Week in the Word: Enough is as Good as a Feast

This is the message I preached on Sunday, February 24th,  at Hanks Chapel United Church of Christ in Pittsboro, NC   I hope it blesses you!  If you find yourself in or near Pittsboro, please join us!   Hanks Chapel has Sunday school at 9 AM, with worship beginning at 10 AM, and is located at 190 Hanks Chapel Loop, Pittsboro, NC.  We also have Bible study most Wednesday nights at 6:30 PM at our fellowship hall.

 

 

Call to Worship, based on poem by Lillian Susan Thomas

Loaf

of bread

makes

a song

of fragrance,

waiting

to

feed all

who hunger.

If only it

worked that way,

the world

could

be full

and hope would

waft on

winds

with bread

scent.

 

Sermon   “Enough is as Good as a Feast”

Matthew 14:13-33 New International Version (NIV)

13 When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

15 As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”

16 Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”

17 “We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered.

18 “Bring them here to me,” he said. 19 And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. 20 They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 21 The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children.

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, 24 and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

25 Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

27 But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

28 “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

29 “Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

32 And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. 33 Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

 

These are the words of God for the people of God.  May we hear God’s voice as we listen to them, discuss them, and embrace them in Christ’s name. Amen.

 

What stands out to you about these words of Scripture?

As I read these words, my memory goes back to a freezer and fridge overflowing with food.

Before my late wife passed, I don’t believe I had ever seen so much food in my life.  Day after day after her passing, everyone brought by tupperwares of every imaginable food.   In fact, when I moved to Durham a year and a half later, I do believe I still had tupperwares in my fridge left over from kind people who came by my apartment the first few weeks after Kat passed, worried I might be so overcome by grief I didn’t think to cook.   Being raised by folks who taught me “waste not, want not,” cooking again for myself felt like a reward, since I made myself wait until I got some distance into the freezer, reheating meal upon meal until I began to cook for myself again.

Not only was I surrounded by food – but by lots of other kind gestures, like how my Sunday school class pitched in money and bought me a tree for Christmas, knowing how special decorating at the holidays had been for me.   And one friend came over and insisted to clean and reorganize my kitchen, while bringing over a big container of pasta that lasted for weeks.

This was how my community cared for me in a time of grief and trauma.

When we join Jesus and his first followers in our Gospel lesson, they too are in a time of grief and trauma. Jesus’ mentor, John the Baptizer, who had organized a movement of repentance and renewal centered on baptism, the very same baptism Jesus went through earlier in Matthew, had been beheaded by the puppet ruler of Palestine, Herod.   John had called Herod out for his violence, for his license when it came to women, for the way he used and abused others.   Then, in the midst of a lavish party in Herod’s palace, with more food and drink than one could know what to do with, Herod’s niece had done a dance for him and, on behalf of her mother, the wife of Herod’s brother, a woman who Herod had taken as his own lover, she asked for John’s head on a platter.

As we begin today’s reading, John’s head has just been delivered on that platter as promised.  John the Baptizer’s outcry against the sins of the comfortable, powerful, and well-established was finally silenced by the power of Roman state violence.

I can only imagine the shock and pain Jesus must have felt and the questions that must have run through his mind on hearing the news of John’s death.  I can only imagine how heartbroken, confused, and lost those who had gone down with Jesus to the river Jordan to be baptized by John, must have felt to see him killed so brutally.

As individuals, as communities, as families, as a church, as a nation, we go through times of trauma and shock too, times which shake us to the core, leave us hurting and grieving, leaving us wondering what comes next and where to turn.  What does Jesus’ example teach us about how to deal with loss, grief, and trauma?

First, Jesus models our need in the midst of such pain to take a time out, to stop and to simply be.   Jesus knows his disciples are hurting and looking for comfort from him. He knows those who have looked first to John the Baptizer and then also to him for a word from God will be looking to him, hoping he will show them some way forward.  Yet he puts a pause on his need to rush to respond.

It is easy, in the midst of your own pain, to simply react.  To rush to decisions.  To rush to new plans.  Jesus could have done this.  But he knew he needed to stop, to sit with what had happened, seeing what lessons it had to teach.  He knew his need, as Hebrews 4 invites us, to come boldly before God’s throne of grace where he can find mercy and strength in this time of need.

Before he could help others who were hurting, he knew he had to reach out to the One who heals hurting hearts.  Before he could share a word from God with others, even Jesus had to step away from the noise of what had happened, quiet his own heart, go to God, and listen.   So Jesus begins by leaving the crowd and going away alone, just Him and God.   Likewise, after he ministers to the crowd, he sends his disciples away by themselves so they can do the same; and he then pulls away from both to again pour himself into prayer, plugging into the presence and life of God.

Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, in a few weeks I am flying on an airplane to visit my longtime friend  a UCC minister up in Boston.  Likely I will experience what most of us do whenever you ride in a plane. Before takeoff usually they do a safety talk where they point out exits, explain seatbelts, and explain what to do if air pressure goes wonky.  They always explain oxygen masks will fall down, and then tell you that, though you might be tempted to rush to put masks on the person beside you first, to secure your own mask first, because only then can you really help another with their own.  What good would it be for both of you to pass out, breathless, while you are trying to help each other?  Jesus models here the need for all of us to put on our own masks first, making sure we are giving ourselves the breathing room to spiritually reconnect with God, when we come out of loss and trial, or face crises of our own.

Next, Jesus models our need to let the tragedy or trauma we’ve faced from a situation open us up to welcome in other hurting people and share with them, rather than closing ourselves behind walls out of fear.

In large part because of the people who surrounded me with not just tupperwares of food but also companionship, listening ears, and love, I was able to take my own pain from being widowed and let it teach me how to have compassion on people losing loved ones during my work with hospice.  Rather than breaking me in two, the experience broke me open to love and serve others in new ways.

Yet, like many of you, I have seen people broken by their pain in such ways that they become jaded, afraid to open to others, busily protecting themselves from ever getting hurt again.

In a way that response of fear seems to be the one the disciples have when they are over-run by those hurting people who cannot figure out how to move on after John’s death, who come and crash Jesus’ retreat to be alone and pray.   The disciples see them and are worried they will run out: there is not only not enough food, but not enough energy, time, room, or resources, for such a crowd that have crossed the borders they felt Jesus’ retreat had marked off.   Send them away, the disciples say.   We have to protect our own food, time, space, energy.   If we share, there will not be enough, they think.

And to be sure, resources are limited, from a human standpoint.   This story centers on fish and water – the disciples go out on a fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee and people share fish that had been pulled out of the waters of that same Sea.   The reason people flock to the Sea of Galilee to fish there, was that food in general was scarce.   Most ordinary working people in Palestine had been pushed off the farm lands where their ancestors raised crops for food by Roman leaders like Herod and wealthy aristocrats like the temple priests, both of whom John had called out to repent for how they had built great wealth by gobbling up those lands and generally mistreating the poor.  Now many people had no land on which to farm.  If they still lived on the lands their ancestors farmed, they weren’t able to keep the food they grew but had to hand it over to these wealthy folks who now owned that land and sold its crops for a profit.   So food was hard to come by – and people had to fish the waters of Galilee just to get enough to eat.  Add to this the real threat that John’s death brought — that the might of Rome might come for the lives John’s followers too – and you can see why the disciples might want to put walls up, to hoard what little freedom, food, energy, and resources they had just for themselves, and most of all not let in crowds of people who drew attention from Herod and his government.

It is easy to let pain become fear, distrust of others.  For it to lead us to put up walls to keep out others who are hurting, who are different.   To lead us to turn inward.  Ultimately that just creates a situation where we hurt more, are lonely and isolated, and we multiply that hurt in the lives of others around us by pushing away from them when they need us most.

You can see how this can happen in our personal lives, and in families, but we see this tendency writ large in communities across our country right now, whether churches or towns; and across the country as a whole.  People are feeling threatened and afraid by changes in our society, by people who are different, by the economic struggles they are going through, and so not only put up metaphoric walls but are arguing to put up literal walls, afraid of the stranger, the immigrant, the poor, the struggling and in need.  That fear can lead us to think there is not enough to go around, and we must hoard what little we have from others.

Jesus chooses another path.  When the crowd comes seeking words of comfort and direction, he welcomes them.  He is moved with compassion for them, his heart breaking at their situation.  The Biblical Greek used to describe what we translate “heal the sick” here literally means strengthen the weak.   Jesus shares his time, his energy, his prayers, his attention and what good words he has for them, to strengthen them in this time of weakness.   And, rather than sending them back to fend for themselves, he instructs the disciples to take what little food they have – just a bit of bread and fish, and let him bless it, and then have them distribute it to the crowd.

When he does so, everyone is fed and comforted by eating together.  And much more bread and food is gathered than is ever passed out.  The Bible does not explain how this happens.  Was it like when Elijah went to the widow in his journeys and blessed her oil container, so so it never ran out, all based on God’s generous provision despite every law of nature , because she was generous and gave more than she thought she could afford to him, choosing generosity rather than fear?  Or was it that everyone there had a bit of food with them already— some only a tiny bit and some a lot more than they could ever use— which they were all keeping to themselves out of fear, yet when those people saw  the disciples sharing what little they had it inspired them, the  whole crowd,  to each chip in a bit?   Either way, we are reminded that if we embrace the idea that we don’t need extravagance, but enough is as good as a feast, and that if, rather than seeking extravagance, we share with others, we will be amazed at the ripple effect it makes, leading others to pay it forward in ways that are truly miraculous!   As I’ve said before, Jesus models that God’s way is not about building higher walls to keep others out but wider tables, where more can be welcomed.

Which leads us to the final message of this text.   Which is how this is all possible.   You see ,this call out of fear into openness and faith is frightening.  Like the disciples at the end of our reading, we can feel that we are on shaky, uncertain ground.  It can feel like we are about to be knocked over by waves, drowned.  It can feel like being called onto choppy seas, called to walk on the water like Peter is called by Jesus.

In a way, it is.  It is a call beyond who we can be and what we can do on our own.  It is only possible because we follow one who can walk on the water, one whom the wind and wave obey – Jesus the Christ.

This would have been very clear to those who first read the Gospel of Matthew.  The Gospels were all written as one of the last parts of the Bible.   While the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life lived, people simply went to them to hear the stories of Jesus.   These all seem to have been written in responses to persecutions in which Christians died, as a way of keeping the story of Jesus around.

In particular, the Gospels began to be written after the persecutions of emperors Domitian and Nero, under whose reigns the apostles John the Revelator and Paul both were killed.  Nero in particular was known for throwing parties like the party Herod threw – full of piles upon piles of food, and pitchers upon pitchers of wine, all while the people of the empire starved.  And, like Herod killed John the Baptizer as a part of his festivities, Nero was known for stringing up Christians and lighting them afire like Tiki torches to keep his parties well lit at night.

If ever there was a time for fear, it was in that time period when this persecution went on, which is the time period around which the Gospels were written.  And yet, history tells us it was the great generosity in the giving of food and clothes, the care for the sick and abandoned, service to others, and other acts of people whose hearts were moved with compassion, offered by these first Christians in the midst of such persecutions that led the poor, suffering, and outcast to flock to the church.   Those followers of Jesus chose to let their experience of suffering and loss, trauma and threat, not cause them to withdraw from the world and set up walls to exclude others who were different but instead to be moved with compassion for the world around them, and openly share with and serve others.  Historians tells us it is this choice made by those persecuted Christians which ultimately caused the church to grow and thrive.

They could do this because they knew it was not up to them.  They depended on the one who can make the most tempestuous storms and waves as still as pavement, as sturdy as the mountains, and easier to walk on than a sidewalk with just a Word.  And in that one they could trust and rest secure.

And the same is true for you, and is true for me.

May we choose to trust, to follow Christ onto the waters, by living lives of faith rather than fear, compassion rather than closed mindedness, sharing and service rather than shrinking behind walls.  Amen and Amen.

Recognizing the Witness of Faithful People in a Broken Church

So, there is alot of lamenting the Methodist church right now, much of it by non-Methodists like me and some by Methodists themselves. As a person who spent alot of my career in church ministry fighting for inclusion of all people — specifically LGBT folks but also people with disabilities, racial minorities, immigrants too — I get people’s anger and heartbreak.

But I also have known and been blessed by so many amazing folk of faith and Spirit from the United Methodist tradition, some really in the mix of the fight to welcome all God’s children, I want to just recognize them.

I remember experiencing Calvary Methodist in Durham, then pastored by Rev. Laurie Hays Coffman and the now gone-to-glory Rev. Dr. Gayle Felton, as a place of spiritual homecoming at a particularly low place in my spiritual journey when I felt battered and bruised by the weight of the cost of speaking up for justice in the church. And being powerfully touched by the ministry there that gave safe haven for LGBT folks and allies, that deeply lived a classical and orthodox Methodist and Christian faith in deeply southern terms, which helped me re-imagine how I could be both progressive and (as I still am in my mind) Bible-believing, southern, and embracing what is long-held, true, and central in all our Christian traditions as the very reason I am so committed to welcome, inclusion, and compassion with justice.

I remember Roger Wolsey whose words and example as a Methodist leaders inspires me still, putting into words so many things I did not have the words for on my own and many others I would not have thought of.

I think of people like Jimmy Creech, like all the courageous people of Reconciling Ministries Network and Reconciling Methodists who chose to unflinchingly and unapologetically embrace their faith.

I think of friends like Frank Schaefer and Kevin Higgs who spoke up in different ways for the call for a multiracial and diverse welcome of people of all gender expressions and sexualities.

I think of great Methodist colleagues like my good friend Lisa’s pastor at Parkwood United Methodist Church, Pastor Anita, and also my friend Rev. Kori Robins, who are all in different ways working to broaden the welcome in their communities.

I am aware that my own tradition, the United Church of Christ, officially made room for welcome of all LGBT people in the church as national policy; yet not all our churches have opted into the call to be open and affirming. And I am reminded that, on different levels, the institutional church is a broken thing, here in the tradition I call home and also in the United Methodist Church — the various Baptist communions, the Mennonites, you name it.

I am reminded of Dorothy Day, who felt called to be faithful to the Catholic Church even while officially it did not always stand for the calls for church and inclusion, believing that loving Jesus means loving both the outcast of the church (in her days, often the poor she served in the Catholic worker communities) and the church itself, even when it was as wrongheaded, sinful, and broken as the person locked in alcoholism she served soup in her Catholic worker house.

So I think we should not forget these beautiful wonderful Methodist lay people and clergy who are working in an broken, imperfect part of the Body of Christ — just as I am, just as you likely are if you choose to connect in the church — to make it more there as it is already in heaven. And I think we need to pray for them, rally them, support them, and remind them — you are not alone.
And most of all — remind those feeling outcast from the churches they call home, that God’s love is big enough for them.

Week in the Word: Love Stories by Jesus

 

This is the message I preached on Sunday, February 17th,  at Hanks Chapel United Church of Christ in Pittsboro, NC   I hope it blesses you!  If you find yourself in or near Pittsboro, please join us!   Hanks Chapel has Sunday school at 9 AM, with worship beginning at 10 AM, and is located at 190 Hanks Chapel Loop, Pittsboro, NC.  We also have Bible study most Wednesday nights at 6 PM at our fellowship hall.

 

As we’ve been doing since the New Year, today we continue looking at Matthew’s Gospel, this time by turning from the Sermon on the Mount to another part of Jesus’ teachings, his parables, looking at Matthew 13.

 

Matthew 13:24-35

24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.

27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

31 He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. 32 Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

33 He told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

34 Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. 35 So was fulfilled what was spoken through the prophet: “I will open my mouth in parables,       I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”

These are God’s words for God’s people.  May our still-speaking God open the eyes of our minds and ears of our hearts so we can see and know what God is saying to us through them this day.  Amen.

Does anything stand out to you about Jesus’ words?

We are in that time of year when folks get into love stories, aren’t we?   Cupid has been about and love is in the air!  Maybe you were  curled up Thursday night to a Lifetime story or classic romance novel.  Maybe you took out a special someone this week either hoping for love to spark or celebrating your own love story with them.  Perhaps as a single person like myself you either wished you had a love story to tell or you  were glad to not be in the midst of a story that had started out  looking alot like love but had become  something else entirely.   For good or ill — and I hope good for each of you — it’s pretty hard to avoid thinking about love this week.

Today,  in our Scripture reflection time, we turn from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount which we’ve been studying the last few weeks to his main form of teaching, parables,.  Parables are stories Jesus told to teach us about what he called “God’s kingdom” or “heaven’s kingdom”.  And though we often don’t realize it, and — goodness knows! —  these stories sure don’t appear alot like the ones we see on Lifetime or at the movie theater, there is a real sense in which these stories Jesus tells are, in their own way, all love stories.

You see, in the Bible, love is not just about candles or candy, nor is it only about romance.  Sure, those things are great, as far as they go, but love in the Bible is a deeper, stronger, thing that that. Love is in fact where we came from and where we all ultimately are headed.  It is God’s love and care for us that births us into this world.  It is to God’s love we all are headed on our great homecoming day, whenever that is. And, in that time between, it is that some love that lifts us up and carries us through all of our lives, on days of joy and wonder, as well as on days that are hard and trying. As 1 John tells us, God is love, and we are called to live out and reflect that love in every aspect of our lives.

In a way, all we have been studying so far in the Sermon on the Mount, with its calls for us to be caring for all kinds of people, even enemy and outcast, even those who use and mistreat us, even when that means forgiving them, going the extra mile for them, turning the other cheek, or sharing with others without expectation of “thank you” or a return of the favor — all of this is a picture Jesus has been painting of what God’s love looks like when it is put into action.  Speaking of the importance of such love in our life, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King once said “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” Cornel West picked up where King left off by adding, “We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence…” — the very things Jesus calls us to in his Sermon on the Mount! And Dr. West continues, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

In a way, just as the Sermon on the Mount is kind of a roadmap or blueprint for what a life of reflecting God’s love in every corner of our life can look like, so these parables are short stories that picture what love lived out together in a community and love lived out in public looks like: Jesus is showing us what it would be like for a community to change the world by the power of love, by working to tear down every barrier that stands in the way of love, so that here and now we can see love lived out among us as it already is being lived out in heaven.  This life-transforming and world-changing love lived out in community together and lived out in public is part of what Jesus means by saying the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God has come near and by teaching us to pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, here on earth as in heaven”.

 

What do today’s love stories by Jesus teach us about how God changes us and our world through the power of love?  And what love lived out in community, and in public, looks like?   I think we can learn something from what Jesus looks to in order to tell us how to love, as well as how Jesus says God’s love changes things, and finally how these stories suggest we can respond to God’s work of love within and all around us.

First, notice what Jesus looks to: ordinary everyday life.

Most of you know that a few years ago I was widowed.   At first the pain of that was so hard I could never imagine ever thinking of dating or finding love again.  Then when I realized that was a possibility, my very nerdy and bookish self decided, first, look at what the experts say!  And before I would even try to seriously date, I decided had to read book upon book about dating in the modern world, which (not surprisingly) I discovered had changed alot since my 20s.

Jesus does something different when he paints a picture of how God’s love works in the world.  Jesus does not quote hard to decipher Bible verses to explain how God’s kingdom of love breaks forth here and now.  He doesn’t quote the experts either, the philosophers or theologians.  In his parables Jesus points to everyday life – he talks about women baking bread, he talks about planting seeds, growing plants, and farming.   Though for some of us, such things may seem far removed from our daily lives, working at universities, doctor’s offices, nursing homes, construction sites, this likely is not the case for all of us here.  And it couldn’t have been less true for his first audience.  For them the stories Jesus gives are of what they did every single day.

You know, sometimes we can get the message that our lives here and now – our work with its frustrations and joys, our families with their laughter and fighting, our play and rest – don’t matter.   They aren’t the things of Lifetime movies, nor of political arguments, let alone the stuff of fancy theologians, are they?  But it is exactly in the midst of those things that Jesus is teaching us to look for and expect to see God’s hand and handiwork, God at work guiding us into how to receive and give, reflect and share God’s love.  And any of you who have ever had a marriage or partnership of any real length, let alone raised children or cared for older parents, you know what Jesus knows: it is in how you do the daily and the ordinary  in your life that everything piles up, which makes your relationships work smoothly and with grace, struggle, or grind to a clanging halt.

If we will slow down and pay attention to our every day lives, we can find signs of God in each day and each moment.  We can see where God is at work, where we and others are reflecting, and point out God’s love in action, and also where love is breaking down in our individual lives, our relationships, our church, our world, and our community.  This is part of why I encourage us in worship to pause, be quiet, and pay attention to what God is saying in our lives each Sunday.  Each day God is showing up, in each encounter we have, if we learn to pay attention.

 

Questions for Discussion

            What difference does it make to see God as at work in your everyday life?

            What are places or people you’ve not expected to see God?  What would it look like to look for God there?

            What examples do you have of times that you learned lessons about what God wants through paying attention to people, places, or experiences in your everyday life?

 

Next, these love stories by Jesus suggest that love’s way of changing the world is slow and messy. Love is patient because love takes time.

All three parables are stories of growth and change.  A field grows from seed to harvest.   A seed grows into a shrub so big all the birds of the air can rest in its branches.   A tiny speck of yeast grows, spreading through dough until it can help create 60 lbs of dough. Such growth takes time.

Yet each is messy.  They discover weeds are growing alongside the wheat and have to decide whether to risk pulling up wheat alongside weeds by weeding before harvest time, or to risk weeds choking out some of the wheat’s resources in the meantime, possibly damaging the harvest.   The yeast the woman  does not just mix into but, in the original Greek literally hides within, the dough is not the sweet sanitized packets you buy in a store, but a smelly bubbly mix of old dough that has developed all kinds of bacteria and, though effective for its purpose, would seem very gross to us.  And mustard plants kind of got mixed reviews – some people used them for food, but others treated them like pernicious weeds that weren’t good for much.  So, messy business indeed!

I am reminded by these stories of seeing the end result of surprising growth that took time while serving in Los Angeles at a historically black church.  About once a month one of the older members would bring in bags full of collards, ready to hand them out to anyone who would take them.   Folks would tell me “you gotta try some of these collards from Elder Felix’s collard tree”.  Now I grew up in the south and if I knew one thing it was that collards don’t grow on trees.  They grow just like cabbages, near the ground.   Finally I got invited by Felix and Melba to their house and I could not wait until I could ask to see their fabled collard trees.  “Sure, I’d be happy to show them to you,” Felix told me,  and lo and behold there were enormous, tall, collard plants growing straight up to my neck.  Felix explained that he didn’t pull them up out of the ground or cut them down when he harvested his collards, but plucked off a few leaves at a time.  With no frost, the things just kept growing.  I was seeing decades of growth on his collard plants.   And it truly did make collard plants — not that different from mustard in the big scheme of things — which, after years upon years of growth, were tall enough you could imagine birds roosting in their leaves.

Jesus is letting us in on a secret – love doesn’t often come in a neat easy to wrap package and love takes time. Such love can be messy.  The messiness of love can lead us to withdraw and not open up, but Jesus would have us know that is not the path to life.   As C. S. Lewis once wrote, “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  Yet the alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation,” since God is love and heaven is the unrestricted presence of that God who is love.   “The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.” So the way to life means embracing the risks and vulnerabilities, the measures of being open to others through love.

 

Not only this, but the change God’s love brings doesn’t happen overnight or happen easily.   If God shows us as individuals, as families, as partners or spouses, as a church, as friends, as a community, some way we are supposed to be a part of God’s change in this world, making it more like it is in heaven, and making love happen in community or in public, we need patience and understanding.  If we open ourselves to others — whether friend or partner, family member or church member, neighbor or someone we are called to serve, even the best relationships with them will be messy and take time.  And sometimes God calls us to love, serve, and care for people we don’t naturally find easy, with that commitment to love being how the kingdom breaks out in our midst. Although God could choose to just snap God’s fingers and make it  all work out at once, God doesn’t.  Love takes time, even God’s love.  God works slowly, over time.   God spreads changes little by little, person by person, in this love lived in public, love lived in community.

 

Discussion Questions

            What are changes you feel called to help happen in your community, your church, or family that may take time?

            In what ways is it is easy or hard to patient for them?

            In what ways can such changes be messy at first?

 

Finally, the way we get to God’s destination, the way we live out God’s love together, is not by judging but by hospitality and discernment.  God’s way of loving in public and loving in community casts a wide net, where everyone, folks from all walks of life, can find a welcome.

Our natural impulse is that of the workers in the farm – let’s pull up what we think are weeds as soon as we see them.  Yet their master says, no, make room until things are full grown, because you never know if you might mistake wheat for weeds and pull up something worth saving.  Such a slowness to judge and exclude those God brings along our path on this journey of being a people who help change this world to be more as it is in heaven through the slow work of love is key.

Often church folks have pet sins they use as boundary markers to exclude – perhaps it is drinking too much, perhaps it is being divorced, or being gay, or loving Jesus but cussing a bit, or not dressing right – whatever that means! – or having tattoos and piercings.  And perhaps we should put sin in quotes, for not all or even most of what I just described is in fact a sin in God’s eyes, is it?, though there are folks ready to call it so and throw the first stone!  But perhaps that person you say is just too much this or that is one God has called to be a part of the solution.

And sometimes the people who come off as most opposed to what you feel God calling you to  in fact become in the long run your biggest asset in helping love’s long work be done in community and in public , because if you build a relationship with them and you both truly hear each other out, you might find you have more in common than different and become allies.

This is why the other two parables have images of welcome and inclusion.  The mustard tree becomes a welcoming spot, where all kinds of birds can take roost.   A woman, often kept out of the center of decision making and the life of the community, is brought in by Jesus to be welcomed as an image for God.  That woman makes enough dough to bake bread to share with everyone she knows and many she does not yet.   And as Irvin Milton, a patriarch in our UCC Conference has often said, you can’t really sit down and eat bread with another person –maybe just eating from the same table but not really dining together with them– and truly remain enemies.  There is something about breaking bread that tears down walls and includes. Such is the way of God’s love.

 

Discussion questions

            What are groups of people you feel the church sometimes struggles to include?  How can we work to include them better?

            Do you have an example of someone you did not expect who became a good ally when working to make a good change or make a difference?

 

Loving God, you created life in us and all around us,

Help us to encounter you in our daily lives, with hearts and and minds open,

Embrace the call you give us there to live love together, to live love in public,

Week in the Word: The Path is Made by Walking

This is the message I preached on Sunday, February 10th,  at Hanks Chapel United Church of Christ in Pittsboro, NC   I hope it blesses you!  If you find yourself in or near Pittsboro, please join us!   Hanks Chapel has Sunday school at 9 AM, with worship beginning at 10 AM, and is located at 190 Hanks Chapel Loop, Pittsboro, NC.  We also have Bible study most Wednesday nights at 6 PM at our fellowship hall.

 

Call to Worship,  based on poem by Antonia Machado

Wanderer,

your footprints are the path, and nothing else;

wanderer, there is no path,

the path is made by walking.

Walking makes the path,

and on glancing back

one sees the path

that must never be trod again.

Wanderer, there is no path—

Just your wake in the sea.

 

 

SERMON  The Path is Made By Walking

 

 

Matthew 7:1-14, 24-29

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

6 “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

–

24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

These are the words of God for God’s people.  May our still-speaking God open the eyes of our minds and ears of our hearts so we might see and hear what God is saying to us in these words of holy Scripture.  Amen.

What stands out to you in these words?

One of the most life- and trouble-saving inventions in my life was the GPS.  Before I got one in my car, and then later now in my phone, I took missing my turn and getting lost on a trip to epic proportions.

My late wife Kat never let me live down the time when we were driving home to just outside Los Angeles from a trip to the beach in san Diego and I made just one wrong turn, ending up accidentally in Mexico.

Not that getting lost was all bad, I would always remind her.

One time getting lost landed me to exactly the perfect retreat center for a gathering I was planning.

More importantly, I would say, it was me getting royally lost that sparked the friendship which became a romance that became a marriage with her when, just weeks after moving into southern California, my friend John asked her and me on a road trip and handed me the map for a quick 2 hour drive.   Somehow I so misread the map that I turned the 2 hour trip into 5 and got us smack dab in the middle of the Mojave Desert, which let me tell you, was nowhere near where we were headed.  Lucky for us, Kat had the job of packing snacks and we had our fill for the trip – and that trip sparked a fun conversation which really never ended between Kat and me until the day she died some 3 years ago.

Looking back, I have to ask myself is it any wonder my dad would barrage me with questions before starting a trip as a teenager or a young adult – have you checked tire pressure?  Have you checked the oil?  Have checked and double checked the maps?  I guess deep down he knew I was one apt to make a wrong turn and end up stranded in the desert.

In a way Jesus’ words in our Gospel reading, as he reaches the end of his Sermon on the Mount, are just that kind of advice and those kinds of questions.   Following the example of Moses who climbed atop Mount Sinai to give a roadmap or a blueprint for how the rag tag band of just freed slaves who stood gathered around Moses could become a nation of free people, so Jesus had climbed atop a mountain too to give his directions on how it would look for people to live out the heart of God in our world, becoming a people through whom God’s kingdom breaks out in our world, so this earth became more as it is in heaven.

And what a roadmap or blueprint he gives!: he describes a life defined not by the righteousness of the religious teachers of his day, a life lived not by a blind obedience to heartless rules that leads to forcing others into boxes that may cause harm.  A righteousness defined instead by rejecting treating others as objects.  A path defined by the kind of peacemaking that does not return evil for evil but instead loves enemies, prays for those that use and abuse you, and does good to all people even those who mistreat you.       It Is a way of living that he says gives generously of time, of talent, of resources, of treasure, to those in need without expecting either a congratulations or that gesture of giving to be returned.  He describes a way of sharing well expressed by Dorothy Day, a Christian leader in the last century who organized communities aimed at helping the abject poor and the working class find their way to break the cycle of poverty.  Day said first “What we would like to do is change the world–make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute–the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in

other words–we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend” and, perhaps most importantly, she always added that “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”

Jesus paints a vivid picture in this Sermon of a way of living that goes even further – and rejects the idea of an outsider at all.   Edwin Markham’s classic poem “Outwitted” puts Jesus’ way for all of us well when it says “He drew a circle that shut me out– / Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. / But Love and I had the wit to win: / We drew a circle that took him in!”

Jesus has been inviting his hearers, and by extension, each of us, through his Sermon on the Mount to embrace living a whole different pattern of life, a way of living that bucks against the messages our world surrounds us with every day.  He calls us too to join together, to build a different way of being community, whether that community is churches, neighborhoods, families, marriages or life partnerships, you name it.   This is why Jesus’ way is through a narrow gate, along a narrow path, and few there be that make it.  As the late G. K. Chesterton one said, by and large true “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and” left “not tried”.  And, as Jesus warned when talking of those who cry out “Lord, Lord”, yet to whom he will say “I don’t even recognize you”, even many of us may go through times when, though we call ourselves Christian, though we go to church and pray, we may be busy going through all the outward motions of worshipping Jesus while, in our hearts, not really be listening to anything he is saying at all.  It is easy to keep up appearances rather than listening to his voice and following where it leads.

Not only so, but it is easy to get distracted.  It almost sounds contradictory at first that Jesus follows the command Dorothy Day referenced in saying we had no right to judge who was deserving and not deserving among us by then saying for us to not cast our pearls before swine, but in truth he is warning us, that the path we are on is one it is easy to become distracted from, and thus from which to wander off.  Jesus’ warning echoes the challenge of the prophet Isaiah who asked those who heard him in his day, “Why spend money on what is not bread,  and your labor on what does not satisfy? “  The world bombards us with the messages to give our time, talent, and treasure, our hearts and lives into things that truly don’t fulfill, into projects that will not give us the return they promise on our investment, into people and relationships that won’t last.  And we find ourselves forgetting the higher calling, losing our way, and wandering off in the desert like the one I got Kat, my friend John, and me lost in so many years ago,  as we follow rabbit trails off the beaten path Christ is laying out for us.

And of course this path is hard.  I don’t know about you, but when I hear the kind of life Jesus calls us to if we want to be his hands and feet in this world today and I compare it with my own life, I sometimes want to throw up my hands.  How can anyone live this straight and narrow path Jesus has given us in his teachings and example?

And, you know what, we can’t.   We can’t in our own strength.  We can’t in our own power.  We can’t in our own will power, or our own wisdom.

We can only do it by God’s grace, strength, and help.

To return to the story of Moses and Israel, which Jesus is intentionally pointing back to by delivering this message on a mountain, even though the journey from Egypt to the Holy Land was not really that far, it took Moses and Israel 40 years of wandering lost in the desert to get there.   The Scriptures tell us that the reason why is that they kept getting distracted, not listening to God, and wandering off the trail.

Yet, guess what? It may have taken 40 years, but they finally made it.   They were able to make it that far not because they were good at following directions.  They weren’t!  God was with them, appearing as a fire by night and a cloud of smoke by day, guiding their steps whenever they were willing to listen.   They did not get through the desert because they were good at foraging and hunting, nor good at finding good sources of water.  They weren’t!   They made it to the other side of their wilderness journey in one piece, all the way to the holy land, because God provided – bringing springs in the desert, sending quail like snowfall on the ground, and manna or bread from heaven every morning.  God was faithful.  God led, God fed, God provided.  God pulled them through.

This is a reminder to each of us.   We will not be able to find our way on the narrow road to being people who reflect God’s image, God’s heart, like Jesus because of how smart, or good, or holy we are.  We won’t be able to build the house of lives, communities, families, churches, marriages or partnerships, that make heaven break out here in this world because we are so strong, or so smart, or so kind, or so spiritual, or so well-versed in our Bibles.  No, it will happen because God will lead and feed.  God will provide.  We will get there because we let the Holy Spirit guide us like God did as fire and cloud to Israel.  We will make it as we listen to and follow Christ’s still speaking voice, and trust he can give us what drink and bread to strengthen us until the end through our every desert.

And this is a part of what communion means.   When we break the bread and drink the cup, we remember that the lives and callings we have from God are exactly who we cannot be and what we cannot do, on our own that is.  We remember that to get where God has called us individually, as families, as couples, as singles, as a church, and as a community, we need bread from heaven, too.  We need the strength, grace, wisdom, and guidance only God can bring.  It depends on God, not on us.  On our own, we will find ourselves stranded in the desert.  But with God, we will make it.

And so my challenge to you and me is the same challenge Isaiah gave Israel, which Jesus echoes in these words, to not despair for the path is what we cannot do on our own, nor to become distracted by what will not nourish, but instead to come each day, seeking the strength, wisdom, and sustenance God alone offers, which alone can give us strength for this journey.

Amen and Amen.

 

Week in the Word: Connecting with the Hub of Life

This is the message I preached on Sunday, February 3rd,  at Hanks Chapel United Church of Christ in Pittsboro, NC   I hope it blesses you!  If you find yourself in or near Pittsboro, please join us!   Hanks Chapel has Sunday school at 9 AM, with worship beginning at 10 AM, and is located at 190 Hanks Chapel Loop, Pittsboro, NC.  We also have Bible study most Wednesday nights at 6 PM at our fellowship hall. 

 

Call to Worship,                   based on poem by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

 

 

Connecting with the Hub of Life

Matthew 6:7-21, New International Version

7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  9 “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  11 Give us today our daily bread.  12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

These are the words of God for God’s people.  May God open the eyes of our minds and ears of our hearts so we might see and hear what God is saying to us in these words of holy Scripture.

What stands out to you in these words?

This Scripture reminds me of a story by my good friend Chuck. Chuck Fager often tells people of his experience eating Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s dinner.  Chuck is retired and lives in Durham now, but when he was younger was a student worker helping with Dr. King’s fight for Civil Rights in Selma.  Chuck tells how, he was gathered up by the police with Dr. King and others while they were speaking up against segregation.   Chuck had only been there a month and had no idea what to expect.   He ended up being tossed in a jail cell together with Martin Luther King and some of those other key leaders in the civil rights movement there.

The wardens of the jail were mainly black citizens of Selma themselves who were supportive of Dr. King.   Quietly, in a way that didn’t draw attention to themselves, these wardens put together a meal for King, to express their appreciation for his work.   After a long day of marching, speaking, and ultimately being processed by the police and put in jail, everyone who had been working with Dr. King was famished and exhausted.   Despite this, when the meal that was the best these wardens had to offer was brought out, King graciously turned it down.  His reason?  Long before this imprisonment, King and the other civil rights leaders in Selma, most of whom were pastors and other Christian leaders, had decided to follow the example of others who fought for Civil Rights before them and, when put in jail, to set it aside as a time of spiritual retreat where they would fast, going without food to focus on prayer, Bible study, and reflection.  So in order to nourish themselves spiritually, he and his closest associates in the jail had to turn down the specially made meal.   My friend Chuck knew nothing about this agreement, being just a student worker and not that active in church beforehand himself.  So Chuck was heartbroken, with his mouth already salivating as he eyed the delicious meal, to think of it going to waste.  Stuttering and embarrassed, Chuck let them know he had made no such commitment, and would hate for all that good food to go to waste.  King, the other leaders, and the wardens all agreed.

That Dr. King chose when jailed to focus his time there on prayer, fasting, and Bible study, is important. He and other Civil Rights leaders recognized that, as important as their work for civil rights and equality for all was, something more was needed.  They need to be able to also to put away the business, stress, and constant going, going, going, that this work brought into their lives at times and simply to be in the presence of God.  As Walter Wink says in his book Prayer and the Powers, “Unprotected by prayer, our social activism runs the danger of becoming self-justifying good works, as our inner resources atrophy, the wells of love run dry, and we are slowly changed into the likeness of” what we fight against; “prayer…is the field hospital in which the diseased spirituality that we have contracted from” the injustice all around us “can most directly be diagnosed and treated.”

This is also true with all our work and callings – from our work serving in the church to our own activism in the community, to our careers to caring for family members, to being parents or grandparents or spouses.   Ultimately, unprotected by prayer, such work can cause our wells to run dry, and us to become people very different than who God made and called us to be.

Jesus’ words challenge us, like King, to pause and put away the need for more and bigger in our lives, pulling away from the noisy and public, from our constant going, going, going, to turn instead to seek a deep inner connection with God and within ourselves.   Full of worry we can become tempted to pile up treasures, power, privilege, popularity, comfort, for ourselves.  We can become tempted to Super-size our lives – having to have the biggest and best careers, homes, cars, the youngest and most attractive partner, you name it.  Our world bombards us with the temptation to invest so much in that material side of things that we don’t make the time and space for lasts and what really matters.

This doesn’t just happen with things that seem suspect right away but can even happen with otherwise seemingly good pursuits.  Dr. King’s work for civil rights was good, but he knew he needed to drink deep of the waters of life God offers to sustain himself and keep his perspective.  This is something I have to constantly remind myself as someone who works with ministry: ultimately though that work is important, it cannot become an end in itself.  If I am not myself connecting with God each day, working at caring for and loving the people around me, and working to be the person God has called me to be, even so-called “holy work” can be a kind of keeping up appearances.

We don’t have to be ministers for this to happen.  Caring for our children, for people who are sick or in need, working for social justice, or even our jobs we work to provide for our families, all can stretch us without taking time to connect to spiritual resources.  Even prayer, Jesus says, can become something we Super-size, something we make more about saying pretty words or appearing holy before others than us honestly, truthfully, coming before God just as you are.  Fasting too can become about putting on a show to be seen by others.  Even things we claim we are doing for God or out of faith can be used just to prop up ourselves, rather than truly connecting with God.  Any spiritual practice, when it becomes about looking good, about how great we are, and not coming before God in honesty to really encounter God as God is, developing a personal relationship with God that changes you, even that can be a dead end.

The kind of connection Jesus is calling us to is exactly about taking us out of ourselves – and hence done best when not on display.  This is why we read Wendell Berry’s poem as our responsive reading.  When it says, “It may be that when we no longer know what to do / we have come to our real work, / and that when we no longer know which way to go / we have come to our real journey”, it is highlighting that connecting with God is about real honesty where we open up to God showing us who we really are, what we really need, and even how we must change our lives.  To do so we must be willing to admit what we don’t know, and what our limits are.

Ultimately this is kind of prayer which Jesus calls us to, which is the real work we are called to, first and foremost.  This is inner work and an inner journey.

One of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen, explains this well.  He likens prayer to the sort of large wagon wheels that are used in his home country for decoration – with wide rims, strong wooden spoke, and big hubs in the center.  “These wheels help me to understand the importance of a life lived from the center,” he said.  “When I move along the rim, I can reach one spoke after the other, but when I stay at the hub, I am in touch with all the spokes at once. To pray is to move to the center of all life and all love. The closer I come to the hub of life, the closer I come to all that receives its strength and energy from there. My tendency is to get so distracted by the diversity of the many spokes of life, that I am busy but not truly life-giving, all over the place but not focused. By directing my attention to the heart of life, I am connected with its rich variety while remaining centered. What does the hub represent? I think of it as my own heart, the heart of God, and the heart of the world. When I pray, I enter into the depth of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of love. And I recognize, right there, the place where all of my sisters and brothers are in communion with one another. The great paradox of the spiritual life is, indeed, that the most personal is most universal, that the most intimate, is most communal, and that the most contemplative is most active. The wagon wheel shows that the hub is the center of all energy and movement, even when it often seems not to be moving at all. In God all action and all rest are one. So too prayer!”

When you pay careful attention to how Jesus teaches us to connect with this hub or center of life, we see that not only does doing this help us find renewal and center, not only does it help us see the world from the bigger perspective Nouwen talks about by connecting us with others and their perspectives, but also it transforms how we look at and live here and now.

By praying our Father, we recognize each of us and every person we meet are children of God, that the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and that none of us are better or worse than others from God’s perspective.   Each of us are loved, embraced, cared for by our God equally.   Not only that, but in the Psalms “our Father” is the name of God used to say God is the father of the fatherless, who sheds special attention on the poor, and who is the protector of the orphaned, the widowed, and the immigrant.  Saying “our Father” in prayer is inviting God to help those priorities, God’s priorities for our world, become our own.  We are inviting God to widen our vision so that we can see ourselves and others as God does.  When we pray your kingdom come, your will be done, we are signing our names on the dotted line and agreeing to be partners with God in God’s work of setting right our world.   When you pray for God to give us our daily bread, you pray not just saying “give me my bread” but “give us”, recognizing that the needs of each person matter, and you are intended to be a part of God’s answer to this prayer for daily bread for others.  And Jesus makes it clear in his words after he introduces this prayer that praying for God to forgive your debts challenges you to forgive others who have wronged and harmed you.  The language Jesus uses is peculiar too – he does not say forgive us our sins or harms,  but forgive us our debt.  In his day and age, like ours, debts could wreck a person’s life.   Praying this prayer also involves an obligation to help accept God’s clearing of the slate while also committing to help clear the slate for others.  This does include forgiving people and seeking reconciliation.  But such prayer should also challenge us to ask, Do we set up a system in our society where people are pushed into debts like ones falling into the bottom of a well, without a way up, when they face health problems, disasters, poor choices early in life?  Does our world throw those people, whoever that is, into cycles of poverty or into the criminal justice system without a way to right their wrongs?

Since this Lord’s Prayer is Jesus’ model prayer, even if it is not exactly these words you pray, prayer that follows after Jesus’ heart, opens you this sort of change in perspective.

Even fasting, which Jesus describes here and which Dr. King was practicing in front of my surprised friend Chuck, fasting is also intended to shape our perspective into one that considers others, leading us to recognize the struggle of the neediest around us who may go without food or comfort not by choice.   As Isaiah 58 challenges us, “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?  Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? … [to] spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed…”  This why such fasting as follows after the footsteps of Jesus cannot be for show.  Its point is not to make you feel or seem big and important.  It is to challenge you to see yourself and others as God does, and be moved to respond to them at their point of need.

Any thoughts about ways we can respond to this call as individuals?  As a church?

May we follow Christ’s words, Dr. King’s example, and make time and space to return to the center, the hub of life, where our hearts connect with God’s heart and the heart of the world, so we might be renewed and transformed there by God’s presence, love, and grace.  Amen and Amen.