Crossing into the Kingdom

There is nothing quite so delightful as a gift given at just the right moment. Or better yet…there is nothing quite so delightful as a gift received at just the right moment. I’m not ignorant of what season this is. It may be Christ the King Sunday on the liturgical calendar. It may be the end of the Thanksgiving weekend. It may be yet one more week before Advent begins and Christmas is still a whole month away, but I know what the season is. Friday was Black Friday. The Internet sellers are expecting their big business to hit tomorrow on what they call Black Monday. (Such ominous names that are supposed to bring such joy to retailers!) We are in gift frenzy and in the midst of all of it, I’m thinking of the few times in my life, and I mean the very few, when I have experienced and seen true and real delight in the giving and receiving of a gift.

I’m thinking of the Christmas when my Uncle Dick couldn’t think of anything he wanted for Christmas except a flashlight and everybody in the family gave him a flashlight. He had 18 flashlights and I don’t think I ever saw him as happy as he was on that Christmas.

Mostly, though, I think of children who are still getting the hang of the present thing. When a child’s eyes light up at a gift it is the purest form of joy. They don’t know that they are supposed to withhold some of their excitement. They don’t know that they are supposed to be skeptical about why they are getting this particular gift. They’re not sizing it up to estimate their value in the eyes of the giver. They aren’t wondering if they can take it back to exchange it for a better size or color. When a gift is given and received at just the right time, it’s magic.

I’m afraid that’s what we’re trying to recapture in all of our mad frenzy this time of the year. We have seen that delight and that joy once or twice in our lives and we are desperately trying to recapture it. For some of us, beneath the jadedness and disappointments we have with the season, we still want to believe in the magic of a gift. But we’re going to have to dig down beneath a lot of crusted-over old layers to get back to the little child. And a store-bought present is not going to be enough for the excavation, much as we love them.

Which, in an odd way, brings me to this disturbing scene in our gospel lesson this morning. Here we are ready to go into Advent and the scripture lesson today takes us right back to another Black Friday – the day when they took Jesus outside Jerusalem up to a hill called The Skull and nailed him to a cross, raising him up to die between two criminals who were also crucified. It’s a strange place to go to end the cycle of the Christian year. After all, Christ the King Sunday is supposed to be the day when we celebrate the coming reign of Christ when, at the end of all things, Jesus will come again in glory to rule in majesty and power. This is the culmination of everything. The end of the story is Christ at the right of God, not a dying thief at the right hand of the dying Jesus, right?

There’s a reason for this story being told on this day, though. It’s a story that has to do with kingship and how we misunderstand it and what we do to those who presume to tell us that we’ve got it all wrong. And if we don’t listen to this story, we’re in danger of forgetting everything the cross has to tell us about the power of God. When we talk about Christ coming in glory, it is a glory born of this journey to the death. Soon and very soon we are going to see the king, the spiritual says, but the king we see will be the same one who was on that cross outside the city with the words nailed above him: ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

So there he is. Lifted up and brought down all at the same time. It was not all that unusual that his final companions were criminals or that his final stand should be outside the gates. Jesus was always one who spent his life on the edges, on the margins, among people who weren’t exactly socially respectable. He was the one you could find at table with publically-identifed sinners – prostitutes, taxcollectors, malcontents, lepers. That’s where he hung out. So why not a final stand with two men who are not known by their names but only because of what they’d done? We call them thieves because tradition says that’s what they are, but they are generic sinners, standing in for all of us.

As Jesus is pronouncing a final blessing over the people, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing,” the crucifiers are performing some last indignities – dividing his clothes among them by throwing lots. At the beginning of the gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his followers, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” [Luke 6:29, NRSV] Now here he is offering not only his cheek but his entire body, and giving away his coat, his shirt, his very self for the enemy he is forgiving.

There are people watching. With them their leaders. And their talk is of salvation. They scorn Jesus as he dies and they wonder why he doesn’t save. “He saved others; let him save himself if he really is the Messiah.”

Closer in the soldiers are asking the same question. They bring over their cheap wine to Jesus as if he were one of their drinking buddies having a bad day. They mock him and they say, “The sign says you are the king of the Jews. If you’re the king, why don’t you save yourself?” Save yourself.

Closer still is the criminal hanging beside him. But his question is the same. “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself.” But then he adds something, which perhaps is the plea behind all of the other questioners, too. The criminal doesn’t have anything to lose by saying it, though. He not only says ‘save yourself’ but he also adds ‘and us.’ Save yourself and us.

Is it just me or do you hear a plea behind all these scoffing words directed at Jesus? Just as loud as the voices that cried “Crucify him,” are all of these voices that say, “Save yourself,” but are they not really all saying, “Save me”? Just like when we are dealing with an adolescent or a person who is acting out in some really destructive ways, we have to listen to what’s not being said. And when we hear what the crowds are not saying, perhaps it is just what the one criminal does say – “I’m saying ‘save yourself,’ but save me.” Now the criminal is probably saying this in a very cynical way. It’s a way for him to make fun of Jesus and the power that the title King of Jews seems to confer on him. For him it has probably always been about ‘saving me,’ and so this is just one more way of proclaiming his self-interest. But there is it any less real for the crowds?

What must they have been thinking? For some it must have been relief. Jesus was threatening to turn a lot of things upside down and even some of those who were hoping that he would stick it to the powers that be were probably a little fearful of what the result would be. It all sounded so good – loving our enemies, bringing God back into the house of God, welcoming the stranger, forgiving the sinner – but what would happen to the world as we know it if those things really became the standard of the kingdom? Do I really want those things?

Because when you get right down to it, if Jesus had turned out to be who he said he was all of those people deriding him from a distance would have had to face a horrible truth. If Jesus was who he said he was, they would have to change. They would have to be transformed. And some of us are so attached to our sins, so enmeshed in our mess, so limited in our vision of who we are and what we could be that we would rather put up with the demons than to send them packing in the light of Jesus’ love.

C.S. Lewis has an image of this in his book The Great Divorce, which was Lewis’ attempt to describe heaven. In the book the main character meets a ghost, the shadow of a real person worthy of heaven, who has a red lizard, which represents the temptation to lust, attached to his shoulder. The ghost is told by an angel that he will not survive unless the lizard is killed and separated from him, but the ghost is reluctant to let the angel kill it. As he finally gives permission and the angel begins to act against the lizard he struggles when he realizes it is going to cause him pain. The angel responds, “I never said that removing it would not hurt you, only that it would not kill you.” It’s a wrenching fight, the man screams in agony, but in the end the lizard is transformed into a magnificent stallion that carries the man off into heaven.[i] The man could not recognize his own salvation because he was so closely attached to his sin.

I have a sense that the people watching Jesus weren’t so blind. I think they must have seen their own salvation there on the cross, but refused to acknowledge it for fear of the pain changing would involve. But also for fear of giving into a deeper hope. This is where the connection with the gifts comes in, because I feel one of the reasons we so seldom see the deep joy and delight we seek in our gift-giving is that we are not willing to give into those emotions for fear of appearing naïve or weak. We’ve got too many barriers to our joy. We had too many losses or too many disappointments to connect again with what it feels like to be truly touched. Or maybe we’re too busy orchestrating the occasion – making it the perfect Christmas – that it fails to be perfect for just that reason.

So then there’s Jesus. What is it that keeps us from loving Jesus? Our questions may be the same as those folks watching and scoffing from a distance. Who’s going to throw their lot in with a king whose hanging on a cross dying? Who’s going to sell out for Jesus when he’s so obviously uncool? Who’s going to put all their eggs into the basket of a savior who tells his followers to leave behind the lives they have known, to leave behind their kin, their wealth, their comfort, their status – everything on which they had built their lives – and to take up their cross and follow him? Who’s going to do that? Who’s going to follow this king into his kingdom?

Are you going to do that? Are you going to give your life to a man that the world is mocking? That the world is deriding as powerless? As a pretender? As a fool? Are you going to stake your life on the life that Jesus promises or are you going to stand on the sidelines protecting yourself from any small flicker of hope because sophisticated people just don’t do that. People who have it all together do not give themselves over to such things. The in-crowd is not into Jesus this year because the in-crowd is always into irony and protecting itself from getting genuinely invested in anything. There will always be something novel but never anything really new because the way of the world is continuation not transformation. The way of the world means you should never get excited about Jesus. You should never put your hopes in Jesus. And for goodness’ sake, you should never give your life to Jesus.

But here’s this other thief. This other man hanging on a cross next to Jesus. This other criminal who has seen what all of these others have seen. But somehow he has seen something more. And he rebukes, not Jesus, but the other criminal. “Don’t you have any fear of God at all, for you and I got the same sentence of death that this man got? And we were judged rightly because there was cause for our sentence. But this man did nothing wrong.” Then he spoke to Jesus. And he doesn’t say, “Save yourself.” And he doesn’t say, “Save me.” What he says is, “Jesus, remember me. Remember me when you enter into your kingdom. When you enter into your kingdom.” There is no doubt in this man’s mind. Jesus has a kingdom. Jesus is a man worth investing his life in. Jesus is a man worth giving himself to, if only to be remembered before God.

You could say, “Yes, but what did he have to lose? The thief was never going to be confused for part of the ‘it crowd.’ The thief didn’t have to worry about he was going to look. He didn’t have to maintain an image any more. He was dying.”

The model in this story is precisely in the thief, though. When we look to the crowd and the soldiers and the thief we see them all asking Jesus a question so that they don’t have to ask it of themselves. They ask if Jesus can save himself so that they don’t have to ask, “Why can’t I save myself?” Why can’t I do it? Why can’t I make it work by my own efforts? Why can’t I achieve what I want in my job? Why can’t I make my family the all-American family? Why can’t I feel contentment in my heart and peace in my soul? Why can’t I buy the right accessory or live the right lifestyle to make it all make sense? Why can’t I save myself? Jesus, you can’t save yourself, can you? Jesus, you can’t save me, can you?”

So what I’m inviting you to today is an opportunity to give it up. Give up whatever crowd it is you’re trying to hang with. If you’re in school, it’s not a gang or a social group that’s going to save you. Give it up for Jesus. If you’re older, it’s not your job or your political party or your love interest or your community status or your neighborhood or your things that will save you. Give it up for Jesus.

What I’m suggesting is that there is within us the seed of our salvation. It’s what was implanted in us before we were born. It is what it means to be made in the image of God. And that has been distorted and bruised and battered by what we have done and left undone. Sin has mangled our lives in many ways. The devil has had his way with us, but one thing that the devil does not have the power to do is to take away from us the deep hope that informs our souls. The greatest challenge we have is not that we feel we have no power but that we fear the power we do have. We are afraid that if we let the world know the source of our true hope we will be ridiculed and ostracized and separated and maybe even sent outside the city with the criminals and the outcasts. And perhaps we will be. But who are you to deny the world the hope that is within you? Who are you to take the message of the new life we have in Jesus and hide it away? Who are you to live your life guarded and protected from disappointment by a wall of cynicism and irony?

When are you going to give it up for Jesus? When are you going to sell out to the king of Kings? When are you going to take your place in the chorus? When are you going to take the role that God has been preparing you to play for your whole life? When are you going to join the great big family that Jesus is making from the likes of you and me and accept that you are accepted and that you have work to do for the kingdom? When are you going to look to Jesus and say, for all the world to hear, ‘Remember me when you come into your kingdom’?

Some of you are old enough to remember when “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was a new Christmas TV special back in the 60s. One of the most memorable scenes in that show is when Rudolph goes to visit the Island of Misfit Toys. This is a place where toys that are considered defective or otherwise undesirable are collected. It’s ruled over by King Moonracer, a flying lion who travels the earth looking for toys that are unwanted. He brings them to this land and looks over them. So there’s a Charlie-in-the-box and a cowboy on an ostrich and a train with square wheels. You know, misfits. But the wonder of the story is that these misfits help another misfit, Rudolph, discover what his deep purpose is.

You’ve got a purpose much greater than Rudolph’s. You’ve got a destiny prepared for you since the beginning of all time. All you have to do is claim your place in the kingdom and to join those that the world calls misfits – people who give it up for Jesus – the king of kings that we met on a cross, that we scorned, that we mocked, that we killed, but who loved us to the end and who will remember us, if only we ask.

Thanks be to God.

Luke 23:33-43
Then they came to the place called The Skull. There they crucified him along with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” They divided his garments among themselves by throwing lots.

The people stayed there watching. They and the rulers with them scorned him, saying, “He saved other; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the chosen one.”

The soldiers mocked him, too, coming to him, offering him their cheap wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself.” And it was written over him: “This is the King of the Jews.”

One of the criminals hanging there was deriding him, saying, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us.”

But the other one responded, rebuking him, “Don’t you have any fear of God at all, for you received the same sentence? And we were judged rightly because we deserve what we are getting for what we did. But this man did nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

He said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

[i] C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1946], pp. 106-112.

Working Hard and Hardly Working

If I were listening to me saying what I’m about to say to you this morning, I would be really annoyed. Because you’re going to hear me tell you something that sounds so obvious and so unhelpful that you will wonder if I’m living in the same world you do. (Some of you wonder that already.) But you know, this is my role here – to study the scriptures and pray and then bring you a word that you were not expecting to hear or maybe that you were expecting to hear but need to hear in a deeper way. So, like I say, I’d be annoyed if I was being told this by my preacher, but I’m just doing my job.

So here’s what I have to say – and this is right out of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonian church – if you don’t want to work, you shouldn’t eat. I know. That’s a really simple message. Lots of times we read a passage of scripture and we scratch our heads and wonder what it could mean or how it could be interpreted. But this one is pretty clear. If you don’t want to work, you shouldn’t eat. It’s very practical. Very straightforward. Not much getting around what Paul wanted to say here. He’s got a problem with lazy folks and he’s telling them, “Hey, buck up and pull your fair share of the load.” Which doesn’t sound very theological but it does sound right. All of us who have been in organizations or workplaces know how much better things go if everyone pulls their weight.

“But wait a second, Alex,” you might be saying to yourself. “Hold it right there. I see where you’re going and if you are going to try and relate this passage to our day and time and tell me that I’m not working and not pulling my weight, well, that’s…annoying.”

To which I say, “See, I told you.”

“But hold on, Alex. This just doesn’t look my life. Especially at this time of the year! Do you know what it’s like? I’m so busy I’d have to postpone a mild heart attack. I’ve got 3 papers, a book report presentation and a Spanish vocab test for Mr. Pereira standing between me and Christmas. I’ve got music lessons. I’ve got basketball practice. I’ve got to take the kids to basketball practice. They’re downsizing at work and I’m now doing three people’s jobs. I’m pulling multiple shifts at the hospital and I haven’t had a day off in a week and a half. My dad’s in physical therapy and may need a home health nurse. My folks are coming for Thanksgiving. I said I’d host the Christmas party for work and I’m not ready. The car needs to go in the shop. There are 16 special programs at school and Christmas play rehearsals at church. I said I’d make a cake for the UMW program and I haven’t even been to the grocery store for ingredients. I haven’t picked up the newspaper in three weeks just because there is no time. Bills need paying. The house needs cleaning. Cats living with dogs. It’s crazy here and you’re preaching about how we need to work? Forgive me if I laugh.”

So, O.K., I get it. You’re busy. But here’s a thought: What if being busy is not the same as working? What if what Paul means by working is something a little more life-giving, a little more holy, a little less annoying than busy-ness?

Because truth be told, I think we’re all looking for something a little more life-giving and a little more holy than we find in the midst of our busy-ness. We say to ourselves, “Look how much I’m doing. I must be fulfilled.” Corrie is a single mother with two kids. She puts it this way in a recent blog post: “You would think the kids and work and working toward my 2nd Masters and taking care of a home would keep me busy enough that I would never be bored. That is so not true….[My parents are moving in for awhile.] I'm sure in a few more weeks things will settle into a nice flow and it won't be so bad. In the mean time, anyone have a spare room for [me] to stay in because between the folks and the teenage girls I'm going crazy!!! Did you know that crazy feels bored too?”[i]

So just what was Paul telling the Thessalonians? We know what he says. In the passage we read this morning he tells the Christians there at Thessalonica to “keep away from believers who are living in idleness and not according to the tradition that they received from us.” Those are connected. The ones Paul is warning them about are idle because they are not living according to the traditions or teachings that they received from Paul.

This is where God gets into this teaching. Because you see the reason that there are lazy Thessalonians is because there has been some bad teaching in the community. Paul, who had started the church there, had been telling the new Christians to be prepared because Christ was going to return and no one knew when that would be but they should live as if it were imminent. Jesus had left them with this expectation. We still live with this expectation.

But some believers in Thessalonica had begun to teach that Jesus had already returned. In chapter 2 of this book he says to them, “As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed…to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.” [2 Th. 2:1-2] There were some people saying, “Hey, maybe we are already living in the new age. And if this is the new age, then why do we keep up with old patterns and habits? Why do we need to obey the old rules? Why can’t we just have a good time? Why do we need to work?” These folks were idle for theological reasons. This is why Paul says that they needed to deal with those people “who are living in idleness” and not according to his teachings.

There’s something more to this, too. The word that is translated as “idleness” here has another meaning. It does mean idleness and that’s definitely what Paul means because he goes on to talk about how these folks should follow his example in working to earn his own income. But the literal phrase here is that these were people “walking in disorder.” It’s a military term. When you get a group of soldiers marching you want them to be in step and moving in the same direction. Rachel and I were doing this the other night – marching around the parsonage kitchen to the music from “Bridge on the River Kwai.” But if soldiers break rank – if they walk in disorder – it makes it impossible for the army to move forward with efficiency. The army can’t do what it’s supposed to do or be what it’s supposed to be if there are soldiers who walk in disorder.

This is the problem with idleness. It’s not just laziness; it’s a disorder for the whole community. In the early Christian communities this was a particular problem. These were folks who were sharing their lives at a deep level. The book of Acts tells us about Christians who sold their possessions and held everything in common. They devoted themselves to communal living, communal prayer, and communal meals. They did take care of those who were in need…the vulnerable in their community…but they also depended on the members being transformed by their experience with Jesus Christ so that they would give all that they had, including their work, to God.

Here’s the important thing, though: Even the idea of work was transformed by Jesus. Work now is the way that we invest ourselves in the world until Christ comes again. Work is our way of participating in God’s continuing work of creation. As children of God, made in God’s image, we are given the capacity to join God’s work, reflecting the Creator’s glory in what we do in the world.

Why do we do this? We could say, couldn’t we, “What’s the point? If Jesus is coming again, if the ultimate destiny of this age is to pass away, then why should I put my labor into it? Isn’t that kind of like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?”

To think like this is to deny what the incarnation was all about. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ was born of Mary. We have seen the living God who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” [Philippians 2:7] As the Scottish sage George MacLeod was fond of saying, “Matter matters to God.” So what we do with the stuff of the world and the stuff of our lives matters to God.

What is that we have to do except to present ourselves and this world as “a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God”? [Rom. 12:1] What is that we have to do except to glorify God by adding to the beauty of the universe, the beauty that we glimpsed on that cross and in that empty tomb? According to Ephesians, we “must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” [Eph. 4:15]. We grow into the image of Christ as we do what he did, as we submit ourselves to the discipline of community, as we give ourselves over to something beyond ourselves, as we work for the kingdom of God rather than the kingdom of me.

All fine and good, but now I have to tell you the really annoying news. We are walking in disorder as a church. Nobody is going to accuse Franktown Church of idleness. If you come in here just about any night of the week you will find things happening. You will find boxes being prepared for Operation Christmas Child. You will find picture of orphans in Russia being supported by church members. You will find Emma cataloging and organizing our excellent Media Center. You will find bible studies, children’s Christmas play rehearsals, choir practice, the depression support group, Administrative Board and Council of Ministries meetings, Nora and Carolyn and Mickey and others cleaning the building. Come in the day and you’ll find kids at the Montessori school. You’ll see people dropping off donations for the Hispanic ministry. You’ll see more study groups. Oh, it’s a busy place here. We’re even busy beyond here, outside the walls of the church. But there is a difference between busy-ness and work.

The test of whether this church is a church is not based on its programming or its calendar or its busy hum. The test is whether or not we are being and making disciples of Jesus Christ. The test is whether our membership vows are being lived out so that we are glorifying God with all that we have. Do you remember what it is that we pledge in the membership questions? We are asked if we will uphold the church by our prayers, our presence, our gifts and our service.

Are we praying for this church? Are we praying that it will be a place where people hear the good news of God and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus? Are we praying that it will be a place that reaches out to serve the community? Are we praying that it will nurture young people and older folks as they grow in faith? Are we praying that God will use it for whatever God wills? Are you praying for this church? It’s part of your work.

With our presence…Are we here? Are we here for worship? Are we here to serve and lead? Are we here for all those programs? Are we there in the community representing Franktown Church? This body is not a body without all of its members. Can’t you tell the difference when we are doing things together? When the place is full? Are you upholding the church with your presence? It’s part of your work.

With our gifts…this congregation has been able to do some astounding things through the ways that our gifts are offered. Through art and music and landscaping and nursery service and hospitality and witness we give what we have to God. These are our gifts. Last Sunday at the emerging service, not only did Gillian dance, but we all did. Dancing for God.

But also in our financial gifts. Our faithfulness to God’s call comes through the ways we use our money, too. Drury is here this month to talk about our budget and how it expresses our ministry as a congregation. Each of those line items should in some way reflect our primary mission, which is “to glorify God by making disciples of Jesus Christ as the Holy Spirit empowers and guides us.” That is the mission statement you see posted all over this building. As he said last week, if this budget makes the church seem like a business, it does, because the church is in the business of doing all those things.

Our financial giving is not done to meet a budget, though. Our giving is done out of a desire to imitate Jesus’ self-giving lifestyle. We give because it is a way of following Christ and opening space within ourselves for God to work in us. Giving is part of our work.

Finally, our service. Hands offered to do the work that needs doing. Hands to scrape paint from the walls of a house that was under ten feet of water during Hurricane Katrina. Hands to hold other hands as they make the transition from this world to the next. Hands to make the meals for dinners. We discover our identity as a disciple of Christ as we serve others. Are we offering our service? It’s part of our work.

But here’s the thing about the hard work we do here: When we do it right, it seems like hardly working. It’s pure joy. Yesterday at the UMW Day Apart that was held here, we sang a song from our hymnal called, “Lord, your Love through Humble Service.” The third verse asks God to make “known the needs and burdens your compassion bids us bear, stirring us to tireless striving your abundant life to share.” When we are trapped, seeing our work in the church or in the world only as tireless striving, it feels like Paul’s got it all wrong. We don’t want more work. We don’t want more reasons to feel stretched and frazzled. We don’t want one more candle to burn at both ends.

What we want is at the end of that verse. The tireless striving is for the purpose of sharing abundant life. Abundant life. Isn’t that what you’re waiting for? Jesus said, “I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly” [John 10:10]. Isn’t that what we strive for? Isn’t that the deep desire of our hearts? All this work. All this busy-ness with which we busy ourselves. If it’s not getting you to heaven…if it’s not getting heaven into you…well, you might as well be idle because you’re walking disorderly. Annoying, isn’t it?, to realize that work might be the substance of our salvation. But the world is full of the presence and the beauty of God and so is the work that is done in Jesus’ name. Give thanks and let’s get to work! Thanks be to God.

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
Now we command you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep yourself away from every believer who walks without direction and without regard to the tradition which they received from us.

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, for we were not idle among you. Neither did we eat bread from anyone without paying for it, but instead we worked arduously, night and day, so as not to burden any of you. We did this, not because we didn't have the authority, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to imitate. Even when we were with you we commanded this: "Anyone who does not want to work shall not eat."

We hear that some among you are walking without direction, not working but monkeying about in others work. To such as these we command and beseech them in our Lord Jesus Christ that they will settle down and work to earn their bread. But you, brothers and sisters, do not get tired of doing what is right.

[i] Corrie’s Rant Space, http://nmb1blonde.spaces.live.com/, May 15, 2007

Learning How Not to Breathe (poem)

The surface shines like some skin
stretched taut above the deep
Reflecting the sky, the sinewy clouds
and my own anxious face
(I am seeing into a glass not so dimly)
Behind my mirrored eyes
a scaly fin flashes with borrowed sunlight,
and disappears again into the murk of another world

I dive to follow
and feel the warmth of immersion
It is regression
There is no thought, no sound,
no future, no time
It is silent being
In the womb
there is no need even to breathe.
We are creatures not yet
of the earth, though entirely embodied

It is the contingency of breath that makes us incarnate
But in the plunge
there is a moment when I forget
to be so careworn and at risk
I am no longer separated
from my origin
I do not stand apart

I swim into my baptism
mindful and mindless
(Knowing as I am fully known)
It is only the grim necessity
of oxygen that calls me back from primordiality
I gasp
as concentric ripples scatter to unknown frontiers
The glass is disturbed

I am still learning how not to breathe

All Along the Watchtower

Who’s going to stand on the ramparts with Habakkuk? Who’s going to go up to the watchtower with him to look to the horizon and see what’s coming? Who’s going to stay awake? Who’s going to keep their eyes open when there are so many reasons to look away? Who’s going to live out of hope when the soup de jour is hopelessness? Who’s going to look for salvation when the world is talking about damnation? Who’s going to remain faithful when the day seems to belong to the faithless, the proud, the wicked and the unjust? These are just a few of the questions raised when you turn to the book of Habakkuk.

There are actually a lot of questions to ask about the book of Habakkuk. Number one being – Just how do you pronounce his name? But the question that seems to be at the top of the list is where the people of God find their strength in the midst of trials. And I am here to tell you today that we find our strength on the horizon. We find our fortitude on the frontier. We find our faith in the future.

The future. The goal. The end. That which is to come. It’s the thing that makes Christians different from other folks. We are on a timeline here. We’ve got an eye on the horizon because we believe that there is narrative here. We’re in the midst of a story. It’s a story that has markers in the creation and in the covenant with Israel. It’s a story that reaches its climax on a cross on Calvary’s hill and in an empty tomb somewhere nearby. And it’s a story that will reach its conclusion with the return of Christ and the establishing of God’s reign throughout the heavens and the earth. Everything…everything hangs on that story and it changes how we view the world. If we did not have this story, then each moment would not be significant. If we didn’t have this story, then what I do today would be pretty inconsequential. Time would be rolling along but to what end?

I don’t know how many of you are football fans, but if you are then you have probably heard about a new rookie running back who is rewriting the record books. Adrian Peterson plays for the Minnesota Vikings and in eight games this year he has already run for over 1,000 yards, which is a great year for a running back. Last week against the San Diego Chargers he ran for 296 yards, which is not only a record number of yards for a rookie to run in one game, it is the NFL record for anybody ever. Peterson is a phenomenal athlete and a wonder to watch.
What is most amazing is the way that he runs. He’s kind of small for a back at only 6’1” and a little over 200 pounds, but he runs over people. He doesn’t spend a lot of time juking and jiving, he just runs straight ahead. Tiki Barber last week said that the thing that was most impressive about Peterson was the way he kept his eyes on the end zone. He keeps looking straight ahead, ignoring the distractions on either side of him, and uses all of his power to move him towards the goal line. Part of Adrian Peterson is living in the end zone already; his body is just trying to catch up.

Well, welcome to the world of Habakkuk and to the world of God’s people. Our journey makes sense when we recognize that part of us is already living in the future that God is ordering. Our bodies are just trying to catch up. We stand with the future.

Now I admit that when I say something like that, “We stand with the future,” it sounds kind of like a cute “buzzwordy” phrase. Something like you might see on a corporate billboard. You know, like “Microsoft: We Stand with the Future.” But that’s not what I’m after here. Christians stand with the future, not because we believe in a cult of progress. We stand with the future not because we believe that every day and in every way we’re getting better and better. We stand with the future not because we’re guaranteed some sort of golden ticket that makes us immune to the slings and arrows the world might send our way. None of that is true! We stand with the future because of what we’ve seen in the past and what we’ve seen in the past and know in the present is the God who has revealed salvation in the covenant with Israel and ultimately in Jesus.

Habakkuk recognizes this. We know very little about who he was, but it seems that he was a prophet in Jerusalem just as the southern kingdom of Judah was coming to an end. Babylon was rising to the east and soon the nation would be attacked, conquered and many of its people carried off into exile.

Things looked bad. The book of Habakkuk begins with the prophet lamenting that the people are crying out for help and it seems that God is not answering. “O Lord,” he says, “how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention also. The wicked surround the righteous.” It’s all falling apart for Habakkuk. He wonders where God is.

Something happens by the beginning of the second chapter of the book, though. Habakkuk goes up to the watchtower and to the walls of the city. Those would be the places where the guards and sentinels kept a watchful eye for the approaching Babylonian army. But Habakkuk is not going up to look for the end; he’s waiting on God. And he hears a word from God.

“Write this down,” God says. “Put it on tablets. Write it big so that people running past it can see it. There is still hope. There will come a day. There will be an appointed time. The word is true. The promise is sure. It may seem to tarry, but wait for it. The day of the Lord will come. That’s why you must not be like the proud or the wicked. The righteous live by faith.” This is the God that Israel had staked its life on. This is the God who redeems. This is the God who promises to come again in power.

Now you might say, “That’s great, but how many thousands of years have passed now since Habakkuk went up on the ramparts to look for God? How many years have we been waiting? To coin a phrase from Langston Hughes, ‘What happens to a dream deferred?’ When does Jesus return? When does God come? When do the unjust get what’s coming to them and when are the righteous redeemed?”

So we work to explain the discrepancy. Maybe Habakkuk meant the day of the Lord metaphorically and it’s really about some spiritual reality. Maybe there’s a Hebrew word that just didn’t get translated right. Maybe the problem is us.

Or maybe violence, destruction, injustice, anxiety and fear are not the exception to the norm of life in this world. Maybe violence, destruction, injustice, anxiety and fear ARE the norm. Maybe the world does not look so great on an average day. Maybe wars and rumors of wars are just the normal, everyday newspaper headline. They have been for all of my life. Maybe struggle, abuse, and death are not all that uncommon for human beings. Maybe every generation feels like the generation behind it has lost its bearings, lost its moral compass, lost its sense of propriety, and lost its common sense. Maybe life has always seemed a fragile thing. Maybe I don’t feel as good as I used to. Maybe cats have always left hairballs in just the place your toes could find them. Maybe acne has always plagued teenagers. Maybe things just aren’t as they should be and by golly, if the end isn’t near, it sure ought to be.

If that’s true…If it is the case that the world is always a frightening place in the present tense then maybe what we need is a watchtower to stand on. What is it that Habakkuk says? What is it that Jesus tells his followers? Keep your head up. Be of good courage. Pray for strength. Because you don’t stand with the present. You stand with another reality that is drawing near. The reign of God is drawing near.

What is it that is drawing near? Redemption, liberation, hope, the kingdom, the power and the glory, Jesus, the future is drawing near. And we do not fear. We do not grow faint. Our arms do not grow tired. Our backs do not grow weak. Our feet do not grow weary. We keep our heads up because…we keep our heads up because we Christians stand with the future. And the future is assured because of Jesus, the one who came and lived among us, who knew our pains and sorrows, who shared our joys and passions, who died our death, and went down into the grave so that he could break through into new life. We stand with the future because the past tells us everything that God intends to do with us and this crazy, chaotic world. God’s answer to the question of death is no and God’s answer to the question of life is always yes. That’s where we stand.

So Jesus really does make all the difference. It makes every place that we stand a new place – one in which the sufferings of this present age don’t get to define the meaning of this time. Because Jesus has redeemed every moment, all these moments are holy and will be taken up into God. They seem like so many loose ends now. We can’t see the purpose in a young girl’s terminal fight with cancer. We can’t see the meaning in a young boy’s life cut short by a roadside bomb in Iraq. What do we do with the senseless ruin that drugs and alcohol can bring to lives? What do we do with the wounds in our minds and in our souls that just don’t seem to go away? All of those loose ends are taken up by God in ways that we can’t perceive. In God’s economy all those threads are drawn together into a tapestry of grace. What is lost is found. What is dead is made alive. This is the work of God is Christ.

I remember having a great discussion with a student once on a mission trip to Mexico. A few years ago I went with a team of students from the Wesley Foundation at UVA to the border region of Texas and Mexico. We were working at projects on both sides of the border and one day a small group of us was resealing the roof on a kindergarten run by the Methodist Church in Reynosa, Mexico, which is a huge, sprawling city of about a million people right across the river from McAllen, Texas.

After working on the roof, a doctor in the Methodist-run clinic nearby took us over to a colonia on the south side of the city. Colonias are neighborhoods, often with no city services, that grow up when new migrants come into the region looking for work. This one grew up on a landfill. You see, the industry that supports most of the 14,000 people living in this colonia is trash. Every day carts pulled by donkeys go through the streets of Reynosa collecting garbage and every night they come back and empty the trash into their neighborhood. So now it is a small city built on piles of rotting paper, food, and worse.

A river runs by the colonia and separates it from the main part of the city but so much trash has collected here that there are now islands in the river. And on top of the new islands are houses. Shacks really. No running water. No electricity. At night the dirt streets are pitch black. And 14,000 people, many of them children, live here. The border with the United States is less than a mile away.

It’s hard to stand with the future in the streets of this colonia. It’s hard to see liberation drawing near for the children who call it home. But there’s something else in this neighborhood. There’s a Methodist Church. This is what the clinic doctor who brought us there wanted us to see. Three brand new buildings. One, a dining hall to serve breakfasts to up to 300 children a day. One, a clinic to serve the many medical needs of the community. And the last, a sanctuary where large groups gather to worship and praise God and to witness to a hope they don’t yet see.

One of the students who was in that small group saw this and she was angry at what she saw. She wondered how the church could simply set up shop in this neighborhood without challenging some of the reasons why the neighborhood had grown up there in the first place. Wasn’t this just accepting some great injustice? Couldn’t more be done to ensure that such places never had to exist anymore?

On the other hand you could see the place as a watchtower. The Methodist Church of Mexico is small. It doesn’t have many resources. But some of its leaders believed that if God is anywhere, God is in the midst of a suffering people. And what little resources they have for new expressions of the church they are putting into places like this church compound, which is called El Sendero, The Way. U.S. church volunteers have come to help build El Sendero and they have come away talking about how they have seen faith in action in a very disturbing place. But when you worship at El Sendero, you stand with the future. And that’s what Christians do.

The world is fierce and vast and devastating and beautiful and God is everywhere within. This is the vision of Habakkuk and God’s people. And God will come to bring God’s people home.
If you are in the midst of some deep struggle this morning, you should know that it may seem to have great power but it does not have the power to change what God has done and what God will do in Jesus Christ. We stand with the future because of what God has done. And God is faithful. And for that reason the righteous live by faith. Thanks be to God.

Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4 (NRSV)
The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw: O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous -- therefore judgment comes forth perverted…I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.

Revisiting the Afterlife

Whenever anyone asks me for a good book to read I find myself handing them the same book. It’s a book by Leif Enger called Peace Like a River and I must have bought the book eight times now. I just keep giving it away.

I like the book because, number one, it’s a great story. You just can’t put the book down once you get started because it draws you in. It’s the fictional story of the Land family in early 1960s Minnesota as told through the eyes of 11-year-old Reuben Land, a boy who has a bad case of asthma and who often finds it hard to breathe. The family is led by Jeremiah, a man who has lost his wife and is trying to raise three children, including Reuben.

The story takes a dramatic turn when the oldest son, Davy, ends up going to jail when he kills two intruders who break into the family house and attack the youngest child, a daughter. He ends up breaking out of jail and heading out into the wilds of North Dakota. Most of the rest of the book is the tale of the family going off to find Davy in the midst of the winter.

But along the way there is great writing and there are great observations about life and faith, which are the other reasons I recommend this book. It seems that Jeremiah, the dad, can do miracles. Not earth-shattering, crossing the Red Sea kinds of miracles, but acts of everyday wonder that remind Reuben that there is more to the world than most of us can imagine. Beyond the observable world there is another reality at work and at certain times it becomes obvious. At one point Reuben writes:

Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature...Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave -- now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth. My sister Swede, who often sees the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed -- though ignoring them will change you also.[i]

There are several reasons I thought of this book as I was reading Jesus’ words in the gospel of Luke this week. I’ll come back to another one a little later. But one of them is found in that passage. “People fear miracles because they fear being changed – though ignoring them will change you also.” It seems to me that what we have in the confrontation between the Sadducees and Jesus is a clear example of people being threatened by something they can’t see or explain – in this case the resurrection of the dead. The threat is not only that they can’t get their minds around what will happen after death; it’s also the threat that if they accepted the idea of an afterlife they would have to change in the here and now. Heaven – it’s not just for the afterlife anymore.

The confrontation begins in the Temple in Jerusalem where all sorts of people were gathering around Jesus. He was nearing the end of his earthly ministry and he had finally come to the Temple – the holiest site in Israel. He was teaching and telling people about the Good News of God and he had a lot of eager listeners. But he was also gathering representatives of the religious leaders who were very threatened by him and the change he represented.

One of those groups was the Sadducees. What the Bible tells us about this group is that one of their defining characteristics is that they didn’t believe in the resurrection. This was not unusual. The idea that people would be raised to an afterlife after they died was a controversial notion within Judaism. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection from the dead. There were many images in the Jewish scriptures, particularly in the prophets and the later writings, of a world to come. But the Sadducees represented a branch of Judaism that was skeptical about the resurrection.

So they came to Jesus as he taught in the Temple with a test. They came and said, “Teacher,” which was a term of respect and honor, though you might wonder how much they meant it that way. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote a law for us.” This was where the test began. Moses was the most revered figure in Jewish law. What Moses had left behind, they were supposed to observe. So they start the test by going straight back to Moses. It would be like one of us saying about a piece of constitutional interpretation, “Well, Thomas Jefferson wrote…” Just the name adds weight.

“So,” the Sadducees said, “Moses wrote that if a man dies and leaves a wife and no children that the woman should become the wife of the man’s brother so that they can produce a child for the dead man.” It seems like a pretty bad idea to us in our day, but it was a kind of social security system in biblical times. Women without husbands or sons had no claim to the means of living or land ownership. So this law allowed widows to have status within her husband’s family and perhaps to have a son that would give her future security. It didn’t always produce ideal results, though, as you can see in the stories of Judah and Tamar in Genesis and in the story of Ruth. But it was in the Law of Moses and the Sadducees were going to use it.

So they tell a parable. At least that’s how it starts out. It’s not nearly as good as Jesus’ parables. It’s pretty boring and when they finish with it you would be forgiven for thinking, “Couldn’t you do better than that?” but there we have it. “There once were seven brothers.” Seven is a good number. It means a perfect number of things. This was an ideal set of brothers. And the first one took a wife and then died without children. So being a good Jewish family, they followed the Law of Moses and the second one married the widowed woman but he died also without producing any children. Then the third brother married her and the same thing happened.

When they got to the fourth brother I’m sure he was little nervous about things but he married her, too, and he died. No children. The fifth brother took out a life insurance policy and then did the same thing. Same thing happened. The sixth brother said goodbye to all of his friends and then married the woman. Guess what happened? Then the seventh. Well, you know what happened to him, too. All seven had married her. All seven had died. No children in sight. At last, the woman herself died – probably grateful that there were no more brothers.

“So,” the question came to Jesus, “they all married her and none of them had any children.” So when the resurrection comes, (IF the resurrection comes, they were probably thinking), when the resurrection comes, whose wife will the woman be?

Now there are several times in the scriptures where Jesus stops and has compassion on people who are coming to him with questions or challenges. A Canaanite woman who has an ill daughter confronts him and he tries to put her off, but she keeps after him and Jesus sees her faith and gives her daughter healing. A young man who is trapped by his wealth comes to Jesus and the scriptures say that he loved the young man even as he told him to give away all that had to the poor.

I think Jesus must have looked at the Sadducees in the same way. He must have had compassion because they so obviously didn’t get it. They tell this silly parable that turns on an obscure legal point and think they’re getting closer to the kingdom of heaven, or at least proving a point about it. But they just don’t have the eyes to see.

Jesus dealt with their question about marriage first. Marriage is appropriate for this world and this age where things are broken and life is uncertain and where human love can model the love of God for humanity. But if they only had the eyes to see, the Sadducees would understand that the arrangements God makes for human beings in this life are irrelevant in the age to come. “Those who are considered worthy of the age to come and the resurrection of the dead,” he says, “will neither marry nor be given in marriage.” And because marriage in the law was meant, in part to deal with the problem of death, Jesus adds, “Those who are resurrected cannot even die.” The resurrection is all about life.

This is the point Jesus wants to make for them. Death is the way of the world. As Reuben puts it in Peace Like a River: When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him or her back up. Death is the inevitable limit of earthly life. But because Christ opens the way to life that does not end, death no longer has the power to have the last word. God is not our destiny and all the rules of this age are off. Marriage is a promise of what is to come – not an eternal reality. Children are a promise. God is the fulfillment and the all in all.

What we can do that the Sadducees could not do, at least at the time of their questioning of Jesus, is to see, lived out in human history, the power of the resurrection. The theologian Karl Barth put it this way, “Those who believe in Jesus can no longer look at their death as though it were in front of them. It is behind them.”[ii] Our death is behind us. Jesus died on the cross and that death was not for himself but for the whole of humanity. Paul in Romans says that “we have been [past perfect tense] buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” [Rom. 6:5] There is a new world breaking upon us that the Sadducees can’t see, you see?

To quote again from Barth:
Death may still be the tyrant, but it is no longer an omnipotent tyrant…It can take away from us everything we have. It puts an end to our existence. But it cannot make God cease to be God, our God, our Helper and Deliverer, and therefore our hope. It cannot do this. And since it cannot, we may seriously ask: What can it do? What is all that it can do compared with what it cannot do?[iii]

And if the resurrection has broken all the rules and upset every apple cart, if it has thought outside every box and reframed every paradigm, then why are we still slaves to death’s power? Why do we live our lives in fear instead of confidence? Why do we live as people who have no hope and die as people who believe that death still has a chance to defeat God? What’s sad about the Sadducees is that they cannot envision a world in which God makes an ultimate difference.

Paul knew this was the most critical thing. He knew that if the Christians ever gave up on the resurrection or explained it away as somehow not essential that the game would be lost. In 1 Corinthians he says, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” [1 Co. 15:19-22, NRSV]

This is our hope. It’s also why we celebrate this day, All Saints Day. We light candles and we remember those who have died, not because we are worshipping them or because we think that if we do not remember them their memories will be forever lost. We light the candles to celebrate what God has done through them and to attest to our faith that this God we serve is the God of the living and in God’s love Abraham and Isaac and Barbara and Rosa Mae and Eleanor and Linwood and Bill and Myrtle are not gone from us or from God. Because Christ lives, they live.

Another reason I give Peace Like a River to so many people to read is because it contains one of the most beautiful descriptions of heaven that I know. Leif Enger doesn’t know any better than you or I what heaven looks like, but his heaven feels like a place I know from having known Jesus and God’s love. It feels right. Here’s just a piece of his description, because I don’t want to give too much away and I do want you to read the book:

And now, from beneath the audible, came a low reverberation. It came up through the soles of my feet. I stood still while it hummed upward bone by bone. There is no adequate simile. The pulse of the country worked through my body until I recognized it as music. As language. And the language ran everywhere inside me, like blood; and for feeling, it was as if through time I had been made of earth or mud or other insensate matter. Like a rhyme learned in antiquity a verse blazed to mind: O be quick, my soul, to answer Him; be jubilant my feet! And sure enough my soul leapt dancing inside my chest, and my feet sprang up and sped me forward, and the sense came to me of undergoing creation, as the land and the trees and the beasts of the orchard had done some long time before. And the pulse of the country came around me, as of voices lifted at great distance, and moved through me as I ran until the words came clear, and I sang with them a beautiful and curious chant.[iv]

Now here’s the good news. There have been days…and I hope you know what I’m talking about as I say this…there have been days when I have felt this heaven on earth. There have been times and places when the earth is filled with the glory of the Lord and I feel it. There have been people in whom I have seen God’s love shining so fiercely that I was burned by their intensity. There have been moments when the earth seems a very thin place indeed because some other, better world is showing through the stretch marks of this one.

“Those considered worthy,” Jesus says, “will experience the age to come and the resurrection of the dead.” What makes us worthy? Grabbing hold of Jesus and recognizing the gift Jesus gives of new life. Don’t settle for anything less. Don’t despise this gift that has been won for you. Don’t turn your back on the one who refused to turn his back on you. Just grab hold of Jesus and hold on because when you do that…nothing will ever be the same. Thanks be to God.

Luke 20:27-38
Then some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came and asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If a man’s brother dies and he has a wife and is childless, then his brother should take the wife and raise up a descendent for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers and the first one took a wife and then died without children. Then the second and third took her. In the same way, all seven did the same and died without leaving children. After all this, the woman died as well. Now, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? All seven had her as their wife.”
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of the age to come and the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. They cannot even die for they will be like the angels and children of God, being children of the resurrection. That the dead are raised up even Moses showed at the bush, as he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now this is not the God of the dead but rather of the living, for all to him are alive.”

[i] Leif Enger, Peace Like a River [New York: Grove Press, 2001], p. 3.
[ii] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2, p. 621.
[iii] Ibid., p. 611.
[iv] Enger, p. 302.