These R M Y Sermons

Saturday, May 9, 2020

“You’ll Grow into It” - May 10, 2020 (Mothers' Day)

I Peter 2:1-3

It’s Mothers’ Day, so I’m going to start with a memory not of my mother, but my grandmother. She grew up as a coal miner’s daughter and she raised two daughters on her own during the Depression, after my grandfather died. So she was thrifty. She made a lot of the family’s clothing. When I was little, she made me a suit coat that I loved. It was Black Watch plaid and had gold buttons. Before I was twelve she must have made about four or five editions of that same jacket, each one always just a little too big for me at first. So when I would put my new one on every year or two, she would tell me, “Don’t worry. You’ll grow into it.”

It’s her voice I hear when I Peter talks about growing into salvation.

“Salvation” is such a big term. It means being saved from sin and death, receiving forgiveness from God for the sake of Christ and having the promise of eternal life beyond the grave. That part is the most straight-forward aspect of the Christian faith. The Apostles’ Creed that gives us an outline of the faith talks about the work of the Holy Spirit says,

“We believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”

“Salvation”, like I say, though, is a big term. It also refers to a process that is ongoing. It may reach its fulfillment at the completion of our lives on earth, but salvation is also something we grow into. It’s bigger than we are, and even if it’s prepared for us ahead of time by someone who both knows us and loves us, there may be a bit of growing to do before it sits just right.

Clothing got passed along in my family, as well as being reproduced. A cousin of mine had a sweater that he loved, like I loved the suit jacket, and his mother knitted him a series of them, one larger than the next. These sweaters were dark blue with a sailboat on the front. As he grew, these things got passed on to me. I wasn’t so happy about that. By the time I was in elementary school, the sailboat was sort of embarrassing and I found myself stretching my arms out sometimes to try to make it look like I was outgrowing whichever version I was wearing, too.

Growing into salvation means growing out of the ways and the practices that don’t suit us anymore, not if we keep growing into the likeness of Christ. I Peter says to

“Rid yourselves, therefore, of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.”

There comes the point where some things just don’t suit who you are growing to be. Toward the beginning of “The Wizard of Oz”, there’s a confrontation between Almira Gulch (who later turns into the Wicked Witch of the West) and Auntie Em. Almira Gulch has been mean to Dorothy and Toto, and Auntie Em comes to their rescue. That’s when she says,

“Almira Gulch, just because you own half the county doesn't mean that you have the power to run the rest of us. For 23 years, I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you, and now... well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it!”[1]

Apparently, some growing had gone on over that twenty-three years.

Growing into salvation is shown both by what fits us better than when we first met Christ and what no longer fits us the way it did then. The apostle Paul became a Christian in response to a vision he had as he was on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, where he planned to arrest Jesus’ followers in order to derail what he saw as a dangerous and heretical cult. Years later he told the story to one of the churches he himself founded, neither denying his past nor the changes in himself that he had experienced since then. He told them,

“I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.”

[I Corinthians 15:9-10]

We find ourselves living with that tension. On the one hand, we are totally and utterly forgiven. On the other hand, God expects us to make good use of the grace we’re given.

Therein is one of the ways that a human mother may be very like God, where parental love (motherly or fatherly) intersects with divine love. It is unconditional and free, and it will always be there. But it also holds us, for our own sake, to grow up, and to put away childish things.

If you are there already, praise God.

If not, keep going. You’ll grow into it.

[1] cited at https://quotecatalog.com/quote/noel-langley-almira-gulch-j-a3rm3Rp/

Saturday, May 2, 2020

“Not ‘What?’ but ‘How?’” - May 3, 2020

Acts 2:42

If you think we’re living in chaotic and dangerous times, you’re right. And so did Jesus.

Right after Jesus was born, a ruler with a shaky claim and an uncertain hold on power heard a rumor that someone else who might be considered the rightful king had been born in Bethlehem, so he ordered the massacre of all boys less than two years old. Joseph had been warned and had taken his family to Egypt for safety, so Jesus spent his earliest years as a political refugee. Later, Jesus’ inner circle included a man called Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were a group advocating war against Rome. That alone, even ignoring what Jesus was teaching about the Kingdom of God, made him suspect so another disciple, Judas, was bought off by people who wanted Jesus dead and were willing to pay solid silver to see it happen.

From there, things became more chaotic. His followers insisted that although he had been dead and buried, he somehow returned from the dead. They insisted that his Spirit, which was not a ghost but his power and presence, was encouraging them to keep on doing what he had done. Meanwhile, the danger grew with the confused state of the time and place they lived.

Bitterness and violence turned into civil war and rebellion. After an uprising that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers, the legions enslaved or crucified people all over Galilee and Judea on their way to starve Jerusalem into submission. In August of 70 A.D., they broke through the walls; slaughtered the defenders; and looted, burned, and leveled the Temple.

No Temple? No sacrifices? Every Jew in the empire considered as a hostile alien? What about the followers of someone who had been executed by Pilate, the Roman prefect, with a sign over his thorn-crowned head identifying him as “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”? We – you and I – have no idea what torment the faithful endured all through that terrible period. The effect would be far more profound than our temporary arrangements. They had to meet in locked rooms because they were marked for death. We are asked not to travel. They fled for their lives.

What we do know is that they did endure. The Zealots were slaughtered, the Sadducees disappeared with the Temple. The Pharisees developed into modern Judaism. The smaller group that followed this suspect Messiah/King, Jesus, became us. Each one of these groups had to ask questions like: now that Jerusalem was gone, now that there was no Temple and there were no sacrifices to atone for their sins, were they doomed to carry the guilt forever?

Jesus’ people already had an answer. They looked at the death of Jesus and asked if and how that took the place of the sacrifices in the Temple. They looked at his resurrection, and saw new life for them as well, as individuals and as a community. Their faith was not centered on a place anymore, but on a person.

Like him, they began to live a new life. They came to accept Gentiles – even Romans, the enemy of Israel – as part of the people of God. They came to set aside or reinterpret huge sections of religious law that talked about how to eat, how to dress, how to organize the family. They changed their language from Hebrew and Aramaic to whatever the local language was: Greek or Latin or Syrian or Persian. They developed new patterns of leadership to replace the system that had led to the holocaust in Jerusalem and Judea.

You can see all of that, and more, happening in the letters they saved from those decades, letters that they considered so important, so inspired, that they attached them to the ancient scriptures as a second section, a New Testament.

We have entered a period where the challenges we face are nowhere as great as theirs. For the next while, though, we have to figure out how best share the good news about Jesus with others and to be faithful to his teaching when the tools we are used to are not available.

For too long, we’ve seen our mission as a matter of getting people to go to church. Once that happens, things go onto autopilot. We have done a great job making our buildings attractive. We’ve made our music beautiful and inspirational. We know how to provide age-appropriate educational programming and provide opportunities for people to develop friendships and healthy social bonds that bolster their spiritual development. We make unequalled jello salads, casseroles, and desserts.

We look back at the words of the New Testament and see that in the first days, after the coming of the Holy Spirit and before the destruction of the Temple,

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” [Acts 2:42]

When the early Church was scattered, they continued provide for Christian education, fellowship, provision of basic physical needs, and worship. Under our current limitations, we will be able to do that, too.

I would caution, though, that some of it is going to be tricky, especially education. We may need to move toward family-based learning instead of classroom-based lessons for awhile. In an abnormal time, children both need to be protected and to be prevented from spreading any lingering virus. What if we provide lessons and supplies for parents to share with their children? Or maybe we could have teachers go to them at home instead of having them gather in a classroom.

I want to say that older kids should be able to be more careful, but I have seen even adults do some things thoughtlessly in the past few weeks. I go back and forth on how to decrease the risk to middle- and high school students without allowing for their naturally expanding independence.

Adult education may mean smaller classes than we have had, offering the same class at two different times to keep groups smaller, or participating online. This would apply to midweek studies as well as Sunday mornings. I can actually see some advantages in this, in providing more variety of topics and teaching or learning styles.

Fellowship will, I believe, emerge stronger from all of this because it has been missed. That is why people are trying to move faster than is probably prudent. Weekly coffees and monthly meet-and-greets are out, but Zoom check-ins are a good way to begin. Over the summer, maybe small outdoor gatherings can take place. How new relationships develop, though, is still to be seen.

As for the “breaking of bread”, the sharing of basic necessities, I am happy to say that we have managed to keep that going throughout the emergency. We have been providing takeout meals throughout this time, and people have continued to support the Kitchen Ministry, to provide supplies for PACS, and have been generous in helping one another financially.

With respect to the “breaking of bread” in the form of Holy Communion, we will be careful in that as well. In the past, I would squirt some Purell on my hands before handling the bread or cup. In the future I will wear gloves also, and will ask an acolyte, also wearing gloves, to distribute individual cups of juice.

Worship will need to be conducted with smaller groups at first, spread out across the room. That means some people will need to move forward. Passing the peace will mean waving. To accommodate these changes, we will have to add at least one service or livestream to rooms other than the sanctuary (most likely the chapel and Fellowship Hall).

Some people have asked that we continue to provide worship online. We will do that in some form. Most likely, we would switch over from the current recorded format to a livestreamed version.

And if none of this works, we will have to do something else.

What counts is that we do what, when everything else is pushed aside, we have always done, which is tell the story of Jesus, who will always stand out as the light that the world needs. No matter how confused, chaotic, or experimental things get, keeping Jesus at the center of the way we order our lives is what makes us the Church.

That’s the “what”. Everything else is just “how”.

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

“But We Had Hoped” - April 26, 2020

Luke 24:21

Before we understand – no, before we experience – Easter, the resurrection of Jesus and the new and indestructible life that puts into us, we have to look at the far more universal experience of disappointment and loss.

You know what disappointment is. The high school seniors can tell you all about it. It’s the baseball season that barely started. It’s the prom that never takes place. It’s the senior trip that’s off. It’s the graduation ceremony that is a ghost of what it could be. It’s a bunch of older people posting their senior pictures on Facebook “in solidarity with the Class of 2020” that rubs it in that everybody else had these rituals and they don’t.

You know what disappointment is. It’s the wedding plans that have to be cut way back. It’s the new job that never starts. It’s the years of hard work and long hours and doing without that went into a business that was finally taking off and now may not reopen. It’s the 401(k) that has declined by more than you want to think about. Disappointment is the future than more than likely will not be born.

For at least two of Jesus’ disciples, his death was not only an injustice and an outrage but it was also a great disappointment. As one of them remarked,

“we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” [Luke 24:21]

They had thought that Jesus was the one that so many of the people were waiting for. He was going to be the one to toss the Romans out of the country. He was going to be the one who would give voice to the needs of the poor and the people who were pushed aside – which he did. But they thought that he was going to be the one who would do that in a way that would really be heard and that would change things. Hadn’t the crowds backed him up just a week earlier when he rode into town and people shouted,

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord” [Luke 19:38]?

Hadn’t he been the only one who had had the guts to do what so many wanted to do when he overturned the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple and chased them out? Where was the follow-up?

They were to learn that redemption is not a matter of seizing power and punishing enemies. In fact, redemption comes from setting expectations of glory aside and from putting forgiveness in place of retribution. Jesus brought redemption when he set aside the things he could do to do the things that he should do. King, yes – but servant first. Ruler, yes – but one who wants people to follow him out of love, not fear.

If you consider what is going on in our lives right now, who is redeeming the situation? Who is turning trouble and struggle into constructive channels? Who is doing something that will have a lasting, admirable effect? Who is bringing about results that are worthwhile?

I would submit that it is not the people whose names are in the headlines or who stand in front of the cameras. Those who speak the loudest are not those who speak the most clearly. No, those are the ones who have no time for that because they are busy in the labs and in the hospital rooms. They are stocking the shelves in the grocery store and keeping the kids out of trouble. They are just trying to keep things running smoothly as possible today. They are figuring out how to keep people safe in the future.

If anyone looks for the world to be transformed from what it is into what it could be, by God’s grace, there is going to be disappointment and loss. Jesus was clear about that. He said,

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” [Luke 9::23]

It’s a daily activity. It’s a way of life. It’s not a one-time, heroic act that has a clear start and a certain end, or even a definite outcome. There are no definite measures of success and failure except the internal conviction of the Holy Spirit that we are on the right track. Hold that up against the measurements that the world uses. The world has clear definitions of success. How much money are you making? Do you have connections that can get things done? Do people recognize your name and your face? Are you an influencer?

We all fall into that trap, in how we judge others and even in how we judge ourselves. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus even judged Jesus that way, and when it didn’t work out for him, it meant that they had misplaced their hopes. They had bet on a loser, and that made them losers, too.

Or so they thought.

Yet that is where the power of the resurrection comes upon us. That power begins when it forces us to set aside our assumptions about success or status and rethink what matters. Real redemption begins. “To redeem” is one of those really loaded terms. It can mean to set free, or to buy back, or to ransom, or to make the best of, or to bring good from. It can mean a little of all of that at the same time. To explain what the Messiah’ job really was would take Jesus going through the scriptures with those two from start to finish.

“Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” [Luke 24:27]

Jesus’ role as Redeemer wasn’t even just what they were looking for,

“the one who would redeem Israel.” [Luke 24:21]

He would be the one who would redeem the whole world. It would take in more than establishing a political kingdom. It would mean buying back and setting free the human soul.

What I see in the depredations that this pandemic has laid bare is a chance of renewal. What I see is a painful exposure of how misplaced our values have become. Yet along with that arises clarity about what they should be, and a call to realign our lives with the love of Jesus. I do not see some sort of cosmic punishment from God, but I do hear the warning that we cannot keep going the way we have been.

Senior portraits don’t matter as much as the students who sit for them. Prom dresses and tuxedoes don’t matter as much as the people who wear them. What school you get into doesn’t matter as much as what kind of education you get; and getting a degree is not as important as being a decent human being. The job you have is not as important as knowing we cannot even function without the worker who is paid the least. Leadership isn’t the same thing as fame. Respectability is not the same thing as position.

Resurrection is more than life going back to the way it always was. Resurrection is going back to a life that has been redeemed and is made better, truer, wiser, more authentic, by a Savior whom the world does not recognize but who is out there on the road with his people.

As the spiritual says,

“I want Jesus to walk with me.

I want Jesus to walk with me.

All along my pilgrim journey,

Lord, I want Jesus to walk with me.”

Saturday, April 18, 2020

“Presence, Pandemic, and Peace” - April 19, 2020

John 20:19-23

All of us are affected by the covid pandemic in different ways, but we are all affected. There is no easy equation between what one person endures and another person’s problems.

Some people go through the actual suffering of someone in a hospital bed, and many more before this is over will not have that luxury. There are homeless people in our country who have nowhere to go or no one to take them to help when they get sick. There are countless people in India who live in crowded conditions where distance is not possible who will pass away surrounded by people who watch fearfully, thinking, “That will be me in a week or two.”

There are those who are well, but grieving the loss of a loved one, perhaps several.

There are those who deliver food to the sick and think, “I have to be careful; I have to be careful.” There are those who drop off groceries or drive delivery trucks who wonder about the condition of the people behind those doors. Theirs, and others’, is the constant anxiety of infection.

There are the people, though, without jobs. They are laid off for now, and for now may have enough to get by, but they know it won’t last forever. If they have work when the quarantine is lifted, will their salaries be cut? If they need help, will the food banks and assistance programs have enough to offer? Once the moratorium on evictions ends, will they be able to pay their rent before the extra charges and back payments catch up with them?

What if there is a second wave of infection when this first one has passed? Will a weakened system be able to handle it? How far do we hang back in the meantime to see when it is safe to resume some – not even all – activity?

There is no single, universal level of pain or anxiety. Nor do people handle what comes to them the same way. Some people just naturally worry more, in the same way that some people have a higher threshold for enduring physical pain.

As we respond to any of it, however – and this is part of the cruelty of this pandemic (and I do mean cruelty) – anyone’s instinct is to reach out to the sufferer and touch them. If you have ever been with someone who is dying, you have seen whoever is closest to their side reach out and hold their hand or brush the hair back on their forehead. It is one of the gentlest, kindest ways of conveying the love that is in the room. But this disease forbids that.

If you have ever been with someone who is in extreme anxiety, you know that words may make things worse, and the best thing to do is to hug someone or put a hand on their back or shoulder. Not these days. And be aware that not being able to do that will increase your own unease and maybe leave you feeling guilty about knowing what could have helped and not having done it. But hold back all the same.

There are times that those walls and those doors between people have to stay closed. It will not be forever. Sometimes fears are justified. There really is danger, and we are not always able to assess it well from our own vantage point.

But neither are we able fully to assess the help that is on its way in those moments, and that is where today’s gospel lesson speaks. It was the very day that Jesus rose from the dead, John tells us, and

“When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” [John 20:19]

Those were his first words to them.

“Peace be with you.”

The door that was closed to everyone else did not keep Jesus out. Later on in the encounter Jesus would show the disciples his wounds to prove it was really him, and he would repeat the process again for Thomas a week later because he wasn’t there the first time. In another visit with them he would eat with them, to demonstrate that he wasn’t a ghost or a zombie, but if you get tied up in all of the metaphysical stuff that nobody is ever really going to be able to resolve, you miss the real point anyway.

That point is that the disciples were locked away from the outside world by a justifiable fear. Jesus had been killed, and his followers, if caught, would likely also be killed. So they hunkered down with their fears and worries in a place of danger that they could not leave.

That was when Jesus reached out to them in a way that nobody else could, and offered them the peace that they desperately needed when no one else was able to give it. And really, when we want to help someone in the deepest way, and find that we cannot do it, it is best to remember that it is our place ultimately to point people to him, not to ourselves. Sometimes we can provide what someone needs, but only sometimes. Jesus can provide it always.

“Peace be with you,”

He said that to the disciples in that locked room. Three days earlier he had said the same thing to them in the same place, before they knew just how much they would need it. Then he had said it this way:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” [John 14:27]

He said it then and I believe that if you listen, you can hear him say it now.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

“Jesus Got Up” - April 9, 2020 (Maundy Thursday)

John 13:4

It was customary for guests arriving for a banquet or special occasion – and for the people who streamed into Jerusalem for the Passover, there was no more special occasion than the seder meal – to be welcomed at the door by someone who would wash the dust off their feet for them. It was sometimes a servant, but whoever was assigned the job, it was somebody low on the status ladder. We are talking here about welcoming guests who have walked through unpaved streets where animals sometimes roamed freely.

At the Last Supper, the last meal of any sort that Jesus would eat before his death, the last time he would gather them all together, and the last time that Judas would be part of the group, this detail was overlooked. You can understand how it happened. It had been an overwhelming kind of week, and it was amazing in many ways that they were even able to pull it all together. I have friends now who have had to plan their seders this week and have managed to get most of what they need, but it hasn’t been easy. So if no one was assigned the job of washing feet, it seems understandable.

In fact, the meal was underway and Jesus was entering some very treacherous and demanding territory that the disciples didn’t know anything about, when, John tells us,

“during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to was the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.” [John 13:2-5]

It would be like a Thanksgiving dinner where the host or hostess jumps up from the table in the middle of the meal and went outside to clean the guests’ windshields. It’s an incredible gesture, but is it really the time to do it?

Now, on the one hand you could say that it was the last opportunity that Jesus would have. They did not know that, but he did. Maybe he was feeling his own need to express his extravagant, intimate love for these people who had left house and home to follow him and who would face dangers and trials of their own for his sake in the days and years to come. He had asked a lot of them, and would ask more. I wonder, though, if he wasn’t also trying to show them how much he was prepared to do for them, and give them an opening into what he had already done.