Old Dogs and New Tricks

 

Luke 7:36-8:3 (story of the woman of the city, washing Jesus' feet with her tears, drying them with her hair and then anointing them with ointment.

 

Main thought – Forgiveness leads to great love.

 

Malady – we don't need to be forgiven very much if at all. OH REALLY!

 

I have something to say to you. It's important. So, how I say it matters. I hope and pray that you will be able to hear it. I count on God's Spirit for that to be able to happen.

 

I would like to begin with a quote from Mark Allen Powell who is a professor of New Testament studies at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus Ohio. He writes about an experience he had:

" Basically, I thought the good news revealed in and through Jesus Christ was that 'God accepts us just the way we are.' A lot of Lutherans think that.

Then, I encountered liberation theology. I remember a seminar I attended in college. A large African-American man had two big signs up front. One read, 'Jesus Christ accepts you the way you are.' The other said, 'Jesus Christ will change your life.' Both are Biblical and both are good news, the speaker affirmed. 'So, why is it that you Lutherans equate the Gospel with one sign and not the other? You say, 'Jesus will change my life? Well, that's nice but the really good news is that he accepts me the way I am!' You get so excited that Jesus will accept you the way you are that, after a while, some of us begin to wonder whether this isn't because you plan on staying the way you are – whether Jesus will change you or not. Now, where I come from, in the inner city, I know some folks who – if you tell them, 'Jesus accepts you the way you are' – will respond, 'Well that's nice of him, but the fact is I don't really like being the way I am. My life isn't so good. It's nice that Jesus loves me even though I'm poor and hungry and my life is a mess, but you know what some really good news would be? Really good news would be if he'd change my life so that I don't have to be this way." (Chasing the Eastern Star, p. 181).

 

 Sometimes I wonder if we want our lives changed? I wonder if we think or feel, if we are convinced THAT WE NEED GOD TO FORGIVE US?

 

When I was a child I thought and felt that forgiveness was about someone being able to let go of something bad or wrong that I had done. When I had said hurtful things to my parents – and they still loved me, or told me that although my words had hurt them, that they forgave me – that was forgiveness. When I was practicing my swing with my bat in the living room and accidentally broke my mother's long mirror – and she didn't whale on me or continually remind me of how I broke it, well that was surely forgiveness.  Then when I lied about rafting in a slough my parents had told me not to raft in – and confessed my lie many years later, my dad told me that he had known I was lying from the get go, but had decided to forgive me anyway. Surely that too was forgiveness.

 

But as I have been growing older, as I have been reading and studying the Bible, as I have been blessed with so many wonderful gifts in my life from God: friends, family, growing up in such a beautiful and wealthy as Canada, and as I am growing in understanding and experience of God's Son, Jesus, suffering and dying that all may be reconciled, I have begun to think of sin very differently. Sin is no longer just what I do that is wrong. Nor is sin simply what I don't do that I should have done. My wrongs both of commission and omission are symptomatic of, indeed evidence of my sin. Sin is part of who I am. My attitudes are so often different even at time the opposite of what God intends. When I think poorly about someone because of their weight or the way they are driving, or because of the way they express their faith or don't (from my limited perspective) practice any faith – there is evidence of my sin. When I cast malicious waves towards someone because they don't acknowledge me when we walk by each other, when I just write them off in my mind without any desire to get to know them or to try to understand why they are the way they are, or speak to them, that is a complete disregard for God's command and Jesus' command to love my neighbor as myself.

 

Or, when we worry about or hoard money and things, we are trying to function as if we are independent beings totally responsible for "our" survival. Then I am not thinking of others or God, but only or at least primarily of myself. How futile that is! Then, we are forgetting that God is God, the One who gives us breath, who loves us, all people and all creation SO MUCH!

 

We refuse to trust God when we close our hearts and minds, our wallets to God's love. I mean is the house, the apartment, the car, the kids, any of it, mine or yours? Or is "it" all God's? Can't we see that it is only by God's grace that we are blessed to experience any of these?

 

Nevertheless too often I am afraid, unsure, selfish. Like the little child we reach out to grasp, all the while thinking, "mine, mine, mine". This too is sin. For this I and we need both forgiveness and transformation. 

 

Nor is this sin of ours only personal. Sin is also collective. When we forget or disregard people in other nations, and the impact our actions have upon them, we are refusing to love them. You see I like my car, our two cars. I expect to have my convenience. I've had such convenience for a long time now. I like to be able to go where I want when I want. I don't want to think about the massive amounts of carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere and the impact that is having on the glaciers, the polar bears and all sea creatures. .  In the last 100 years we have put back into the atmosphere what it has taken thousands if not millions of years for God to create.

 

The consequences of our actions are unfolding. The seas are rising. The poorest nations of SW Pacific are being affected first. But our time is coming, faster than we think. Watch Richmond having to build the dikes higher and higher in the next decade. Are we remorseful? Do we see the need to change our behaviour? 

 

In today's Gospel, a woman of the city enters Simon the Pharisee's house. She has not come to see Simon. In fact it is unlikely that he would have welcomed her. Rather, she has come to see and thank Jesus. She realizes that she is forgiven. Her sins have been removed by Jesus and God. Now she has a new life, a new way of thinking and being.

 

She is consequently moved to great gratitude. She is no longer enslaved to custom, limited by what others think of her. Her resultant joy will not be, cannot be self-contained. So, she enters Simon's house, weeping for joy. As her tears cascade onto Jesus' outstretched feet, she begins to dry his feet with her hair. And then, she anoints Jesus' feet with ointment.

 

Many look askance at her. Simon is one of these people. He observes the externals thinking to himself, If Jesus really were a prophet, a truly religious figure, he would not allow such a sinner to touch him in any way, let alone in these scandalous ways. But Simon isn't experiencing the power of Jesus' forgiveness.

 

Jesus then tells both Simon and us a story. It has to do with being accepted, forgiven. But even that isn't all there is. Forgiveness, loving us as we are – the letting go of others especially by God of that which has been set in motion by or through us will never leave us the same. In being forgiven we will be changed. We will see others and ourselves in new ways. We will then treat them differently. We will be filled with  joy and  gratitude that overflows like an artesian well calling us to joyfully give ourselves away. 

 

Is this the way we are living our lives? Or do we think or feel, that I really don't need forgiveness – I don't need much change in my life?

 

May God help us!

 

The forgiveness birthed in Jesus' life, death and resurrection results in the transformation of our minds, hearts and lives. May it be so among us and through us, for Christ's sake, Amen.   

Beyond Wonder

 

Holy Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010

John 16:12-15 with Romans 5:1-5 and Proverbs 8:1-31 in the b.g.

 

 

Focus verse – John 16:12 – "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

 

Do you ever truly wonder? About God and how God works? About life, the world, wonder and beauty, suffering and pain, justice and injustice, hatred and love? I mean do you really wonder as you are living? Or do you just coast, float, stumble around through this journey we call "life"?

 

Alynn, Tessa and Ian shared a little bit of their wondering this week. They are honest as they wonder. With their permission I share their wondering with you.

 

Why does God almost 'test' our love for him with death and chaos? Is it to test our own inner spirit? Or perhaps to show that even through the darkest, sinful road, that when you put your trust in God, he will always have his guardian angel at your side? Why is it, that it seems God taunts us with love and perfection? When, in most cases we fall short! Is it because we do not meet certain expectations?… Or because his generosity and gratitude will guide us, even we seem left in the dirt, to something better than our earthly possessions. I WONDER…

 

I wonder why God gives us the beauty of nature and the devastation of storms? Maybe it's to remind us that God is with us through the good times and the bad times and that there is always good that can come out of bad things – such as from the devastation of forest fires comes brand new growth and life; from the destruction of an earthquake comes survivors being found after days of being buried. A miracle perhaps but I would believe that is a part of God's love for us as people and it inspires us to be the best we can be. I  WONDER …

 

I wonder why God gives us all life and love but then lets us suffer through wars, devastating the family and friends of people who died. I think it could be to teach us a lesson. Maybe God wants us to know that when we do cruel things like trying to take something that should belong to everyone, bad things happen back to us. People dying in the wars that someone else decided to start is an example of this. It may be God's own way of telling us to stop hating each other. I WONDER …

 

Sometimes when we actually to question what we see, feel, taste and touch, wondering about all of that, we are led to a new place. Newton saw an apple fall from a tree and wondered why? It led him to an understanding of something he called "gravity". Dr. Frederick Banting was interested in diabetes and the work of the pancreas. As he wondered he questioned, worked and explored, eventually learning more and more about the production of insulin. Such insulin now allows people with diabetes to live much longer while enjoying a higher quality of life. Understanding, that growing which may arise from wonder can be amazing. It has led us to new possibilities – traversing the globe, exploring space, mapping the human genome, all of which have contributed to the literal explosion of information. Who knows what else will come out of wonder and the hunger that such wonder brings with it?

 

But there are also limits to understanding. I share a story with you from Mary W. Anderson in the publication, the Christian Century. Anderson writes, "I was watching my grandmother sleep during her afternoon nap. As I contemplated her existence, I thought wisely. "That's Grandmama, Mamma and Odell." She smiled in her sleep as I called her by the names used for her by her grandchildren, her daughter and her husband. Three names, three relationships and yet the same person. Amazing!"

 

For Anderson as a young girl the light went on as she watched her grandma sleep while calling out to her by her various names. Anderson began to probe the depths and complexities of human relationship. Such probing can be wonderful. But such resulting understanding is also limited. Could Anderson as a young girl fully understand what it is to be a grandmother: to hold her grandbabies in her arms, to dream dreams for them, to worry about might happen in their lives, to want to impart the most important lessons she has learned, even as her own life ebbs and flows? Will Anderson ever fully be able to understand what it meant for her Grandmother to be her grandmother? I suspect not.

 

As I said our understanding is always limited. We get bits and pieces of wonder – and are led to new wonder, to new possibilities, even to mystery. Some of it may never be fully resolved.

 

So what are we left with?

 

To give up our attempts to understand as wonder moves us and because we then will experience our limitations? To live with a naivete, an ignorance that we have things figured out, that we fully understand ourselves, some others and God, and that's the way life is?

 

If that's all the "way it is" the way we will be, where is the wonder, the miracle, the new possibilities not yet dreamed, the trust of God?

 

We need to know that there is both beauty and miracle to wonder about: a new-born baby and all he or she is and learning and can be; the ever expanding universe and what you will know of it, contribute to it. At the same time there is also horror and injustice to wonder about during these human journeys we call "life". Tessa and Alynn alluded to these realities– war, genocide, diseases that ravage our world with no cure now known, natural and human disasters. Such realities can lift us to the highest heights – to singing songs and dancing in new ways or they may also propel us to the lowest lows – where we question whether or not we can go on, even if we would want to.  

 

And yet, in all of this is God. In Jesus we are met by God in the flesh. Jesus is born, grows up, loves, and fully gives himself for you and me, for all creation. In this God wants us to know that God will not abandon us! Jesus dies. In our dying and suffering we are not alone. And yet, even His horrific death is not the end – for him, nor for us. He is raised from the dead. Alleluia! And His Spirit, the very spirit of God is given to us, moving us to wonder, to think, to explore and ultimately to trust. Such trust is a very great miracle. So, see Jesus. May the Spirit as Paul says of the Roman Christians, fill our hearts with love – a love that is not only romantic, but a love that moves us to wonder, to work to understand, to invent, to care, to continually give of our ourselves for others. May this be especially so and when all of our understanding is exhausted, when we are tempted to give up, because we may not be able to see the results we had so desperately wished for.

 

Even then, especially then may we know that God is at work for the well being of all, even among and through us. What we can see, feel, taste and touch is very important – but these are not all there is. There is also always a cross on our foreheads. I suspect that this cross was there with us while we were in the womb, certainly as we are being born, while we are growing, when we are filled with wonder, certainly as we are threatened by despair. You see the One for whom the cross is not merely a symbol but His reason for being, goes to the cross and refuses even there, especially there to let us go. God in Jesus loves us with a love beyond our understanding. I can't explain it or prove it, but I trust Him and His love, as do millions of others who have gone before us. By God's grace may you Alynn, Ian and Tessa trust him and live with wonder, with love, with amazing hope! May this be so for each of us! Amen and Amen.

 

Brand Spanking New!

 

2^nd Sunday after Pentecost, June 6, 2010 (Luke 7:11-17 with I Kings 17:8-24)

Have you seen the pictures of the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico and drifting onto the Louisiana coastline? Have you seen the interview of the peoples who have made their living in those waters, listened to their pain, their anger, the reality of so much unknown in their lives? Have you seen pictures of the waterfowl, the pelicans drenched in oil? Can one even begin to imagine what is happening right now to the fish and the other sea creatures trying to live in those oil infested waters?

 

Can there be new life there? Or can we only "hope" for containment. Will there be a change in the way we live our lives, a radical reorientation, about what we need, even what we want, what we expect, even hope for?

 

Or will we continue to reenact this scenario over and over, the Exxon Valdez, the BP vessel – until much of the marshlands, coastlines, beaches and all their habitats are destroyed? Will we ever sense our deep connection to this earth, her waters, all the creatures and seek to live accordingly?  Or? ………

 

Some years ago I was privileged to live in Israel. For most of my time there I lived on the Mediterranean coast near the small city of Nahariya. Some nights I would wander through the streets. Often there were UN soldiers sitting in coffee shops, having pizza and a beer at the street-side tables. I became acquainted with a few of them. One evening I was sitting with a group of friends speaking to a Norwegian UN soldier. We were about our days' events.  As he spoke he was shaking his head. He me how earlier that day he had been shot at by a boy no more than 10 years old packing an archaic single shot rifle. Now this soldier, a member of the UN peacekeeping force, was under strict orders not to fire unless fired upon. But this boy was so small, so inexperienced with a rifle that the soldier chose not to return fire but instead pursued the young boy, eventually catching up to him. Once in his arms the soldier asked the young boy why he had shot at him. The young boy screamed back, "Because I hate you!" When the soldier replied, "How could you hate me, since you don't even know me?" the young boy responded, "Because you like the Israelis. Anyone who likes the Israelis, I hate." The soldier shook his head saying to us, "I do not understand such hatred."

 

That was 1978. The hatred between many but certainly not all Israelis and Palestinians continues. We saw that again last week – as a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza was violently attacked, this time by members of the Israeli navy. So, I wonder can there be new life there, life where hatred itself dies, where reconciliation is worked at, where people are seen and encountered first not as Israeli or Palestinian, Jew or Arab, but as people, people with needs and gifts, people in need of and wanting to share compassion? Can hatred be transformed into care? I wonder. (P)

 

Now we meet a widow, who is mourning. Her only son has just died. He is being carried on a flat board, covered by some kind of sheet. She and others are in a procession moving out of their city because burials are not permitted within the walls of the city.

 

Can we imagine, what it is like for her - To have to bury her child, her only child, a male child? In that time and place there was no social assistance, no age old pension, no CPP. Women of that time and place were fully dependent on men to financially provide for them. Hers is a patriarchal society.  The two most significant men in her life have died. Not only has she, is she, suffering emotional trauma and loss. She will in all likelihood soon become destitute. It is with all of this including the emotional pain that her son's death evokes that the procession marches on.

 

But at the city gate – that very place where competing forces often made war, Jesus encounters her. He tells her not to go on weeping. His words seem heartless. How can anyone who has lost so much, not weep? Is Jesus advocating a stiff upper lip as one confronts death? Is he offering a mindless, even heartless advice: "Just give it some time"?

 

See what he does. He reaches out. He touches the bier, that platform upon which the dead son lies. Then Jesus tells that young man, "to rise". And the young man does! The young man even begins to speak. Then Jesus gives the young man back to his mother.

 

It all seems absurd, even impossible. This seems to be the stuff of legends, fairy tales, the content of what many people call myths.

Many of us gathered here claim to be followers of this Jesus. Most of us "know" his story. Not only was he, is he compassionate. Not only did he touch people, physically, emotionally and spiritually. Not only was he willing to die for his convictions. But he, himself, is raised from the dead. Then he commissions ordinary people like you and me, people with gifts and skills and shortcomings to share his compassion, his new beginnings, his ability to reconcile people, even to overcome the power of death with others.

 

So this morning at Christ's command and promise we bring two very young boys, yet babes in arms. We gather with them around this large stone container. We pour water on their heads and say in obedience to Jesus, "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!" Then we lay hands on them while uttering this remarkable claim, "Liam, Nikolai, child of God you have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit, forever."

 

Can there be new life in them – beyond this amazing physical life God has already granted them? Can they bear the compassion of Jesus, the hope that looks into the face of suffering, of calamity of tragedy – and dares to enter it with and for others believing that God is with us, that something new and filled with wonder can happen because of God, even with and through us? 

 

So much of the world around us and sometimes significant parts of the world within us say, "No! There can't be anything new. Hatred and death – defoliation, pollution, greed and the economic survival of the fittest is all there is, all there ever can be."

 

But Jesus comes to the gates of our lives, to whatever processions we are caught up in or by. And there, here, Jesus reaches out to us, touching us, willing to make us and all creation new. He doesn't do this through military might or violence. He doesn't do this  by attempting to exclude others so that we might feel included. No! He does this through his own death and resurrection, through His Spirit working in such seemingly simple ordinary things as bread and wine, word and water. Through His life, death and resurrection He can change our hearts and minds, breaking down old or new walls to create friendships, even to birth compassion. 

 

What do you think? More importantly what do you believe? Whom do you trust? Can there be anything new, new life arising in the midst of death? Indeed what is God calling us to be and do, we who claim to follow Jesus?                                                         Amen.