Love All

Sermon for Sunday, December 18, 2011 at First UMC of West Newton

Scripture: Matthew 22:34-40

These past four weeks really have been a lot of fun. As a congregation, we’ve taken up the challenges of the Advent Conspiracy. We are worshiping fully, spending less, and giving more this Advent season in preparation for Christmas. The point of it all is to focus on how we can change the way we celebrate Christmas so that it can once again be the world-changing and life-changing event it originally was, when God broke into this world to restore our relationship with Him, as well as shine his light into the darkness of this world. We have been considering how we can change our own thoughts and actions, wondering how we can serve God and display God’s glory with all we say and do – not just this holiday season, but all year round.

But as I read the nativity stories, I just can’t get over one thing – the amazing, incredible, unconditional, abundant, passionate love that God has for us. More than anything else, the story of Christmas is a love story between God and his people. We see evidence of this in many places in scripture:

• “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.”
• “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.”
• “Greetings, favored one,” the angel tells Mary. “The Lord is with you…you have found favor with God.” God loves Mary so much that God has chosen to dwell inside of her, for the sake of all people.
• GOD IS LOVE.

Yes, God is love. And God loves us so much that he chose to give us this wonderful gift of presence through the Messiah. At its heart, Christmas is all about God giving us this amazing gift of love, the gift of Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

And really, what greater gift is there? I would say that most of the time, the gift we wish for most is to be able to spend time with the ones we love. And so the greatest gift, especially these days with the busyness of life, is to be together, to give presence rather than presents. What’s more, God loves us so much that he doesn’t ask us to come to him. God loves us so much that God comes to where we are, dwells with us and in us, and restores the relationship not in some distant, removed way, but in the most intimate way possible. Emmanuel, God is with us.

In fact, I believe that one of the most appealing aspects of Christianity as opposed to other religions is that there is no other world religion I know of that has a more personal, intimate God. With other religions, there seems to be more intentional keeping of distance between God and people. But as Christians, we believe in a deeply personal, intimate God who loved us so much that he came here to be with us, through the incarnation which we celebrate next weekend.

That’s not to say there should be no distance at all between us and God. Sometimes God feels distant, and sometimes God is distant. That reminds us that God is far more powerful and amazing than we could ever imagine, and that our conception of God is woefully inadequate. Even so, there is a deep intimacy present in the Christian understanding of God that I have yet to find anywhere else.

Furthermore, the love that God has for us is so incredible, so amazing, so passionate, so intimate, that it compels a response. And when a person or being loves us, we typically respond in two ways: either with reciprocating love, or fear and trembling.

Yes, I believe the opposite of love is not hatred, but fear. In fact, our hatred for things and people usually comes from our fear – fear of what we don’t know about them, or fear that their displeasing aspects will only reveal the things we hate most about ourselves. We hate because we fear, and fear is the opposite of love.

God so loved the world that he broke into it in the person of Jesus. And the reaction by King Herod was fear. The word of a new king, a king of kings and a prince of peace, worried him. When Herod was told that a new king had been born, he wasn’t angry, as we may picture him. He wasn’t upset. He wasn’t even arrogant. No, he was frightened. He was very fearful that his authority would be usurped, that the kingdom would no longer be his. God loved through the incarnation, and King Herod responded in fear.

In a much different way, I think the Advent and Christmas season often garners fear in us. We have small, trivial fears this time of year:

• I’m afraid he won’t like the gift I give him
• I fear the new recipe isn’t good enough.
• I’m afraid grandma will get run over by a reindeer.

But, we also have more serious fears, things that keep us up at night and cast a dark shadow over our Christmas spirit:

• I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay the credit card bills come January.
• I fear that the family gathering will end in conflict and fighting.
• I’m afraid to face this Christmas without a loved one for the first time
• In Herod’s case, “I fear that I’ll lose my throne.”

Yet, the wonder of Christmas is that God loves us. And God comes to Mary with a message of love and favor rather than fear. Do not be afraid, Mary, for God is with you. God comes to the shepherds in the fields with a message of good news and great joy. So you see, shepherds? Do not be afraid!

Do not be afraid, dear children, shepherds, mothers. Do not be afraid, kings and rulers and wise men. Love is on its way, coming to dwell with us. This truth is proclaimed no more beautifully than by Charles Wesley in the first verse of one of my favorite hymns:

Love divine, all loves excelling,

Joy of heaven to earth come down,

Fix in us thy humble dwelling,

All thy faithful mercies crown.

Jesus, thou art all compassion,

Pure, unbounded love thou art;

Visit us with thy salvation,

Enter every trembling heart.

Our God is a God of incredible, passionate, intimate, amazing love. And in compels us to love in return, to invite this love into our hearts. When we do so, the two great commandments become the mission statement for all we say and do – to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves.

My mother-in-law has a decoration hanging in her front hallway. It is the outline of a heart, and inside the heart is the word JOY. Written out next to the word “joy” is three words: Jesus, Others, You. This simple, kitschy decoration reminds me, first of all, who we are to love, and second of all, the order in which that love should be prioritized. How often do we flip that order, first taking care of ourselves, and only then loving neighbors, and if we get around to it, loving God? Every time I am at my in-laws, I see that and remember the greatest commandment: Love God, love others, love self, and you will find joy.

And if you really think about it, that’s what the Advent Conspiracy is all about: love. We love God by worshiping him fully, not the things or ideologies of this world. We serve God rather than consumerism or other cultural messages or icons. And we love others when we become like God, practicing the gift of presence rather than presents, and when we consider what we can give God for Christmas as we give generously to those in need. Here in this congregation, we have loved both God and others this Advent season by baking cookies for our neighbors, by gathering for worship, by practicing alternative ways of celebration. And there are still other ways we will practice love: tonight, a wonderful combined choir will love by singing praise to God and sharing that good news with those who wish to hear it. Next weekend, we’ll love each other by exchanging gifts. And together, we’ll give to Living Water International, so that our Christmas gift to God and our brothers and sisters around the world will be life-giving water for all.

I’ve been saying all month that Christmas is world-changing, revolutionary, and scandalous – and it is very much so. But it is also, more than anything, the first chapter in the greatest love story ever told. It is the story of God loving all people so passionately and intimately that God came to be with us. It is a love that comes without price, without condition, without any qualification or requirement on our behalf. It is a love that displays the Wesleyan notion of prevenient grace – that this is love: not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his son. We are only able to love God because God first loved us.

I hope and pray that you will discover the depth of God’s love on display at Christmas. And I hope that rather than being afraid, you will respond in love of God and neighbor: loving all with every fiber of your being. Go therefore, and love all – love all you meet, in every way that you can, with all that you have. Love all because that’s what God does, and we are called to imitate God. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Give More

Sermon for Sunday, December 11, 2011 at First UMC of West Newton
Scripture: Isaiah 64:1-4, 8-11


My father comes from a Dutch family. In fact, he was born in the Netherlands, and the majority of his relatives still live there. As such, there are ways in which my father loves to celebrate his Dutch heritage, and as a child he would share certain traditions with us.

One such tradition was that of Sinterklaas Day, also known as the feast of Saint Nicholas, on December 6. Sinterklaas is the patron saint of children, and originally a Greek Bishop of the 3rd and 4th centuries. As legend has it, Sinterklaas would travel around and put money in the shoes of poor children. It was an act of charity meant to take care of those who could not afford life’s basic necessities. This eventually evolved into leaving gifts in the children’s shoes, and is something Sinterklaas still reportedly does on the eve before his feast day.


And so, every year growing up, on Dec. 5 my sister and I would be instructed by my father to leave our shoes out on the front porch for Sinterklaas. You were also supposed to fill the shoes with hay for the horse Sinterklaas rode in on, but being suburban kids we didn’t quite have easy access to hay. So we’d fill our shoes with grass. The following morning, we would wake up and discover that Sinterklaas had come and left us a small gift – one that could fit inside a shoe, of course.

Sinterklaas, you might say, is the ancestor to Santa Claus. And like many traditions and cultural celebrations, Sinterklaas has evolved from being a tall, thin, charitable patron saint of children, to being a pudgy, red-cheeked glutton and provider of toys and amusement to those who already have everything. Do we need any more evidence that sometimes our traditions lose their true meaning as time goes on?

What’s interesting about the story of Sinterklaas, or Santa Claus in the USA, is that it has taken on the same fate as the celebration of Christmas. What used to be a tradition of giving to those in need has become a tradition of indulgence, consumerism, and debt as people spend more than they can afford in futile efforts to acquire the latest, greatest things – things that will likely be not so great by this time next year. Throw in just enough charitable giving to relieve us of our consumer guilt and to give us year-end tax breaks, and you have Christmas, 21st century style.

But Christmas is not about getting stuff. It's not about shopping malls, traffic jams, and overeating at holiday parties and family gatherings. That's something we've been reminding each other this month around First UMC, as we participate in the Advent Conspiracy. We’re considering how Christmas can once again be the world changing and life changing revolution it is meant to be, rather than just another reason for Hallmark to make greeting cards.

And this week, we ask ourselves, "Now that we have committed to worshiping fully, and now that we have cut back and committed to spending less, what might it look like if we celebrated Christmas by giving more? What if, instead of being roly poly Santa Clauses, we acted more like saints, giving hope, peace, joy, and love from our hearts?

After all, “Jesus is the reason for the season,” we say, but as I like to add, "Jesus is not the reason you’re at the mall.” Rather, the fundamental meaning of Christmas is that God has already given us a gift, and it is the greatest gift of all. Beginning with the birth of Jesus, God offers us a new covenant, a new life, a new relationship. And what do we do for people who have given us gifts in love? Usually, we give them gifts in return. But no one is harder to shop for at Christmas than God – what do you give the one who created and creates everything, the one who’s already got the whole world in His hands? What on earth could be on God’s wish list?

The answer, I believe, lies in chapter 61 of Isaiah. Here, the prophet might as well be reading God’s wish list. And if those words sound familiar, particularly the first two lines, it’s because this is the scripture Jesus read at the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. In Luke chapter 4, Jesus stood up, and in his first public teaching as an adult, said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And with these words, Jesus gives his mission statement. Jesus gives us all kinds of salvation, both individual and collective, both from sin and death as well as the evil powers and structures of this world. And in doing so, Jesus “displays God’s glory,” as the prophet Isaiah so eloquently states.

But these words in Isaiah are not only prophetic language of what God will do in the form of a Messiah, the savior to come. No, these words are also prophetic language about the people of God. Yes, God brings good news to the poor, the oppressed, the enslaved, the victimized, the grieving, and those with broken hearts. But additionally, God sends out his people to declare his good news as well. The people of God are here in Isaiah commissioned to bring good news, to liberate, to comfort, and to display the glory of God. Through God’s people, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And that is the best gift we could ever give God in return this Christmas: to display his glory.

At Christmas, God gives us a relationship, and in return we are called to give ourselves in relationship to God and others. First, we are called to spend this Advent season similar to the way we spend Lent in preparation for Easter. As we prepare for the coming Messiah, we seek to love God more deeply. And we also give more in our relationships with others.

The invitation to give more, in regards to Advent Conspiracy, is two-fold. First, it is an invitation to give relationally to friends and family. It means considering what is a better use of our time and money – spending an entire day at the mall, hunting for the perfect gift for our spouse, or spending the day enjoying being WITH our spouse? Which will have a more lasting impact on your relationship with your child – as well as your child’s development: spending all of Advent buying gifts for them, or spending all of Advent baking cookies, watching Christmas movies, and developing a closer relationship with them?

Second, the invitation to give more is a call to return to the Sinterklaas (or, St. Nicholas) way of giving gifts – to give not to those who have everything, but to give to those who have nothing. The amount of money it would take to address problems of poverty, disease, lack of clean water, and injustice in this world is miniscule in proportion to the amount of money we Americans spend on Christmas shopping every year. So this Advent and Christmas, as a congregation we are giving to Living Water International, and in doing so are giving the gift of clean water and improved health to people all around the world. Giving more, both relationally to friends and family as well as generously to those in need, is how we celebrate Christmas God’s way, and how we display God’s glory.

Last week, I talked about “spending less.” I mentioned the obvious: that in our culture, exchanging gifts around Christmas has gotten out of hand. Every year it’s bigger and better gifts, bigger and worse debt, and bigger and more useless piles of “stuff” that we never use. Black Friday brings out the worst in humanity. Malls and big box stores are not in the business of religion. And even though their signs proclaim it, the retailers cannot give you “real joy guaranteed.”

For many, gift giving has become more trouble than it’s worth. For these and other reasons, both my family and my wife Lisa’s family have cut back in gift giving in recent years. We’re practicing more alternative or charitable gift giving. But that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with giving and receiving gifts with others. Even though we’ve cut back and we now spend less, we are still spending money and we are still giving some gifts.

You see, it’s still okay to exchange gifts and be a Christian. Every holiday season, I spend considerable time shopping for people I care about. I admit, I put more thought into some gifts than others, but with all my gifts I think about the receiver. Who are they? What are their interests? Will they really use this? Will they appreciate it?

Gift giving offers us a chance to think about people around us. We smile just thinking about how much she’ll love it, or how his eyes will light up when he unwraps it. Or, when we struggle to find a good gift because we don’t know the person very well, we recognize the room for growth in a neglected relationship. Gift giving can be a meaningful way to reflect and express our love for each other as spouses, siblings, children, parents, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, co-workers, or friends. In fact, for some people gift giving is the most comfortable way to express love for another.

And we may practice alternative gift giving. I already know there are large families in which the adults only give gifts to the children, or do some variation of a secret santa gift exchange. I know there are others who make homemade gifts out of love. I know that’s how some people in this congregation celebrate Christmas and gift giving, because you’re a talented bunch. I know there are talented artists, sewers, musicians, writers, woodworkers, cooks and bakers in our congregation. You all have many talents you could use to make gifts of love for friends and family. And when you use your gifts and talents to make gifts or give gifts of love to others, you "display God's glory," because it is God who created you with those special talents and abilities. And those gifts express love greater than anything bought in a store.

I also know that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus’ birthday, not ours, and so the change in gift-giving must reach further than our own families and friends. What God wants for Christmas is the world to change. God wants us to use Christmas as an opportunity to transform this world. And so we return to that second invitation of giving more. Because we are committing to spending less and giving relationally on the home-front – giving our time and our talents rather than going into debt – we are now free to give more this Christmas to those who are truly in need.

So we thought we’d offer you a way to do that. Of course, we all have our favorite non-profits and charitable organizations we like to support, and that’s great. We want you to continue doing that – supporting the organizations you care deeply about. But we also want to give you an opportunity to learn about Living Water International, which is the primary charitable organization that Advent Conspiracy explicitly partners with. We have a video that will show you a little bit about the work that Living Water International does:

I believe that God is always challenging me to give more – not just during the Advent and Christmas season, but all the time, all year long. And you know, growing in terms of giving is a tremendous challenge. Do you know why? Because giving more means I get to keep less for myself. That's why I'm being called always to give more – God is using the call to give to mold me into someone less selfish, as someone who doesn’t think only of my own needs. Giving more is not a one-time call, but is an invitation into a life-time process. And it is the first step toward having the mind that was in Christ, who gave all he had, even his life, in a self-emptying way for our sake.

That’s the story of Christmas, folks. God had everything, and GAVE it all up for our sake. God GAVE up all power, authority, glory, and grandeur, entered our world in a smelly stable in a forgotten small town, through the faithfulness of a pregnant unwed teenager. God GAVE everything for us. So maybe, just maybe, as we celebrate the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, we can strive to do the same. Give more this Christmas, and you’ll find that your life and this world will be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. God gave everything He had for the sake of others. Go and do likewise. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Spend Less

Sermon for Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011 at First UMC of West Newton

Second Sunday in Advent

Scriptures: Matthew 6:19-21, 24-33; Ecclesiastes 2:1-11

This year during Advent, we are participating in the Advent Conspiracy. The Advent Conspiracy is a movement of hundreds of churches – across the world, but primarily in the United States – that seeks the true meaning of Christmas. And that is that Christmas is not about giving or receiving gifts. It’s not about hosting the best holiday party. It’s not simply a way to end the year in a good mood, although it may have that effect. No, Christmas is more than what our culture has turned it into, and as Christians we are called to celebrate Christmas as it was originally intended: as a world changing, transformative event. Christmas is the scandalous, revolutionary, life-changing and world-changing event of God and God’s kingdom breaking into this world.

Through the Advent Conspiracy, we are trying to rediscover this true message of Christmas. Last Sunday, I shared how we may conspire to worship fully – that Christmas is about peaceful moments of rest, as well as revolutionary movements of protest, and both these moments and movements can be forms of worship. Today, we’re going to talk about how together, we might conspire to SPEND LESS this Christmas. By spending less, we can then free ourselves from the burden and obligation of spending so much on Christmas and gifts, and we are freed to give more, worship fully, and love all.

Spending less is important to the Advent Conspiracy, because it is a concrete, counter-cultural action we can take in this season of shopping, sales, and general shopping mall-induced stress and traffic jams. The conspiracy of spending less begins with cutting back on gift giving.

Before you get the wrong idea, this is not a call to eliminate gift-giving completely. I do think it’s monumentally important that we admit gift-giving and receiving is not the point of this season. Christmas is not about getting what you’ve always wanted, nor is it about giving your children everything they’ve always wanted. Christmas is not YOUR birthday, after all. The retail side of Christmas is out of hand and a tragic sign of where our culture’s priorities lie. But the fact is, there’s not necessarily anything wrong with giving and receiving gifts with others, if it’s done out of love for each other and not love of stuff.

However, what we are doing this Advent is asking ourselves if we really need to spend as much on gifts as we do. We are asking if all the gifts we give are really necessary to show someone we care about them. And the call to spend less is not to cut out gift giving completely, but to evaluate our spending and consider cutting back.

Think about this: Americans spend $450 BILLION a year on gifts. Every year. That’s a lot of money. And yet, it has been estimated that just $20 billion per year could solve the world water crisis. That’s less than 5% of our Christmas spending. If we just cut back 5% on our Christmas spending as a nation and gave it away, we could solve the world’s water problems. That’s a big deal, because tens of millions of people each day do not have access to clean, safe drinking water. Without clean, safe drinking water, these people are at significantly increased risk of illness and disease, and the infant mortality rates are sky-high. So, Advent Conspiracy asks that we think about giving one less gift for Christmas, or maybe 5% less than in previous years, and then give away the money we save to Living Water International – or some other organization.

There are many ways to spend less. You can simply buy less, or you can practice alternative gift-giving. You can “tithe” a percentage of your gift budget. 

Spending less frees us to give more – to give in new ways, to give with more love and to give relationally. After all, God gave a relationship at Christmas, and it was the best gift we could ever receive. Next week, we’ll talk further about GIVING MORE – one of the things that spending less frees us to do.

The Gospel lesson this morning is not particularly an Advent or Christmas text, but I do find it to be extraordinarily relevant to this season, in the face of retail mayhem. It is a season of worrying and fretting and anxiety. It is a season where we tend to serve wealth and the “things” of this world rather than serving God.

It is very easy to serve the retail gods around Christmas. This is what we are so tempted to do, is serve and worship the retail season of Christmas. It is a religion unto itself – marked by holy days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, celebrated with the weekly rituals of Saturday traffic jams, requiring the sacrifice of our financial well-being, and proclaiming the fulfillment of promise and hope for our families.

I wish that the passion people display in the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday, lining up and creating riot-like atmospheres just for the best deals on flat-screens, would pale in comparison to the passion people have for God breaking into this world. It’s a stark reminder that everyone seeks fulfillment of some type of promise this season, and we are all in service to someone or something during the holiday season. 

So what are you seeking this Advent with all your heart? Where is your mind? What are you dedicating your time and money to? If someone were to look at your life this December, who would they say you are serving, God or wealth?

Let me tell you – I have found myself serving wealth at times. And I echo the sentiments of the writer of Ecclesiastes: all of it is vanity and chasing after the wind. For the things on this earth are temporal, but God’s kingdom is forever. I hate to break it to you, but even diamonds are not forever in the way that God’s kingdom is.

This morning, we baptized a young child. And when I think about the world this child will grow up in, I hope that the world will be better in the future for him than it is for us today. I think that’s the hope for all our children and grandchildren, all the generations that will follow us. I have hope that many things will be better for him than for us – I pray that he will live in a more tolerant nation than we see today. I pray that the world will be more peaceful than it is now. I pray that the harmful things we’re doing now that we don’t know are harmful – he’ll be warned of them. After all, we younger generations were warned of the harmful effects of smoking, a habit that many people of previous generations did for years without realizing how harmful it was.

And I hope in another way. I really do think it’s possible that Christmas can eventually be not about the stores making profits, but can be about the world being transformed into God’s kingdom. I hope that one day, we’ll tell our children and grandchildren about how people pushed and shoved each other to get a good deal on a TV. We’ll tell them that Saturdays in December were just one big traffic jam, and people spent entire weekends at the mall and it still wasn’t enough to complete all their shopping. We’ll tell these younger generations about the amount of money we spent as a country on a holiday celebrating the birth of a Savior, and our children and grandchildren will look at us in disbelief – there’s no way people were that materialistic and selfish, they’ll say. Didn’t they know that Christmas is a time to participate in God’s work in the world, a time defined by giving from our abundance to those in need, a time to make a positive change in the world? Why did they celebrate selfishly rather than charitably?

And we’ll say, yes, people gave to charity back then, but only to assuage their guilt for spending so much on crap they didn’t need. You see kids, Christmas had lost its nature of being a world-changing event, and had simply become a way of acting out our greed in the worst way. But eventually, the church stood up and created a revolution. The Christians of this nation – just as they had with women’s rights and the abuse of alcohol and with racism and with gambling – they stood up and said, “Enough!” And they committed to spend less, to give more, to worship fully, to love all. They led a revolution that changed Christmas back from the retail holiday it was to the true Holy Day that it was always meant to be.

That’s my hope – that we can tell future generations how bad it used to be, how parents wrestled each other for tickle-me-Elmo dolls. And then, we’ll remember what it was that finally changed things – the Holy Spirit moving through a committed group of individuals, the world changing because people began serving the Messiah rather than wealth. Don’t you want to be a part of that story? Don’t you want to be a part of the revolution, the one where God can transform how we think about Christ’s birth?

Spend less this Christmas. In doing so, you’ll discover that it frees you to: 

• Worship fully – serve and love God, prepare the way of the LORD, more time to worship with family
• Give more – give your time, give relationally, give charitably (join us next week and we’ll talk more about this)
• Love all – Christmas is a time of love – of God’s love coming into our world, of how we may return that love by worshiping God and giving to those in need, and that true love is not defined by the price tag on our gifts.

One final note: spending less has special significance in this season of the year, because the holidays are a time marked by indulgence, over-spending, and perhaps even the accumulation of unmanageable debt. But this is only when we are at our worst. These kinds of consumerist, retail-worshiping actions are practiced by us all year round. So the call to spend less may begin this holiday season, but it is meant to continue all year long.

May it be so. May we spend less, and in doing so, discover anew how we may serve God and God's kingdom rather than the kingdoms of this world. And may it free us, in turn, to give more this Christmas and all year long. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Mercy and Judgment

Sermon for Sunday, March 7, 2010
Third Sunday in Lent
Scripture: Luke 13:1-9

This morning’s passage from the Gospel of Luke is quite an interesting bit of scripture, isn’t it? Here in the 13th chapter, we find a Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, and as Lutheran scholar Kae Evenson puts it, he is “railing against this and that and then telling an odd story about a fig tree.”

The “railing against this and that” is Jesus’ response to a crowd eager to magnify the sins of other people. As we gather from Jesus’ response, there seems to be good motivation for drawing attention toward the sinfulness of persecuted Galileans or laborers of Jerusalem. The crowd’s hope is that in pointing out the sinfulness of “those other people,” the sinfulness of the speakers themselves will be overlooked, forgotten, or merely seen as trifling compared to those really bad sinners down the block.

And this is not the only place in scripture where we encounter an antiquated punishment/reward system based on our relative sinfulness or righteousness – a system that assumes all human blessing is reward for righteousness, and all human suffering is punishment for sins. Old Testament wisdom literature, for instance, and the book of Job in particular, spends a great deal of time addressing the subject of divine reward and punishment, divine mercy and judgment. And here in the 13th chapter of Luke, as in Job, we find a God who challenges these self-righteous attitudes – the judgment we wish on sinners worse than us, and the mercy we reserve only for ourselves. Through the words of Jesus, we are cautioned against being rash to judge the wickedness of others, and we are also cautioned against assuming that, as self-ordained “lesser sinners,” we are free from having to face the judgment that our neighbors must face.

And then, there is the odd story about a fig tree. The owner of the fig tree is ready to chop it down. It hasn’t produced fruit for 3 years, and it’s time to make room for a tree that will. “Cut it down! It’s wasting soil!” screams the owner to his gardener. This fig tree has had enough chances to bear fruit, and it has wasted those chances. But on the tree’s behalf, the gardener pleads for mercy, asking the owner to give this poor little fig tree one more chance to bear fruit. And the owner displays mercy to the tree – gives it yet another chance to bear fruit.

Isn’t it nice to be a tree? Taken on its own, this parable assures us that even when we’re fruitless fig trees, God still gives us more chances than we deserve to grow into the productive trees we’re called to be. But unfortunately, this “odd story about a fig tree” is told in the same meeting, in the same context, and in the same breath as the “railing against this and that.” And it’s intentionally told this way, so that we may understand that if we believe in the mercy of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th chances in our own lives, then we better believe that the same mercy is offered to our neighbors as well – the people we mistakenly label as “worse sinners.” What Jesus does here in Luke 13 is delicately hold a railing against judgment in tension with a parable about mercy, and in doing so he gives us more to think about than we can explore in a simply Sunday morning sermon – on a communion Sunday, no less.

But the juxtaposition of mercy and judgment here reminds us of our propensity to apply God’s judgment to the sins of others, while at the same time applying God’s mercy to our own sins. We turn up our noses in self-righteousness at the sins of others, contemplating how we can throw scripture in their faces to warn them of a wrathful God, lightning bolt in hand, ready to inflict judgment on them at a moment’s notice. And then we continue on our way to church, where we pray, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And then we thank God for the grace and mercy that wipes away our sin.

But then one day, we stumble upon Jesus’ words in Luke 13, and he challenges us to look at things from a different perspective. Rather than focusing on the judgment of others, perhaps we should start thinking that we may be judged just as harshly, if not more harshly, than our neighbors. And rather than holding onto mercy as if it’s something that we own, something that we’ve purchased, perhaps it might be a good idea to plead for mercy on behalf of our sinful neighbors as well.
All too often, we paint a picture of a judging God examining others, and a merciful God examining ourselves. But the God of scripture and the God that is present with us this morning is not a one-dimensional God. Our God gives out both judgment and mercy, when God wills, to whomever God wills, and however God wills. And God’s son harmonizes the story of judgment and the story of mercy in this morning’s text, creating one new story: a story that journeys from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, ending with death on a cross leading to an empty grave.

Jesus knows that both judgment and mercy are essential to his story. He knows that to omit either would be to tell a story different than the good news. To speak of judgment without mercy or mercy without judgment would be as empty as celebrating Easter without a preceding Good Friday, or celebrating a Good Friday with no Easter on the horizon. It would be as incomplete as tasting the blood of Christ’s death without also tasting the bread of Christ’s life, or vice versa. For the Christian story is a paradoxical one – one that celebrates both death and life, tastes both bread and cup, and proclaims both judgment and mercy.

But, we must be clear that the judgment of which we speak is God’s judgment, and the mercy which we desire is God’s mercy. No judgment we make on our own sins or the sins of another has any significance, and any mercy we proclaim for ourselves or for others is wasted soil. As Christ calls us to “repent or perish” on this Third Sunday in Lent, we are reminded by his words that God’s judgment is what makes repentance necessary, and God’s grace and mercy is what makes it possible.

This is a story of judgment and mercy, of repentance and forgiveness, of death and life. This is the Gospel story, that paradoxical story in which our God uses death on a cross to bring us new life. Thanks be to God for holding us all accountable with judgment, and for offering the mercy that saves us from getting what each one of us sinners deserves. For we all deserve harsher judgment than we can bear, and we all are given greater mercy than we could ever imagine. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jubilee

Sermon for Sunday, January 24, 2010
Scriptures: Leviticus 25:8-12, Luke 4:14-21

Lithuanians love basketball. So when our mission team arrived in the summer of 2000 to a United Methodist church in the slums of Kaunas, one of our first orders of business was replacing their old basketball hoop. In the parking lot of the church was an old, dilapidated basketball hoop. The frame was rusty, the backboard half missing, the net completely missing, and the rim was severely bent down due to years of slam dunk abuse. Yet the neighborhood teens played on – it was this hoop or nothing. But we Americans would not stand for such terrible athletic equipment, so we bought them a brand new hoop. The rest of our 2 weeks there, countless hours were spent in pickup basketball games between us and the neighborhood teenagers. Sometimes we played Americans vs. Lithuanians, sometimes we mixed it up. They trash talked us in Lithuanian, and we trash talked back in English, neither side understanding the other but all of us busting up laughing. And with this being my first trip out of the country, I distinctly remember being amazed at the connections we made on that basketball court despite the many differences between us. We were Americans from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, and they were Lithuanians from the slums of Kaunas. We were from different cultures, spoke different languages, ate different food, participated in different local customs. In many ways, we just didn’t connect with each other. But we quickly found that, all of us being around the same age, we enjoyed many of the same things – trash talking on the basketball court, hanging out with friends, chasing girls. And, if it wasn’t for a common connection to Jesus Christ through the United Methodist Church, we probably would never have met. And with those pickup basketball games, where cultural and language barriers threatened to divide us, we all shared sacred moments of fellowship with people that lived half a world away from us.

Seminarians love to argue. I remember many class periods when debates and arguments raged on for long periods of time. We’d debate the divinity of Christ. We’d argue over theology until we were blue in the face. We’d disagree over the proper way to minister with the poor. We’d challenge each other on ethical and moral issues. And arguments of all kinds would often spill out of the classroom and into the hallway, the courtyard, or the student lounge. But there was one place that those debates and arguments never happened: Cannon Chapel. Our worship space was used for more than worship, but we never used it as a forum for debate. No, we knew that a sanctuary was just that – a safe space. It was a space set apart as sacred, way too sacred to defile with our petty squabbles with each other.

The rhythm of a typical day at our seminary included morning classes leading up to an 11:00 worship service, followed by lunch, then a slew of afternoon classes. I always loved worship in seminary. We would spend mornings with each other debating and arguing the topic of the day, knowing that in large part our debates were fueled by all the differences among us. We had students from all around the world. We had students of all different Christian denominations. We were a smorgasboard of race, ethnicity, nationality, and culture. We had a variety of opinions, experiences, and lifestyles. We were all so different, yet we shared a desire to study and worship the one true God. I used to love the contrast between class and worship. One minute, we’d be arguing with each other over a theological tenet that seemed to take on ultimate importance, and the next minute we’d be singing “Marching to Zion” side by side. In the morning, we’d admit that we didn’t always understand or agree with each other’s life choices, but then we’d serve each other communion, and sit down to lunch together. Despite our many differences, we always found a way to rise above those barriers of race, class, culture, denomination, and lifestyle. And no matter what our relationships the rest of the day, worship was always a truly sacred time of glorifying God side by side with brothers and sisters in Christ.

The people of Haiti have suffered yet another great tragedy. I’ve been amazed these last couple of weeks how much people have been willing to reach out to the people of Haiti. I wish that we had all been better about it before the earthquake, but at least people are sending aid to the Haitians now. And it’s amazing how relief is coming in from all over the world, from religious as well as secular organizations, from individuals as well as governments. United Methodists are partnering with Muslims, Catholics and Protestants are singing hymns together on the streets of Port-au-Prince, and even the United States and Cuban governments have been cooperating to get aid to Haiti more quickly. In a country where a great tragedy has taken place, people are responding with sacred moments of jubilee, ignoring barriers and simply helping brothers and sisters in need.

Tibetan Buddhist monks know how to have a good time. I’ll never forget the day I learned this. The late afternoon sun was shining beautifully on the quad of Emory University, and in the patch of grass between the theological library and the ancient artifact museum, we were holding a fiercely competitive ultimate Frisbee game. As usual, we had to dodge all the passerby on the sidewalks, but on this particular day, there was one group of passerby we just couldn’t ignore. It was a group of 3 Tibetan Buddhist monks, complete with their traditional red and yellow robes and shaved heads. As the monks approached, they looked upon our Frisbee game with great interest. So, we invited them to play Frisbee with us. For the next 5 or 10 minutes, we just jogged around throwing the Frisbee back and forth with these Buddhist monks. There was a cultural barrier, a language barrier, a religious barrier, and even a wardrobe barrier, but we took a break from our competitive game and simply played with the monks. We pretended to play a real game, but the rules were suspended, and we weren’t keeping score or anything. But I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun in my life. It was, in one word, awesome. It was truly a sacred moment that I will never forget.

I’m guessing that the people who attended the synagogue in Nazareth on the day Jesus got up and spoke experienced an unforgettable moment as well. The hometown boy has returned, and is asked to read scripture in worship. He chooses Isaiah 61, and reads the following:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. Now the year of the Lord’s favor is a reference to the year of jubilee, which according to Leviticus was to be celebrated every 50th year. The year of jubilee was defined by many of the things proclaimed in this passage: good news for the poor, release to captives, freedom from oppression. The year of jubilee was a time when families were reunited, all debts were forgiven, and slaves were freed. For the year of jubilee, everyone was equal. The barriers that usually got in the way of human relationships – finances, disagreements, and exerting power over one another – were wiped clean. Every 50th year, jubilee was celebrated, and as it says in Leviticus, it was a very holy time. In the year of jubilee, people were, for a brief time, lifted above the barriers that separated them into a sacred moment of joy and fellowship with each other.

Here in the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus has come to proclaim jubilee once again. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, he has come to wipe away all debts, eliminate our relationships of power with each other, put away all our disagreements, and reunite us with each other and with God. He has come to usher in God’s kingdom, available for everyone, and he announces to the worshippers that the kingdom of God will look a lot like the year of jubilee. The kingdom of God is defined by holy times of unencumbered relationships with each other.

That fall day when we played Frisbee with the Tibetan Buddhist monks, I remember thinking, “This is what heaven must feels like.” When I would attend worship with my classmates in seminary, I used to feel like together, we were lifted from the din of classroom arguments into a shared encounter with the divine. And over the last couple of weeks, I’ve looked upon all the relief efforts in Haiti and thought, these relief workers are truly the hands and feet of Christ. These stories I’ve shared with you are just a few examples of how, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we all experience jubilee moments in our lives from time to time.

Leviticus 25:12 defines a jubilee moment as a moment that is holy to us. Jubilee moments are holy moments, filled with the Holy Spirit, that lift us above the ordinary, above the differences, above the barriers. They are moments defined by an encounter with the divine, relating with each other simply as brothers and sisters beloved by God. They are even moments that give us glimpses of the glory of the kingdom of God. What are the jubilee moments in your life? Has the Holy Spirit led you to jubilee recently? Have you shared in holy fellowship as you’ve reunited with a group of friends? Have you put aside differences with relatives to share a meal together? Have you worshipped or served alongside someone of a different denomination? Have you played basketball with Lithuanians or ultimate Frisbee with a trio of Tibetan Buddhist monks?
I’d like for you to take some time to think about jubilee moments in your own life. When has the sacred lifted you above the ordinary? When have you felt the Spirit leading you into perfect relationships with your neighbors, even if just for a moment? When have you felt the presence of Jesus Christ providing you a moment defined by holiness and pure fellowship with your brothers and sisters? As you leave this place, think about your own experiences of jubilee. Write them down. Say a prayer of thanksgiving for those moments. And remember that those moments are the work of God, giving us glimpses of the kingdom of heaven by the presence of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

And as you move forward, I encourage you to pay close attention for the jubilee moments in your life. Let the Holy Spirit continue to lift you at times from the ordinary and into the experience of the divine. Let Jesus usher in God’s kingdom for you, one jubilee moment at a time. For the year of the Lord’s favor is here. Let us proclaim and celebrate the jubilee moments in our lives. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.