Mar.  17, 2019                 Citizens of Heaven                            

         His name was Zach, and he was a IRS agent. He was good at his job, he knew what deductions were legal and what weren’t. He was fair and just, but he found that he had few friends, few people like the tax man, even fewer, those who are fair and just. Over the years, he often was exasperated by the deductions people tried to take, in time he was often quick to see the worst in others.  

         Her name was Samantha. And Samantha was a housewife, at least that was her dream. So she married her high school sweetheart, but somehow that just didn’t work out and a few years later she was divorced. She tried again, this one took for 5 years and she had two kids, but it too ended. She tried again, and again, and again. She just could understand, she was a good person, this was all supposed to be so easy, but she just kept marrying losers.

         His name was Nick, and Nick was a priest. But Nick had some doubts, doubts about his church, doubts about the priesthood. Oh, Nick told himself, he believed in God, there was no problem there, and he was a good man, keeping the commandments and doing the work of the church, but there was always this nagging doubt, did his life mean anything, did it really make a difference.

         Her name was Mary, and Mary, shall we say, was a professional. She had long ago given up on the idea of marriage and children. But that wasn’t important, none of that mattered. All that silly moral stuff that people talk about, they were liars, none of it mattered, the most important thing was to be a good person yourself, so that no matter what you had to do to get along, there was still something inside you that was pure, and good.

         A few years ago, I did a series on C. S. Lewis book, “Mere Christianity” A book that tries to get people to examine their faith, so that they can hear the Christian message anew, bringing faith and hope and new life to them.

         In the first section of the book, Lewis speaks about the Law of Human Nature. The difference between right and wrong that all people seem able to recognize. Lewis says, we love the law of right and wrong, for it establishes the ideas of justice and the common good that are in all our interests. Yet, at the same time, we hate the law of right and wrong, because it keeps us from acting solely in our own interest all the time, it keeps us from worshiping ourselves.

         And so, because of this love and hate relationship with right and wrong, we find that we have this same love and hate relationship with God, who gives us the law of right and wrong. We are not as good as we think we are, nor as bad as others think us to be, we are just people, people who love what is right, and people who love what is right for us.

And therein lies the problem, because as we live loving what is right for us, more and more, we love what is right for all, less and less, until we become lost, until we become enemies of God, and our lives become broken. And no amount of telling ourselves we are good, can set us right.

        

         Many of you might have heard of Zack by another name, his name was Zachaeus, and when he found Jesus, his whole life changed, he found an acceptance for himself by which he was able to accept others, for who they were.

         You might have heard about Sam, Sam was the woman at the Samaritan well, who learned that life was about more than marriage and babies, and she at last came to know a relationship of love, a relationship with God.

         You all know Nick, Nicodemus who came to Jesus at night, who discovered that his life in the church lacked that Spirit of God’s love that truly makes a difference in our lives.

         And Mary, Mary of Magdalene, who discovered that what you do, does make a difference in your life, that God wants us to live only the best life, and ultimately, the life that is best for us!

         Here again, these words of Paul to the Philippians,

         “For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”

        

         The season of lent, is a time for Christians to examine their faith, and whether we have bought the lie some tell ourselves that they are good by societies standard, when in fact they have become enemies of God. How many of us go about seeking our own wills, seeking glory by the standards of the world, and set upon our own personal desires, and find we are unsatisfied.

         To be citizens means to enter a realm where we are not our own any more, but where we are God’s. A life in which we seek God’s affirmation, not the world. A life where we seek the glory of God’s goodness in ourselves rather than our own.

         And when we live this new life, we find the burden of being responsible for our own goodness fall away, and a new life that frees us, to find our true joy and happiness in our lives.

         It worked for Zach, Sam, Nick, and Mary, and it can work for you! 

          

Mar. 10, 2019         A Blessing to the Sojourner                          

“None of us, are native Americans!” This statement was made by one of our local clergy, at our weekly minister’s meeting.  Which prompted a 20 minute discussion on the topic. Mostly, family histories of how we all came to this country. Now most of us have two family histories, one involves my great grandfather on my dad’s side, coming on a boat through the St. Lawrence seaway to Detroit, and the other involves my Mother’s side of the family, traveling up the Mississippi from New Orleans to settle outside of St. Louis. I’m sure most of you have your own stories of the days when your family came as immigrants to America.

A number of those stories probably include some kind of prejudice or discrimination along the way. When the Irish came to this country after the potato famine, they were feared and blamed for the society’s problems. Same thing when the Italians came, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Germans, and etc.  As the speaker noted at our Wednesday Lenten Breakfast, when strangers, foreigners, or what the bible calls sojourners, enter into a new community, they are often scapegoated, blamed for the ills of society. What our speaker didn’t go onto say, was that we do the same thing today, with our fear of Muslims, Mexicans, and people from backward countries.

So why am I on to this today. Well, I have preached numerous times on the temptation of Jesus, but I haven’t ever written a sermon on our passage from Deuteronomy this morning. And, since immigration, and our fears of those who are different from us, is a current concern in our society – indeed it always is - this a timely topic for us to meditate upon this morning.

Our passage from the book of Deuteronomy, speaks about what the people faithful to God are to do to celebrate, give thanks, in the promised Land that God is about to give them. The first thing they are to do is recognize that they were immigrants to the land. A wandering Aramean was my ancestor, reads the text. The next thing is to recognize the persecution of his ancestors – he went down into Egypt, ….. and was oppressed with hard labor. After that, we hear the story of how God brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and led them through the wilderness, to a land flowing with milk and honey. So therefore, in response to this, the faithful Israelite is to take the first fruits of his or her labors, and give it to the poor, the stranger, and the sojourner in the land.

This is the act of almsgiving, which I preached on at our Ash Wednesday service. This is not an anonymous act of giving money, but instead a direct one on one interaction with someone in need. The purpose of which is to know their sufferings, their persecution, and their hardship, as a reminder of what our ancestors faced when they were strangers in a strange land. And in so doing, to overcome our fears of the sojourner among us, so that they may be assimilated into our culture in peace.

Now I realize that there is a lot of fear out there, concerning the immigrant, the foreigner, and the sojourner among us. But one of my favorite quotes about immigrants, comes from Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish philanthropist, who said of first generation immigrants, that the vast majority of them are a hardworking, humble, and law abiding people, seeking the American dream. This statement, reminds us of our families, when they first came to these shores, seeking acceptance and inclusion in American society, and willing to work at any job, to secure that place.

     So what does this all have to do with God? Our passage this morning, shows us that God is the God of the wandering Aramean, the oppressed Israelite in Egypt, the Israelites who were sojourners when they came to settle the promised land. As a reminder of this God commands the Israelites to give of their first fruits to those in need and those who are sojourners among them.  To be clear, the God presented to us in our scripture lesson today is not on the side of those who fear monger and scapegoat the stranger or the foreigner. This God is a God who directs his faithful people to welcome the immigrant into our communities, helping to integrate them, so that we may dwell together in peace. That is ultimately the side that God is on, our living together in Peace! And that is the Good News of Jesus Christ. Amen.  

Mar. 6, 2019                Ash Wednesday                                       

As I noted in my newsletter article this month, Lent is that 40 day period between Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday, Sunday’s not included. Lent is supposed to be for us, like 40 years in the wilderness was for the Israelites, and 40 days in the wilderness was for Jesus when he was tempted. The entire purpose of Lent is for us to grow in our relationship with God, and that can’t happen, when we continue in our devotion to the God’s and idols of our lives.

So for many people Lent is a time when they give up something. Some give up soda, or sugary foods, or time watching tv, or smoking, or drinking, or gambling, the list goes on and on.  The point being, to somehow better ourselves, through suffering the absence of such things. And perhaps, this is the only way that people can appreciate that all suffering isn’t bad, and sometimes it is helpful. But that’s not quite what Lent is all about, as I noted above, the suffering of Lent is supposed to help us understand the suffering of Jesus, so that we may be ready to appreciate the new life that is offered to us at Easter through Jesus resurrection. 

William Shakespeare has a famous line from one of his plays, “All the world is a stage, and men and women are merely players.” When Jesus talks about the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, this is what he is getting at, their acts of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, are done to be seen by others, to curry favor or acts for which they are well spoken. As Jesus says in another part of the gospel, those who perform these acts for such reasons, have earned their reward, and it is a human reward, not one from God.

The purpose of the disciplines of lent, almsgiving, prayer, and fasting, are not meant for us to earn a human reward, each of them is meant instead to bring us closer to God, to knowing God’s presence, compassion, and strength through a process of emptying ourselves, giving of ourselves, not for our own benefit, but for the benefit of others. Because ultimately, life is not about us, it’s about our relationship with God, and that comes through the way we relate to one another.

So what is this almsgiving all about? Almsgiving is something that most of us really don’t do today. Actually, there are many who do almsgiving year round, but we don’t realize that is what we are doing. We have our offerings on Sunday, we have special collections in church, sometimes during Lent there are even special offering boxes that we fill, and then send in to a mission. Even people today, who don’t give to others through their church, can send money online, or sign up through facebook to support a cause, or even make a donation to hurricane victims via text. All of which makes us feel good about ourselves, but safely keeps us from interacting with those in need.

Real almsgiving is about interaction with people in need, it is one on one assistance, helping a struggling family pay their bills, or deal with their problems. Real almsgiving forces us to see their predicament, to see how the system is stacked against them, to see how the rules work against them. Real almsgiving forces us to realize that those who are deeply in debt to credit cards, who lose their homes because of medical payments, who choose drugs as a way to escape their pain and hopelessness, who are discriminated against because they are strangers, or foreigners, or just plain different, are not all that different from us. Real almsgiving challenges us to see the world differently, and allows us to experience God’s compassion for those the world so often ridicules or ignores.   

So what is this prayer stuff all about? We all know about prayer, in fact it is the most requested topic of sermons for the pastor. Pastor, why don’t you preach a really good sermon on how to pray? A lot of times, in response to this, the pastor will pass on some other prayer from scripture that can be read or memorized.  Then there are family prayers, said at mealtimes, or there are morning or nightly prayers said after or before bedtime. These prayers are usually a long list of what we want, or to help a family member or neighbor, or someone else in trouble. Some when they do pray, are in the deal making game, God if you do this, then….. But most of us are just to hurried, to busy, to devote ourselves to the kind of prayer Jesus is talking about.

When was the last time, you set aside a certain amount of time to pray? You know, twenty minutes of quiet time, when you actually took the time to ask God, for direction in your life, how to handle an awkward situation at work or school, how to love your children when they make mistakes, how to forgive your spouse when you have a disagreement or when they have done something wrong.  How often do we ever acknowledge things are not working out as we plan and ask God how to be a better person. Not many people today are willing to stand directly before God, and allow our lives to be examined, admit our insecurities, mistakes, our weaknesses, and ask God to help us, to guide us. This kind of prayer is the kind that leads to the thing we most fear, change, and it requires of us a trust in God that can be life changing. That’s the kind of prayer Jesus is talking about, the kind that lets God into our lives.

So what is fasting all about? Now I checked online and there are all kinds of fasting, some is total water, bread, and vitamins, some is partial fasting, excluding meat and only eating veggies during lent, one is even called supernatural fasting – going without bread or water for 40 days – somehow trusting that God will sustain you. Can you say tempting God? Also, for some people, a Lenten fast is a chance to diet, to lose some weight or go down a pant size, that’s more of a self-help version of fasting, which really misses the point – growing in our relationship with God.

In America, where the average weight of our citizens is pushing 200+ lbs, fasting during lent is perhaps not such a bad idea, however, what is more important about fasting during lent, is the way it changes the way we look at the world. As well fed Americans, we are full, satiated, sometimes even to the point of feeling ill. Fasting changes that, through fasting we learn what it is to feel empty, what it is to be hungry, and even more, to realize how much we have, and how much food we waste. When we fast, we come to realize, God really has given to us, more than enough, especially of food, and to trust that God has also done that in the other areas of our lives, enough to trust that we will not perish if we are not full of everything we want. 

So, you might have noticed that Jesus doesn’t say if you give alms, pray, or fast, but rather when you give alms, pray, or fast. The purpose of these is not self-help, nor is it to look good before others, but it is indeed for us to experience God’s presence in our lives, to grow in our relationship with God, but most importantly, to prepare ourselves to enter into that new life, that is ours through faith in the resurrection. For as the scriptures tell us, in dying to this life, the door is open to the new life that is ours through faith in Jesus Christ. And that’s the Good News of Jesus Christ in this season of Lent!