to be gracious and loving in our actions, we are failing to live out the salvation that has been given to us. When we fail to let God work in us, we become road blocks for God’s work in the world. We get in the way of what God wants to accomplish.
The phrase “work out your own salvation” tends to be misinterpreted, because in English it gives the impression that we can be saved through works. But when we look at the original Greek text, we see that the word we translate to “work out” actually means something closer to “finish”, “complete”, or “fulfill.” So we see that Paul’s original message for the Philippians would better read “finish your salvation” or “fulfill your salvation.” God desires that we fulfill or finish the salvation that we have already been given, and the way to fulfill our salvation by grace is to allow God to do God’s work through us. And we fulfill our salvation by the way we use our precious little pointer fingers. We fulfill it by where we direct our attention. We fulfill it with Christ-like humility, pointing out the good in others and the good in God. Christian punk band Relient K has a song called “Maybe it’s Maybelline.” I love the song. It’s a song about pointing the finger and placing blame. I want to read you those lyrics.
Relient K – Maybe It’s Maybelline
People make mistakes
finally everything breaks
and it always is the samegotta find someone to blame
cause these errors that we make
cause we’re all human earthquakes
yeah we made the hurricane
but we’re not the ones to blame
we point the finger even though it’s not polite
we condemn the son of God
we’re hoping two wrongs make a right
maybe it is them, maybe it is me, or maybe it’s maybelline
people make mistakes
we took the apple from the snake
and it always is the same
gotta find someone to blame
our reputations were at stake
but the guilt we could not take
America’s gone down the drain
President’s at fault again
we point the finger even though it's not politewe condemn the son of God
we're hoping two wrongs make a rightmaybe it is them, or maybe it is me, or maybe it's Maybelline
the truth is, excuses are lame
accept consequence
accept the blame
we're all sinners
we're all unclean
maybe we're born with it
or maybe it's Maybelline
Yes, it always is the same – we gotta find someone to blame. We like to build up our egos as people, as Christians, by pointing out the good that we do and the bad that others do. “Look at what our church does”, “Look at my charitable giving”, “Look at how much I help other people.” But this is not how a true servant thinks. A master does not want servants who brag about being servants. And God does not want us to brag about how great of servants we are. God does not want us to brag that we are better than other servants, or better than those who refuse to be servants. God does not want us to take the credit for the work that God does in and through us.
If we’re going to brag, God wants us to brag about God, and to treat others as more worthy than ourselves. We love to point out the shortcomings in others, but how often do we really stop and point the finger at other people for the good they do? How often do we lift up those who are different from us as better than us?
When I was in seminary, I spent time in an urban ministry setting in downtown Atlanta. One of the things I learned through that experience was that I had always looked at homeless people as needy. My attitude was that they had needs, and I, the enlightened, well-off seminarian was called to help them with their needs. I learned that this is really not a good attitude to have. It doesn’t really accomplish anything to consider myself as need-less and others as needy. First of all, to consider myself need-less is to consider myself perfect – I have nothing to gain from others; I have no need of help from others. And that, my friends, is simply untrue. No one is truly need-less.
Second, no one is completely needy. I used to look at the homeless population of Atlanta and forget that they were humans too, humans with something to offer to society. By classifying people as “needy”, we suggest that they have nothing of their own to offer. But everyone has the capacity to offer something. Perhaps these homeless people had nothing to offer financially or materially, but they possessed skills and knowledge that could be put to good use, if only someone gave them the chance to contribute.
I’m afraid we like to think of ourselves as having arrived at some sort of pinnacle of need-lessness, while others in need have reached a point of worthlessness. It’s a subtle yet harsh form of finger pointing, separating the “haves” from the “have-nots”, as if there are people out there who truly “have” nothing to contribute to society. That is simply a false and unloving idea, that there are people with nothing to contribute.
You see, we spend too much time congratulating ourselves that we fail to point the finger at others for anything but blame and judgment. We fail to point our fingers at others as a way of lifting them up, encouraging them, and enabling them to let God work through them. We point the finger in all the bad ways and none of the good.And it is God’s pleasure to do work through us, but we so often ruin it by letting people give credit where it’s not due. We bask in our own glory rather than pointing our finger upward to the one for whom all good actions are done. Not only are we failing in our horizontal finger pointing in our human relationships, but we fail in our vertical finger pointing as well. We forget that every good and perfect gift comes from above. We forget that without God, we would be unable to congratulate ourselves. We forget that it is God who is at work in us, enabling us to will and work for God’s good pleasure. And when we forget all these things, it is then that we become slackers in the completion or fulfillment of our own salvation. It is then that we sin by not using the grace already given us. It’s when we’re pointing the finger in impolite and harmful ways rather than in humble and glorifying ways that we restrict the spread of the gospel message. So let us not slack off, but work out our own salvation, remembering that it is God at work in us. For it pleases God to be able to work through each and every one of you. In the name of God the Creator, Jesus Christ the Redeemer, and the Holy Spirit the Sustainer, every knee will bend and every tongue will confess the glory that we find on this day. Amen.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Heroes
Season 3 of Heroes begins tonight. However, my lovely wife thinks even While You Were Sleeping has too much violence, what with the subway almost hitting someone and Bill Pullman slipping on ice. Since she has no interest in watching good TV, I have two choices tonight:
1. Spend 3 hours watching the red carpet special and the 2-hour premiere of a suspenseful, intense, theological drama of dramas, or...
2. Wake up on Tuesday still married.
With this dilemma as well as the Steelers playing on Monday night next week, it looks as though I'll have to watch Heroes by myself on my computer in secret for the first few episodes..."While Lisa Is Sleeping."
1. Spend 3 hours watching the red carpet special and the 2-hour premiere of a suspenseful, intense, theological drama of dramas, or...
2. Wake up on Tuesday still married.
With this dilemma as well as the Steelers playing on Monday night next week, it looks as though I'll have to watch Heroes by myself on my computer in secret for the first few episodes..."While Lisa Is Sleeping."
No Pain, No Gain
My working title for this sermon was, "For Christ's Sake!" I was even tempted to put that out on our sign, but decided against it. I don't think I've been here long enough to get away with a sermon title like this around here. Another note about the sermon: I thought it was okay at best, kinda all over the place and not really saying much. I didn't have much time to prepare this week as I was very busy. However, a couple people have mentioned that they think it was my best sermon since arriving in July. And, I later discovered that I inadvertently hit on the discussion topics of both adult Sunday schools on Sunday, neither of which was studying this text (Phil. 1:21-30). Just another example of the Holy Spirit working in and through my preaching to touch people's lives. Good thing I'm not in charge when I preach.
Also, I'm almost positive no one picked up on my Shakespeare's Hamlet reference. As a preacher with an English degree, this makes me weep -- just a little -- on the inside.
Before I begin, I want to mention that over the next four weeks, I’ll be preaching from Philippians. The lectionary gives us four weeks of Philippians this fall, spending one week on each of the four chapters. So permit me to make some introductory remarks on Paul’s letter to the Philippians and on my sermons over the next few weeks, and then we will dive in to the passage of Philippians that I just read.
As some of you may know, Paul wrote this letter to the church in Philippi while he was imprisoned. Paul was arrested in Jerusalem because he was accused of allowing a Gentile to enter the temple, thus desecrating a holy place for the Jewish people. Thankfully, the Roman authorities rescued him and threw him into prison in Rome, probably saving his life. Some Jews were actually plotting against his life while he was sitting in prison writing this letter to the Philippians.
The church in Philippi is, like all the Christian communities in Paul’s time, a young church. He is writing this young community of believers for the purpose of encouragement. He wants to encourage them to live joyfully in Christ and to stand firm in their faith no matter what obstacles or opponents try to get in their way. He instructs the church in Philippi about what it means to belong to God. His instruction centers on exercises of belonging, a way of living out the gospel in joyful togetherness as a way of honoring the God to whom these people belong.
For this reason, we will spend the next several weeks meditating on exercises in belonging. We’ll learn what God has in store for us in Paul’s words to the church in Philippi. We’ll discover that God desires that we become a true community, belonging to God, living in joy, standing firm in the midst of suffering, and capable of doing “All things through Christ who strengthens us” (as written in Philippians 4:13).
Paul opens his letter in prison, and when we reach the beginning of today’s text it seems as if he is thinking out loud about his current situation. People want me dead. I’m in prison and could die here. Is it better that I die or that I continue to live in prison? This is a Paul seriously considering what is better for him: life or death. To be or not to be, that is Paul’s question.
On the one hand, Paul is in prison, so he’s unable to do much to advance the gospel message. Of course being in prison can’t be any fun for Paul. In such a situation anyone may consider whether death is a less painful option at this point. And if that’s not bad enough, he has people out there vowing to kill him. For Paul, death seems mighty appealing, because then he would be with Christ for eternity.
On the other hand, Paul’s imprisonment is having the opposite effect his opponents hoped it’d have. The spread of the gospel is being advanced by news of Paul’s imprisonment. The early Christians are rallying together in support of their brother Paul. Thus, Paul sees his imprisonment as beneficial, so his death may hinder the spread of the gospel. What to do? Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (i.e. to let his opponents get the best of him), or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?
Paul determines that as much as death appeals to him, his suffering in prison is advancing the very gospel message his opponents were trying to silence. His pain is Christ’s gain, so to speak. And suddenly, suffering in prison isn’t so bad for Paul, because he considers the greater purpose of the spreading of the gospel to be worth remaining in a situation of suffering. And Paul wasn’t the last to do this. A man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood up against the Nazis and Hitler when few Christians did in the 30’s and 40’s in Germany. And for trying to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer ended up in jail. But rather than get discouraged, he wrote letters from prison – letters that ultimately advanced the gospel message. In fact, these letters are still read today, and they are letters full of wisdom, and hope, and promise despite the painful situation from which they came. They are letters that still advance the gospel message.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was wrongly imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement. And many southern clergy, even his allies, thought he had hindered the liberating gospel message found at the heart of the civil rights movement. But he wrote a letter to these clergy, letting them know that his presence in jail was helping the cause and was true to the gospel. Again, this is a letter immortalized in history – a letter that is still able to speak to us today just as it did almost a half century ago.
Paul, Bonhoeffer, and King – all men who changed the course of history while sitting in prison. All men who refused to take the easy way out, instead taking the lemon of imprisonment and suffering and turning it into lemonade.
All these men were imprisoned because they had angered authorities. Paul was thrown into prison because he was accused of being too “open” at the temple. Why should just anyone be allowed to enter this holy place? Why should just anyone be allowed to approach God? Some people just don’t deserve it. That’s the excuse we give when we only allow our own to participate in the life of the church.
Bonhoeffer was trying to kill Hitler to save millions of Jews. And that, of course, was a threat to the Nazi regime. Someone motivated by love was thrown into prison in order to quell the resistance. However, it only provided inspiration.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was put in prison for too much love as well. He was too “open minded” like Paul, and fought for justice like Bonhoeffer. King thought all people were worthy of basic rights and of God’s love, and was willing to be imprisoned to make sure this gospel message was advanced.
Sometimes I hear Christians proclaim a gospel message that leads to life getting easier. If you are bogged down with the problems and crises of life, it’s because you haven’t met Christ yet. Come to church and all those problems will vanish. Your life is infinitely easier once you give it to Christ. This is an all-too-familiar message in our culture today – that coming to church is a one stop cure-all place. I’m not sure I believe that. I think most of us can speak to the fact that much of the time, life’s problems do not go away when we attend church, or when we read Scripture, or when we pray. We find that Christ does not always wipe away our problems once we choose to believe in him. Instead, these practices of connecting with God through prayer, study, and worship lift us up and give us the strength to deal with whatever issues come our way.
In fact, sometimes life even gets harder when we become Christians. We see people like this imprisoned trio living lives guided by the gospel, yet pain and suffering outweigh the benefits. Maybe what we learn from these people, then, is that if you’re not making waves – if you’re not risking imprisonment due to loving people “too much” – you’re not really living out the gospel.
Christ calls us to love everyone, no matter what. Christ calls us to fight for justice in the world. Christ calls us to fight against authority or against the norm sometimes. Christ calls us to stand firm in our faith, as Paul says. We are called to let our faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ rule our life. And sometimes this means gently rebuking someone who makes a hateful or prejudicial comment, even if it’s unintentional. Sometimes this means being honest about getting too much change at te supermarket, when keeping quiet means we get a little undeserved “gift”. Sometimes this means sacrificing a few inches in the size of our TV screen so that someone else can get their daily bread.
A movie that I love is A League of Their Own. It’s a movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, started when the Major Leagues had many of their stars overseas fighting in World War II. Near the end of the movie, the star of the league is leaving her team just before the championship series. And her manager asks her why she’s leaving. She says she’s going home because “It just got too hard.” The manager’s response is, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it.”
It’s the same with being a Christian. Living the gospel is supposed to be hard, as evidenced by Paul, Bonhoeffer, and MLK Jr. That’s why not everyone does it. It is hard sometimes. It does require sacrifice, and it doesn’t excuse us from tough times in our life. But it isn’t too hard. Anyone can do it if they are firm enough in their faith, Paul tells the Philippians.
The Philippians are a young community facing their own opposition as Paul writes this letter. We know they are facing opposition from within as well as from without, but that’s about all we know. Paul does not elaborate here what kind of opposition they meet, only that it’s there. And it seems like Paul is anticipating the response that may come to opposition. Opposition may make the Philippians want to give up, just as his own opposition threw him in jail and made him want to give up. But he encourages them that belonging to Christ’s church is not something to give up on at the first sign of trouble. Belonging to our church is not something to give up on because there’s a little opposition here and there. Remember, it’s the opposition out there that wants us to fail, that wants us to prove that this Christianity thing is a bunch of baloney.
Paul encourages the Philippians – don’t give up, he seems to be saying. Stand firm in your faith – TOGETHER. This is what is means, in Paul’s eyes, to be a member of the Christian community. Alone it is hard to stand firm in our face in the midst of opposition, but together we can stand firm. If we bind together with cords that cannot be broken, then we are able to stand firm in the faith. And being together in community is what God created us for.
In college, I was a psychology minor. One class that I took was on developmental psychology, studying how infants, children, and adolescents develop mentally. During the class we studied a few case studies of severe child abuse, where children were isolated from human contact for years. In all these instances, there was little to no relations with humans whatsoever for 5, 7, sometimes 13 years. When this occurs, the child is permanently disabled in a lot of ways. The longer the child goes without being in communion with other people, the worse it is. In the worst cases, something seemingly simple to us, like speaking sentences, is no longer a skill able to be taught.
These tragic case studies show the need for human interaction. They show how badly we need community in order to develop. And our faith is the same way – we need community, or our development is stunted. We just can’t do it alone. God created us to be in community, standing firm in our faith against all opposition. God calls us to love together and grow together as we seek to be Christ’s disciples.
Of course, we’ll meet opposition, and we’ll meet growing pains, both individually and as a community. And when we begin to wonder why we are wasting our time doing something that seems so difficult, we can remember that it’s all worth it because of why we’re doing it: FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! We’re doing what we do in order to advance the gospel, just as Paul is advancing the gospel from behind prison bars. Yes, we’re able to face opposition and stand firm, just as Paul did and just as he encourages the Philippians and us to do. We’re able to face opposition because we know that opposition is often used by God as a tool to spread the gospel message. We’re able to face opposition because we know that God has our back, and that our brothers and sisters in Christ have our back. This is why we belong to this Christian community – because together we can better stand firm in our faith, lifting each other up and supporting each other in the midst of our suffering. This is why we are members of Christ’s church. May it be so in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the midst of all opposition that we meet. Amen.
Also, I'm almost positive no one picked up on my Shakespeare's Hamlet reference. As a preacher with an English degree, this makes me weep -- just a little -- on the inside.
Before I begin, I want to mention that over the next four weeks, I’ll be preaching from Philippians. The lectionary gives us four weeks of Philippians this fall, spending one week on each of the four chapters. So permit me to make some introductory remarks on Paul’s letter to the Philippians and on my sermons over the next few weeks, and then we will dive in to the passage of Philippians that I just read.
As some of you may know, Paul wrote this letter to the church in Philippi while he was imprisoned. Paul was arrested in Jerusalem because he was accused of allowing a Gentile to enter the temple, thus desecrating a holy place for the Jewish people. Thankfully, the Roman authorities rescued him and threw him into prison in Rome, probably saving his life. Some Jews were actually plotting against his life while he was sitting in prison writing this letter to the Philippians.
The church in Philippi is, like all the Christian communities in Paul’s time, a young church. He is writing this young community of believers for the purpose of encouragement. He wants to encourage them to live joyfully in Christ and to stand firm in their faith no matter what obstacles or opponents try to get in their way. He instructs the church in Philippi about what it means to belong to God. His instruction centers on exercises of belonging, a way of living out the gospel in joyful togetherness as a way of honoring the God to whom these people belong.
For this reason, we will spend the next several weeks meditating on exercises in belonging. We’ll learn what God has in store for us in Paul’s words to the church in Philippi. We’ll discover that God desires that we become a true community, belonging to God, living in joy, standing firm in the midst of suffering, and capable of doing “All things through Christ who strengthens us” (as written in Philippians 4:13).
Paul opens his letter in prison, and when we reach the beginning of today’s text it seems as if he is thinking out loud about his current situation. People want me dead. I’m in prison and could die here. Is it better that I die or that I continue to live in prison? This is a Paul seriously considering what is better for him: life or death. To be or not to be, that is Paul’s question.
On the one hand, Paul is in prison, so he’s unable to do much to advance the gospel message. Of course being in prison can’t be any fun for Paul. In such a situation anyone may consider whether death is a less painful option at this point. And if that’s not bad enough, he has people out there vowing to kill him. For Paul, death seems mighty appealing, because then he would be with Christ for eternity.
On the other hand, Paul’s imprisonment is having the opposite effect his opponents hoped it’d have. The spread of the gospel is being advanced by news of Paul’s imprisonment. The early Christians are rallying together in support of their brother Paul. Thus, Paul sees his imprisonment as beneficial, so his death may hinder the spread of the gospel. What to do? Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (i.e. to let his opponents get the best of him), or take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?
Paul determines that as much as death appeals to him, his suffering in prison is advancing the very gospel message his opponents were trying to silence. His pain is Christ’s gain, so to speak. And suddenly, suffering in prison isn’t so bad for Paul, because he considers the greater purpose of the spreading of the gospel to be worth remaining in a situation of suffering. And Paul wasn’t the last to do this. A man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer stood up against the Nazis and Hitler when few Christians did in the 30’s and 40’s in Germany. And for trying to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer ended up in jail. But rather than get discouraged, he wrote letters from prison – letters that ultimately advanced the gospel message. In fact, these letters are still read today, and they are letters full of wisdom, and hope, and promise despite the painful situation from which they came. They are letters that still advance the gospel message.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was wrongly imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights movement. And many southern clergy, even his allies, thought he had hindered the liberating gospel message found at the heart of the civil rights movement. But he wrote a letter to these clergy, letting them know that his presence in jail was helping the cause and was true to the gospel. Again, this is a letter immortalized in history – a letter that is still able to speak to us today just as it did almost a half century ago.
Paul, Bonhoeffer, and King – all men who changed the course of history while sitting in prison. All men who refused to take the easy way out, instead taking the lemon of imprisonment and suffering and turning it into lemonade.
All these men were imprisoned because they had angered authorities. Paul was thrown into prison because he was accused of being too “open” at the temple. Why should just anyone be allowed to enter this holy place? Why should just anyone be allowed to approach God? Some people just don’t deserve it. That’s the excuse we give when we only allow our own to participate in the life of the church.
Bonhoeffer was trying to kill Hitler to save millions of Jews. And that, of course, was a threat to the Nazi regime. Someone motivated by love was thrown into prison in order to quell the resistance. However, it only provided inspiration.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was put in prison for too much love as well. He was too “open minded” like Paul, and fought for justice like Bonhoeffer. King thought all people were worthy of basic rights and of God’s love, and was willing to be imprisoned to make sure this gospel message was advanced.
Sometimes I hear Christians proclaim a gospel message that leads to life getting easier. If you are bogged down with the problems and crises of life, it’s because you haven’t met Christ yet. Come to church and all those problems will vanish. Your life is infinitely easier once you give it to Christ. This is an all-too-familiar message in our culture today – that coming to church is a one stop cure-all place. I’m not sure I believe that. I think most of us can speak to the fact that much of the time, life’s problems do not go away when we attend church, or when we read Scripture, or when we pray. We find that Christ does not always wipe away our problems once we choose to believe in him. Instead, these practices of connecting with God through prayer, study, and worship lift us up and give us the strength to deal with whatever issues come our way.
In fact, sometimes life even gets harder when we become Christians. We see people like this imprisoned trio living lives guided by the gospel, yet pain and suffering outweigh the benefits. Maybe what we learn from these people, then, is that if you’re not making waves – if you’re not risking imprisonment due to loving people “too much” – you’re not really living out the gospel.
Christ calls us to love everyone, no matter what. Christ calls us to fight for justice in the world. Christ calls us to fight against authority or against the norm sometimes. Christ calls us to stand firm in our faith, as Paul says. We are called to let our faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ rule our life. And sometimes this means gently rebuking someone who makes a hateful or prejudicial comment, even if it’s unintentional. Sometimes this means being honest about getting too much change at te supermarket, when keeping quiet means we get a little undeserved “gift”. Sometimes this means sacrificing a few inches in the size of our TV screen so that someone else can get their daily bread.
A movie that I love is A League of Their Own. It’s a movie about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, started when the Major Leagues had many of their stars overseas fighting in World War II. Near the end of the movie, the star of the league is leaving her team just before the championship series. And her manager asks her why she’s leaving. She says she’s going home because “It just got too hard.” The manager’s response is, “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone would do it.”
It’s the same with being a Christian. Living the gospel is supposed to be hard, as evidenced by Paul, Bonhoeffer, and MLK Jr. That’s why not everyone does it. It is hard sometimes. It does require sacrifice, and it doesn’t excuse us from tough times in our life. But it isn’t too hard. Anyone can do it if they are firm enough in their faith, Paul tells the Philippians.
The Philippians are a young community facing their own opposition as Paul writes this letter. We know they are facing opposition from within as well as from without, but that’s about all we know. Paul does not elaborate here what kind of opposition they meet, only that it’s there. And it seems like Paul is anticipating the response that may come to opposition. Opposition may make the Philippians want to give up, just as his own opposition threw him in jail and made him want to give up. But he encourages them that belonging to Christ’s church is not something to give up on at the first sign of trouble. Belonging to our church is not something to give up on because there’s a little opposition here and there. Remember, it’s the opposition out there that wants us to fail, that wants us to prove that this Christianity thing is a bunch of baloney.
Paul encourages the Philippians – don’t give up, he seems to be saying. Stand firm in your faith – TOGETHER. This is what is means, in Paul’s eyes, to be a member of the Christian community. Alone it is hard to stand firm in our face in the midst of opposition, but together we can stand firm. If we bind together with cords that cannot be broken, then we are able to stand firm in the faith. And being together in community is what God created us for.
In college, I was a psychology minor. One class that I took was on developmental psychology, studying how infants, children, and adolescents develop mentally. During the class we studied a few case studies of severe child abuse, where children were isolated from human contact for years. In all these instances, there was little to no relations with humans whatsoever for 5, 7, sometimes 13 years. When this occurs, the child is permanently disabled in a lot of ways. The longer the child goes without being in communion with other people, the worse it is. In the worst cases, something seemingly simple to us, like speaking sentences, is no longer a skill able to be taught.
These tragic case studies show the need for human interaction. They show how badly we need community in order to develop. And our faith is the same way – we need community, or our development is stunted. We just can’t do it alone. God created us to be in community, standing firm in our faith against all opposition. God calls us to love together and grow together as we seek to be Christ’s disciples.
Of course, we’ll meet opposition, and we’ll meet growing pains, both individually and as a community. And when we begin to wonder why we are wasting our time doing something that seems so difficult, we can remember that it’s all worth it because of why we’re doing it: FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! We’re doing what we do in order to advance the gospel, just as Paul is advancing the gospel from behind prison bars. Yes, we’re able to face opposition and stand firm, just as Paul did and just as he encourages the Philippians and us to do. We’re able to face opposition because we know that opposition is often used by God as a tool to spread the gospel message. We’re able to face opposition because we know that God has our back, and that our brothers and sisters in Christ have our back. This is why we belong to this Christian community – because together we can better stand firm in our faith, lifting each other up and supporting each other in the midst of our suffering. This is why we are members of Christ’s church. May it be so in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in the midst of all opposition that we meet. Amen.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Grace: Don't Leave Church Without It
After a hymn sing Sunday and a week off, I'm back on the preaching wagon. Here's my latest sermon, from yesterday. The primary text is Matthew 18:21-35, and I tied in Romans 14:1-12 as well.
Alright, I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to my cell phone. I honestly can’t leave home without it. And I know I’m not the only one these days that’s like this. Many of us have our little things that we never leave home without. Cell phone, wallet, keys, and day planner, for me. I know some people who can’t leave home without some makeup on. Some people can’t leave home without their purse. Others won’t leave without a lucky charm. And almost all of us refuse to leave our house unless we’re wearing clothes, which is generally a good thing. We all have those things that we carry with us wherever we go. And this morning’s text from Matthew speaks to this phenomenon.
Peter, the representative of the disciples, asks Jesus a question about how often forgiveness is necessary to someone who has hurt us. What’s the protocol here with forgiveness? What’s required in order for the forgiveness to take hold? And Jesus, as he so often does, responds with a parable, the parable of the unforgiving servant. And this is how the story goes.
There once was a king who was trying to settle all his debts, get his books in order. So he called this one servant in, probably a middle management administrator in his kingdom, and tried to collect on this guy’s debt. But this servant had a debt of practically infinity – he owed 10,000 talents! Now the talent was the largest monetary unit, and 10,000 was the largest number imaginable in those days, so this servant literally owed the largest possible debt someone could owe. It was impossible to ever pay it back – he was doomed. So he pleaded with the king, “Please be patient, I’ll do everything I can to pay back this debt.” But the king knew that was impossible, and in a spirit of ultimate grace he cancelled this servant’s debts, all of them.
The servant, free of debt because of the king’s grace, went out to collect the debt someone else owed to him. He had loaned another servant about 100 days wages, and now it was time to pay up. But the debtor was unable to pay, and he pleaded with the servant, “Please be patient, I’ll do everything I can to pay you.” And this was a significant debt, about $11,500 in our terms, but definitely a debt that could be collected with a little patience. However, the servant trying to collect decided not to extend grace to this debtor, and threw him into prison until he paid his debt (which would now be hard to do since he was sitting in prison).
When the king heard about this, he got really peeved. “This guy owed me an infinite amount of money, and I gave him infinite grace. But now he’s treating people like this? Because of how he acted, he is indebted to me again. He forgot his debt was cleared, or didn’t believe it was, so now it’s not. He is imprisoned by his debt, and is back in the situation he was in before.
When we first read this story, it seems so easy to come down hard on the unforgiving servant, as he’s so often labeled. This guy was let off the hook by a benevolent king, and he refuses to let others off the hook. What a jerk! Or, as the king said, “what a wicked servant!” What a mean-spirited servant!
Well, let’s give this servant a break, okay? After all, we don’t really know all the facts. We know he pleaded with the king for patience as he tried to pay off a debt impossible to pay off. And the king threw the rule book out the window and went beyond giving him patience. He said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s all in the past. That debt is water under the bridge, so let’s just call it even.”
Well, this of course would blow anyone away, for a king to be so merciful, so forgiving, so full of grace. But it’s not the standard practice, nor would anyone expect it to be! In fact, the king canceling the outrageous debt seems so absurd that perhaps the servant doesn’t really believe it’s true! Maybe the king is setting him up. Kings wouldn’t be above that, you know. So perhaps the servant is trying to cover his bases by collecting on his own loans, and that way if the king takes back the whole grace thing, he’ll be able to show he’s working on repaying the debt.
Or, maybe he realizes his debt is cleared, but he’s trying to collect on his loan so he can pay the king something as a way of saying, “thanks for not making me pay everything.” Maybe it’s a way of trying to impress the king. He’s taking it upon himself to show the king that he’s changed, that he’s finally able to manage his finances.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that he goes away from the king and simply forgets about the grace given to him. He just doesn’t think about it. It’s already been erased from his mind when he deals with his own debtor, and he doesn’t mean to be as hard-hearted as he ends up being.
Yet another way to look at the servant’s actions is that he finds that being cleared from debt is a liberating experience. He finally feels freedom from financial worries, and now he’s trying to free the other servant of his debt. You need to pay me your debt so you too are free of indebtedness, you too are liberated from the bondage of debt. Maybe this is it. Maybe he’s only trying to help the poor sap, but he goes about it all the wrong way.
Paul writes of this in his letter to the Romans. In this morning’s Romans passage, Paul addresses a church dealing with disputable religious matters. This is not a church dealing with petty differences in opinion. You do communion by intinction with cardboard-y wafers and wine, and we do it by kneeling at the altar rail with real bread and shot glasses of grape juice. You dunk people for baptism, and we sprinkle. You like this kind of music, and we like that kind of music. No, the church Paul speaks to is dealing with real, difficult issues. It’s a church tackling all the hot-button issues – and we know all about that, with the election rearing its ugly head soon on the horizon.
And what’s one of the most disputable issues in any church, in any organization, in any relationship? That’s right, money. Money can ruin a relationship. That’s why they say to never rent out to family or friends, and never lend money to family or friends. That’s why money is the number one most difficult issue in most marriages. Money divides. Money causes disputes. And it’s because when it comes to money, we have a tendency not to operate with any sort of grace or gentleness. Instead, we act in a wicked or mean-spirited way, and it leads to trouble and division.
But Paul advocates in Romans 14 for the use of gentleness, patience, and grace in dealing with disputable matters. He insists that unity in the body of Christ does not require agreement. He allows both sides to live out their convictions as long as they are actions done with reverence to God. And his point is that whatever we do, grace and gentleness must be at the center of our actions.
The servant in Jesus’ parable failed to act in this way. Perhaps for one reason or another he was doing what he thought was right by trying to collect the debt from his fellow servant. But regardless of his motives, he failed because he forgot to be filled with grace and gentleness and forgiveness in his dealings. The king was forgiving, gentle, and filled with grace. The servant was not. The servant received grace at the feet of the king, but when he left the king’s presence, he left the grace behind. He didn’t take it with him. He didn’t live out the grace given to him.
I suppose you see now where I’m going with this. When we come to meet with God here in this holy place, we come indebted to him, weighed down by our sins and our mistakes. These things we’ve done which we shouldn’t have done, and these things we should have done but haven’t done, are the things we label sin. And these sins break our relationship with God. They leave us in a state of helplessness, a state of owing more than it’s ever possible to pay back. We are completely indebted to God, and we won’t ever be able to pay off this debt. So we come and kneel at the throne of grace and beg for forgiveness. We’ll make it up to you, we say, knowing that there’s no way that we’ll ever be able to make it up to God. It’s ridiculous to think we can pay back God for all our sins, but we pretend like we can anyway, because we’re that desperate for forgiveness.
But then, as we kneel at the feet of God’s throne, in a miraculous, forgiving, gentle act, God wipes our debt clean through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. In the ultimate act of grace, God the king wipes out we the servants’ debts. And we are free and clear of all our sins, all those things weighing us down. And we praise and worship this wonderful giver of grace!
But then we file out of our tidy little Sunday morning service, go on with our tidy, well-maintained little lives, and act as the unforgiving servant. And most of the time we mean well, but we end up failing, just as the unforgiving servant. We don’t fully believe that our debt has been cancelled even though that’s what we were told. Or we try to impress God anyway, try to earn the forgiveness and grace as if it isn’t a done deal. We still think what we do matters when it comes to God’s grace, so we try to impress God with all our wonderful deeds. Or maybe we just simply forget about the grace given to us, so we fail in our dealings with others because we check our grace at the door.
For about 10 years now, I’ve had the tradition of spending a day each summer golfing with my grandfather. At 83, he still golfs several times a week at the same golf course, Chesnut Ridge. One year, we showed up at Chesnut Ridge to golf, and because it was a busy day they paired us up with a guy golfing alone. It’s standard for golf courses to combine twosomes or single golfers into larger groups on busy days so they can get more people out on the course. Anyway, we’re paired up with this guy that my grandfather knows, because he knows everyone who’s played that golf course once in the last 50 years. And this guy had a mouth on him. He used every swear word I’d ever heard, and I even learned some new words that day. Well, he hits a bad drive on 13, and here come the swear words again, one right after another, like sausage links strung the whole way around a butcher shop. Finally, he looks at me and says, “Kid, I hope your dad isn’t a minister, because I’m using some pretty foul language around you.” In fact, another few swear words came out almost involuntarily as he spoke that sentence. Well, after a few minutes of my grandfather and I doubled over in laughter, we finally explained to him that my dad is a minister. In fact, my mother is too. And at the time, I was thinking about entering the ministry as well. This guy’s face turned bright red. And his language the rest of the day was clean as a whistle. His mouth was on its best behavior from hole 13 to 18.
I tell you this story because it’s just one example of how people tend to clean up their act when around clergy. As the child of two pastors, I have seen this phenomenon played out often. As a seminarian and now as a pastor, I too have become someone that people act different around. And honestly, I’ve been on the other end too, always sitting a little straighter and managing to include more holy talk in my conversations when I knew the pastor was in the room during youth group.
And we do the same with God, don’t we? We tell people not to swear “in church,” as if it’s somehow okay to swear away from church. We treat everyone kindly and gently at church, because how would it look to turn over the tables in the social hall out of anger? And let’s be honest: we do it because it’s easy to act on our best behavior at church. It’s easy to be filled with forgiveness, gentleness, and grace here. But the real world doesn’t operate in this way. The real world is just, and fair, and everyone pays what they owe, even if it’s as much as 10,000 talents! The real world doesn’t operate with forgiveness, with gentleness, with grace. So why should we?
We’re unsure exactly why grace was left with the king and not carried with servant in his own dealings, but we see that it was. The servant didn’t live out the grace given to him, didn’t take the grace of the king with him as he went out to meet those yet unaware of the grace. And often we leave God’s grace at church instead of taking it with us, for one reason or another. We worship in the presence of grace on Sunday, then live Monday through Saturday as if Sunday didn’t even happen. The servant separates his relationship with the king from his relationship with others. We separate our dealings with God from our dealings with the world. We consider our relationship with God and our relationships with the world to be mutually exclusive. We just don’t make that connection in our lives – we live one way here in church, and another way when we’re away from this building.
And when we do, we find ourselves in the same situation as the unforgiving servant. We find that when we fail to live a continuous lifestyle of grace, we become again imprisoned by the sin that we allow to exist in place of that grace. By leaving grace where we think it belongs, at church, we reserve our freedom from sin to be only in that place. But God calls us to a much more fulfilling life of freedom. God calls us to a life free from all bondage of sin, 24-7-365. Only when we accept God’s grace into our hearts and lives are we truly saved from sin. Only when we allow grace to dictate are we really clear of all our debts. And when we reject the infusion of grace into our Monday to Saturday lives, we remain imprisoned by sin.
We are called to live out God’s grace not just in some moments, in some places, with some people. We are called to live continuous lives of grace, around the clock, no matter where we go, or who we meet, or what we do. We are called to a life of forgiveness, gentleness, and grace, grace which cannot and will not be left at the door of the church as we leave. As John Wesley famously said, “The world is my parish.” Yes, the world is our parish. The world is our church. The world is desperately in need of the grace that we so carelessly and thoughtlessly leave here in this building. The world yearns for the grace that we visit once a week instead of allowing it to take control of our lives, infusing itself into every moment, every thought, every relationship in our lives. Let us remember this undeserved and absurdly abundant gift of grace already given to us. Let us remember it not only here, but continue to seek new ways to experience that grace everywhere. Let us open ourselves up in all places to all people, allowing that grace to fill us anew each day, so full that grace overflows from us and reaches others who have yet to experience the wonder of God’s grace. We must allow grace to accompany us out of those doors in the back and into our Monday through Saturday lives. Then, and only then, can we be fully free to live the life that God desires for us. May it be so in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Alright, I’ll admit it: I’m addicted to my cell phone. I honestly can’t leave home without it. And I know I’m not the only one these days that’s like this. Many of us have our little things that we never leave home without. Cell phone, wallet, keys, and day planner, for me. I know some people who can’t leave home without some makeup on. Some people can’t leave home without their purse. Others won’t leave without a lucky charm. And almost all of us refuse to leave our house unless we’re wearing clothes, which is generally a good thing. We all have those things that we carry with us wherever we go. And this morning’s text from Matthew speaks to this phenomenon.
Peter, the representative of the disciples, asks Jesus a question about how often forgiveness is necessary to someone who has hurt us. What’s the protocol here with forgiveness? What’s required in order for the forgiveness to take hold? And Jesus, as he so often does, responds with a parable, the parable of the unforgiving servant. And this is how the story goes.
There once was a king who was trying to settle all his debts, get his books in order. So he called this one servant in, probably a middle management administrator in his kingdom, and tried to collect on this guy’s debt. But this servant had a debt of practically infinity – he owed 10,000 talents! Now the talent was the largest monetary unit, and 10,000 was the largest number imaginable in those days, so this servant literally owed the largest possible debt someone could owe. It was impossible to ever pay it back – he was doomed. So he pleaded with the king, “Please be patient, I’ll do everything I can to pay back this debt.” But the king knew that was impossible, and in a spirit of ultimate grace he cancelled this servant’s debts, all of them.
The servant, free of debt because of the king’s grace, went out to collect the debt someone else owed to him. He had loaned another servant about 100 days wages, and now it was time to pay up. But the debtor was unable to pay, and he pleaded with the servant, “Please be patient, I’ll do everything I can to pay you.” And this was a significant debt, about $11,500 in our terms, but definitely a debt that could be collected with a little patience. However, the servant trying to collect decided not to extend grace to this debtor, and threw him into prison until he paid his debt (which would now be hard to do since he was sitting in prison).
When the king heard about this, he got really peeved. “This guy owed me an infinite amount of money, and I gave him infinite grace. But now he’s treating people like this? Because of how he acted, he is indebted to me again. He forgot his debt was cleared, or didn’t believe it was, so now it’s not. He is imprisoned by his debt, and is back in the situation he was in before.
When we first read this story, it seems so easy to come down hard on the unforgiving servant, as he’s so often labeled. This guy was let off the hook by a benevolent king, and he refuses to let others off the hook. What a jerk! Or, as the king said, “what a wicked servant!” What a mean-spirited servant!
Well, let’s give this servant a break, okay? After all, we don’t really know all the facts. We know he pleaded with the king for patience as he tried to pay off a debt impossible to pay off. And the king threw the rule book out the window and went beyond giving him patience. He said, “Hey, don’t worry about it. It’s all in the past. That debt is water under the bridge, so let’s just call it even.”
Well, this of course would blow anyone away, for a king to be so merciful, so forgiving, so full of grace. But it’s not the standard practice, nor would anyone expect it to be! In fact, the king canceling the outrageous debt seems so absurd that perhaps the servant doesn’t really believe it’s true! Maybe the king is setting him up. Kings wouldn’t be above that, you know. So perhaps the servant is trying to cover his bases by collecting on his own loans, and that way if the king takes back the whole grace thing, he’ll be able to show he’s working on repaying the debt.
Or, maybe he realizes his debt is cleared, but he’s trying to collect on his loan so he can pay the king something as a way of saying, “thanks for not making me pay everything.” Maybe it’s a way of trying to impress the king. He’s taking it upon himself to show the king that he’s changed, that he’s finally able to manage his finances.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that he goes away from the king and simply forgets about the grace given to him. He just doesn’t think about it. It’s already been erased from his mind when he deals with his own debtor, and he doesn’t mean to be as hard-hearted as he ends up being.
Yet another way to look at the servant’s actions is that he finds that being cleared from debt is a liberating experience. He finally feels freedom from financial worries, and now he’s trying to free the other servant of his debt. You need to pay me your debt so you too are free of indebtedness, you too are liberated from the bondage of debt. Maybe this is it. Maybe he’s only trying to help the poor sap, but he goes about it all the wrong way.
Paul writes of this in his letter to the Romans. In this morning’s Romans passage, Paul addresses a church dealing with disputable religious matters. This is not a church dealing with petty differences in opinion. You do communion by intinction with cardboard-y wafers and wine, and we do it by kneeling at the altar rail with real bread and shot glasses of grape juice. You dunk people for baptism, and we sprinkle. You like this kind of music, and we like that kind of music. No, the church Paul speaks to is dealing with real, difficult issues. It’s a church tackling all the hot-button issues – and we know all about that, with the election rearing its ugly head soon on the horizon.
And what’s one of the most disputable issues in any church, in any organization, in any relationship? That’s right, money. Money can ruin a relationship. That’s why they say to never rent out to family or friends, and never lend money to family or friends. That’s why money is the number one most difficult issue in most marriages. Money divides. Money causes disputes. And it’s because when it comes to money, we have a tendency not to operate with any sort of grace or gentleness. Instead, we act in a wicked or mean-spirited way, and it leads to trouble and division.
But Paul advocates in Romans 14 for the use of gentleness, patience, and grace in dealing with disputable matters. He insists that unity in the body of Christ does not require agreement. He allows both sides to live out their convictions as long as they are actions done with reverence to God. And his point is that whatever we do, grace and gentleness must be at the center of our actions.
The servant in Jesus’ parable failed to act in this way. Perhaps for one reason or another he was doing what he thought was right by trying to collect the debt from his fellow servant. But regardless of his motives, he failed because he forgot to be filled with grace and gentleness and forgiveness in his dealings. The king was forgiving, gentle, and filled with grace. The servant was not. The servant received grace at the feet of the king, but when he left the king’s presence, he left the grace behind. He didn’t take it with him. He didn’t live out the grace given to him.
I suppose you see now where I’m going with this. When we come to meet with God here in this holy place, we come indebted to him, weighed down by our sins and our mistakes. These things we’ve done which we shouldn’t have done, and these things we should have done but haven’t done, are the things we label sin. And these sins break our relationship with God. They leave us in a state of helplessness, a state of owing more than it’s ever possible to pay back. We are completely indebted to God, and we won’t ever be able to pay off this debt. So we come and kneel at the throne of grace and beg for forgiveness. We’ll make it up to you, we say, knowing that there’s no way that we’ll ever be able to make it up to God. It’s ridiculous to think we can pay back God for all our sins, but we pretend like we can anyway, because we’re that desperate for forgiveness.
But then, as we kneel at the feet of God’s throne, in a miraculous, forgiving, gentle act, God wipes our debt clean through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. In the ultimate act of grace, God the king wipes out we the servants’ debts. And we are free and clear of all our sins, all those things weighing us down. And we praise and worship this wonderful giver of grace!
But then we file out of our tidy little Sunday morning service, go on with our tidy, well-maintained little lives, and act as the unforgiving servant. And most of the time we mean well, but we end up failing, just as the unforgiving servant. We don’t fully believe that our debt has been cancelled even though that’s what we were told. Or we try to impress God anyway, try to earn the forgiveness and grace as if it isn’t a done deal. We still think what we do matters when it comes to God’s grace, so we try to impress God with all our wonderful deeds. Or maybe we just simply forget about the grace given to us, so we fail in our dealings with others because we check our grace at the door.
For about 10 years now, I’ve had the tradition of spending a day each summer golfing with my grandfather. At 83, he still golfs several times a week at the same golf course, Chesnut Ridge. One year, we showed up at Chesnut Ridge to golf, and because it was a busy day they paired us up with a guy golfing alone. It’s standard for golf courses to combine twosomes or single golfers into larger groups on busy days so they can get more people out on the course. Anyway, we’re paired up with this guy that my grandfather knows, because he knows everyone who’s played that golf course once in the last 50 years. And this guy had a mouth on him. He used every swear word I’d ever heard, and I even learned some new words that day. Well, he hits a bad drive on 13, and here come the swear words again, one right after another, like sausage links strung the whole way around a butcher shop. Finally, he looks at me and says, “Kid, I hope your dad isn’t a minister, because I’m using some pretty foul language around you.” In fact, another few swear words came out almost involuntarily as he spoke that sentence. Well, after a few minutes of my grandfather and I doubled over in laughter, we finally explained to him that my dad is a minister. In fact, my mother is too. And at the time, I was thinking about entering the ministry as well. This guy’s face turned bright red. And his language the rest of the day was clean as a whistle. His mouth was on its best behavior from hole 13 to 18.
I tell you this story because it’s just one example of how people tend to clean up their act when around clergy. As the child of two pastors, I have seen this phenomenon played out often. As a seminarian and now as a pastor, I too have become someone that people act different around. And honestly, I’ve been on the other end too, always sitting a little straighter and managing to include more holy talk in my conversations when I knew the pastor was in the room during youth group.
And we do the same with God, don’t we? We tell people not to swear “in church,” as if it’s somehow okay to swear away from church. We treat everyone kindly and gently at church, because how would it look to turn over the tables in the social hall out of anger? And let’s be honest: we do it because it’s easy to act on our best behavior at church. It’s easy to be filled with forgiveness, gentleness, and grace here. But the real world doesn’t operate in this way. The real world is just, and fair, and everyone pays what they owe, even if it’s as much as 10,000 talents! The real world doesn’t operate with forgiveness, with gentleness, with grace. So why should we?
We’re unsure exactly why grace was left with the king and not carried with servant in his own dealings, but we see that it was. The servant didn’t live out the grace given to him, didn’t take the grace of the king with him as he went out to meet those yet unaware of the grace. And often we leave God’s grace at church instead of taking it with us, for one reason or another. We worship in the presence of grace on Sunday, then live Monday through Saturday as if Sunday didn’t even happen. The servant separates his relationship with the king from his relationship with others. We separate our dealings with God from our dealings with the world. We consider our relationship with God and our relationships with the world to be mutually exclusive. We just don’t make that connection in our lives – we live one way here in church, and another way when we’re away from this building.
And when we do, we find ourselves in the same situation as the unforgiving servant. We find that when we fail to live a continuous lifestyle of grace, we become again imprisoned by the sin that we allow to exist in place of that grace. By leaving grace where we think it belongs, at church, we reserve our freedom from sin to be only in that place. But God calls us to a much more fulfilling life of freedom. God calls us to a life free from all bondage of sin, 24-7-365. Only when we accept God’s grace into our hearts and lives are we truly saved from sin. Only when we allow grace to dictate are we really clear of all our debts. And when we reject the infusion of grace into our Monday to Saturday lives, we remain imprisoned by sin.
We are called to live out God’s grace not just in some moments, in some places, with some people. We are called to live continuous lives of grace, around the clock, no matter where we go, or who we meet, or what we do. We are called to a life of forgiveness, gentleness, and grace, grace which cannot and will not be left at the door of the church as we leave. As John Wesley famously said, “The world is my parish.” Yes, the world is our parish. The world is our church. The world is desperately in need of the grace that we so carelessly and thoughtlessly leave here in this building. The world yearns for the grace that we visit once a week instead of allowing it to take control of our lives, infusing itself into every moment, every thought, every relationship in our lives. Let us remember this undeserved and absurdly abundant gift of grace already given to us. Let us remember it not only here, but continue to seek new ways to experience that grace everywhere. Let us open ourselves up in all places to all people, allowing that grace to fill us anew each day, so full that grace overflows from us and reaches others who have yet to experience the wonder of God’s grace. We must allow grace to accompany us out of those doors in the back and into our Monday through Saturday lives. Then, and only then, can we be fully free to live the life that God desires for us. May it be so in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Steelers-Browns on Sunday Night Football!
There are many great moments in the history of the Steelers-Browns rivalry, but this might be my favorite.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Life is good
Finally, in the 3rd week of college football season, Lisa and I are free to spend Saturday the way Saturdays in the fall should be spent. A recap of our day so far:
8:20 am Woke up still feeling full from last night's battle with Olive Garden's never-ending pasta bowl. Apparently, the battle is not over.
8:25 am Battle with never-ending pasta bowl complete. As Johnny Drama would yell, "Victory!"
8:30 am Make coffee, get paper off front lawn, putz around with coffee, paper, and computer for about a half hour.
9:00 am Revise sermon.
9:40 am Check on status of Lisa. She's laying in bed, fully awake, staring at the ceiling and smiling. That's my girl.
9:45 am Begin making breakfast.
10:10 am Eat breakfast while watching College Gameday.
11:30 am Still eating breakast while watching College Gameday.
11:45 am Clean up from breakfast, check e-mail, watch College Gameday.
12:00 pm Read Sports Illustrated, do a crossword, watch football.
1:00 pm Talk with Jeremy for awhile.
1:30 pm Back to football, write blog about my lazy Saturday.
1:42 pm Finish this post while watching football. Decide to eat cake as a snack.
I suspect the rest of the day will go pretty much like this. I hope it does. I'm going to go get some cake as a reward for finishing this post.
8:20 am Woke up still feeling full from last night's battle with Olive Garden's never-ending pasta bowl. Apparently, the battle is not over.
8:25 am Battle with never-ending pasta bowl complete. As Johnny Drama would yell, "Victory!"
8:30 am Make coffee, get paper off front lawn, putz around with coffee, paper, and computer for about a half hour.
9:00 am Revise sermon.
9:40 am Check on status of Lisa. She's laying in bed, fully awake, staring at the ceiling and smiling. That's my girl.
9:45 am Begin making breakfast.
10:10 am Eat breakfast while watching College Gameday.
11:30 am Still eating breakast while watching College Gameday.
11:45 am Clean up from breakfast, check e-mail, watch College Gameday.
12:00 pm Read Sports Illustrated, do a crossword, watch football.
1:00 pm Talk with Jeremy for awhile.
1:30 pm Back to football, write blog about my lazy Saturday.
1:42 pm Finish this post while watching football. Decide to eat cake as a snack.
I suspect the rest of the day will go pretty much like this. I hope it does. I'm going to go get some cake as a reward for finishing this post.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Weekend in Ohio
I took my first Sunday off this past weekend. Lisa and I attended her college roommate's wedding, about 30 minutes from our college town of Ada. Lisa was a bridesmaid, I was a bridesmaid's husband (i.e. gopher), and we saw lots of people we rarely see. The weekend was a blast, the wedding was a blast, and it reminded us that we're now back within driving distance of many of our college friends. We also got to see Wayne and Fern Albertson, the pastor of the UMC in Ada
and his wife. He officiated our wedding, and they've both been dear mentors and friends to Lisa and I over the years. We love them and love the people at their church. We attended there Sunday morning and saw many folks from the congregation that we should keep in touch with and simply don't. It was probably the last chance in a long, long, long time that we'll get to attend Ada First UMC, since it's hard for me to justify taking too many of my precious few Sundays off to spend the weekend surrounded by Ohio cornfields. While there, apparently the person preparing the communion elements can't count, and cut the bread into fours and set out four chalices. Well, there was only supposed to be 3 sets of servers. Anyway, when Wayne saw that, he decided to invite "The Rev. Erik Hoeke and his wife, Lisa," to be additional communion servers. We weren't expecting it at all, but it turned out to be a memorable moment for us, as we got to serve many of the members who served nurtured us as we began dating and as we began the journey towards ordained ministry. It was special.
Now, September is in full swing and there's meetings practically every night at the church for the next 3 weeks. There's 2 tonight back-to-back that I'll be leaving for shortly, another one tomorrow, 3 next week, 3 the week after that, and so on. It was so smart of me to plan a 7 week Bible study in the midst of charge conference planning. But it was now or during Nov. and Dec., when the holidays tend to keep people from committing to evening studies. That's all for now.
and his wife. He officiated our wedding, and they've both been dear mentors and friends to Lisa and I over the years. We love them and love the people at their church. We attended there Sunday morning and saw many folks from the congregation that we should keep in touch with and simply don't. It was probably the last chance in a long, long, long time that we'll get to attend Ada First UMC, since it's hard for me to justify taking too many of my precious few Sundays off to spend the weekend surrounded by Ohio cornfields. While there, apparently the person preparing the communion elements can't count, and cut the bread into fours and set out four chalices. Well, there was only supposed to be 3 sets of servers. Anyway, when Wayne saw that, he decided to invite "The Rev. Erik Hoeke and his wife, Lisa," to be additional communion servers. We weren't expecting it at all, but it turned out to be a memorable moment for us, as we got to serve many of the members who served nurtured us as we began dating and as we began the journey towards ordained ministry. It was special.
Now, September is in full swing and there's meetings practically every night at the church for the next 3 weeks. There's 2 tonight back-to-back that I'll be leaving for shortly, another one tomorrow, 3 next week, 3 the week after that, and so on. It was so smart of me to plan a 7 week Bible study in the midst of charge conference planning. But it was now or during Nov. and Dec., when the holidays tend to keep people from committing to evening studies. That's all for now.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
What are you smoking?
So, two things happened in the sports world in the last 2 days that are utterly ridiculous.
1. I don't follow the NBA, but apparently they have a rookie transition program designed to help players adjust to life as a professional athlete making a 7 figure salary. I guess it's a code of conduct orientation -- don't get in trouble and make the league look like it's just a bunch of thugs. Well, two players were found in their room at this conference with marijuana and --gasp -- girls. Both drugs and girls were against the rules of this conference. It all sounds like a high school band camp drama. Anyway, the punishment was to send them home from the very program trying to keep them from making such errors in moral judgment. Does this make sense to anyone? How will this teach them a lesson? It's akin to sending youth home from a church youth retreat because of breaking rules. Usually, those are the kids who need to be at the retreat the most.
2. Chad Johnson, flamboyant receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, has legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. This is so utterly ridiculous I have no words for it. I'm just waiting for the offseason, when Ocho Stinko demands a trade again, and it's finally granted. Only, he discovers that he's been traded to the Lions or Rams, the only two teams in the NFL that have retired #85. After that, he'll have to legally change his name again. This time, he'll choose a more fitting last name: Ocho Idiot.
1. I don't follow the NBA, but apparently they have a rookie transition program designed to help players adjust to life as a professional athlete making a 7 figure salary. I guess it's a code of conduct orientation -- don't get in trouble and make the league look like it's just a bunch of thugs. Well, two players were found in their room at this conference with marijuana and --gasp -- girls. Both drugs and girls were against the rules of this conference. It all sounds like a high school band camp drama. Anyway, the punishment was to send them home from the very program trying to keep them from making such errors in moral judgment. Does this make sense to anyone? How will this teach them a lesson? It's akin to sending youth home from a church youth retreat because of breaking rules. Usually, those are the kids who need to be at the retreat the most.
2. Chad Johnson, flamboyant receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, has legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. This is so utterly ridiculous I have no words for it. I'm just waiting for the offseason, when Ocho Stinko demands a trade again, and it's finally granted. Only, he discovers that he's been traded to the Lions or Rams, the only two teams in the NFL that have retired #85. After that, he'll have to legally change his name again. This time, he'll choose a more fitting last name: Ocho Idiot.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)