Becoming Human for Christmas: Formlessness

I keep all kinds of strange objects in my office. There’s a wooden elephant given to me by a parishioner who wanted me to remember that she would never forget God or the mission experiences we had been on together. There’s a picture of a young girl standing amid piles of fruit in a Mexican home that dedicated one room to a being a fruit stand. That reminds me of two powerful trips I took to Cortazar, Mexico to work with the Methodists there.

Then there is a chunk of concrete. It’s a piece of a church in Piedmont, Alabama. I got it when I led a team of Volunteers in Mission to Alabama in the summer of 1994. Some of you will remember this story. On March 27 of that year, Palm Sunday, there were about 140 people gathered together for the 11 AM service at Goshen United Methodist Church. The children were doing a musical program that day and the procession had just begun.

At just that moment an F4 tornado was cutting a half-mile swath across the county. When it hit that church it lifted the roof right up and then crashed it and the walls down on top of the people inside. Twenty people died. More than 40 people died overall in three states during that storm. But it was the church that got our attention.

One of the children who died was Hannah, the 4-year-old daughter of Kelly Clem, pastor of Goshen Church. “This might shake people’s faith for a long time,” she said. “I think that is normal. But having your faith shaken is not the same as losing it.”[i] So the next Sunday, with the cameras from national TV networks there and her eyes still blackened from the collapse of the roof, Kelly Clem led her church in an Easter sunrise service in the parking lot next to the ruins of the church. Those of us watching shuddered. We professed belief in God. We knew that life triumphed even in the midst of death. But could we have done the same?

A few weeks later we took a mission team to Piedmont to work on houses that were being rebuilt in the wake of the storms. Kelly’s mom is from Virginia and she was on the trip with us. Kelly’s husband, Dale, is a United Methodist minister, too, and he’s the one who took us on a tour of where the church had stood. We walked through the parsonage next door, which was damaged, but not destroyed.

At the end he talked about a cross that had survived the tornado. Everything else in the church had signs of damage, but the cross that was being used for the Palm Sunday service had survived untouched. That was his sign of hope in the midst of all that inexplicable suffering. Yes, there was death and there was rubble, but there was still a cross to witness to something beyond death. That’s when I picked up my piece of Goshen church that still sits in my office.

Today is the day that Advent begins. A time of waiting on God and a time of looking for signs of a new day that will dawn. But Advent always takes us by surprise. We’ve just come from Thanksgiving and from Black Friday. Christmas songs are playing on the radio. Lights are in the windows. The Hamilton Men’s Class is cooking breakfast. These are signs of a great celebration.

In our scripture lessons for today, though, there are some very different images. In the Mark reading, Jesus talks about darkness and stars falling from the sky. In Isaiah, the prophet emphasizes the absence of God. Speaking for the people who are waiting on a God to deliver them from exile, Isaiah calls for God to tear open the heavens and come down with earthquakes to make the earth tremble. But Isaiah suspects that God is absent because of the people’s sin and a people living without God are no people at all.

So how do you describe such a people? “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” [Isa. 64:6]. A filthy cloth. A leaf being blown in the wind. There’s not much to recommend a people who are far from God. Maybe it’s a little like having a tornado come through and take away everything that you’ve built your hope on.

There’s one more image that Isaiah uses. “We are the clay,” he says to God, “and you are our potter; we are the work of your hand” [Isa. 64:8]. It’s an old biblical image. You could say it goes right back to the opening chapters of Genesis. After all what was Adam before God got to work? Earth. Dirt. Clay. This pottery image goes way back.

We can imagine in our minds potters we know who go to work so carefully on a formless ball of clay. You can see her, can’t you?, bent over the wheel, arms up the elbows in the clay, hands immersed in mud. Then, almost magically, the clay begins to take shape in her hands, becoming what, when it’s finished, you know it was always meant to be. They are connected. Without the potter, the clay is a lump. With the potter, the clay becomes the bowl, the pitcher, the cup. This is the image Isaiah uses to describe us before God. If we’re going to see God…if we’re going to be redeemed from the situations that threaten to take away our hope…if we’re going to be changed and remade…if the world’s going to become better instead of worse, we’ve got to put ourselves before God like formless clay before the potter. For Christmas to come, you’ve got to give yourself to God to be remade into the thing God desires you to be.

We often say that the amazing thing about Christmas is that God comes to us in human form. God becomes human in order to save us and this world from the effects of sin and destruction. We might also say that one of the side benefits of that incarnation is that we also have the opportunity to become human…to become what God intends us to be.

What are the things that make us human? Comparative biology tells us that there are about six traits that we have that make us distinctive from any other creature on God’s green earth. We laugh, we cry, we kiss, we have a big toe, we create TV shows like SpongeBob Squarepants. These are things that make us stand out.

We also have really big brains, though you wouldn’t guess it from Sponge Bob. Chip Walter, who has studied these things, says that humans have a unique adaptation to this condition. Walter says, “If we were born as fully formed and physically mature as the babies of contemporary great apes, human gestation would last not nine months, but twenty-one! This means that we are born a full year premature…Because our premature birth, we come into the world almost totally helpless. Our brains are small and underdeveloped; our limbs, fingers and toes are cartilage rather than mature bone. We are born nearly blind, our nervous systems are not even close to fully formed, and we continue to grow for approximately a third of our lives, years after other primates have reached their majority.”[ii]

Here’s the amazing thing, though. Other creatures come into the world with just about all of their ways of relating to the world fully established. Every platypus born into the world is born with all of their culture already established. Every baboon. Every hippopotamus. They are not going to change much after birth.

But humans! We have a highly adaptive brain that goes on changing. As Walter says, our brains “enable us to change our personal behavior in reaction to personal experience, and as a species, they keep us curious, playful, creative, and restless; in a word, youthful.”[iii]

That’s a biologist’s way of putting things. Here’s how I put that in theology: God has created human beings in such a way that we are born with the capacity to be transformed. I don’t know what sorts of sins a platypus gets into, but they really don’t need to be transformed and remade. They are born with what they need to be what they are supposed to be. We, however, not only CAN be transformed, we MUST be transformed and we are given everything we need to do it. We are not condemned to accept the world as it is or to accept ourselves as we are. We know hope and possibility and change even when everything around us seems to deny it. We can know that God has not abandoned us even when it seems the world is God-forsaken.

This is why in the midst of the Holocaust, even when their homes had been taken, their families separated, their loved ones killed, their neighborhoods and synagogues destroyed, Jewish culture survived. People sang and made music in the death camps. In the Warsaw ghetto people wrote articles for newspapers. People told stories to their children because they knew that eventually even the Nazis would pass and transformation would come.

So when Isaiah says that we are like filthy rags, like leaves in the wind we can say, “Yes, but we are also clay awaiting transformation. God can take us and remake us. A new day is coming and it belongs, not to the worst of us, but to God.”

So how much do our lives reflect this understanding? Does Advent say for us that we are proclaiming this new day that is coming or does it say that we are just going to do more – more of the same, only this time with more lights and glitter?

A few years ago a group of churches came together and said, “We are tired of Christmas being lost in a sea of seasonal stress and traffic. Let’s make Christmas counter-cultural again. Let’s start an Advent Conspiracy!” So these churches networked together and they committed themselves to four simple Advent rules. They were going to Worship fully, Spend less, Give more and Love all.

They challenged their congregations to give as much to the missions of the church as they spent on Christmas. Their cause was clean water and they put wells in places all over the world where more than a billion people don’t have drinkable water. They say that for only $10 spent in the right way, a child can have clean water for life. $10. That’s how much it costs for a mosquito net in our Nothing but Nets campaign. When’s the last time you felt that good about giving away $10?

So here’s where we are – with me challenging you to make Advent the scandalous time of expectation that it is meant to be. Couldn’t we take up those rules of the Advent Conspiracy? To worship fully – not just on Sunday morning but at every opportunity. With our Advent devotionals. With our Advent calendars. With our families around an Advent wreath or candle. With our friends.

To spend less. We make a mockery of this season every time we spend more than we have, winding up with more debt, more burdens and more stress, rather than more joy. Spending less is good not only for your wallet, but for your soul, too.

To give more. To support those ministries that do so much in our community. To give our time to the food bank. To visiting those in need. To teach. To bake. To increasing racial reconciliation. To give more to making our community a better place for all of its citizens.

Finally to love all. To love all of God’s children and all of God’s creatures – starting with the people right around you. Nothing is going to change the world more than experiencing and showing love. Worship fully. Spend less. Give more. Love all. It’s a conspiracy, because we know that God’s new day will come and we want to be ready.

It was not easy for Kelly and Dale Clem to look ahead after the tragedy that struck them in 1994. They could have looked inward and let their loss and grief define the rest of their lives. They could have held God at a distance and allowed those deep questions of “Why?” to determine the shape of their lives. But they didn’t. All of those teams of United Methodists going to work in Alabama made a difference.

"We received and welcomed hundreds of volunteers, to help us rebuild our homes and lives," said Dale. "It wasn't easy to be a receiver, but what a blessing it was to see how God was moving through the United Methodist Church to help us and our community get back on our feet. I want to give back just a portion of what I have received."[iv]

Dale said that as he and Kelly went to be missionaries to Lithuania, where they served for several years, representing the gospel of Jesus in a place that had not heard that message in many, many years. They have now returned and are serving churches in Alabama once again, but they continue to speak to groups and write about their experiences. For them, as for so many people of faith, the formlessness of the world is an opportunity for God to do a new thing. All we have to do is be open to the redeeming God will do in making us human for Christmas. Thanks be to God.

Isaiah 64:1-9 (NRSV)
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us into the hand of iniquity. Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are your people.

[i] Rick Bragg, “Piedmont Journal”, The New York Times, 4/3/1994, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E5DE103FF930A35757C0A962958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.
[ii] Chip Walter, Thumbs, Toes, and Tears: And Other Traits that Make us Human, [New York: Walker & Co., 2006, p. 34.
[iii] Ibid., p. 36.
[iv] Dale & Kelly Clem: Telling the Missionary Story, http://www.awfumc.org/news_detail.asp?TableName=oNews_PJAYMY&PKValue=7.

On Being Looked After

Maybe you remember this experience as well: I can remember what a scary and uncertain time it was when my parents would go out for the night. I could distract myself for a little while. Generally they would leave while it was still light outside. And they would usually leave us with TV dinners which we loved, though for the life of me I don’t know why. Some of you will remember those things. It was the days before microwave ovens and the meals were frozen foods - usually Salisbury steak that never got warmed all the way through, mashed potatoes and gravy that got cooked way too much, and some sort of apple dessert – all of which you only got to eat about half of because it would stick to the foil when you peeled it off. And just for good measure there would be strawberry flavoring you could put in your milk. It was disgusting and we LOVED those things.

So, OK, there was that. Good distraction for a little while. Then there was a favorite TV program like Green Acres or Emergency. That would work for awhile, too. But Emergency was not a great thing to watch when you had this nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach. It was the 1970s version of ER so it had lots of car crashes and heart attacks and life-threatening illnesses. Somewhere about halfway through Emergency I’d start to think, “Mom and Dad ought to be back by now.”

By the time Emergency was over it would be worse. “It’s 9 o’clock. They’ve never been out later than 9 o’clock before, have they? Why haven’t they called to tell us that they’ll be late? I knew the air pressure in the back tire on the car looked low. They probably had a flat tire. Or, no, worse! They had a blowout and crashed through the guardrail on the big curve going into town and the car flipped, went down the embankment, hit a tree and caught fire and nobody saw any of it and they dragged themselves from the burning wreckage and then they were assaulted by robbers who took everything they had and then kidnapped them and carried them off to Culpeper (bad things always happen in Culpeper) and they’re being held for ransom until their eldest son can collect a million dollars in unmarked bills and can exchange himself and the money for their lives.” Sometimes it was aliens from outer space, but that’s generally how my mind worked.

I outgrew all of this eventually. I think I was 23. There was one thing that worked against all these scary thoughts. That was when Ms. Virginia would come and look after us. Ms. Virginia lived by herself around the corner from our house and as I think back on her, I realize she must have had the patience of Job. For many years she had to put up with all the exuberance and anxiety of the three Joyner children and she did it with joy and the most reassuring calm. When my parents told us that they were going out and that Ms. Virginia was going to look after us, we knew that whatever the night would be, it would ultimately be all right because Ms. Virginia was going to be there.

“I will look after my sheep,” the Lord God said in the reading from Ezekiel for today. “I will look after them. When they are lost I will search for them. When they are scattered I will seek them out. When it is dark and cloudy and they have wandered far from the flock, I will rescue them. I will bring them back from the foreign lands where they have been sent.” (You can tell here that we aren’t just talking about sheep any more. It’s God’s people we’re talking about.)

“I will gather them from the nations. I will bring them to their own land. I will feed them on the mountains of Israel. I will feed them with good pasture by the riverside. I will give them rest. I will bring back those who have strayed. I will bind up the injured. I will strengthen the weak.”

“Those sheep that have made themselves fat and strong at the expense of my flock I will destroy. I will judge between the fat and the lean and bring justice to the world. I will set up a shepherd, David, who will feed the sheep and be their shepherd. I will look after them.”

This is the promise of God to all who are scared and uncertain. It is a promise to make things right. It is a word of judgment on those who think they can make their own way at the expense of others. It is a word of hope that in the end, God’s will finds a way – God’s people find their back home – God’s love and justice have no enemy that can stand.

If that’s all we had to say on this day – this Christ the King Sunday, this Sunday before Thanksgiving, this day in the period before a new presidency begins, this day in the wake of economic distress, this day that feels like winter far from the fresh breath of spring – if that is all we had to say – it would be worth saying. After all, we have cause to be scared and uncertain and we need the blessed assurance that Jesus is mine. O do we need a foretaste of glory divine! We need the calm assurance that we can face uncertain days because He lives.

But somehow I think we need to hear something more as well. We need to hear, not only that the future is in God’s hands and that God has come in Jesus to be the shepherd, but that we have something to do BECAUSE the future is in God’s hands and BECAUSE Jesus is the shepherd. What do we DO in uncertain times?

Thomas Cahill makes a bold claim for what the Irish did in the uncertain times that are sometimes called the Dark Ages. The Roman Empire had fallen. All over Europe the structures that had supported Christianity and Latin civilization were disappearing. New pagan rulers were taking over large areas of the countryside. All the books and learning that the Christians and Romans had brought were vanishing.

Ireland, however, was on the edge of the world as they knew it then. In the midst of the darkness of the times, the Irish were becoming Christian and establishing monasteries and keeping alive the culture and faith they had been given. There were many people throughout Europe who thought they were seeing the end of the world. It was certainly the end of the world as they had known it. They were scary and uncertain times.

So the Irish set sail. Some of those crazy Irish monks who had been formed in the faith of Jesus set off in coracles, small boats made of timber and animal skins, and took to the wild Irish Sea. They were called White Martyrs – martyrs because they gave their lives to be a witness to what God was doing in Jesus. White because they set off to travel into the white light of the morning.

One of them was Columba, who set off from Ireland because he had gotten into some trouble with his superiors. He left in one of these small boats with 11 of his disciples and sailed until he could no longer see Ireland. He had arrived at Iona, a small island off the coast of what is now Scotland. Coming ashore, he burned his boat and began a monastery which would bring Christianity back to Britain. Columba established 60 monasteries before he died.

Another was Columbanus, who went to the continent of Europe and challenged popes and bishops to leave the cities to which they had retreated and take the gospel back to the people. They walked into dangerous situations with books tied to their waists like swords. Cahill says, “What is certain is that the White Martyrs, clothed like druids in distinctive white wool robes, fanned out cheerfully across Europe, founding monasteries that would become in time” familiar cities like Salzburg and Vienna.[i] In uncertain times, Thomas Cahill says, the Irish didn’t just get looked after. They trusted that they were looked after, so they saved civilization.

What do Christians do when the world is threatening and the times are uncertain? They set sail. They go back to the faith that told them who they were…to the savior who makes all other claims to who they are irrelevant. They go back to the Bible with its stories of peoples who knew their own times of fear and uncertainty and who prayed for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. And they sail into the future to work for that kingdom in this place and every place.

The gospel parable for today is one of those scary parables we talked about last week. It is part of a series of stories that Jesus tells about groups of people who were not ready for some major event. In the first case they are bridesmaids who had not brought enough oil for the groom watch and are locked out of the wedding feast. In the second case there is a servant who takes the money his master has entrusted to him and buries it in the ground, much to his master’s displeasure. Finally there are the people who, when brought before the throne of Jesus at the Last Judgment, are told that when they had the opportunity to put their love and faith into action they failed.

Of course, in each of these stories there are also characters who are prepared, who do have oil, who do invest the money they’ve been given, who do serve Jesus in the form of their brothers and sisters in need. But what makes me anxious about these stories is that all of the characters think their doing fine. None of those who end up on the outside assume at the outset that that is where they will be. They are just not very conscious of the bridegroom or master or king and what the coming will mean for them.

God will establish a shepherd to look after the sheep. Jesus is the King who will come again in glory. The Spirit is moving across the face of the waters bringing new life. All of that is happening but it does not mean that there are not adventures for us to be about. It doesn’t mean that there are not hands to hold and mouths to feed and lost folks to bring home and injured folks who need to healing and weak folks who need strengthening. Sometimes those folks are us and we are the ones who are lifted up. At other times we are the ones who take our cue from the Great Shepherd and offer ourselves to the kingdom work.

There is another passage that should echo in your head as you hear these passages about sheep and goats. It comes at the end of John’s gospel as the disciples are having breakfast with the resurrected Jesus by the shores of the lake. Jesus calls to Peter and asks him a question: “Peter, do you love me more than these?”

Peter says to Jesus, “Yes, Lord. You know that I love you.”

What does Jesus then say to Peter? “Feed my lambs.” Again he asks Peter, “Do you love me?”

“Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

“Tend my sheep.” But Jesus wasn’t done. A third time he asks, “Do you love me?”

Peter is hurt. But surely somewhere he must have remembered the three times that he had denied Jesus before his trial and crucifixion. “Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you.”

“Feed my sheep.”

What is it that we are called to do? If we are followers of Jesus there is no need for us to be anxious about who we are or where we are headed. We are being looked after by the Great Shepherd. But we are also told to be like the shepherd. We are told to tend the lambs, to feed the sheep, to conform our lives to the model of the one who gave us life.

All around us there are sheep to tend. What are we going to do? It’s great to be looked after. Like Ms. Virginia looking after us kids, God is looking after us like a shepherd tending a flock. And because of that, we’ve got some looking after to do. Thanks be to God.

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24(NRSV)
For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice...

Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken.

[i] Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, [New York: Doubleday, 1995], p. 194.

Using What the Good Lord Gave You

One of the legends in my family is that my great-grandfather, Pop Bryant, responded to the Great Depression by taking what little money he had, sticking it into Mason jars and burying it in the front yard. The banks had failed. Nobody trusted the banks. So Pop started digging holes.

My dad doesn’t remember this. He says the Great Depression was so bad that Pop didn’t have any money to bury. He’s probably right, but I remember as a young child being told this. It was especially intriguing because the rumor among the great grandkids was that Pop had never found all the money he’d hid in the ground and so if we just dug in the right place we’d uncover a jar of money.

I thought about that this week when I was listening to a news program. The newscaster was talking to Mark Haines, a financial reporter, about how people should invest their money given the uncertain state of our economy. Haines said, “Dig holes in the back yard and double bag the money to keep the water out.”[i] My mind went right back to my Pop and how so many people responded when the economy failed in the 1930s. When they lacked confidence that the system worked, they reacted the way most of us would. They drew back, held on to what they had, refused to take on any more risk. It’s a natural instinct.

I also thought about this because of the Bible story that we have for today. There’s some hole-digging going on in this story, too.

Jesus is in the midst of telling his scary parables. Chapter 25 of the gospel of Matthew is full of these scary parables. Before the one we read there is the cautionary tale about the bridesmaids waiting on the groom. This is the one Peter preached on last week. They’re waiting in the dark. Five of the bridesmaids are foolish and don’t bring any oil to light their lamps. Five are prepared. The word comes down the line that the groom is on the way and the five who are prepared go to meet him, but the foolish ones have to head out to find a 7-11 so they can stock up on oil. (This is the Alex Joyner translation, by the way.) When they get back, the door is locked and the foolish ones are left out in the cold despite their desperate knocking on the door. It’s a scary parable because I know that usually I’m not prepared.

The parable that comes after the one we read is the story of the last judgment when Jesus divides those who come before him based on how they treated him in life. To some he says, “You took care of me. You clothed me when I was naked. You fed me when I was hungry. You visited me in prison.”

The ones who are recognized say, “When did that happen?”

Jesus says, “Whenever you did it for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” You see where this is going, don’t you? The next group didn’t do any of these things and they get sent into the outer darkness because they weren’t looking for Jesus in the poor. That’s a scary parable because I know there are many times when I haven’t looked at the people I meet every day as if I were looking at Christ.

Then there’s this parable about a man who goes away on a long trip and gives each of his servants a large amount of money, based on their ability. One gets five talents, one gets two, and one gets only one. He’s gone for a long time and during that time the first slave trades with the money he’s been given, invests in a few mutual funds and some real estate and he doubles his money. The second one buys some shares some credit default swaps and doubles his money. And the third one…well, he goes off and, (here’s the hole-digging), he digs a hole and buries the one talent he’s been given.

The master comes back and…well, you know the pattern by now. Some are prepared and some are not. Some see Christ in the poor and some don’t. Some take what they’ve been given and do something with it and others…don’t. Like the foolish bridesmaids and the goats of the other parables, the last servant ends up in the dark, on the outside, in a place where the hottest hits on the soundtrack are wailing and gnashing of teeth.

I have always wanted to take up for the last servant, though. Surely it must have made sense for him to try to hold on to what he had been given. The servants were given their money, each according to his ability. So when the master gave him the least amount of money, it must have seemed like a vote of no-confidence. “If the master doesn’t trust me with as much money as the others, then maybe I’m not that competent. Maybe the master doesn’t think much of me and he likes me less than the others. They have room for error, but I don’t.”

So, of course, he digs a hole. There’s too much at stake. He doesn’t know what the master is going to do. Better to at least give the master back what he had given out rather than risk falling further in his estimation. What else do you do when you don’t feel confident in yourself? If it’s all up to you and you don’t think you’re up to it – you play it safe. You dig a hole. You hope that what little you have will get you through. You don’t expect to grow and expand your lot in life.

When it’s all up to you and you don’t think you’re up to it…how often have I been there? That’s what makes these parables scary. They demand faithfulness and far too often I know that what is required is more than I’ve got.

Have you ever had trouble being faithful? Have you ever doubted that you have what it takes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ? Do you hear these parables and get a little nervous? Do you hear the demands of the gospel and feel a little worried? Do you hear the call of God and wonder if God has dialed the wrong number? Do you see the eyes of Jesus looking at you and look over your shoulder because surely he must be looking at somebody else? Do you feel the Spirit moving and hesitate to jump on for the ride?

Faithful? Faithful? What silly notion…what sudden impulse…what grand delusion…what arrogant sentiment…what could possess us to think that we could be the faithful disciples that Jesus is calling? Has Jesus not looked at us? Has Jesus not seen what shoddy material he’s working with? Faithful? Brothers and sisters, do we have it in us to be faithful?

Or will we always be the foolish ones, the goats, the servants who dig a hole to store what little dignity we can muster so that at least we won’t lose that? This is no way to live and it is not the good news that Jesus intends. The master of the story recognizes it to. Faithfulness must be more than a hole in the ground to keep a few small tokens.

If you think that these parables from chapter 25 of Matthew are scary…keep reading. Chapter 26 is worse. The first disciples…the ones who were seated at Jesus’ feet as he told these parables…who saw his eyes as he looked at them…who watched his back as they followed him…these disciples who had every reason to be faithful…begin to fall away. The plot to kill Jesus thickens. A group of powerful leaders plan his arrest and death. A woman comes to him while he sits at the table of a leper and breaks a costly bottle of perfume over his head and no one recognizes that she is anointing him in the same way that one would anoint a dead body.

They gather together in a house for a Passover meal and Jesus says that one of these disciples will betray him and that all of them will desert him. Peter…it had to be Peter…protests. “No, Lord, I would never desert you.”

Jesus says, “Peter, you will deny me three times before the rooster crows at dawn.

“No,” Peter says. And they all say it together, “Even if we must die with you, we would never deny you.” But later, when they go up to a lonely garden to pray, Peter can’t even stay awake to watch.

Jesus is arrested. The trial is rigged. The die is cast. It will end in death. The disciples melt away and Peter spends his vigil in the courtyard doing exactly what he swore he would never do…even if I must die with you!…he denies Jesus three times. The rooster crows. The cross awaits. Those who swore to be faithful are nowhere to be seen.

If this is so…If what it takes to be faithful is something that not even the first disciples could seem to muster, then what hope is there for you and me who have trouble even caring for what little we have?

Our hope is in the second servant. The first servant is the super competent one. He’s like the kid in class who’s always got the right answer. He’s like the person who always knows exactly the right thing to say. He’s like the person who always seems to be in the right place at the right time to make a way for himself. So, it’s hard to relate to the first servant. Besides…he’s been give five talents. The master knows what he can do and…sure enough…he does it.

The second servant, though. This is the servant who is in the middle. Not as competent as the first one. He’s not given as much as the first one. He could doubt himself, too. He could pull back and not put his gifts at risk. He could spend the time while the master is away hoarding the money…shrinking back from the world…digging a hole in which to place it. But he doesn’t.

What the second servant does is to continue to operate as if he is the most competent person on the staff. He may not have as much to work with as the first servant, but he can do something with what he’s got. He can double what he’s been given. He can trust that what he has is enough. He can believe that it’s not all up to him…he has what he has because he has been entrusted with it by a master who knows what he can do. He’s not alone…he has the master’s confidence, too. The same was true for the last servant, too, but he lives out of fear and not out of trust.

These are days when we are being asked to do some radically counter-cultural things. We can face these uncertain days by pulling in and shrinking back and closing ourselves off to the world. We can live out of fear. Or we can remember that Jesus responded to the fear of the world by opening his arms. He offered his back to the scourge and his face to those who would spit upon him. He offered his life, trusting that God would do more with his death than he could do by holding himself back from the worst that the world could do to him.

I got a phone call yesterday from someone who has been sensing some changes in his life. He's in a high power career and he’s been very successful at it. I’m sure is very good at what he does. But something is not quite right in his life. Something is changing. Something is tugging at him. He’s started to feel a call to ministry.

It’s a crazy thing to do. He’s got a good job. He’s got a house. He’s married and his wife is thinking of going back to school. All of this and the economy is doing whatever it is that it is doing.

But he’s been given a gift…more like a fire to tend to. He feels it burning and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He could shut it up inside of himself. He could bury it in a hole where it would die for lack of oxygen, perhaps taking him with it. Or he could trust that God is still speaking in his life…that God is still speaking in his world…that God is not through with him or with this old earth yet. He can walk forward in faith into a new future, exploring this calling and taking seriously the words of Jesus that we find our lives by losing them. That there is a reward in this life for those who will give up what they are holding dear in order to follow the kingdom.

So what are you shutting up? Where have you been digging holes? How are you living out of fear instead of trusting that God has something for us to do? Times of great distress are also times of great opportunity. Where are we going to go with God? Is it to the joy of our master – or is it to the darkness of wailing and gnashing of teeth and the deep regrets of having squandered the gifts that we have been given? The adventure is on. Are you coming? Thanks be to God.

Matthew 25:14-30 (NRSV)
"For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
“The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money.
“After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.'
“His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'
“And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.'
“His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.'
“Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.'
“But his master replied, 'You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents.
“For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'“

[i] Mark Haines on Morning Joe 11/14/08, http://gbuddy.blogspot.com/2008/11/taxpayers-fund-millions-for-aig.html.

One Fine Day

Just what is going to happen after Tuesday? Here we are on the edge of a major presidential election and if you believe some of the mail I’ve been getting this is either the dawn of a glorious new era or the first sign of the apocalypse. I don’t mean to make light of this. Far from it. This is one of the most important elections we have had in some time. We are in a time of great crisis. We are at war. Our economy is teetering on the edge. People are losing their jobs. People are losing their homes. I’ve received many more requests for help with bills than usual. We gave out food to more families last month than we ever have. These are nervous times in the United States.

Our values as a people are up for debate. Are we still a people who believe that America is a land of opportunity for all people? Are we still a people who believe that we have a responsibility for one another and that we move ahead when everyone gives their best and offers a hand up to their neighbor? Are still a people who believe in a culture of life and that children are to be nurtured? Do we believe that budgets are moral documents that show our values more clearly than our words? Do we live within our means and do we use our common resources for the bettering of our world and not for the enriching of the few?

So what happens on Tuesday is very important. We have gotten caught up in the fervor. You were listening very carefully to my words just now trying to determine who I’m voting for and some of you were preparing arguments to share with me at the end of the service. I have received all sorts of mail and faxes advising me how to advise you in these last days before the election. The worst was one that came the other day telling me that my congregants should think of me as nervous, wimpy and unholy if I didn’t publicly call for Obama’s repentance because he favors child sacrifice. (He doesn’t.)

Here’s what I need to say this morning, though. We need to take this election very seriously. We need to be talking with each other about how our faith and our values are leading us to vote in this election. You can even talk with me and I will tell you who I as a citizen will be voting for. But I will also tell you as your pastor that neither Barack Obama nor John McCain has a lock on biblical truth. Both of them could stand to repent for some of their positions and for the worst parts of this campaign season. But I think we are fortunate as Christians that we have two candidates who share the name of Christ, who have met together in a church – Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church – to talk about how their faith impacts their public policies, who have both sought out people of faith as allies in promoting an agenda they see as faithful to our highest ideals, and who, I hope, will continue to be Christians after the election. I trust that is so.

So I encourage you to vote your hopes and not your fears as you go to the polls on Tuesday. Pray with me that we will make a wise choice and know that whoever is elected that we will need to continue to keep praying and working. Because the truth is that while neither Obama nor McCain are the devils some make them out to be, they are not angels either and whoever wins will need help for the huge challenges we face.

What’s going to happen after Tuesday? Well, as people who expect Christ to return one day to bring the kingdom in its fullness, it is a little presumptuous to speak this way. The pundits will say, “Well, now it’s in McCain’s hands” or “Now it’s in Obama’s hands,” but they will be wrong. If we are really seeking God in this election we will not give the winner that much credit in organizing our futures for us. On Tuesday we will turn to God. On Wednesday we will turn to God again, because whatever happens next is for God to determine.

It’s the same sort of thing that happens at graduation exercises or commencements as they are called. Have you ever noticed that they are called that – commencement? You would think they’d be called something else, like the grand finale, because after you’ve worked your way through high school or college you see graduation as an exit. But it’s called a commencement because the graduates are now commencing a new life in the world. They are going forth to something new.

Usually at some point someone will stand up and lie to the graduates. They will lie to them. Sometimes it’s the valedictorian who does this. Someone will stand up and look out at all of those folks in their caps and gowns and they will say, “The future is in your hands.” That is a lie.

How scary would that be if it were true? “The future is in our hands? I barely made it through Ms. Tankard’s Algebra II class. I slept through government. And have you seen how Myrtle Moomaw handles money? You’re going to put the future in our hands. The world is in trouble!”

No, the truth is that the future is not in our hands. It’s not in Barack Obama’s hands. It’s not in John McCain’s hands. The future is in God’s hands. How do I know this? Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

What does the Bible say? The Bible says that there was no future before God. Neither was the past. The future is what it is because God made space for it. As the Psalmist says, “You have made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. You make darkness, and it is night, when all the animals of the forest come creeping out.” [Psalm 104:19-20, NRSV] Who made time? Who made the time in which we could be born? Who make the time that we exist in right now? And who, then, makes the future into which we move? God. God who declares all things good.

But what happened in this time that God made? What happened when we really did try to take the future into our hands? What happened when Adam and Eve looked at the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden and heard the snake’s voice saying, “Eat it. It will make you wise. It will make you like God?” You know what happened. When we try to do things apart from God we fall, we fail, we take what is good and we despise it. We have been trying to take the future into our hands…we have been trying to take our lives into our hands and the result is the broken lives that we live. What God made good, sin turns into something with only a dim resemblance to goodness and truth. And as Paul says in Romans, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23].

God was not content to let us go our own way, though. We may have forgotten who we were, but God didn’t. God knew that we were “fearfully and wonderfully made” [Psalm 139:14] and God loved us not for who we were but who God knew we could be. Is there any greater love than that? Think how many ways we try to cover up who we really are because of the fear we have deep down that we are unlovable? Plastic surgery, fancy cars, jewelry – how much of that is a way of saying, “You could never love the real me, so here is the fake me. Love that.” But God looks beneath the service and says, “No, I know who you are. I know what you’ve done and what’s been done to you. And none of that defines you in my eyes. What defines you in my eyes is who I made you to be and who you can be.”

God sees us through the eyes of Christ. In Jesus came to earth to share our lives and to go to the cross to show the extent of that love. We were made good, we did bad, but in Jesus we were redeemed for new life. “In Christ Jesus, God was reconciling the world unto himself, not counting their trespasses against them,” as 1 Corinthians says [2 Co. 5:19].

There is one last step to this story, though, and this really shows us how the future is in God’s hands. Salvation is offered to you and me and the whole world in Jesus. The work of God in making a way for fallen humanity is done. But something still waits. We still wait for the day when all will be made clear…when the kingdom will come…when Christ will return in glory…when this “mortal flesh takes on immortality” [1 Co. 15:53].

Or to put in the terms of the Bible reading from 1 John that we have for today, “See what manner of love the Father has given to us so that we might be called children of God and so we are.” That’s pretty amazing right there. That we, with all of our warts and all of our flaws and all of our king-sized bone-headed decisions, might be called children of God is one of the truly ridiculous things the Bible has to say about us. It’s also ridiculously true.

There’s more, though. “Beloved,” the first letter of John says, “we are children of God and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be. We do know that when he is revealed, we will be like him because we will see him just as he is.” This is the great hope of the Christian. We don’t look forward to the future in confidence because we are better than the rest of the world. We don’t look forward to the future with confidence because we have been chosen because of our good looks or our high moral standards. Most of us didn’t have either of those when we discovered Jesus.

No, when Jesus came to us we were the ordinary people we had always been – beset by sin and far from perfect. Our mamas loved us but we sometimes had a hard time loving ourselves. We doubted ourselves and we doubted the world around us.

When Jesus turns your life around, though, he tells you something flat amazing – “You are a child of God. You are my brother. You are my sister.” And because of that we look at ourselves differently. Sure we’re still a long way from perfect and we read the Bible and we meet together and we pray and we work for a world that looks more like God’s kingdom because we want to be more like Jesus. But there is that day. There is that one fine day yet to come. There is that day when all will be revealed and we don’t know what we will look like then, but we know this because the Bible tells us so – we will be like him.

This is the great promise of the Christian life. No matter what this old world holds. No matter what the new world under a new president holds. No matter what the world may say, the future belongs to the God of Jesus Christ and it is a future of love and hope and the righting of all wrongs. And the name that is given to those who wait in hope for this future is the name of saints.

That’s what Paul calls the people he is writing to. And the Corinthians and the Ephesians and the Galatians and the Thessalonians were no better or worse people than we are. They had no more claim to the title than we do. But these people who lived at a moment in history that seemed every bit as historic as we now live in were called saints – holy ones, meant for something more.

This is All Saints Day in the Church. One of John Wesley’s favorite days in the church year. It is a day to give thanks for all those who have gone from this life to the next who shared the promise given to us. It is a day to remember that we are called to the same life. It is a day to remember that the future is not in our hands…it is in much better hands. The future belongs to God and God is already there with all the saints. Thanks be to God.

1 John 3:1-3
Look at what sort of love the Father has given us -- that we should be called children of God and so we are. The world does not know us for this reason -- it did not know him. Beloved, we are children of God now, and it is not yet revealed who we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, we shall be like him because we will see him just as he is. All who have this hope from him purify themselves.