September 21, 2008
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Jonah 3:10-4:11
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.... But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, "O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." And the LORD said, "Is it right for you to be angry?" Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, "It is better for me to die than to live." But God said to Jonah, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" And he said, "Yes, angry enough to die." Then the LORD said, "You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?" (NRSV)
From time to time, I have been accused of having a flair for the dramatic. I have no idea how this could be but that’s what they say. Because of this, I can certainly relate to the Biblical character of Jonah. More than anything else, he seems to have a flair for the dramatic—in a way that would put my dramatic antics to shame.
In today’s passage, we hear how Jonah’s big mission is accomplished: the Ninevites turn from their wicked ways and repent, but that's not good news to Jonah. He spitefully says, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Better to die than to live just because God wants to forgive a repentant city? Scholars tell us that Jonah's not just being dramatic in asking for death; he is saying that he believes he has participated in an act of injustice and is worthy of the death sentence. It is not fair that this horrible city should be spared from punishment. Simply not fair!
And then when Jonah’s beloved little bush dies at the teeth of a worm appointed by the Lord and he again wails out: “It is better for me to die than to live!” Hey, my house plants die all the time and you don’t see me going around shouting: “It is better for me to die than to live!” And God responds to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” Jonah answers, “Yes, angry enough to die.” I want to die! I want to die!
How easy it is to look at Jonah and think what a ridiculous, overly dramatic prophet he was and just laugh. How hard it is to see ourselves in Jonah—to see how we too, would rather God NOT have mercy on just any old body. We wish God’s mercy was more selective. We want to think that we who deserve it are more loved by God.
That's Jonah's mistake. He is a sinner—he has been given God's mercy. He has been saved by the grace of God, but he appears to have totally forgotten that. So when God tells him that he is called to be a prophet and he must go and tell the Ninevites to repent or be destroyed, he protests. Now Ninevah is a nasty city. There are all kinds of immoral and despicable things going on there. But Jonah knows that God is merciful—so that is his first excuse out of his mouth. Oh no, God, you are merciful and you'll probably forgive those terrible Ninevites. So I don’t want to go. I'm not going to tell them to repent because I don't want them getting any of your mercy. I want to be your favorite, not them!
And of course, that's just what God does in the end. God's mercy spreads over all those undeserving people when they repent and it gripes Jonah so much that he actually wants to die because it is so grossly unfair!
And that's the same thing that the workers in the vineyard cry in our Gospel text for today. They show up and they work hard all day long in the hot sun and then some Johnny-come-latelies show up at the very end of the day and yet the master pays them all for a full day of work anyway! Shouldn’t the ones who worked all day get paid more? Not fair!
This kind of thing happens in congregational life all the time. First of all, you have the loyal churchgoers who have been faithful to their congregation and faithful to God for years—they’ve served on council, taught Sunday School, volunteered to help with all kinds of tasks, made jello for countless potlucks and the list goes on and on. And then when newcomers enter the picture, the pastor often welcomes them right on in. Other parishioners welcome them, too. Sometimes, they even get into church leadership positions in their first year or two! And then those faithful folks who have been there forever can get bent out of shape about it. This is OUR church, they protest. How dare these new people come in and take over? How dare they enjoy the same benefits of this Christian community that we do? That's not fair!
Fairness, yes this is the big question that these two scripture lessons bring up for us. How in the world are we going to cope with a God who chooses to be more merciful than fair? There’s no getting around it because that is who God is and who God will continue to be. God is endlessly full of grace and mercy and for reasons we’ll never comprehend, God wants to bestow this grace and mercy on all humankind—not just us. Puzzling, isn’t it?
But God works out this unfairness in a pretty amazing way. Let me tell you a a story. An elderly woman once told me about growing up the oldest of four children. “My mother was always very fair,” she said. “She didn't play favorites. We always knew that we could count on her to be fair. But my father—well, that was another story. The truth is, I grew up secure in the knowledge that I was ‘Daddy's favorite.’ I was the oldest, after all, and the only girl until my sister came along when I was thirteen. I figured it wasn't hurting anybody; my father loved all his children, and probably they never even knew that I was his favorite. But I knew—and that was enough for me.”
“But then one day," she continued, “after I was grown and married and a mother myself, I fell into conversation with my brothers and sisters, and I was surprised and a little bemused to learn that each of them had also grown up with that same unspoken conviction. Each of us had always felt sure that he or she was ‘Daddy's favorite.’ How my father accomplished that, I'll never know!”
In the Lord’s prayer, we pray, “thy kingdom come.” We say we want God’s reign to come here on earth, but in our hearts, do we really want it? What if God's kingdom is not about competition? What if “fair” isn't even a word that can be used in God's kingdom, because in that kingdom each and every one of us is “God’s favorite child”? What if everybody gets the best seat in God's kingdom because we all get the place that is prepared especially for us? What if the kingdom is a place where we don't get what we deserve (which is a good thing), but rather what our loving Father wants to give us? What if God's infinite love and grace and mercy is poured out on each of us and no matter how much everybody else gets, there is still plenty for me? If that is the case, we can’t be likeJonah—protesting God’s unfairness, now can we?
This is the kind of kingdom for which we pray, “thy kingdom come,” and so like Jonah, it is up to us to help make it happen—to proclaim the wideness of God’s mercy to all people and to zealously welcome newcomers regardless of how worthy they appear to us! It is up to us to forgive others their sins, realizing we have all been forgiven by God. It’s up to us to stop worrying about whether or not we are getting our fair share and, instead, recognize each of our brothers and sisters as God's favorite child, too. We must make ourselves available to be the instruments of God's love to these other children of God. We must open our ears to God and be willing to act upon what we hear. That is what will make God’s wonderful kingdom come here on earth.
Indeed, the story of Jonah teaches us that God’s favoritism includes everyone and we are not to begrudge God of giving that grace and mercy to all people. In fact, we cannot stand in the way, no matter how much of a flair for the dramatic we may possess. And not only are we not to stand in the way, we are called to help God’s kingdom come.
Psalm 40 verse one says: “You have put a new song in my heart! Many will see it and fear and will trust in the Lord.” This day, God is singing to you. There is a new song in your heart—a song of grace and freedom, a song of love that was given to you by our Savior Jesus Christ: You are God’s favorite child...and, remarkably, so is everyone else! Therefore, we simply must proclaim this good news to everyone—and stop keeping it under wraps!
Let us pray:
Oh help us Holy God. May your kingdom of love and mercy come to our earth. Help us to kick our Jonah-like pride and recognize that we do not deserve your love more than anyone else. In humility, help us to freely share your mercy with others that you may be worshipped in all the earth. Through your son, our savior we pray. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
FORGIVING FOR FREEDOM
September 14, 2008
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Matthew 18:21-35
Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
During the Holocaust, Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister, Miriam, were selected for a series of horrifying genetic experiments at the hands of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele—who became known as the angel of death. Ironically, because of these experiments, the girls were able to survive Auschwitz even though much of their family did not. In a quest to heal her wounds, Eva returned to Auschwitz for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps in 1995, and on that occasion she did the unthinkable. She read aloud her personal "official declaration of amnesty" to Mengele and the Nazis. She explained that to be liberated from the Nazis was not enough; she needed to be released from the pain of the past. To extend forgiveness without any prerequisites required of the perpetrators, said Eva, was an "act of self-healing." Through the act of "forgiving your worst enemy" Eva said that she experienced "the feeling of complete freedom from pain."
Could you offer such forgiveness? Most people have not been wronged to the extent of the victims of the Holocost, but everyone has been wronged. Everyone has opportunities for forgiveness. Lots of people end up on our “to-forgive” list: bosses, co-workers, teachers, friends, children, spouses and even people we haven’t met personally but whose decisions can harm us, like policy makers and other politicians.
But how much should we forgive? Peter thought this was an important question and so in today’s Gospel, he poses it to Jesus: Should I forgive someone more than once? What about seven times? That sounds like quite a lot. Generous enough? Nope. Jesus astonishes him by saying “No, not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times!”
Seventy seven times I’m supposed to forgive the same person? This is outrageous when you think about it. Simply outrageous! This seems like license for other people to sin against us. Wouldn’t we just become a doormat if we forgave at this radical rate? I mean, Jesus can’t be serious, can he?
Well, to show Peter how serious he is about this answer, he launches into an outlandish parable about an unmerciful servant. This servant received forgiveness for his gigantic debt, but he turns around and offers no mercy to a person who owes him a relatively small sum. He is so unmerciful, in fact, that he throws the man into prison.
The point is that God has forgiven us all our sins—the sins of the past as well as the sins we have yet to commit. God has forgiven each one of us such a vast amount of wrong-doing that it is incomprehensible. Therefore, we are obligated to pass the forgiveness along to others. Paul later puts it sucintly in his letter to the Christians at Ephesus to, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you.”
This is a must for the Christian. In fact, if we do not practice forgiveness, we actually limit God’s ability to forgive us. St. John of the Cross, a 16th Century Carmelite mystic, wrote that “Attachment to a hurt arising from a past event blocks the inflow of hope into our lives.” If we keep a hold of our grudge and refuse to forgive, we actually keep God’s love out of our hearts. We block the inflow of hope into our lives.
Frederic Luskin, co-founder of Stanford University's "Forgiveness Project," says that forgiveness "reduces anger, hurt, depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of optimism, hope, compassion and self confidence." And according to the results of the Human Development Study Group at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, forgiveness leads to improved physical and mental health as well as better relationships. Indeed, scientists have proven what Jesus taught so many years ago: forgiveness is necessary for us to be healthy and happy.
Even though we know this is true, forgiveness is hard. Let’s admit it. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard people say, “But I just can’t forgive.” Even if we want to forgive, we sometimes feel powerless to actually do so. Yet there are amazing stories of forgiveness, like Eva Kor’s who forgave the Nazis who killed her family and the doctor who caused her such pain. We know it is possible to forgive. Jesus told us that God wants us to forgive. But how?
In the book Forgiveness Is a Choice, Robert D. Enright outlines a 4 stage process for forgiving. This method is the first scientifically proven forgiveness program in the country. Enright demonstrates how forgiveness, approached in the correct manner, benefits the forgiver even more than the forgiven. He explains that forgiveness does not mean accepting continued abuse or even reconciling with the offender. Rather, by giving the gift of forgiveness, readers are encouraged to confront and let go of their pain in order to regain their lives.
The first phase of forgiveness, according to Enright, is uncovering your anger. Have you faced your anger? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican bishop of South Africa and formerly chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, says “to forgive is a process that does not exclude hate and anger. These emotions are all part of being human.” Tutu continues, “You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things; the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.”
Has your anger affected your health? You can’t stay healthy if you’ve got bottled up anger. Are you obsessed with the injury or the offender? Has the injury changed your life or your worldview? Admitting your anger and letting this emotion be what it is—this is the vital first step toward forgiveness.
The second phase is deciding to forgive. Looking at Jesus’ mandate to forgive can help you make the decision to forgive. Looking at how not forgiving has not worked can also help you come to that conclusion. You must be willing to begin the healing process by making this vital decision. Remember that you don’t have to wait until you feel like forgiving. You don’t have to warm and fuzzy feelings about the offender. In fact, you can still be feeling great pangs of anger towards them. But if you make the decision to forgive, the process will continue forward.
The third phase is working on forgiveness. Work on your compassion. Work on your inner pain. Then act. Do an act of kindness toward the offender, or to honor your decision. Act as if your forgiveness has already occured and this will help bring your intention into reality.
The fourth and final phase is discovering release from your emotional prison. In the case of Eva Kor, she found immense release through forgiveness and finally began to live. Others were highly critical of her decision to forgive—stating that to forgive the Nazis would be to condone a terrible evil and to open the door to future tragedy. Yet through her faith and through her understanding of her deep need to forgive, she found the power to forgive and this gave her ultimate emotional freedom. This really takes a leap of faith. Until you forgive, you cannot know the extent of healing it will bring you. But when this release is accomplished, the process of forgiveness is completed.
Feeling your anger, deciding to forgive, working on forgiveness, and then finding release—these are phases of forgiveness, which have offered a reliable path to freedom for many.
The fact is, we’ve been forgiven for more than we can even imagine. We are saved entirely by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, not by any of our own doing. And so we are obligated. We are duty-bound to pass on this forgiveness to our brothers and sisters. Just as there is no limit to God’s forgiveness of us, there should be no limit to our forgiveness of others. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Matthew 18:21-35
Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. “For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’ Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
During the Holocaust, Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister, Miriam, were selected for a series of horrifying genetic experiments at the hands of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele—who became known as the angel of death. Ironically, because of these experiments, the girls were able to survive Auschwitz even though much of their family did not. In a quest to heal her wounds, Eva returned to Auschwitz for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps in 1995, and on that occasion she did the unthinkable. She read aloud her personal "official declaration of amnesty" to Mengele and the Nazis. She explained that to be liberated from the Nazis was not enough; she needed to be released from the pain of the past. To extend forgiveness without any prerequisites required of the perpetrators, said Eva, was an "act of self-healing." Through the act of "forgiving your worst enemy" Eva said that she experienced "the feeling of complete freedom from pain."
Could you offer such forgiveness? Most people have not been wronged to the extent of the victims of the Holocost, but everyone has been wronged. Everyone has opportunities for forgiveness. Lots of people end up on our “to-forgive” list: bosses, co-workers, teachers, friends, children, spouses and even people we haven’t met personally but whose decisions can harm us, like policy makers and other politicians.
But how much should we forgive? Peter thought this was an important question and so in today’s Gospel, he poses it to Jesus: Should I forgive someone more than once? What about seven times? That sounds like quite a lot. Generous enough? Nope. Jesus astonishes him by saying “No, not seven times, but I tell you seventy-seven times!”
Seventy seven times I’m supposed to forgive the same person? This is outrageous when you think about it. Simply outrageous! This seems like license for other people to sin against us. Wouldn’t we just become a doormat if we forgave at this radical rate? I mean, Jesus can’t be serious, can he?
Well, to show Peter how serious he is about this answer, he launches into an outlandish parable about an unmerciful servant. This servant received forgiveness for his gigantic debt, but he turns around and offers no mercy to a person who owes him a relatively small sum. He is so unmerciful, in fact, that he throws the man into prison.
The point is that God has forgiven us all our sins—the sins of the past as well as the sins we have yet to commit. God has forgiven each one of us such a vast amount of wrong-doing that it is incomprehensible. Therefore, we are obligated to pass the forgiveness along to others. Paul later puts it sucintly in his letter to the Christians at Ephesus to, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you.”
This is a must for the Christian. In fact, if we do not practice forgiveness, we actually limit God’s ability to forgive us. St. John of the Cross, a 16th Century Carmelite mystic, wrote that “Attachment to a hurt arising from a past event blocks the inflow of hope into our lives.” If we keep a hold of our grudge and refuse to forgive, we actually keep God’s love out of our hearts. We block the inflow of hope into our lives.
Frederic Luskin, co-founder of Stanford University's "Forgiveness Project," says that forgiveness "reduces anger, hurt, depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of optimism, hope, compassion and self confidence." And according to the results of the Human Development Study Group at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, forgiveness leads to improved physical and mental health as well as better relationships. Indeed, scientists have proven what Jesus taught so many years ago: forgiveness is necessary for us to be healthy and happy.
Even though we know this is true, forgiveness is hard. Let’s admit it. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard people say, “But I just can’t forgive.” Even if we want to forgive, we sometimes feel powerless to actually do so. Yet there are amazing stories of forgiveness, like Eva Kor’s who forgave the Nazis who killed her family and the doctor who caused her such pain. We know it is possible to forgive. Jesus told us that God wants us to forgive. But how?
In the book Forgiveness Is a Choice, Robert D. Enright outlines a 4 stage process for forgiving. This method is the first scientifically proven forgiveness program in the country. Enright demonstrates how forgiveness, approached in the correct manner, benefits the forgiver even more than the forgiven. He explains that forgiveness does not mean accepting continued abuse or even reconciling with the offender. Rather, by giving the gift of forgiveness, readers are encouraged to confront and let go of their pain in order to regain their lives.
The first phase of forgiveness, according to Enright, is uncovering your anger. Have you faced your anger? Archbishop Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican bishop of South Africa and formerly chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, says “to forgive is a process that does not exclude hate and anger. These emotions are all part of being human.” Tutu continues, “You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things; the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.”
Has your anger affected your health? You can’t stay healthy if you’ve got bottled up anger. Are you obsessed with the injury or the offender? Has the injury changed your life or your worldview? Admitting your anger and letting this emotion be what it is—this is the vital first step toward forgiveness.
The second phase is deciding to forgive. Looking at Jesus’ mandate to forgive can help you make the decision to forgive. Looking at how not forgiving has not worked can also help you come to that conclusion. You must be willing to begin the healing process by making this vital decision. Remember that you don’t have to wait until you feel like forgiving. You don’t have to warm and fuzzy feelings about the offender. In fact, you can still be feeling great pangs of anger towards them. But if you make the decision to forgive, the process will continue forward.
The third phase is working on forgiveness. Work on your compassion. Work on your inner pain. Then act. Do an act of kindness toward the offender, or to honor your decision. Act as if your forgiveness has already occured and this will help bring your intention into reality.
The fourth and final phase is discovering release from your emotional prison. In the case of Eva Kor, she found immense release through forgiveness and finally began to live. Others were highly critical of her decision to forgive—stating that to forgive the Nazis would be to condone a terrible evil and to open the door to future tragedy. Yet through her faith and through her understanding of her deep need to forgive, she found the power to forgive and this gave her ultimate emotional freedom. This really takes a leap of faith. Until you forgive, you cannot know the extent of healing it will bring you. But when this release is accomplished, the process of forgiveness is completed.
Feeling your anger, deciding to forgive, working on forgiveness, and then finding release—these are phases of forgiveness, which have offered a reliable path to freedom for many.
The fact is, we’ve been forgiven for more than we can even imagine. We are saved entirely by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, not by any of our own doing. And so we are obligated. We are duty-bound to pass on this forgiveness to our brothers and sisters. Just as there is no limit to God’s forgiveness of us, there should be no limit to our forgiveness of others. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, June 29, 2008
THE TRUTH ABOUT JEREMIAH'S UNDERWEAR
June 29, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
(During the summer months, the sermon's are based upon non-lectionary texts)
Today, we examine a story from the Book of Jeremiah. This prophetic book of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, which is a complicated and poetic language. The time period it covers is around 587 BC—right about the time in which the Southern Kingdom of Judah falls to Babylonia and the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed.
Jeremiah was a son of a priest from the land of Benjamin. According to the book, for a quarter century prior to the destruction, Jeremiah repeatedly issued prophecies predicting God's forthcoming judgment. He was always caring on, telling the people of God that they must put down their idols and repent in order to avoid judgment. Even though Jeremiah dedicates his life to this important preaching, his fellow Jews refuse to heed the warnings: they do not repent, their land is overtaken by foreign invaders from Babylon and many are sent off to live in exile for 70 years, exactly as Jeremiah predicted.
Needless to say, Jeremiah’s got a rough job. He didn’t sign up for it. He didn’t answer a divine want ad or send in his resume. God simply picked him and called him into service at a very young age. Even before he was born, God knew him and wanted him for the job. Mind you, Jeremiah is by no means perfect. In fact, he seems to complain more than most. He is known as the “Weeping Prophet” because he was always lamenting what would happen to Jerusalem and then lamenting that it did happen to Jerusalem. Jeremiah struggles with the responsibility that God has placed upon him. Still, he presses on with vigor. He engages in dramatic performances to get through to the people. He walks around the streets with a yoke about his neck. He is taunted and put into jail. At one point he is thrown into a pit to die. He is often angry and frustrated by the sinfulness of God’s people.
It was common for prophets to teach with signs. In this passage from Jeremiah, God picks out the sign and basically has Jeremiah act out this object lesson to make a point. Now, we read from the 13th Chapter, verses 1-11.
Thus said the Lord to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.” So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, “Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. And after many days the Lord said to me, “Go now to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” 7hen I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing. Then the word of the Lord came to me: Thus says the Lord: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen.
God tells Jeremiah to go get himself some underwear—that’s what a linen loincloth was, after all. What a strange object lesson this is! Underwear? Hardly something we talk about in public and here it is in the Bible! But it is certainly an object we can all relate to and perhaps it even makes us snicker a bit to hear it preached about.
It reminds me of a famous poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti entitled Underwear. The poem begins in this way.
I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears some kind of underwear
Even Indians wear underwear
Even Cubans
wear underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind...
Well, in this story, Jeremiah’s underwear teaches us about the bind that God’s people have gotten themselves into. God tells Jeremiah to put on his new underwear but not to dip them into water. In other words, he can’t wash them. Now I don’t much like doing laundry and I can really procrastinate doing it when I am busy but there comes a time that dirty laundry simply MUST get washed. This passage doesn’t tell us just how long Jeremiah has to wear his linen loincloth without washing it but it was probably quite a while. Poor Jeremiah had to keep on wearing that stinky underwear! No wonder he became the weeping prophet. I imagine he might have looked like the Peanuts character of Pigpen—who had a cloud of dust that followed him wherever he went.
But just having unwashed underwear is not enough to prove the point. Now the word of God comes to Jeremiah a second time and tells him to go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock. Jeremiah was probably quite delighted to do so. Burying them in the rocks by the river probably seemed like the most appropriate thing to do with those smelly underwear he’d been wearing around without washing. “Good riddance!” he must have thought.
That’s not where the story ends, though. After many days, God instructs him again. Jeremiah is told to go back to the spot and retrieve those hidden underwear that have been rotting there for who knows how long. This is where the story gets gross. In fact, it is listed in the Lutheran Handbook as one of the grossest Bible stories. Junior high boys find it absolutely intriguing when we learn about it in confirmation.
The underwear, it says, are ruined. They are good for nothing. Other words might come to our minds to describe the underwear: rancid, moldy, just downright nasty. They really don’t paint a very pretty picture in our mind’s eye, do they?
There is more than just gross-out in this story. It does have a point. You see, the people of Israel had been to God as this loincloth. Underwear in Biblical times also served as a belt to hold the whole outfit together. It really clung tightly to the body. Metaphorically, God was holding the chosen people tightly to himself—wearing them like a loincloth. He had made them, blessed them and held them.
Yet they had not been faithful as God has been faithful. They were told specifically to avoid idolatries and yet they walked right into them. They buried themselves in foreign earth, mingled among the nations, and were so corrupted that they were good for nothing. Their proud, faithless behavior became abominable to God. Their sin was as nasty to God as old, molded underwear that had been hiding out in the rocks of the Euphrates river.
God declares that he cannot tolerate wearing them as a belt any longer. He will cast them off. They weren’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be God’s glory, a royal diadem in God’s hand, according to the prophet Isaiah. Now instead of shining with the love and glory of God, they have gone their own way. They have acted horribly. They are disobedient and ungrateful. So God threatens that he will cast them away into exile in the land of Babylon by the Euphrates river.
So what does this strange underwear story mean for us today? Notice that the loincloth in this story is made of linen. This fabric was made of natural fibers and this signifies the truth of a person’s inner nature. The chosen people had pride and disobedience as their inner truth. They no longer put their trust in God and walked in God’s ways as they once had. Their hearts were far from God and their sinfulness became so much that God needed to judge them in order to get them to repent. They certainly had ample chance to repent—what with all of Jeremiah’s dramatic preaching—and yet they would not turn back to God until God cast them off.
What we need to ask ourselves is: what is our inner truth. For we know that God looks upon our hearts and knows them even better than we know them ourselves. In our inmost selves, do we love God? Do we cling to God with all our heart and mind and soul? Do we look around at the circumstances of our world and still hold fast to God with confidence? Or have we strayed away and look to other things to give us security?
God’s judgment seems too harsh in Old Testament stories like this one. It is no wonder Jeremiah wasn’t popular with the crowds. But this object lesson helps us see just how deplorable our sin really is to God. In the same way we couldn’t be expected to put on half-rotten underwear, we cannot expect God to join himself to us when we have joined ourselves to sin.
The big problem with God’s people was that they did not listen to God. They did not cling to the Word of God. Ultimately, that Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God was so crazy about us, that he sent his son to be the with us as the Word. He came to be our Savior on a very personal level and to redeem us for all eternity. Do we listen to him? Do we allow him to be our Savior? Do we turn back to him in obedience? Or would we rather go on being stinky underwear?
We DO have a choice. We have an amazing opportunity to receive forgiveness for all our sins and to enter into a loving relationship with God through Christ. My friends, God does not see the foulness of our sin (and it is foul). God sees only the blood of Christ when he looks at you and me. We are redeemed. What an amazing gift! Today, let us cling to him anew that we may be made clean. Amen.
© 2008 Laura E. Gentry
by Pastor Laura Gentry
(During the summer months, the sermon's are based upon non-lectionary texts)
Today, we examine a story from the Book of Jeremiah. This prophetic book of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, which is a complicated and poetic language. The time period it covers is around 587 BC—right about the time in which the Southern Kingdom of Judah falls to Babylonia and the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed.
Jeremiah was a son of a priest from the land of Benjamin. According to the book, for a quarter century prior to the destruction, Jeremiah repeatedly issued prophecies predicting God's forthcoming judgment. He was always caring on, telling the people of God that they must put down their idols and repent in order to avoid judgment. Even though Jeremiah dedicates his life to this important preaching, his fellow Jews refuse to heed the warnings: they do not repent, their land is overtaken by foreign invaders from Babylon and many are sent off to live in exile for 70 years, exactly as Jeremiah predicted.
Needless to say, Jeremiah’s got a rough job. He didn’t sign up for it. He didn’t answer a divine want ad or send in his resume. God simply picked him and called him into service at a very young age. Even before he was born, God knew him and wanted him for the job. Mind you, Jeremiah is by no means perfect. In fact, he seems to complain more than most. He is known as the “Weeping Prophet” because he was always lamenting what would happen to Jerusalem and then lamenting that it did happen to Jerusalem. Jeremiah struggles with the responsibility that God has placed upon him. Still, he presses on with vigor. He engages in dramatic performances to get through to the people. He walks around the streets with a yoke about his neck. He is taunted and put into jail. At one point he is thrown into a pit to die. He is often angry and frustrated by the sinfulness of God’s people.
It was common for prophets to teach with signs. In this passage from Jeremiah, God picks out the sign and basically has Jeremiah act out this object lesson to make a point. Now, we read from the 13th Chapter, verses 1-11.
Thus said the Lord to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen loincloth, and put it on your loins, but do not dip it in water.” So I bought a loincloth according to the word of the Lord, and put it on my loins. And the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, “Take the loincloth that you bought and are wearing, and go now to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock.” So I went, and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord commanded me. And after many days the Lord said to me, “Go now to the Euphrates, and take from there the loincloth that I commanded you to hide there.” 7hen I went to the Euphrates, and dug, and I took the loincloth from the place where I had hidden it. But now the loincloth was ruined; it was good for nothing. Then the word of the Lord came to me: Thus says the Lord: Just so I will ruin the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who stubbornly follow their own will and have gone after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be like this loincloth, which is good for nothing. For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen.
God tells Jeremiah to go get himself some underwear—that’s what a linen loincloth was, after all. What a strange object lesson this is! Underwear? Hardly something we talk about in public and here it is in the Bible! But it is certainly an object we can all relate to and perhaps it even makes us snicker a bit to hear it preached about.
It reminds me of a famous poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti entitled Underwear. The poem begins in this way.
I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears some kind of underwear
Even Indians wear underwear
Even Cubans
wear underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind...
Well, in this story, Jeremiah’s underwear teaches us about the bind that God’s people have gotten themselves into. God tells Jeremiah to put on his new underwear but not to dip them into water. In other words, he can’t wash them. Now I don’t much like doing laundry and I can really procrastinate doing it when I am busy but there comes a time that dirty laundry simply MUST get washed. This passage doesn’t tell us just how long Jeremiah has to wear his linen loincloth without washing it but it was probably quite a while. Poor Jeremiah had to keep on wearing that stinky underwear! No wonder he became the weeping prophet. I imagine he might have looked like the Peanuts character of Pigpen—who had a cloud of dust that followed him wherever he went.
But just having unwashed underwear is not enough to prove the point. Now the word of God comes to Jeremiah a second time and tells him to go to the Euphrates, and hide it there in a cleft of the rock. Jeremiah was probably quite delighted to do so. Burying them in the rocks by the river probably seemed like the most appropriate thing to do with those smelly underwear he’d been wearing around without washing. “Good riddance!” he must have thought.
That’s not where the story ends, though. After many days, God instructs him again. Jeremiah is told to go back to the spot and retrieve those hidden underwear that have been rotting there for who knows how long. This is where the story gets gross. In fact, it is listed in the Lutheran Handbook as one of the grossest Bible stories. Junior high boys find it absolutely intriguing when we learn about it in confirmation.
The underwear, it says, are ruined. They are good for nothing. Other words might come to our minds to describe the underwear: rancid, moldy, just downright nasty. They really don’t paint a very pretty picture in our mind’s eye, do they?
There is more than just gross-out in this story. It does have a point. You see, the people of Israel had been to God as this loincloth. Underwear in Biblical times also served as a belt to hold the whole outfit together. It really clung tightly to the body. Metaphorically, God was holding the chosen people tightly to himself—wearing them like a loincloth. He had made them, blessed them and held them.
Yet they had not been faithful as God has been faithful. They were told specifically to avoid idolatries and yet they walked right into them. They buried themselves in foreign earth, mingled among the nations, and were so corrupted that they were good for nothing. Their proud, faithless behavior became abominable to God. Their sin was as nasty to God as old, molded underwear that had been hiding out in the rocks of the Euphrates river.
God declares that he cannot tolerate wearing them as a belt any longer. He will cast them off. They weren’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be God’s glory, a royal diadem in God’s hand, according to the prophet Isaiah. Now instead of shining with the love and glory of God, they have gone their own way. They have acted horribly. They are disobedient and ungrateful. So God threatens that he will cast them away into exile in the land of Babylon by the Euphrates river.
So what does this strange underwear story mean for us today? Notice that the loincloth in this story is made of linen. This fabric was made of natural fibers and this signifies the truth of a person’s inner nature. The chosen people had pride and disobedience as their inner truth. They no longer put their trust in God and walked in God’s ways as they once had. Their hearts were far from God and their sinfulness became so much that God needed to judge them in order to get them to repent. They certainly had ample chance to repent—what with all of Jeremiah’s dramatic preaching—and yet they would not turn back to God until God cast them off.
What we need to ask ourselves is: what is our inner truth. For we know that God looks upon our hearts and knows them even better than we know them ourselves. In our inmost selves, do we love God? Do we cling to God with all our heart and mind and soul? Do we look around at the circumstances of our world and still hold fast to God with confidence? Or have we strayed away and look to other things to give us security?
God’s judgment seems too harsh in Old Testament stories like this one. It is no wonder Jeremiah wasn’t popular with the crowds. But this object lesson helps us see just how deplorable our sin really is to God. In the same way we couldn’t be expected to put on half-rotten underwear, we cannot expect God to join himself to us when we have joined ourselves to sin.
The big problem with God’s people was that they did not listen to God. They did not cling to the Word of God. Ultimately, that Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God was so crazy about us, that he sent his son to be the with us as the Word. He came to be our Savior on a very personal level and to redeem us for all eternity. Do we listen to him? Do we allow him to be our Savior? Do we turn back to him in obedience? Or would we rather go on being stinky underwear?
We DO have a choice. We have an amazing opportunity to receive forgiveness for all our sins and to enter into a loving relationship with God through Christ. My friends, God does not see the foulness of our sin (and it is foul). God sees only the blood of Christ when he looks at you and me. We are redeemed. What an amazing gift! Today, let us cling to him anew that we may be made clean. Amen.
© 2008 Laura E. Gentry
Sunday, June 1, 2008
THE SOLID LIFE
June 1, 2008
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Matthew 7:21-29
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My husband and I enjoyed our recent vacation, part of which was in California. We drove the very popular portion of the famous Sunset strip a number of times as we would head down the hill to meet up with my uncle who lives just off the famous street where the trendy set goes to be seen. This street is well known for its billboards where the world-renowned Marlboro Man once towered over the passing motorist. There are even awards given out for the larger-than-life ads.
On our final day there, I felt exhausted by the barrage of overly thin models trying to sell me all sorts of products from fashion to TV shows. I said to William, “It seems like all these billboards do is celebrate the shallow life.” We laughed at how accurate that statement was. The shallow life. It’s not just on Sunset, it’s pretty much everywhere. People are all clamoring to buy the latest fashions or use the trendy gadgets and watch the most popular movies, but are these things really making them happy?
Jesus has some seriously hard words for us today. He declares: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Even those who call upon the Lord, Jesus will say to them: “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” I never knew you? Even those who call upon him? Then how can we avoid this terrible fate?
It seems Jesus is dead set on making his point here. He wants us to realize that just knowing about God is not enough. We cannot simply pay him lip service and think our duty to God is paid in full. He says we must not only hear God’s word—we must obey it.
Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis, wrote in his book The Cost of Discipleship: "Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience—not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it."
We must hear the word and obey it. Jesus puts it this way: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.”
When we are connected to God because we live in God’s promises each and every day, our foundation will be solid and nothing that we encounter will throw off our faith. We’ll be like a house on a rock that can stand throughout the storms.
But if we do not act on God’s word, we are in great danger. Jesus explains, “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Jesus makes it clear that the shallow life cannot help us in the end. We might have the exciting things of this world but without hearing and acting on God’s word, we have only emptiness and when the storms come, we will fall.
It is not that Jesus is asking for perfection—that is well beyond us. But he is inviting us into a radical surrender to God. He is warning us that we cannot make it on our own, we cannot fill our lives with things. Our only hope is God. This is the only rock upon which we can depend.
The word of the psalmist in this morning’s psalm is profound. “Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily,” he calls out. “Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name's sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge.”
Is God your rock? Your fortress? Your refuge? If all the other props of our life were taken out from beneath you, would you still be able to stand? Do you feel safe and secure from the storms that you are encountering?
You see, this is what Jesus offers us. He wants us to cling to God as our refuge. He doesn’t want us following the materialistic way of the world into the empty shallow life—thinking that things can save us. No, he wants to be our rock so that we can have a rich, full, meaningful life overflowing with joyful service to others. God wants us to have the solid life of faith! We are called to lean wholly on God so that can become a reality.
Today, as we continue to grow in the Spirit, may we take Jesus serious warning to heart. May we cast aside all the sand foundations, the shallowness of this world, and embrace instead, the rock of our salvation who shall never fail us and will always provide us with the solid life. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Matthew 7:21-29
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My husband and I enjoyed our recent vacation, part of which was in California. We drove the very popular portion of the famous Sunset strip a number of times as we would head down the hill to meet up with my uncle who lives just off the famous street where the trendy set goes to be seen. This street is well known for its billboards where the world-renowned Marlboro Man once towered over the passing motorist. There are even awards given out for the larger-than-life ads.
On our final day there, I felt exhausted by the barrage of overly thin models trying to sell me all sorts of products from fashion to TV shows. I said to William, “It seems like all these billboards do is celebrate the shallow life.” We laughed at how accurate that statement was. The shallow life. It’s not just on Sunset, it’s pretty much everywhere. People are all clamoring to buy the latest fashions or use the trendy gadgets and watch the most popular movies, but are these things really making them happy?
Jesus has some seriously hard words for us today. He declares: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Even those who call upon the Lord, Jesus will say to them: “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” I never knew you? Even those who call upon him? Then how can we avoid this terrible fate?
It seems Jesus is dead set on making his point here. He wants us to realize that just knowing about God is not enough. We cannot simply pay him lip service and think our duty to God is paid in full. He says we must not only hear God’s word—we must obey it.
Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis, wrote in his book The Cost of Discipleship: "Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience—not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it."
We must hear the word and obey it. Jesus puts it this way: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.”
When we are connected to God because we live in God’s promises each and every day, our foundation will be solid and nothing that we encounter will throw off our faith. We’ll be like a house on a rock that can stand throughout the storms.
But if we do not act on God’s word, we are in great danger. Jesus explains, “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Jesus makes it clear that the shallow life cannot help us in the end. We might have the exciting things of this world but without hearing and acting on God’s word, we have only emptiness and when the storms come, we will fall.
It is not that Jesus is asking for perfection—that is well beyond us. But he is inviting us into a radical surrender to God. He is warning us that we cannot make it on our own, we cannot fill our lives with things. Our only hope is God. This is the only rock upon which we can depend.
The word of the psalmist in this morning’s psalm is profound. “Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily,” he calls out. “Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name's sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge.”
Is God your rock? Your fortress? Your refuge? If all the other props of our life were taken out from beneath you, would you still be able to stand? Do you feel safe and secure from the storms that you are encountering?
You see, this is what Jesus offers us. He wants us to cling to God as our refuge. He doesn’t want us following the materialistic way of the world into the empty shallow life—thinking that things can save us. No, he wants to be our rock so that we can have a rich, full, meaningful life overflowing with joyful service to others. God wants us to have the solid life of faith! We are called to lean wholly on God so that can become a reality.
Today, as we continue to grow in the Spirit, may we take Jesus serious warning to heart. May we cast aside all the sand foundations, the shallowness of this world, and embrace instead, the rock of our salvation who shall never fail us and will always provide us with the solid life. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
THE SOLID LIFE
June 1, 2008
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Matthew 7:21-29
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My husband and I enjoyed our recent vacation, part of which was in California. We drove the very popular portion of the famous Sunset strip a number of times as we would head down the hill to meet up with my uncle who lives just off the famous street where the trendy set goes to be seen. This street is well known for its billboards where the world-renowned Marlboro Man once towered over the passing motorist. There are even awards given out for the larger-than-life ads.
On our final day there, I felt exhausted by the barrage of overly thin models trying to sell me all sorts of products from fashion to TV shows. I said to William, “It seems like all these billboards do is celebrate the shallow life.” We laughed at how accurate that statement was. The shallow life. It’s not just on Sunset, it’s pretty much everywhere. People are all clamoring to buy the latest fashions or use the trendy gadgets and watch the most popular movies, but are these things really making them happy?
Jesus has some seriously hard words for us today. He declares: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Even those who call upon the Lord, Jesus will say to them: “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” I never knew you? Even those who call upon him? Then how can we avoid this terrible fate?
It seems Jesus is dead set on making his point here. He wants us to realize that just knowing about God is not enough. We cannot simply pay him lip service and think our duty to God is paid in full. He says we must not only hear God’s word—we must obey it.
Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis, wrote in his book The Cost of Discipleship: "Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience—not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it."
We must hear the word and obey it. Jesus puts it this way: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.”
When we are connected to God because we live in God’s promises each and every day, our foundation will be solid and nothing that we encounter will throw off our faith. We’ll be like a house on a rock that can stand throughout the storms.
But if we do not act on God’s word, we are in great danger. Jesus explains, “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Jesus makes it clear that the shallow life cannot help us in the end. We might have the exciting things of this world but without hearing and acting on God’s word, we have only emptiness and when the storms come, we will fall.
It is not that Jesus is asking for perfection—that is well beyond us. But he is inviting us into a radical surrender to God. He is warning us that we cannot make it on our own, we cannot fill our lives with things. Our only hope is God. This is the only rock upon which we can depend.
The word of the psalmist in this morning’s psalm is profound. “Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily,” he calls out. “Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name's sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge.”
Is God your rock? Your fortress? Your refuge? If all the other props of our life were taken out from beneath you, would you still be able to stand? Do you feel safe and secure from the storms that you are encountering?
You see, this is what Jesus offers us. He wants us to cling to God as our refuge. He doesn’t want us following the materialistic way of the world into the empty shallow life—thinking that things can save us. No, he wants to be our rock so that we can have a rich, full, meaningful life overflowing with joyful service to others. God wants us to have the solid life of faith! We are called to lean wholly on God so that can become a reality.
Today, as we continue to grow in the Spirit, may we take Jesus serious warning to heart. May we cast aside all the sand foundations, the shallowness of this world, and embrace instead, the rock of our salvation who shall never fail us and will always provide us with the solid life. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
By Pastor Laura Gentry
Matthew 7:21-29
"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My husband and I enjoyed our recent vacation, part of which was in California. We drove the very popular portion of the famous Sunset strip a number of times as we would head down the hill to meet up with my uncle who lives just off the famous street where the trendy set goes to be seen. This street is well known for its billboards where the world-renowned Marlboro Man once towered over the passing motorist. There are even awards given out for the larger-than-life ads.
On our final day there, I felt exhausted by the barrage of overly thin models trying to sell me all sorts of products from fashion to TV shows. I said to William, “It seems like all these billboards do is celebrate the shallow life.” We laughed at how accurate that statement was. The shallow life. It’s not just on Sunset, it’s pretty much everywhere. People are all clamoring to buy the latest fashions or use the trendy gadgets and watch the most popular movies, but are these things really making them happy?
Jesus has some seriously hard words for us today. He declares: "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Even those who call upon the Lord, Jesus will say to them: “I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.” I never knew you? Even those who call upon him? Then how can we avoid this terrible fate?
It seems Jesus is dead set on making his point here. He wants us to realize that just knowing about God is not enough. We cannot simply pay him lip service and think our duty to God is paid in full. He says we must not only hear God’s word—we must obey it.
Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred by the Nazis, wrote in his book The Cost of Discipleship: "Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience—not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it."
We must hear the word and obey it. Jesus puts it this way: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.”
When we are connected to God because we live in God’s promises each and every day, our foundation will be solid and nothing that we encounter will throw off our faith. We’ll be like a house on a rock that can stand throughout the storms.
But if we do not act on God’s word, we are in great danger. Jesus explains, “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!" Jesus makes it clear that the shallow life cannot help us in the end. We might have the exciting things of this world but without hearing and acting on God’s word, we have only emptiness and when the storms come, we will fall.
It is not that Jesus is asking for perfection—that is well beyond us. But he is inviting us into a radical surrender to God. He is warning us that we cannot make it on our own, we cannot fill our lives with things. Our only hope is God. This is the only rock upon which we can depend.
The word of the psalmist in this morning’s psalm is profound. “Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily,” he calls out. “Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name's sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge.”
Is God your rock? Your fortress? Your refuge? If all the other props of our life were taken out from beneath you, would you still be able to stand? Do you feel safe and secure from the storms that you are encountering?
You see, this is what Jesus offers us. He wants us to cling to God as our refuge. He doesn’t want us following the materialistic way of the world into the empty shallow life—thinking that things can save us. No, he wants to be our rock so that we can have a rich, full, meaningful life overflowing with joyful service to others. God wants us to have the solid life of faith! We are called to lean wholly on God so that can become a reality.
Today, as we continue to grow in the Spirit, may we take Jesus serious warning to heart. May we cast aside all the sand foundations, the shallowness of this world, and embrace instead, the rock of our salvation who shall never fail us and will always provide us with the solid life. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, April 27, 2008
KNOWING THE UNKNOWN GOD
A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
April 27, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Acts 17:22-31
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."(NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
It is amazing how much a person can accumulate and nowhere is this more apparent than when you move. I remember one year as we were all getting ready to move out of our seminary dorm rooms, I stopped in on a friend who was sorting her items before she began to pack them into boxes. I made my way gingerly through the numerous and precarious piles of stuff before settling down in what seemed to be the only free corner of the room. There was not much to say, I was generally amazed at the amount of things she had managed to pack into her little room. She had a system to combat the accumulation, she would move from one section of the room to the other working one shelf and one drawer at time. Only if I had viewed her on a time-lapsed camera would I be able to enjoy the full effect of her moving madness.
While she was going through some items in her desk she handed me a metal screw cap.
"What is this," I asked.
She shrugged, "I don't know, but it goes in that box beside to you."
I looked to my side and saw a box filled with strange objects, each one of them was a piece of something from something. I dropped the cap inside the box. She told me that the box was her "what's this?" box and it was a tradition that she began some years back when she discovered that unusual items would turn up, which she could not identify, yet she could not throw out until everything had been sorted. If the items in the "what's this?" box did not find homes by the end of the packing then they would be thrown away.
The notion of the 'what's this?' is something we can all relate to, not only in housecleaning, but in the workplace, relationships, just about every aspect of human interaction. We are all confronted at some time by something that we do not understand yet we feel it is too significant to just dismiss, so we place the issue in the back of our minds with the hope that perhaps someday we will come to understand it.
Athens, Greece was a leading city of intellectuals. It was the place where many went to study arts and letters. A very 'heady' city that was not easily disturbed by new thought; however, six hundred years before Paul's delivery to the Athenians a terrible pestilence ravaged the land. The survivors felt that they had upset the Grecian gods and had to make amends. It was suggested, by a resident poet, that sheep be let loose in the town and when the sheep had run themselves to exhaustion then the place where the sheep came to rest would be the place where they would be slaughtered to the god whose temple they were nearest to. If a sheep came to rest near no particular shrine or temple then that sheep would be sacrificed to "the unknown god." There was an understanding to the Greeks that they did not feel that they had discovered all the gods that existed—they had the sneaking suspicion that there was a god whose presence could be felt but even though they did not fully understand who the god was. This feeling of an unknown god was too important for the Greeks to dismiss, but they just did not know who this god might be so they built up shrines to an unknown god, thus keeping connection with this god whose appearance was still a mystery to them. It is this notion of the "unknown god" that Paul builds his presentation to the gathered intellectuals in Athens, which we heard in our first lesson from Acts.
Paul appears to them in the Areopagus, a prominent area in the center of town that served as a kind of ‘speaker's corner.’ He explains to the Athenians that he knows the identity and character of their 'unknown god.' So he begins to unfold his findings to the people of Athens. Paul asserts that. this God is the one, true living God—that he is not limited to the walls of the temples nor is this God the creation of human imagination. These many shrines and idols that the Greeks have created are not the places where God dwells and the Athenians have been mistaken to feel that their gold and silver reproductions can match the power of the living God.
Paul asserts that God alone is the creator and we are the creation—this means that we are merely the creatures of this God and we have no access to the inner thoughts and actions of God. This God is not like their Greek gods who demand the sacrifice of sheep and cattle in order to bestow blessings. Paul tells the Athenians that while they were in darkness, they stumbled around for the truth—they made idols and worshipped those idols because they did not know the living God. They did not know any better. He adds that God acknowledged with a 'wink' their actions, but now that they have heard the gospel, God is calling everyone to repentance. No more will the idolatry be ignored as it was before, once the truth has been revealed then ignorance is no longer a valid excuse. Furthermore, Paul demonstrates to the people that God has spoken the terms of his judgment through the resurrection of his appointed one, Jesus Christ, and that through him, all will be raised and judged accordingly.
Paul's words continue to resonate through the halls of time and confront us here today as well. Like the Athenians, we have been searching for God and perhaps groping for God. And in Jesus, we have heard the good news that God is not far from each one of us. We can no longer claim ignorance as to the nature and character of God. “Oh, I don’t know God...I don’t know what God wants from me!” This is no longer a valid excuse, you see. Because Christ has come, we cannot place our religious faith in the “what's this?” pile, acting like we just don’t know any better. We do know better, for we have heard the Gospel—and many of us have heard it for years and years! And now that we have heard it, we cannot go on with our idolatries and ignorance about faith.
Since we have heard the Gospel and know it, what is important now, is how we respond to Christ. For in Christ, we have seen the mysterious, unknown God and, in this way, we can know God. This God of the universe is no longer a mystery to us, a “what’s this?” God. No. This God has been revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and now that we know this, how shall we proceed? This is a question we must all ask ourselves. We are called to put aside our former, ignorant ways—to repent and follow this Savior, Jesus Christ, who can show us the way to the Father, who can help us know the unknown God, and who is coming again to judge the world in righteousness. May we follow him with all our hearts. Amen
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
April 27, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Acts 17:22-31
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."(NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
It is amazing how much a person can accumulate and nowhere is this more apparent than when you move. I remember one year as we were all getting ready to move out of our seminary dorm rooms, I stopped in on a friend who was sorting her items before she began to pack them into boxes. I made my way gingerly through the numerous and precarious piles of stuff before settling down in what seemed to be the only free corner of the room. There was not much to say, I was generally amazed at the amount of things she had managed to pack into her little room. She had a system to combat the accumulation, she would move from one section of the room to the other working one shelf and one drawer at time. Only if I had viewed her on a time-lapsed camera would I be able to enjoy the full effect of her moving madness.
While she was going through some items in her desk she handed me a metal screw cap.
"What is this," I asked.
She shrugged, "I don't know, but it goes in that box beside to you."
I looked to my side and saw a box filled with strange objects, each one of them was a piece of something from something. I dropped the cap inside the box. She told me that the box was her "what's this?" box and it was a tradition that she began some years back when she discovered that unusual items would turn up, which she could not identify, yet she could not throw out until everything had been sorted. If the items in the "what's this?" box did not find homes by the end of the packing then they would be thrown away.
The notion of the 'what's this?' is something we can all relate to, not only in housecleaning, but in the workplace, relationships, just about every aspect of human interaction. We are all confronted at some time by something that we do not understand yet we feel it is too significant to just dismiss, so we place the issue in the back of our minds with the hope that perhaps someday we will come to understand it.
Athens, Greece was a leading city of intellectuals. It was the place where many went to study arts and letters. A very 'heady' city that was not easily disturbed by new thought; however, six hundred years before Paul's delivery to the Athenians a terrible pestilence ravaged the land. The survivors felt that they had upset the Grecian gods and had to make amends. It was suggested, by a resident poet, that sheep be let loose in the town and when the sheep had run themselves to exhaustion then the place where the sheep came to rest would be the place where they would be slaughtered to the god whose temple they were nearest to. If a sheep came to rest near no particular shrine or temple then that sheep would be sacrificed to "the unknown god." There was an understanding to the Greeks that they did not feel that they had discovered all the gods that existed—they had the sneaking suspicion that there was a god whose presence could be felt but even though they did not fully understand who the god was. This feeling of an unknown god was too important for the Greeks to dismiss, but they just did not know who this god might be so they built up shrines to an unknown god, thus keeping connection with this god whose appearance was still a mystery to them. It is this notion of the "unknown god" that Paul builds his presentation to the gathered intellectuals in Athens, which we heard in our first lesson from Acts.
Paul appears to them in the Areopagus, a prominent area in the center of town that served as a kind of ‘speaker's corner.’ He explains to the Athenians that he knows the identity and character of their 'unknown god.' So he begins to unfold his findings to the people of Athens. Paul asserts that. this God is the one, true living God—that he is not limited to the walls of the temples nor is this God the creation of human imagination. These many shrines and idols that the Greeks have created are not the places where God dwells and the Athenians have been mistaken to feel that their gold and silver reproductions can match the power of the living God.
Paul asserts that God alone is the creator and we are the creation—this means that we are merely the creatures of this God and we have no access to the inner thoughts and actions of God. This God is not like their Greek gods who demand the sacrifice of sheep and cattle in order to bestow blessings. Paul tells the Athenians that while they were in darkness, they stumbled around for the truth—they made idols and worshipped those idols because they did not know the living God. They did not know any better. He adds that God acknowledged with a 'wink' their actions, but now that they have heard the gospel, God is calling everyone to repentance. No more will the idolatry be ignored as it was before, once the truth has been revealed then ignorance is no longer a valid excuse. Furthermore, Paul demonstrates to the people that God has spoken the terms of his judgment through the resurrection of his appointed one, Jesus Christ, and that through him, all will be raised and judged accordingly.
Paul's words continue to resonate through the halls of time and confront us here today as well. Like the Athenians, we have been searching for God and perhaps groping for God. And in Jesus, we have heard the good news that God is not far from each one of us. We can no longer claim ignorance as to the nature and character of God. “Oh, I don’t know God...I don’t know what God wants from me!” This is no longer a valid excuse, you see. Because Christ has come, we cannot place our religious faith in the “what's this?” pile, acting like we just don’t know any better. We do know better, for we have heard the Gospel—and many of us have heard it for years and years! And now that we have heard it, we cannot go on with our idolatries and ignorance about faith.
Since we have heard the Gospel and know it, what is important now, is how we respond to Christ. For in Christ, we have seen the mysterious, unknown God and, in this way, we can know God. This God of the universe is no longer a mystery to us, a “what’s this?” God. No. This God has been revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and now that we know this, how shall we proceed? This is a question we must all ask ourselves. We are called to put aside our former, ignorant ways—to repent and follow this Savior, Jesus Christ, who can show us the way to the Father, who can help us know the unknown God, and who is coming again to judge the world in righteousness. May we follow him with all our hearts. Amen
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, April 13, 2008
MY LOVE IS MY SHEPHERD
A Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter
April 13, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. (NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator and from our Savior Jesus Christ.
In a Peanuts cartoon, Lucy stands with her arms folded and a resolute expression on her face, while Charlie Brown pleads with her. "Lucy," he says, "you must be more loving. The world needs love. Make this world a better place, Lucy, by loving someone else." At that Lucy whirls around angrily and Charlie goes flipping over backwards. "Look, you blockhead," Lucy screams. "The world I love. It's people I can't stand!"
We laugh at Lucy’s antics but her attitude here is all too prevalent. It’s funny because it is true. People trying to get along with people is a dicey business. We can get pretty jaded and exhausted trying to deal with the conditional love and the lack of love we see in the world.
And so when we stop to consider the love of God, it seems too good to be true. We are not used to such lavish love, especially when it is undeserved. The 23rd Psalm from our lectionary today is a famous song of God’s love and care for us.
It uses the metaphor of sheep and a shepherd. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” it declares. We are so accustomed to this language because of the popularity of the psalm but have you ever stopped to think about the implications of our sheepness in this metaphor? Sheep. Why would we be sheep? Why not something more exotic like an eagle, perhaps.
You may have heard that sheep are kind of stupid. That doesn’t make us feel too good about ourselves, then, does it? But you see, sheep in Biblical times were highly valued. They were central in the economy and so it isn’t actually an insult to be called a sheep. For us to be sheep and have God as a shepherd means that we are enormously valued.
The shepherd in this Psalm goes to great lengths to care for the sheep. There are many tender images here about the way our shepherd leads and cares for us. And the verbs in this passage are all talking about the shepherd. It is the Lord who does all the active things: leads, restores, comforts, anoints, and so forth. The sheep passively receive all this, simply enjoying the marvelous gifts provided by the shepherd.
In this Psalm, it is interesting to note, it says that the shepherd prepares the table. In Biblical times, this preparation meant preparing the fields for the sheep. The shepherd would have many things to do in order to make a field graze-ready for the sheep. There would be poisonous weeds and thorns to remove, along with snakes and scorpion’s nests. In the evening, the shepherd would corral the sheep and tend to the injured ones, treating them with oil and a curative drink sweetened with honey. The 23rd speaks of these things, explaining that this is what the Lord does for each one of us.
Another important thing to note about sheep is that they are communal animals. They don’t thrive alone. They need to be with others and they need a shepherd to guide and protect them. So, we need one another. As members of the church, we have the delightful assurance that we are not alone. We struggle to have faith and live God’s will, not as individuals but as a community. As a flock, we share a common life and this is, indeed, good news.
Then, in our gospel reading today, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. He says that he calls the sheep and that they know his voice. I once saw a wildlife special in which a baby hippo had been orphaned and was being cared for by human caretakers. The little hippo looked pretty placid in the pen until his human “mother” came out to feed him. She called his name and little ears began to quiver with joy and he ran toward her with great vigor. It just sticks in my mind as a metaphor as to how we should respond when Jesus calls. So now you’ve been compared to not only a sheep today, but a hippo as well!
Jesus, as our good shepherd, calls us gently into a relationship. He never forces himself into our lives though that is where he most wants to be. No, he gently woos us into a loving relationship because of all the love he gives to us first. When the Lucys of the world scream “it’s people I can’t stand!” Jesus says, “it’s people I can’t stand to be without!” and he pours himself out for us.
Jesus, who is both the shepherd and the gate declares that he came for us, that we might be life more abundantly. As the gate, he has opened the way for us. He seeks us so urgently, that we—along with the rest of the flock—might be God’s own.
Yet it is hard to feel this loved. We feel beaten down by life’s hard blows, unworthy and unable to accept this love as it is lavished upon us by God. But that is the whole point. The theologian Walter Brueggemann once wrote: “The true joy and purpose of life are to love God and be loved by God, no longer alone, but in communion." True joy, my friends, true joy! Don’t you want it? Don’t you want to lay claim to it?
Can we admit that we are helpless sheep in need of a trustworthy shepherd? We accept the unfathomable love of God who loves us just as we are? What would living in that love fully mean for our daily living? How would accepting ourselves as God accepts us translate into the way we treat others? Let us prayerfully invite our good shepherd to love us that we may know and share this love.
In closing, I would like to share a brand new recording with you. Augsburg Fortress Publishers just produced this recording of modern renditions of Psalms by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan. The web site for this album is: The Psalm Project: Sharing the Road. In this version of the 23rd Psalm it calls the Lord “my love,” suggesting a deep, loving relationship with God. The pronoun is feminine, which might seem jarring at first, but it is intended to help us think of God’s presence in a mothering, nurturing way. Let us listen to it and pray along, inviting God’s love to overwhelm us today.
VERSE 1
My Love is my shepherd; I need nothing more For she leads me into lush pastures of green And beside the still waters My life is renewed today Guiding me in the best paths of her way, Though I walk through the valley of darkness and fear, My Love is with me.
VERSE 2
Anointed and bless’d with abundance, I thrive With a table prepared in spite of my enemies And all my secret fears My soul lacks for nothing now Goodness and mercy are following me Every day of my life And I’m forever home in the presence of Love
Copyright © 2008 Augsburg Fortress. All Rights Reserved.
For more information visit Behind the Song.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
April 13, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff— they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. (NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator and from our Savior Jesus Christ.
In a Peanuts cartoon, Lucy stands with her arms folded and a resolute expression on her face, while Charlie Brown pleads with her. "Lucy," he says, "you must be more loving. The world needs love. Make this world a better place, Lucy, by loving someone else." At that Lucy whirls around angrily and Charlie goes flipping over backwards. "Look, you blockhead," Lucy screams. "The world I love. It's people I can't stand!"
We laugh at Lucy’s antics but her attitude here is all too prevalent. It’s funny because it is true. People trying to get along with people is a dicey business. We can get pretty jaded and exhausted trying to deal with the conditional love and the lack of love we see in the world.
And so when we stop to consider the love of God, it seems too good to be true. We are not used to such lavish love, especially when it is undeserved. The 23rd Psalm from our lectionary today is a famous song of God’s love and care for us.
It uses the metaphor of sheep and a shepherd. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” it declares. We are so accustomed to this language because of the popularity of the psalm but have you ever stopped to think about the implications of our sheepness in this metaphor? Sheep. Why would we be sheep? Why not something more exotic like an eagle, perhaps.
You may have heard that sheep are kind of stupid. That doesn’t make us feel too good about ourselves, then, does it? But you see, sheep in Biblical times were highly valued. They were central in the economy and so it isn’t actually an insult to be called a sheep. For us to be sheep and have God as a shepherd means that we are enormously valued.
The shepherd in this Psalm goes to great lengths to care for the sheep. There are many tender images here about the way our shepherd leads and cares for us. And the verbs in this passage are all talking about the shepherd. It is the Lord who does all the active things: leads, restores, comforts, anoints, and so forth. The sheep passively receive all this, simply enjoying the marvelous gifts provided by the shepherd.
In this Psalm, it is interesting to note, it says that the shepherd prepares the table. In Biblical times, this preparation meant preparing the fields for the sheep. The shepherd would have many things to do in order to make a field graze-ready for the sheep. There would be poisonous weeds and thorns to remove, along with snakes and scorpion’s nests. In the evening, the shepherd would corral the sheep and tend to the injured ones, treating them with oil and a curative drink sweetened with honey. The 23rd speaks of these things, explaining that this is what the Lord does for each one of us.
Another important thing to note about sheep is that they are communal animals. They don’t thrive alone. They need to be with others and they need a shepherd to guide and protect them. So, we need one another. As members of the church, we have the delightful assurance that we are not alone. We struggle to have faith and live God’s will, not as individuals but as a community. As a flock, we share a common life and this is, indeed, good news.
Then, in our gospel reading today, Jesus calls himself the good shepherd. He says that he calls the sheep and that they know his voice. I once saw a wildlife special in which a baby hippo had been orphaned and was being cared for by human caretakers. The little hippo looked pretty placid in the pen until his human “mother” came out to feed him. She called his name and little ears began to quiver with joy and he ran toward her with great vigor. It just sticks in my mind as a metaphor as to how we should respond when Jesus calls. So now you’ve been compared to not only a sheep today, but a hippo as well!
Jesus, as our good shepherd, calls us gently into a relationship. He never forces himself into our lives though that is where he most wants to be. No, he gently woos us into a loving relationship because of all the love he gives to us first. When the Lucys of the world scream “it’s people I can’t stand!” Jesus says, “it’s people I can’t stand to be without!” and he pours himself out for us.
Jesus, who is both the shepherd and the gate declares that he came for us, that we might be life more abundantly. As the gate, he has opened the way for us. He seeks us so urgently, that we—along with the rest of the flock—might be God’s own.
Yet it is hard to feel this loved. We feel beaten down by life’s hard blows, unworthy and unable to accept this love as it is lavished upon us by God. But that is the whole point. The theologian Walter Brueggemann once wrote: “The true joy and purpose of life are to love God and be loved by God, no longer alone, but in communion." True joy, my friends, true joy! Don’t you want it? Don’t you want to lay claim to it?
Can we admit that we are helpless sheep in need of a trustworthy shepherd? We accept the unfathomable love of God who loves us just as we are? What would living in that love fully mean for our daily living? How would accepting ourselves as God accepts us translate into the way we treat others? Let us prayerfully invite our good shepherd to love us that we may know and share this love.
In closing, I would like to share a brand new recording with you. Augsburg Fortress Publishers just produced this recording of modern renditions of Psalms by Richard Bruxvoort Colligan. The web site for this album is: The Psalm Project: Sharing the Road. In this version of the 23rd Psalm it calls the Lord “my love,” suggesting a deep, loving relationship with God. The pronoun is feminine, which might seem jarring at first, but it is intended to help us think of God’s presence in a mothering, nurturing way. Let us listen to it and pray along, inviting God’s love to overwhelm us today.
My Love is my shepherd; I need nothing more For she leads me into lush pastures of green And beside the still waters My life is renewed today Guiding me in the best paths of her way, Though I walk through the valley of darkness and fear, My Love is with me.
VERSE 2
Anointed and bless’d with abundance, I thrive With a table prepared in spite of my enemies And all my secret fears My soul lacks for nothing now Goodness and mercy are following me Every day of my life And I’m forever home in the presence of Love
Copyright © 2008 Augsburg Fortress. All Rights Reserved.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, April 6, 2008
HOLY HEARTBURN
A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter
April 6, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Luke 24:13-35
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him." Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.(NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
This morning’s gospel text takes place on that first Easter morning, the day that the women found Jesus’ tomb empty and were greeted by an angel. As our text begins, two very downtrodden disciples are sadly making their way to Emmaus, a seven mile journey from Jerusalem. It was just four days ago that they had shared the bread and cup with Jesus at the Last Supper. Yet, now their shattered world is crumbling in on them and they feel the sting of loneliness. They are so caught up in the drama of this tragic narrative that when Jesus himself shows up, they don’t even recognize him. He comes right up to them and asks, “what’s going on?” Still, they cannot see that it is their Lord! Cleopas answers him, “don’t you know anything?” and then proceeds to tell him all about Jesus’ death and burial. Jesus patiently listens to his whole oration and at length, he begins instructing these two who are slow of heart to believe. He uncovers the mystery of the Holy Scriptures and explains the words of the prophets and how they spoke of the coming Messiah. Now he didn’t make them memorize any of Luther’s small catechism or take any sermon notes like we do for our confirmation students, but he did instruct them at length. And this is not the first time the disciples been instructed. Certainly Jesus taught them many many times while he was with them before his death.
Why are these two so foolish? How can they not recognize their own leader? I mean did he shave off his beard or something? Did he have a new and improved “Risen” look to him? We don’t know. Luke simply says, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Certainly it is understandable. Their Lord has just died. They are disturbed, afraid, disappointed, weary, confused, and feeling abandoned. They cannot make sense out of what had happened. And the Risen Jesus himself comes along and gives them words of Hope—of God’s plan for the Messiah, certainly profound and amazing words that should have overwhelmed them—that should have given sight to their spiritually blind eyes. But that does not happen. They continue to walk along in their darkness.
And what happens to us when we hear these stories about Jesus or when we go to Sunday School or confirmation and learn about God’s plan for our salvation through Jesus Christ? Does it turn our world upside down? Does it radically transform us into brave disciples who run off to proclaim the good news? If not, don’t be too hard on yourself—it didn’t happen that way for the disciples, either. They knew in their hearts that they were longing for God to reach out and deliver them from their terrible state, but hearing Jesus speak about the scriptures doesn’t yet do it for them.
But that night, as the disciples reach the village, they urge Jesus to remain with them, even though they still don’t know who he is. And as they sit at table, Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. In that very moment, their eyes are opened. “It’s HIM!!! Could it be?” they wonder. This stranger on the road to Emmaus is their very own Jesus—the Jesus who had broken bread with them in this same manner just four days before. Their eyes are opened, and they recognize him; and he vanishes from their sight. That quick. Revelation! And then he is gone. And in his absence, it begins to dawn on them and they say, “were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
Holy Heartburn, Batman! Their hearts were burning within them! They knew it then, but they just couldn’t put their finger on it until now—until this experience of breaking the bread with him. Now, all that opening of the scriptures talk about the Messiah on the road to Emmaus is making sense.
Even so, many things are still so unclear to them—why did Jesus have to die in the first place, and why did he trick them by not identifying himself to them, why did he vanish just when they recognized him and when is he coming back!? So many things they don’t know—that they can’t know, but they do know that they have met him in the meal. He did come to them—not even death could keep their Lord away!
Yet the questions remain. Perhaps all these questions don’t have answers that would make sense in the mere words of a sermon. Perhaps it is that God has created us in such a unique and complex way that we need more than intellectual understanding in order to open our eyes to the presence of Jesus in our midst. Perhaps in the gift of the bread and the wine, the body and blood of our savior, there is something altogether different—that can’t be explained in words, because it is an experience of the whole person—one in which Jesus transcends time and space and comes to us in a most tangible way and we experience the true presence of Christ. And then, our holy heartburn makes sense.
That same hour, the two disciples leave Emmaus and return to Jerusalem to tell the others. They don’t mind that it is the middle of the night. They aren’t upset that Jesus vanished from their sight the moment they recognized him. Just catching a glimpse of him in the meal is enough to sustain them—even on the dark journey back to Jerusalem. They have seen the truth for an instant and it has fired them with emotion and given them the assurance—the abounding assurance that their Lord is risen.
This is such an interesting story, one that connects with the lives of many people. Have you ever felt holy heartburn—the deep sense that you wanted more, needed more, that your life was missing something and that you were reaching out for it, even though you couldn’t quite figure out what it was? This is what the disciples were going through in this story. Their hearts, they later realized, were burning within them!
I’ve met many a holy heartburner in my ministry already. While I was in California, I taught a series of First Communion classes, which were also open to children who had not yet been baptized. They plan was for all the children to receive instruction in both the sacrament of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, then on First Communion day, the children who had not yet been baptized would be baptized as well that morning. One particular session, we advertised with a flyer that went home with the children of the church’s elementary school and the response was overwhelming. Twenty eight children and their parents showed up! Ten of the children had not been baptized! And as the instruction progressed, there was holy heartburn going on. As I visited individually with the children who would be baptized, the Spirit was moving. I was sitting in the living room of one family and the mother of the child spoke up. She explained that her parents had changed churches several times and never gotten her baptized and that after receiving the baptismal instruction with her daughter, she was experiencing an intense desire to be baptized also, and would I be willing to baptize her? I was amazed at how God was calling her to baptism. And then the next day, I was meeting with another family and this child’s mother had a similar story. She too, had never been baptized and felt she was being called to baptism. As if that wasn’t enough, be the end of the week, two more mothers asked to be baptized! In the end, I baptized 14 people on one Sunday—including four mother-daughter pairs. They realized there was something about these sacraments that spoke to them in a unique way—in a way that words alone had never done. Holy Heartburn.
The miracle of this story is that Jesus knew his followers had holy heartburn and would stop at nothing to reveal himself to them. And Jesus continues to do the same for us today! Our hearts hunger and yearn for a deep, abundant, life-changing experience of God—they burn within us, and Jesus comes to meet that need. He comes to us in his Holy Word and is made known to our burning hearts. But he does not stop there, he also gives us the gifts of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion where he is manifest—where he comes to wipe away the crimson stain of our sins and tell us, “I love you, you are mine, you will always be mine.” May Christ’s appearance in word and sacrament meet your heart where you need him most.
Let us pray: Holy Jesus, we praise you for your resurrection. We praise you for appearing to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, for meeting them in both your words and in the sacrament. Meet us today, we pray, that we may know you more and our burning hearts may be satisfied. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
April 6, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Luke 24:13-35
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him." Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.(NRSV)
Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
This morning’s gospel text takes place on that first Easter morning, the day that the women found Jesus’ tomb empty and were greeted by an angel. As our text begins, two very downtrodden disciples are sadly making their way to Emmaus, a seven mile journey from Jerusalem. It was just four days ago that they had shared the bread and cup with Jesus at the Last Supper. Yet, now their shattered world is crumbling in on them and they feel the sting of loneliness. They are so caught up in the drama of this tragic narrative that when Jesus himself shows up, they don’t even recognize him. He comes right up to them and asks, “what’s going on?” Still, they cannot see that it is their Lord! Cleopas answers him, “don’t you know anything?” and then proceeds to tell him all about Jesus’ death and burial. Jesus patiently listens to his whole oration and at length, he begins instructing these two who are slow of heart to believe. He uncovers the mystery of the Holy Scriptures and explains the words of the prophets and how they spoke of the coming Messiah. Now he didn’t make them memorize any of Luther’s small catechism or take any sermon notes like we do for our confirmation students, but he did instruct them at length. And this is not the first time the disciples been instructed. Certainly Jesus taught them many many times while he was with them before his death.
Why are these two so foolish? How can they not recognize their own leader? I mean did he shave off his beard or something? Did he have a new and improved “Risen” look to him? We don’t know. Luke simply says, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Certainly it is understandable. Their Lord has just died. They are disturbed, afraid, disappointed, weary, confused, and feeling abandoned. They cannot make sense out of what had happened. And the Risen Jesus himself comes along and gives them words of Hope—of God’s plan for the Messiah, certainly profound and amazing words that should have overwhelmed them—that should have given sight to their spiritually blind eyes. But that does not happen. They continue to walk along in their darkness.
And what happens to us when we hear these stories about Jesus or when we go to Sunday School or confirmation and learn about God’s plan for our salvation through Jesus Christ? Does it turn our world upside down? Does it radically transform us into brave disciples who run off to proclaim the good news? If not, don’t be too hard on yourself—it didn’t happen that way for the disciples, either. They knew in their hearts that they were longing for God to reach out and deliver them from their terrible state, but hearing Jesus speak about the scriptures doesn’t yet do it for them.
But that night, as the disciples reach the village, they urge Jesus to remain with them, even though they still don’t know who he is. And as they sit at table, Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. In that very moment, their eyes are opened. “It’s HIM!!! Could it be?” they wonder. This stranger on the road to Emmaus is their very own Jesus—the Jesus who had broken bread with them in this same manner just four days before. Their eyes are opened, and they recognize him; and he vanishes from their sight. That quick. Revelation! And then he is gone. And in his absence, it begins to dawn on them and they say, “were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
Holy Heartburn, Batman! Their hearts were burning within them! They knew it then, but they just couldn’t put their finger on it until now—until this experience of breaking the bread with him. Now, all that opening of the scriptures talk about the Messiah on the road to Emmaus is making sense.
Even so, many things are still so unclear to them—why did Jesus have to die in the first place, and why did he trick them by not identifying himself to them, why did he vanish just when they recognized him and when is he coming back!? So many things they don’t know—that they can’t know, but they do know that they have met him in the meal. He did come to them—not even death could keep their Lord away!
Yet the questions remain. Perhaps all these questions don’t have answers that would make sense in the mere words of a sermon. Perhaps it is that God has created us in such a unique and complex way that we need more than intellectual understanding in order to open our eyes to the presence of Jesus in our midst. Perhaps in the gift of the bread and the wine, the body and blood of our savior, there is something altogether different—that can’t be explained in words, because it is an experience of the whole person—one in which Jesus transcends time and space and comes to us in a most tangible way and we experience the true presence of Christ. And then, our holy heartburn makes sense.
That same hour, the two disciples leave Emmaus and return to Jerusalem to tell the others. They don’t mind that it is the middle of the night. They aren’t upset that Jesus vanished from their sight the moment they recognized him. Just catching a glimpse of him in the meal is enough to sustain them—even on the dark journey back to Jerusalem. They have seen the truth for an instant and it has fired them with emotion and given them the assurance—the abounding assurance that their Lord is risen.
This is such an interesting story, one that connects with the lives of many people. Have you ever felt holy heartburn—the deep sense that you wanted more, needed more, that your life was missing something and that you were reaching out for it, even though you couldn’t quite figure out what it was? This is what the disciples were going through in this story. Their hearts, they later realized, were burning within them!
I’ve met many a holy heartburner in my ministry already. While I was in California, I taught a series of First Communion classes, which were also open to children who had not yet been baptized. They plan was for all the children to receive instruction in both the sacrament of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, then on First Communion day, the children who had not yet been baptized would be baptized as well that morning. One particular session, we advertised with a flyer that went home with the children of the church’s elementary school and the response was overwhelming. Twenty eight children and their parents showed up! Ten of the children had not been baptized! And as the instruction progressed, there was holy heartburn going on. As I visited individually with the children who would be baptized, the Spirit was moving. I was sitting in the living room of one family and the mother of the child spoke up. She explained that her parents had changed churches several times and never gotten her baptized and that after receiving the baptismal instruction with her daughter, she was experiencing an intense desire to be baptized also, and would I be willing to baptize her? I was amazed at how God was calling her to baptism. And then the next day, I was meeting with another family and this child’s mother had a similar story. She too, had never been baptized and felt she was being called to baptism. As if that wasn’t enough, be the end of the week, two more mothers asked to be baptized! In the end, I baptized 14 people on one Sunday—including four mother-daughter pairs. They realized there was something about these sacraments that spoke to them in a unique way—in a way that words alone had never done. Holy Heartburn.
The miracle of this story is that Jesus knew his followers had holy heartburn and would stop at nothing to reveal himself to them. And Jesus continues to do the same for us today! Our hearts hunger and yearn for a deep, abundant, life-changing experience of God—they burn within us, and Jesus comes to meet that need. He comes to us in his Holy Word and is made known to our burning hearts. But he does not stop there, he also gives us the gifts of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion where he is manifest—where he comes to wipe away the crimson stain of our sins and tell us, “I love you, you are mine, you will always be mine.” May Christ’s appearance in word and sacrament meet your heart where you need him most.
Let us pray: Holy Jesus, we praise you for your resurrection. We praise you for appearing to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, for meeting them in both your words and in the sacrament. Meet us today, we pray, that we may know you more and our burning hearts may be satisfied. Amen.
May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, March 30, 2008
HE HE HE HE IS RISEN!
A Sermon for Holy Hilarity Sunday
March 30, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (NRSV)
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Here we are on our second annual Holy Hilarity Sunday! I thank you for indulging me and assume you enjoy these silly celebrations as much as I do.
Easter, as we’ve said, is God’s great joke on death. Now the thing that makes a joke funny is that there is something unexpected that catches us off-guard. By this definition, resurrection is comic. The people who originally witnessed it were not expecting Jesus to be risen. Oh, he’d told them that he would be rising but they thought it was a more of a spiritual metaphor than something this outrageously real! Here he is, alive again! He beat sin and death, isn’t that funny?
You could go so far as to claim that the empty tomb is the "banana peel" of the Christian faith. Easter is the cosmic pratfall as God pulled the rug out from under the powers of darkness and death by the resurrection.
So this celebration of Eater with humor isn’t so strange after all. In fact, there is evidence that post-Easter lightheartedness is part of our Christian heritage. Even Martin Luther was a fabulous laugher. He once said, “If you’re not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.”
So for this laughing celebration, I have some new Easter jokes and funnies for you.
This was sent to be by Bob Grover. It is entitled: “Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from the Easter Bunny” and I will give you a few of the highlights.
• Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
• Walk softly and carry a big carrot.
• Everyone needs a friend who is all ears.
• Keep your paws off other people's jellybeans.
• Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day.
• Some body parts should be floppy.
__________________________________________
Here are some other fun jokes:
Good Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Easter.
Bad Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Xmas.
__________________________________________
The problem: How to get two pounds of chocolate Easter candy home from the store in a hot car.
The solution: Eat it in the parking lot.
__________________________________________
This one is a picture and if you haven’t seen it, you can imagine it. One chocolate Easter bunny has a bite taken right out of his back side. He complains to his fellow chocolate bunny, “My butt hurts.” But the other one’s ears have been bitten off so he says, “What?”
__________________________________________
Secret Service
A man was heading out of church on Easter morning. The pastor greeted him at the door, then pulled him aside and said to the man: "You need to join the Army of the Lord!"
“But Pastor, I'm already in the Army of the Lord!” he said emphatically.
Pastor questioned, "How come I don't see you except at Christmas and Easter?"
He leaned in and whispered, "I'm in the secret service!"
__________________________________________
Post-Resurrection Visit
It cannot be found in the scriptures, but one story has it that upon his resurrection, the Lord appeared to a certain fisherman.
"I am Jesus - My death has saved all who do or will believe, and I am returned to show the Father's love and power.
"No, you're not Jesus, so bug off, you're scaring all the fish," answered the old fisherman.
"I see thou are full of doubt. What would thee have me do to show who I am?"
"Walk across the river," he tells Jesus.
So Jesus starts walking across the river. Next thing, he sinks and disappears under the water. After he swims back to shore, the old man says to him,
"There you are, see, you're not Jesus, you can't walk across water"
Jesus responds, "Well, I used to be able to do it until I got these darned holes in my feet!"
_________________________________________
Top Ten Reasons to Celebrate Easter
10. You absolutely love the movie, "The Ten Commandments".
9. You look really, really good in yellow.
8. You just went on a low cholesterol diet and didn't want to waste all those eggs in the fridge.
7. You figure any Holiday that starts with a "Good Friday" can't be all bad.
6. You love to bite the heads off chocolate bunnies.
5. It's a good time to check out your neighborhood church and not be noticed.
4. You have this bunny suit you love to wear, but are too insecure to wear it without a reason.
3. Even though you don't know what it is, you really like the sound of going to a "Passion Play."
2. You figured since Jesus went to all THAT trouble to make it to the first Easter, you'd give it a shot.
1. As a Christian you celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, why not Easter too?
_________________________________________
This morning, we heard the story of doubting Thomas. Poor Thomas, though he went on to do such good work, we always think of him as Mr. Doubtful. The other disciples have seen the risen Christ and so they believe. But they tell Thomas and since he wasn’t there, he just won’t believe that Christ is risen. He tells them: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
Perhaps Thomas' real problem was that he was so devastated by what had happened that he could not see the wonderful reversal that God has accomplished in the resurrection. He was blind to the miraculous power of God. Even his friends shiny, happy faces could not convince him. Thomas could not connect to their joy.
No doubt there are some of you here today in the same boat. Life has dealt some crushing blows — financial struggles, loss of loved ones, insurmountable problems, diseases, depression, the list goes on and on. We so desperately want to be Easter people but at times, our lives look a lot more like Good Friday. Hope seems to have dried up and our joy is no where to be found.
The message of the story of Thomas is: open your eyes! You might not see it at first, you might doubt it, but the resurrection is real! The resurrection if for you! Celebrate! Go ahead and laugh!
We need this reminder so much. Life can be so hard and we can get so down that we forget which way is up. And then along comes Holy Hilarity Sunday and we are given the chance to have laughter and light-heartedness, for comedy and silliness. We can throw our hearts into celebrating the victory of the resurrection. The psalmist says that God "sits in the heavens and laughs," and I believe God invites us to do join in the heavenly laughter. God wants us to live in the joy of the Lord.
So here’s one last joke for you.
A man was blissfully driving along the highway, when he saw the Easter Bunny hopping across the middle of the road. He swerved to avoid hitting the bunny, but unfortunately the rabbit jumped in front of his car
and was hit. The basket of eggs went flying all over the place. Candy, too.
The driver, being a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulled over to the side of the road, and got out to see what had become of the bunny carrying the basket. Much to his dismay, the Easter Bunny was dead!
The driver felt guilty and began to cry. A woman driving down the same highway saw the man crying on the side of the road and pulled over. She stepped out of her car and asked the man what was wrong.
"I feel terrible," he explained, "I accidentally hit the Easter Bunny and killed it. What should I do?"
The woman told the man not to worry. She knew exactly what to do. She went to her car trunk, and pulled out a spray can. She walked over to the limp, dead bunny, and sprayed the entire contents of the can onto the little furry animal.
Miraculously the Easter Bunny came to back life, jumped up, picked up the spilled eggs and candy, waved its paw at the two humans and hopped on down the road. 50 yards away the Easter Bunny stopped, turned around, waved and hopped on down the road another 50 yards, turned, waved, hopped another 50 yards and waved again!!!!
The man was astonished. He said to the woman, "What in heaven's name is in your spray can?" The woman turned the can around so that the man
could read the label. It said:
"Hair spray. Restores life to dead hair. Adds permanent wave."
Happy Holy Humor Sunday! Be joyful. Let us never live another day as if Jesus were dead. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed, so let’s laugh! Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
March 30, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
John 20:19-31
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (NRSV)Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Here we are on our second annual Holy Hilarity Sunday! I thank you for indulging me and assume you enjoy these silly celebrations as much as I do.
Easter, as we’ve said, is God’s great joke on death. Now the thing that makes a joke funny is that there is something unexpected that catches us off-guard. By this definition, resurrection is comic. The people who originally witnessed it were not expecting Jesus to be risen. Oh, he’d told them that he would be rising but they thought it was a more of a spiritual metaphor than something this outrageously real! Here he is, alive again! He beat sin and death, isn’t that funny?
You could go so far as to claim that the empty tomb is the "banana peel" of the Christian faith. Easter is the cosmic pratfall as God pulled the rug out from under the powers of darkness and death by the resurrection.
So this celebration of Eater with humor isn’t so strange after all. In fact, there is evidence that post-Easter lightheartedness is part of our Christian heritage. Even Martin Luther was a fabulous laugher. He once said, “If you’re not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.”
So for this laughing celebration, I have some new Easter jokes and funnies for you.
This was sent to be by Bob Grover. It is entitled: “Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from the Easter Bunny” and I will give you a few of the highlights.
• Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
• Walk softly and carry a big carrot.
• Everyone needs a friend who is all ears.
• Keep your paws off other people's jellybeans.
• Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day.
• Some body parts should be floppy.
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Here are some other fun jokes:
Good Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Easter.
Bad Idea: Finding Easter eggs on Xmas.
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The problem: How to get two pounds of chocolate Easter candy home from the store in a hot car.
The solution: Eat it in the parking lot.
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This one is a picture and if you haven’t seen it, you can imagine it. One chocolate Easter bunny has a bite taken right out of his back side. He complains to his fellow chocolate bunny, “My butt hurts.” But the other one’s ears have been bitten off so he says, “What?”
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Secret Service
A man was heading out of church on Easter morning. The pastor greeted him at the door, then pulled him aside and said to the man: "You need to join the Army of the Lord!"
“But Pastor, I'm already in the Army of the Lord!” he said emphatically.
Pastor questioned, "How come I don't see you except at Christmas and Easter?"
He leaned in and whispered, "I'm in the secret service!"
__________________________________________
Post-Resurrection Visit
It cannot be found in the scriptures, but one story has it that upon his resurrection, the Lord appeared to a certain fisherman.
"I am Jesus - My death has saved all who do or will believe, and I am returned to show the Father's love and power.
"No, you're not Jesus, so bug off, you're scaring all the fish," answered the old fisherman.
"I see thou are full of doubt. What would thee have me do to show who I am?"
"Walk across the river," he tells Jesus.
So Jesus starts walking across the river. Next thing, he sinks and disappears under the water. After he swims back to shore, the old man says to him,
"There you are, see, you're not Jesus, you can't walk across water"
Jesus responds, "Well, I used to be able to do it until I got these darned holes in my feet!"
_________________________________________
Top Ten Reasons to Celebrate Easter
10. You absolutely love the movie, "The Ten Commandments".
9. You look really, really good in yellow.
8. You just went on a low cholesterol diet and didn't want to waste all those eggs in the fridge.
7. You figure any Holiday that starts with a "Good Friday" can't be all bad.
6. You love to bite the heads off chocolate bunnies.
5. It's a good time to check out your neighborhood church and not be noticed.
4. You have this bunny suit you love to wear, but are too insecure to wear it without a reason.
3. Even though you don't know what it is, you really like the sound of going to a "Passion Play."
2. You figured since Jesus went to all THAT trouble to make it to the first Easter, you'd give it a shot.
1. As a Christian you celebrate the resurrection every Sunday, why not Easter too?
_________________________________________
This morning, we heard the story of doubting Thomas. Poor Thomas, though he went on to do such good work, we always think of him as Mr. Doubtful. The other disciples have seen the risen Christ and so they believe. But they tell Thomas and since he wasn’t there, he just won’t believe that Christ is risen. He tells them: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
Perhaps Thomas' real problem was that he was so devastated by what had happened that he could not see the wonderful reversal that God has accomplished in the resurrection. He was blind to the miraculous power of God. Even his friends shiny, happy faces could not convince him. Thomas could not connect to their joy.
No doubt there are some of you here today in the same boat. Life has dealt some crushing blows — financial struggles, loss of loved ones, insurmountable problems, diseases, depression, the list goes on and on. We so desperately want to be Easter people but at times, our lives look a lot more like Good Friday. Hope seems to have dried up and our joy is no where to be found.
The message of the story of Thomas is: open your eyes! You might not see it at first, you might doubt it, but the resurrection is real! The resurrection if for you! Celebrate! Go ahead and laugh!
We need this reminder so much. Life can be so hard and we can get so down that we forget which way is up. And then along comes Holy Hilarity Sunday and we are given the chance to have laughter and light-heartedness, for comedy and silliness. We can throw our hearts into celebrating the victory of the resurrection. The psalmist says that God "sits in the heavens and laughs," and I believe God invites us to do join in the heavenly laughter. God wants us to live in the joy of the Lord.
So here’s one last joke for you.
A man was blissfully driving along the highway, when he saw the Easter Bunny hopping across the middle of the road. He swerved to avoid hitting the bunny, but unfortunately the rabbit jumped in front of his car
and was hit. The basket of eggs went flying all over the place. Candy, too.
The driver, being a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulled over to the side of the road, and got out to see what had become of the bunny carrying the basket. Much to his dismay, the Easter Bunny was dead!
The driver felt guilty and began to cry. A woman driving down the same highway saw the man crying on the side of the road and pulled over. She stepped out of her car and asked the man what was wrong.
"I feel terrible," he explained, "I accidentally hit the Easter Bunny and killed it. What should I do?"
The woman told the man not to worry. She knew exactly what to do. She went to her car trunk, and pulled out a spray can. She walked over to the limp, dead bunny, and sprayed the entire contents of the can onto the little furry animal.
Miraculously the Easter Bunny came to back life, jumped up, picked up the spilled eggs and candy, waved its paw at the two humans and hopped on down the road. 50 yards away the Easter Bunny stopped, turned around, waved and hopped on down the road another 50 yards, turned, waved, hopped another 50 yards and waved again!!!!
The man was astonished. He said to the woman, "What in heaven's name is in your spray can?" The woman turned the can around so that the man
could read the label. It said:
"Hair spray. Restores life to dead hair. Adds permanent wave."
Happy Holy Humor Sunday! Be joyful. Let us never live another day as if Jesus were dead. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed, so let’s laugh! Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
Sunday, March 23, 2008
DO YOU WANT YOUR STONE TO BE ROLLED AWAY?
A Sermon for Easter Sunday
March 23, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Above are the "Alleluia" flags the children distributed to begin our worship service. Every time we said or sang "Alleluia" we waved our flags to show the celebratory nature of our worship.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (NRSV)
Here we are on Easter Sunday, gathered for our celebratory worship: the sanctuary is decked out in fragrant lilies, we’re in our Easter finery and we’ve got yellow “Alleluia!” flags to wave about excitedly. What could be better? The stone of the grave has been rolled away and Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Ah, but what does it mean for us that Christ is risen? What sort of demands does it make upon us? That’s right: demands. Have you ever thought of the resurrection of Christ as demanding? Yes, it is fun to worship on Easter morning with all the great hymns and scriptures and to down bags full of pastel colored candies and dye eggs but there is more to this message than that. We have to face the reality that Christ is risen, really risen!
Because he is no longer in the tomb, he won’t be quiet. He is not just a fond memory. He is a living presence with whom we can have a relationship. As a resurrected Savior, he’s entitled to his opinions about the way we choose to live our lives. Frankly, he’s concerned about our disinterest in living the resurrected life.
The question he asks us is: do you want your stone to be rolled away? Do you want to be alive with me or would you rather stay in your old, dull, dead-end lifestyle? You see, we tend to like to stay in our graves. It is safer there. There is no challenge, just go through the daily routines and everything will be fine. Do you want your stone to be rolled away? He demands an answer.
Certainly Jesus’ disciples had a difficult time answering that question. They find the tomb empty and struggle to figure out what this unexpected ending means for them. To be honest, it would have been a lot more convenient for them if he had stayed dead. Oh yes, they would miss him and all those great parables he used to tell, the exciting healings he would perform and so on. But in the grave, he couldn’t challenge them to take up their crosses anymore. I mean, they’d already dropped their nets to follow him, what more did he want? In the grave, he couldn’t give them a mission to spread the good news. In the grave, he couldn’t ask them to give up their very lives for this cause. What simple, uneventful lives they could have led if only he’d stayed in the grave.
Now the stone has been rolled away! Now his body is gone and an angel announces that he is risen. What do they do? They should be leaping for joy and holding laughter club meetings to giggle at the devil’s foiled plot. Instead, they respond with fear. “Oh no! What’s going to happen to us now?” they think. “How are we going to take up the challenges, which the risen Jesus lays before us? We had so wanted to be able to retire in comfort and, you know, perhaps write the Gospels with all our newfound free time.” They don’t seem eager to embrace the adventure that is set before them. They kind of liked it before the stone had been rolled away.
As human beings, it is our nature to want stable and predictable lives. We want life to be easygoing and God to always have comfortable messages for us. But that is the life of the grave. That is not what we were designed for. The resurrected Christ has a more exciting plan. He barges into our neatly ordered lives and demands that we drop our nets and follow him. He demands we put down our tv sets and our easy chairs and our notebook computers and anything else that stands in the way of our discipleship. He demands that we follow him, and follow him all the way to the cross. Then he rolls away our stones whether or not we wanted him to. And then he calls us to live the resurrected life with him!
To live the resurrected life means that we come out of our self-inflicted tombs. It demands that we allow the stone to be rolled away. It demands that leave behind our fears. If we truly believe that our Lord has risen from the dead and that in doing so, he has secured our salvation, then there is no room for fear. There is no room for small-minded, go-with-the-flow, be-like-everyone-else, live-a-boring-life thinking! There is NO room for it! We cannot proclaim that Christ is risen and then turn around and shrink in fear that we can’t handle our lives.
Yet so many people live in this perpetual state of fear and anxiety. It’s easy to see why they do it. The news stations broadcast a smorgasbord of tragedy every single day. You can’t even bring a full-size bottle of shampoo on the airplane with you because of the terrorist-fighting restrictions. And who can you trust to love these days? So many broken relationships and broken hearts may cause us to be cautious. Looking around at the state of our world, it is logical to want to sequester ourselves, to hunker down for a safe but boring life in the grave and ask Christ to kindly leave our stones alone. It may not be great, but this is the life we know and we don’t want it disturbed by any risen Saviors.
The ending of the Gospel of Mark is the subject of much scholarly debate. How did the original writer end it? There are actually three possibilities. Each one of the endings is possible and is supported by ancient manuscripts. Yet, the most likely ending is odd. After telling the story of the resurrection, it simply ends with the sentence: “and they were afraid.” And they were afraid? That’s not a very triumphal ending to such an amazing story! Yet it is truthful. That’s how the disciples felt when they first heard the news. Like us, they were afraid of the stone being rolled away.
So Christ asks us on this Easter morning: do you want your stone to be rolled away? Do you want me to infuse you with my resurrection power? Do you want to believe that I am alive and working in you to live the life God plans for you? Do you want to leave the sofa behind and step out into the adventure of resurrected living? Do you want to be overwhelmed with the joy of the Lord, with the peace that passes all understand, with the courage to face life’s fears head-on in faith? You, yes you, are being called forth from your graves. You are being asked to live with Christ, to really live! Let us summon the courage to say YES to these questions, my friends. Let us sing and dance and shout “Alleluia!” not just today but every day, for our stones have been rolled away! Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
March 23, 2008
by Pastor Laura Gentry
Above are the "Alleluia" flags the children distributed to begin our worship service. Every time we said or sang "Alleluia" we waved our flags to show the celebratory nature of our worship.
John 20:1-18
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. (NRSV)
Here we are on Easter Sunday, gathered for our celebratory worship: the sanctuary is decked out in fragrant lilies, we’re in our Easter finery and we’ve got yellow “Alleluia!” flags to wave about excitedly. What could be better? The stone of the grave has been rolled away and Christ is risen, he is risen indeed, Alleluia!
Ah, but what does it mean for us that Christ is risen? What sort of demands does it make upon us? That’s right: demands. Have you ever thought of the resurrection of Christ as demanding? Yes, it is fun to worship on Easter morning with all the great hymns and scriptures and to down bags full of pastel colored candies and dye eggs but there is more to this message than that. We have to face the reality that Christ is risen, really risen!
Because he is no longer in the tomb, he won’t be quiet. He is not just a fond memory. He is a living presence with whom we can have a relationship. As a resurrected Savior, he’s entitled to his opinions about the way we choose to live our lives. Frankly, he’s concerned about our disinterest in living the resurrected life.
The question he asks us is: do you want your stone to be rolled away? Do you want to be alive with me or would you rather stay in your old, dull, dead-end lifestyle? You see, we tend to like to stay in our graves. It is safer there. There is no challenge, just go through the daily routines and everything will be fine. Do you want your stone to be rolled away? He demands an answer.
Certainly Jesus’ disciples had a difficult time answering that question. They find the tomb empty and struggle to figure out what this unexpected ending means for them. To be honest, it would have been a lot more convenient for them if he had stayed dead. Oh yes, they would miss him and all those great parables he used to tell, the exciting healings he would perform and so on. But in the grave, he couldn’t challenge them to take up their crosses anymore. I mean, they’d already dropped their nets to follow him, what more did he want? In the grave, he couldn’t give them a mission to spread the good news. In the grave, he couldn’t ask them to give up their very lives for this cause. What simple, uneventful lives they could have led if only he’d stayed in the grave.
Now the stone has been rolled away! Now his body is gone and an angel announces that he is risen. What do they do? They should be leaping for joy and holding laughter club meetings to giggle at the devil’s foiled plot. Instead, they respond with fear. “Oh no! What’s going to happen to us now?” they think. “How are we going to take up the challenges, which the risen Jesus lays before us? We had so wanted to be able to retire in comfort and, you know, perhaps write the Gospels with all our newfound free time.” They don’t seem eager to embrace the adventure that is set before them. They kind of liked it before the stone had been rolled away.
As human beings, it is our nature to want stable and predictable lives. We want life to be easygoing and God to always have comfortable messages for us. But that is the life of the grave. That is not what we were designed for. The resurrected Christ has a more exciting plan. He barges into our neatly ordered lives and demands that we drop our nets and follow him. He demands we put down our tv sets and our easy chairs and our notebook computers and anything else that stands in the way of our discipleship. He demands that we follow him, and follow him all the way to the cross. Then he rolls away our stones whether or not we wanted him to. And then he calls us to live the resurrected life with him!
To live the resurrected life means that we come out of our self-inflicted tombs. It demands that we allow the stone to be rolled away. It demands that leave behind our fears. If we truly believe that our Lord has risen from the dead and that in doing so, he has secured our salvation, then there is no room for fear. There is no room for small-minded, go-with-the-flow, be-like-everyone-else, live-a-boring-life thinking! There is NO room for it! We cannot proclaim that Christ is risen and then turn around and shrink in fear that we can’t handle our lives.
Yet so many people live in this perpetual state of fear and anxiety. It’s easy to see why they do it. The news stations broadcast a smorgasbord of tragedy every single day. You can’t even bring a full-size bottle of shampoo on the airplane with you because of the terrorist-fighting restrictions. And who can you trust to love these days? So many broken relationships and broken hearts may cause us to be cautious. Looking around at the state of our world, it is logical to want to sequester ourselves, to hunker down for a safe but boring life in the grave and ask Christ to kindly leave our stones alone. It may not be great, but this is the life we know and we don’t want it disturbed by any risen Saviors.
The ending of the Gospel of Mark is the subject of much scholarly debate. How did the original writer end it? There are actually three possibilities. Each one of the endings is possible and is supported by ancient manuscripts. Yet, the most likely ending is odd. After telling the story of the resurrection, it simply ends with the sentence: “and they were afraid.” And they were afraid? That’s not a very triumphal ending to such an amazing story! Yet it is truthful. That’s how the disciples felt when they first heard the news. Like us, they were afraid of the stone being rolled away.
So Christ asks us on this Easter morning: do you want your stone to be rolled away? Do you want me to infuse you with my resurrection power? Do you want to believe that I am alive and working in you to live the life God plans for you? Do you want to leave the sofa behind and step out into the adventure of resurrected living? Do you want to be overwhelmed with the joy of the Lord, with the peace that passes all understand, with the courage to face life’s fears head-on in faith? You, yes you, are being called forth from your graves. You are being asked to live with Christ, to really live! Let us summon the courage to say YES to these questions, my friends. Let us sing and dance and shout “Alleluia!” not just today but every day, for our stones have been rolled away! Amen.
© 2008 Laura Gentry
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