“The Truth About Cats and Dogs”
John 18:33-37
Todd Buegler
November 21 & 22, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God and King of creation! Amen.
There are two kinds of people in the world. There are dog people, and there are cat people. Ok...just checking...how many people here would define themselves as dog people? What about cat people?
I think that we can draw an entire theological framework around cats and dogs. You see, a dog theology would say say: "You feed me. You pet me. You shelter me. You love me. You must be God!" On the flip side, a cat theology goes like this: "You feed me. You pet me. You shelter me. You love me. I must be God."
So one way of looking at our own sense of identity is to ask ourselves the question theologically, "am I a dog, or am I a cat?"
And really, if we took the question back even one step further, the question we have to ask ourselves is really: "who's in charge?"
Today is Christ the King Sunday. It is the day in the church year that we celebrate the Lordship of Jesus. We recognize and celebrate Jesus as the King of all Creation. We acknowledge Jesus as Lord of our lives. What I have found is that while this is a pretty easy thing for us to talk about, it can be a difficult thing for us to live. In other words, while we talk the talk of the dog theology, oftentimes we live more like a cat.
We are experts at compartmentalizing our lives. We say "God, we totally give you Kingship over this part of my life. But this part over here...I want to maintain control of." We are good at giving God dominion over our Sundays...but we want to maintain control of our Mondays-Fridays." Perhaps it's work life...maybe it's our family life...or it might be a relationship that we are in...or maybe school life...whatever it is, there are parts of our lives that we tend to hold back from God.
But Christ the King Sunday is a day that reminds us that if Christ is King, he is King of all, with nothing held back. In our culture, we are not used to this. We value our independence. We value our ability to make our own decisions. We tend to rebel against anything that limits us. We don't want to be dependent on anyone or anything. If so, then we think we are perceived as weak.
And we're not used to the idea of a King. In our American culture, that's not language we're used to. That's dog language, it gives authority over to someone else. We want to feel more like cats. We want to be independent...we want to be in charge.
But the truth Jesus teaches us is a simple two-fold truth: First, we are not in charge; we are subject to a King. And second: our King is good. In our Gospel text, after Jesus was arrested, Pontius Pilate asked him "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus gives a startling answer: My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would fight for me. But my Kingdom is not here." Pilate, probably a little confused by this answer asks again "So you are a king." Jesus answers "you say that I am...for this I was born and came into the world...to testify to the truth. Those who belong to the truth listen to my voice."
To be honest, this is not an easy text. Jesus isn’t giving a clear, simple answer. But in this text, I believe that Jesus is defining his Kingdom, and his reign. He is saying that he is a different kind of King. He is not interested in the political things of this world. He is coming to bring a different kind of a monarchy. He is coming not to rule with armies...he has no interest in rebelling against the Romans. He is coming to bring truth. While most Kings had a reign over a geographic region, Jesus' reign was over a spiritual region. He is the King of all of who hear his voice, and believe in this truth. Pilate cannot begin to understand what Jesus is talking about.
Kings get mixed reviews throughout history. Certainly there have been many, many good and gracious kings. Likewise, there have been some Kings who were self-serving, or tyrants.
I actually met a King once. While a student, I was a sound tech at Gustavus Adolphus College, and we hosted the King of Sweden on campus. I was the guy who, under the close watch of the Swedish Secret Service, got to clip the King's lapel mic onto his coat. (I bet you didn't even know the King of Sweden had a secret service.) But King Carl Gustav the 16th of Sweden? He was a nice guy. I clipped on his microphone and he said "Thank you."
The role of a King is not just to rule over people. It’s not supposed to be about power. A King is supposed to be someone who “stewards”, or “tends to” the people; who takes care of them and makes sure their needs are met:
In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Denmark. Like so many other European nations, this small Scandinavian country was very quickly conquered. But the spirit of the Danish people and their king proved unquenchable. Even after the Nazis had taken control of the nation, King Christian the 10th boldly led his people, the Danes, in a quiet but courageous resistance movement.
On one occasion, the King noticed a Nazi flag flying over a public building in Copenhagen. He went to the German kommandant and asked that the flag be removed. "The flag flies", the kommandant replied. "Request denied." "I demand that it come down," said the king. "If you do not have it removed, a Danish soldier will go, will climb the flagpole and remove it." "Then he will be shot", said the kommandant. "I don't think so," said King Christian, "for I shall be that soldier." The flag was removed.
Later, the order came that all Jews were to identify themselves by wearing armbands with the yellow star of David. King Christian said that one Danish person was exactly the same as the next. So the King, who was a Christian, donned the first star of David. The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing the star of David. The King, and his people, saved over 90% of their Jewish population.
King Christian the 10th was a different sort of a King. He may have been born into his position; but ultimately, his people developed a great love and allegiance to him, because of his great love and allegiance to them. Their loyalty to him had no boundary. They would have followed him anywhere. Why? Because the love he had for his people had no boundaries. Christian the 10th was a different sort of King. He stood in the gap between his people, and evil; literally between life and death. He was a King who was a servant. He was a King worthy of being followed.
As Christians, we understand this. We know what it is to follow a different sort of King. Our King didn't climb a flagpole. Instead, our King climbed onto a cross, to give his life for his people. And no matter what kind of boundaries we create...no matter how we try to maintain lordship over our own lives, Jesus reminds us: "no, I am King; over not just a portion of your lives...over all of your lives."
And our King provides all we have, and all we need. Every aspect of our lives: the physical, emotional, relational, social, financial. Everything. This is a good reminder for us during this time of year when our church is thinking and talking about stewardship. Everything we have belongs to God. When we take credit for all the things we have, for our salary, for being able to provide for our families, we are denying the Kingship of Christ, who gives all things to us.
You should have received a stewardship pledge packet this last week. The Stewardship season is when we “steward”, or “tend to” the needs of the church. This year, like every year, Lori and I have been talking about what our pledge to the church is going to be. Over the years, we have developed a strategy: We look at our income...we look at our bills. And then we apply two criteria to our decision on what we are going to pledge: First, every year, our pledge will grow; every year we want to give away a little more of our income. Second, our giving must be a sacrifice. We have to give enough that it makes us a little uncomfortable. I know, based on the uncertainty of the economy, based on what we read in the papers, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would someone want to ensure sacrifice? Why would someone seek discomfort?
For us, uncomfortable giving, sacrificial giving, has become a spiritual discipline. It is all about trust. It is about trusting the Lord and King of our lives. We can't hold back and let Jesus be the King of all the parts of our lives except the financial. Jesus calls us to trust. Every year when we've given sacrificially, our King has shown his faithfulness and his trustworthiness. We have never been let down. We have always received more than enough to meet our needs. We haven't always been able to do everything we want...it's forced us to re-think our priorities, but usually, shortly after I stop pouting, I realize that rethinking my priorities is probably a good thing. We have learned to be leaner in our spending, to reduce debt and to refocus spending on our time and our resources together as a family.
It hasn't always been comfortable, but as we have learned to trust more and more, we have grown in our relationship with the God and King who provides. We are more thankful for what God gives us. It reminds us that Thanksgiving is not intended to be just a holiday...it is intended to be a lifestyle.
We have a different kind of a King. He is not distant. He is not aloof. He comes to us and seeks us out. He is approachable. He gives without question and he loves without condition. He cares deeply about each of one of us, without condition.
Yes, we all slip into a cat theology, where we are all the center of our own universe. That is a part of the human condition we call sin. We love to be in charge...we love to be in control...it is all too often all about me.
With all due respect to cat lovers out there, God calls us into a theology of a dog. We can say with faithfulness and confidence "You feed me. You care for me. You shelter me. You love me. You must be God! You are our King!"
The God of grace gives you all that you need...cares for you...gives you shelter in the storms of your life...loves you unconditionally and stands in the gap between life and death, for you. Our King asks that, with confidence, you trust in him.
Amen.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
"Hinges"
“Hinges”
Matthew 22:34-46
Todd Buegler
October 24 & 25, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who fulfills the promise! Amen.
Let me be the first today to say “congratulations” to all of you on this chance to affirm your baptismal vows. For most of you, baptism happened somewhere around 15 or 16 years ago, when your parents made promises for you. Today, it is your turn. And we are all very, very proud of you!
What we’ve been a part of here is about God’s work in your lives. We’d never want to reduce it all to cold, hard statistics. But, sometimes I get a little curious, so I’ve done some math and want to share with you all some statistics about your confirmation experience. There are a total of 164 of you being confirmed this weekend. You were a part of 23 different small groups that met on Wednesday nights and on retreats for a total of 88 hours of time together. Add up all that time your class gave to small groups in your faith journey and it comes out to 13,710 people hours. Together, you have all given (and this is a conservative estimate), 6,842 hours of service to people in need, and to the church. One of you did a total of 109 service hours…in one year. You have turned in a total of 4,864 worship notes. (actually, the number was 4,861, but as soon as the 3 of you still turning in the last ones on this sermon do so, it will be 4,864.) Finally, and perhaps most impressively, over three years, your class personally ate 1,122 large Domino’s pizzas. Congratulations!
And so after this 3-year journey, today we arrive at this milestone. Alongside your baptism, receiving your 3rd grade Bibles, your first communion, today is an important day, a marker in your faith. And on behalf of the church, I want to say thank you to your parents, for their bringing you to this point, for fulfilling the vows that they made at your baptism.
And I want to thank all of you for being a part of this so far; for what you’ve given…for how you’ve grown in your faith.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten to meet with, and talk with, a bunch of you in preparation for this weekend. And I’ve come to understand that even today, there is not total clarity about what this weekend is all about. Does your affirming your baptismal vows mean you’re ‘done’? No. This is not a graduation. We’re never done growing in our faith. Does it mean you’re supposed to have all of the answers? No chance. None of us have the all of the answers…as a matter of fact, the older we get, and the more answers we discover, the more questions we find.
So if today isn’t about ‘being done,' and it isn’t about ‘answers,’ what is it about?
Today is about “hinges.” Yes, I said “hinges.” Hinges, as in door-hinges...like these ones right here.
We don’t think about hinges very often…or maybe even ever. But we use them all the time. Every time you walk through a door, you are using hinges, you just don't think about it. Hinges might just be the piece of hardware that we take the most for granted. The thing that I think is kind of interesting about a hinge is that you never use one by itself. Do you know what you call a door with only one hinge? Broken. A door is useless unless it has two hinges, one on the top and the other on the bottom of the door. Without two hinges, a door just doesn’t work…it isn’t useful…it doesn’t do what it was supposed to do. For any door to work correctly it uses two hinges.
Check it out when you get home. Every door, every cupboard, every cabinet. Two hinges. Some doors will even have three. But the point is, there needs to be at least two for the door to work.
It is with this image of two hinges to make a door work that we approach the Gospel for our affirmation of baptism service today. Jesus is once again in conversation and confrontation with the Pharisees. If there was ever a group of people who approached life and religion differently than Jesus, it was the Pharisees. They were a rule-oriented bunch of people. For them, the very essence of religion was to obey the rules and regulations of scripture...the law. Their goal was to obey all of the commandments of the Old Testament.
Let’s return to statistics for just a moment…do you have any idea how many commandments there are in the Old Testament? How many rules there are? There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament. And what do you think: Are there more positive, or more negative commandments? Negative, as in “thou shall not…” versus positive, which would be “thou shall…” How many think negative? How many think positive. If you guessed “thou shall not…” you win. (your prize? Come to church next week and Pastor Peter will buy you a free donut.) There are 365 negative commandents in the Old Testament and there are 248 positive commandments. The very essence of religion during Jesus’ day was to know and obey these 613 rules; and if you messed them up, the religious leaders might throw rocks at your head. If you think confirmation might have been tough here, or that we have a lot of requirements, you’re just lucky you didn’t live 2000 years ago.
So one day, one of the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him a question in order to trap him. “Jesus, of all of the 613 rules and regulations of the Old Testament, which one is the most important?” One of these 613 rules was that no rule was important than any other…depending on how Jesus answered, they could arrest him. But Jesus didn’t bite. His reply was to go back and quote Dueteronomy 6:4: “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul.” And even though the Pharisee only asked for one, Jesus gave him two. He said “and the second one is like it…” and Jesus reached back into the book of Leviticus, chapter 18…”and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments HINGE all the law and the prophets. On these two commandments HINGE all the scriptures as the Jews knew them.
Jesus was saying that all of the 613 laws, and all the words of the prophets are like a door. And these two commandments, which if you’ll remember from your 9th grade year we call “The Jesus Ethic”, each of them is like one of these hinges.
What use are all of these 613 rules and laws? Jesus is saying “without these 2 commandments, not much.” Like a door with out hinges, rules and laws without love of God and each other don’t work, and are not much good to anyone.
During the past three years of being involved in C3, you have studied the scriptures. We spent a whole year walking through the Old and the New Testaments. And then in the other years, we had a scripture lesson attached to every week, as we looked at Lutheran belief and doctrine, at the teachings of Martin Luther, we discussed decision making and ethics, worship, the Lord’s Prayer, the 10 Commandents and the Apostle’s creed. We heard speakers at Sunday Night Festivals share their faith stories. On retreats you looked at who was Jesus…at discipleship, and just a month ago on our 'day away', at what faith and belief are.
This large body of stuff that we've learned about together is like the door. And Jesus teaches us that our two hinges are still: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.” Everything that we've learned together is hinged on these two commandments.
There are those who would want to do away with the door altogether and claim that they just need the two hinges: “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” They would argue that everything else is optional. The essence of all religion, they would say, is just boiled down to the two hinges, and that is all they need. Unfortunately, for these folks when life becomes difficult, when their faith is challenged, they won’t have the great stories of the faith, the knowledge and the understanding to stand on, to support them.
Others, all they really want is a door full of Biblical knowledge. They know a lot about the Bible and the church, they know the rules, but they really don’t love God with everything they have, nor do they really love their hurting neighbors. They are more interested in religion than they are in faith. They may know what Jesus did (past tense), but they forget what Jesus does (present tense.) They are more interested in the knowledge and in the law, than they are in loving God and loving each other. They don’t grasp the importance of the hinges.
No...to walk through a door, to enter into our faith, it is all about having both the door and the hinges, the knowledge and the love, the law, and the gospel. And Jesus invites each of us to enter into this faith.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two weeks looking at the faith statements you wrote on our Day Away at Gustavus. Thank you for great work on these. I wanted to share a few of these…they were amazing. I’m just going to come down here, and I think I’ll pick a few of you at random to read yours…no…I’m just kidding. But I did ask a few of you to share yours.
Sat: 1:30 – David Gale
Sat. 3:30 – Brady Jacobs
Sun. 1:30 – Summer Getty; Melanie Kraemer
Sun. 3:30 – Austin Kurtti; Alisha Stieg
Thank you! That is wonderful. Do you hear both the hinges in these words? Do you hear love of God? Do you hear love of neighbor? And the door is there. There is knowledge, and understanding, and it all hinges on this great love that comes from God.
10th graders: In your baptism, at the font, you were given this great gift of faith. Your parents now for 15 or 16 years have nurtured that gift. You have been given the knowledge and the understanding. And because of God’s indescribable love of you, you can hang all of these gifts on the two hinges; loving God with your whole heart, mind and soul, and loving
Ultimately, the affirmation of your baptism today is not about a ceremony...not about a robe...not about the 'stuff' that we studied together. It is about an invitation and a gift. It is God who invites you to walk through the door...to enter into a profound relationship. God does not have to do this...no, God does this because he loves you. Each one of you. Deeply.
And today is your chance to affirm that invitation...to say 'yes' to the God who first says 'yes' to you, and to walk through that door, to enter into a new relationship. And every single day, we have the opportunity to say 'yes' and to enter into that relationship.
Our prayer for you this day is that you always remember the invitation that God gives to you. May you always know that the door is made up of knowledge and understanding, but that this door hangs on hinges: God's call to love Him, and to love each other. And as you daily enter into this relationship, may you remember the gifts that God gives, and the love that God feels for you.
Amen.
Matthew 22:34-46
Todd Buegler
October 24 & 25, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who fulfills the promise! Amen.
Let me be the first today to say “congratulations” to all of you on this chance to affirm your baptismal vows. For most of you, baptism happened somewhere around 15 or 16 years ago, when your parents made promises for you. Today, it is your turn. And we are all very, very proud of you!
What we’ve been a part of here is about God’s work in your lives. We’d never want to reduce it all to cold, hard statistics. But, sometimes I get a little curious, so I’ve done some math and want to share with you all some statistics about your confirmation experience. There are a total of 164 of you being confirmed this weekend. You were a part of 23 different small groups that met on Wednesday nights and on retreats for a total of 88 hours of time together. Add up all that time your class gave to small groups in your faith journey and it comes out to 13,710 people hours. Together, you have all given (and this is a conservative estimate), 6,842 hours of service to people in need, and to the church. One of you did a total of 109 service hours…in one year. You have turned in a total of 4,864 worship notes. (actually, the number was 4,861, but as soon as the 3 of you still turning in the last ones on this sermon do so, it will be 4,864.) Finally, and perhaps most impressively, over three years, your class personally ate 1,122 large Domino’s pizzas. Congratulations!
And so after this 3-year journey, today we arrive at this milestone. Alongside your baptism, receiving your 3rd grade Bibles, your first communion, today is an important day, a marker in your faith. And on behalf of the church, I want to say thank you to your parents, for their bringing you to this point, for fulfilling the vows that they made at your baptism.
And I want to thank all of you for being a part of this so far; for what you’ve given…for how you’ve grown in your faith.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten to meet with, and talk with, a bunch of you in preparation for this weekend. And I’ve come to understand that even today, there is not total clarity about what this weekend is all about. Does your affirming your baptismal vows mean you’re ‘done’? No. This is not a graduation. We’re never done growing in our faith. Does it mean you’re supposed to have all of the answers? No chance. None of us have the all of the answers…as a matter of fact, the older we get, and the more answers we discover, the more questions we find.
So if today isn’t about ‘being done,' and it isn’t about ‘answers,’ what is it about?
Today is about “hinges.” Yes, I said “hinges.” Hinges, as in door-hinges...like these ones right here.
We don’t think about hinges very often…or maybe even ever. But we use them all the time. Every time you walk through a door, you are using hinges, you just don't think about it. Hinges might just be the piece of hardware that we take the most for granted. The thing that I think is kind of interesting about a hinge is that you never use one by itself. Do you know what you call a door with only one hinge? Broken. A door is useless unless it has two hinges, one on the top and the other on the bottom of the door. Without two hinges, a door just doesn’t work…it isn’t useful…it doesn’t do what it was supposed to do. For any door to work correctly it uses two hinges.
Check it out when you get home. Every door, every cupboard, every cabinet. Two hinges. Some doors will even have three. But the point is, there needs to be at least two for the door to work.
It is with this image of two hinges to make a door work that we approach the Gospel for our affirmation of baptism service today. Jesus is once again in conversation and confrontation with the Pharisees. If there was ever a group of people who approached life and religion differently than Jesus, it was the Pharisees. They were a rule-oriented bunch of people. For them, the very essence of religion was to obey the rules and regulations of scripture...the law. Their goal was to obey all of the commandments of the Old Testament.
Let’s return to statistics for just a moment…do you have any idea how many commandments there are in the Old Testament? How many rules there are? There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament. And what do you think: Are there more positive, or more negative commandments? Negative, as in “thou shall not…” versus positive, which would be “thou shall…” How many think negative? How many think positive. If you guessed “thou shall not…” you win. (your prize? Come to church next week and Pastor Peter will buy you a free donut.) There are 365 negative commandents in the Old Testament and there are 248 positive commandments. The very essence of religion during Jesus’ day was to know and obey these 613 rules; and if you messed them up, the religious leaders might throw rocks at your head. If you think confirmation might have been tough here, or that we have a lot of requirements, you’re just lucky you didn’t live 2000 years ago.
So one day, one of the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him a question in order to trap him. “Jesus, of all of the 613 rules and regulations of the Old Testament, which one is the most important?” One of these 613 rules was that no rule was important than any other…depending on how Jesus answered, they could arrest him. But Jesus didn’t bite. His reply was to go back and quote Dueteronomy 6:4: “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul.” And even though the Pharisee only asked for one, Jesus gave him two. He said “and the second one is like it…” and Jesus reached back into the book of Leviticus, chapter 18…”and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments HINGE all the law and the prophets. On these two commandments HINGE all the scriptures as the Jews knew them.
Jesus was saying that all of the 613 laws, and all the words of the prophets are like a door. And these two commandments, which if you’ll remember from your 9th grade year we call “The Jesus Ethic”, each of them is like one of these hinges.
What use are all of these 613 rules and laws? Jesus is saying “without these 2 commandments, not much.” Like a door with out hinges, rules and laws without love of God and each other don’t work, and are not much good to anyone.
During the past three years of being involved in C3, you have studied the scriptures. We spent a whole year walking through the Old and the New Testaments. And then in the other years, we had a scripture lesson attached to every week, as we looked at Lutheran belief and doctrine, at the teachings of Martin Luther, we discussed decision making and ethics, worship, the Lord’s Prayer, the 10 Commandents and the Apostle’s creed. We heard speakers at Sunday Night Festivals share their faith stories. On retreats you looked at who was Jesus…at discipleship, and just a month ago on our 'day away', at what faith and belief are.
This large body of stuff that we've learned about together is like the door. And Jesus teaches us that our two hinges are still: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.” Everything that we've learned together is hinged on these two commandments.
There are those who would want to do away with the door altogether and claim that they just need the two hinges: “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” They would argue that everything else is optional. The essence of all religion, they would say, is just boiled down to the two hinges, and that is all they need. Unfortunately, for these folks when life becomes difficult, when their faith is challenged, they won’t have the great stories of the faith, the knowledge and the understanding to stand on, to support them.
Others, all they really want is a door full of Biblical knowledge. They know a lot about the Bible and the church, they know the rules, but they really don’t love God with everything they have, nor do they really love their hurting neighbors. They are more interested in religion than they are in faith. They may know what Jesus did (past tense), but they forget what Jesus does (present tense.) They are more interested in the knowledge and in the law, than they are in loving God and loving each other. They don’t grasp the importance of the hinges.
No...to walk through a door, to enter into our faith, it is all about having both the door and the hinges, the knowledge and the love, the law, and the gospel. And Jesus invites each of us to enter into this faith.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two weeks looking at the faith statements you wrote on our Day Away at Gustavus. Thank you for great work on these. I wanted to share a few of these…they were amazing. I’m just going to come down here, and I think I’ll pick a few of you at random to read yours…no…I’m just kidding. But I did ask a few of you to share yours.
Sat: 1:30 – David Gale
Sat. 3:30 – Brady Jacobs
Sun. 1:30 – Summer Getty; Melanie Kraemer
Sun. 3:30 – Austin Kurtti; Alisha Stieg
Thank you! That is wonderful. Do you hear both the hinges in these words? Do you hear love of God? Do you hear love of neighbor? And the door is there. There is knowledge, and understanding, and it all hinges on this great love that comes from God.
10th graders: In your baptism, at the font, you were given this great gift of faith. Your parents now for 15 or 16 years have nurtured that gift. You have been given the knowledge and the understanding. And because of God’s indescribable love of you, you can hang all of these gifts on the two hinges; loving God with your whole heart, mind and soul, and loving
Ultimately, the affirmation of your baptism today is not about a ceremony...not about a robe...not about the 'stuff' that we studied together. It is about an invitation and a gift. It is God who invites you to walk through the door...to enter into a profound relationship. God does not have to do this...no, God does this because he loves you. Each one of you. Deeply.
And today is your chance to affirm that invitation...to say 'yes' to the God who first says 'yes' to you, and to walk through that door, to enter into a new relationship. And every single day, we have the opportunity to say 'yes' and to enter into that relationship.
Our prayer for you this day is that you always remember the invitation that God gives to you. May you always know that the door is made up of knowledge and understanding, but that this door hangs on hinges: God's call to love Him, and to love each other. And as you daily enter into this relationship, may you remember the gifts that God gives, and the love that God feels for you.
Amen.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
"When Rules Become Religion"
“When Rules Become Religion”
Mark 7:1-8; 14-15 & 21-23
Todd Buegler
August 29-31, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who washes our sins away! Amen.
A father opens the door to greet his daughter’s date. There stands a young man, cap on sideways, hair dyed black and greasy, jeans that sag practically to his knees, tattoos up and down the arms, body piercings in the face, the nose, the lip, the ears, and wearing a set of ipod earphones. “Hello”, says Dad. “You must be here to pick up Chelsea?” The young man grunts hello and walks in past Dad, giving off the unmistakable vibe of “bored.”
The father is more than a little taken back. He goes upstairs where his daughter is finishing getting ready. “I don’t think you should go out with this boy,” says Dad. “He doesn’t look like a nice person.” The daughter is shocked. “Daddy,” she says, “That’s a terrible thing to say! If he wasn’t such a nice person, why would he be doing five hundred hours of community service?”
With apologies to my tattooed and body pierced friends, let’s be honest: While often you can’t judge a book by its cover, sometimes you can!
And humans are great at judging. I think it’s a part of our human nature. Even though we know we shouldn’t, we do. And it is easiest for us to judge based on the things that we can see; on the external.
Our Gospel lesson for today is all about judgment, and about righteousness. On what basis can a person be judged, and how does a person become righteous? In our story, the Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law had come from Jerusalem. As they gathered around Jesus, before they even spoke to him, they saw something that shocked and alarmed them: they saw his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. To put it into complicated theological terms, they freaked out. They rushed right over to Jesus, who was, as we know, a Jewish rabbi, and asked “Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions and the laws?”
At this point, it would be easy to start ripping on the Pharisee’s for being narrow minded and judgmental. But I do think we need to cut them just a bit of slack. In the Jewish cultural and political system, they were the ones whose job was to preserve the religious law. And clearly in this situation, the law was being broken.
You see, Jewish law, going all the way back to the time of Moses, required that devoted Jews did not eat unless they gave their hands a ceremonial washing. These laws were common, and well known. Psalm 24:3-4a asks the question: “Who shall ascent the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…” Of course the Pharisee’s, who were a bit obsessed with following the law, were going to make a point of highlighting when others aren’t following the law. These people, they believed, the ones with dirty hands, they would never be able to stand in the presence of God.
So this story is not really a story about hand washing. The Pharisee’s who stormed over to Jesus were asking a really serious question. They were asking Jesus “why don’t your disciples (and by default, you) have to follow the law?”
This was an indignant, “just who do you think you are?” question. But Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he annoys them by ignoring their question and answering a different question…one that the Pharisee’s didn’t ask, but which is really at the heart of their concern. It was a theological question. It was a question about what Christ’s church was to become. The real question at hand was “Who is worthy to come into the presence of the Lord?”
Understanding the context in this story is everything, and we have to remember that in the time of Jesus, God was perceived as being separate from the people. God was distant. And humans were not even worthy of being in the presence of God. Even the temple, their cultural, social and spiritual center for the Jewish people reinforced this separation. It was set up as a series of concentric squares. How far you could go into the temple depended on how “righteous” you were in the eyes of the law. Anyone could be in the courtyard. In the next area, the great court, the Jewish people could come to worship. In the next area, the “inner court”, only the religious leaders could enter. Inside that was the “Holy Place”, where only the priests could enter. And beyond that was the inner chamber, called the “Most Holy Place”, where the high priest would enter only once a year, to actually be in the presence of God…after going through a complicated cleansing ritual to ‘make himself right…to make himself worthy’. The Most Holy Place was separated from the other rooms by a large, heavy curtain. For all practical purposes, the Jews believed that it was in this place, behind this curtain, where God lived…separated from God’s chosen people.
Please understand that God had originally given the law as a tool to help people live righteous lives, to become worthy to be in God’s presence. But over time, this was were flipped over and the law was used as a tool to judge who was not living righteous lives.
Jesus saw what was in the hearts and minds of the Pharisees, and he wasn’t afraid to call it like it was. In response to the Pharisee’s challenge, He quoted verses from the prophet Isaiah…verses that the Pharisee’s would be very familiar with. Only here, Jesus was aiming these verses squarely at the Pharisees. He said: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the human traditions.” In other words, you are all missing the point. Whether the disciples have performed the ritual hand washing has nothing to do with whether they are or are not worthy of the presence of God, and the scriptures you use to justify your position, you use as a club to hurt others.
In the best traditions of the Pharisee’s, people have misused scripture this way throughout time. As a history student in college, I studied the growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Watonwan County, Minnesota, where my extended family has lived and farmed. In the late 18 and early 1900’s, Watonwan County was a hotbed of KKK activity. There, they focused largely on anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. In my research, I found an old history book of the county. Printed in the book was a copy of a flyer that the KKK distributed inviting people to a rally. In big type face on the top of the flyer was a verse from the Old Testament; a verse that the Ku Klux Klan used to justify their actions.
To do this is wrong. Scripture, both law and Gospel, are gifts. To use them as a club, as a way of justifying immoral and violent actions, or of judging others as not worthy, is dangerous and wrong.
In our Gospel, Jesus was telling the Pharisee’s that they were misusing scripture. He is telling them that their rules had become their religion, and what makes someone acceptable to God, what fulfills the law, isn’t the external and the visible…it’s not about washing hands…it’s about what affects someone internally…it’s about what’s in the heart.
Several years ago, I had a conversation with a high school kid. We were on a 10th grade retreat, and we had started talking. Suddenly, in the middle of a conversation about the high school basketball team she played on she just blurted out: “I don’t really come to the youth group.” There was an awkward silence, but I could tell that she wanted to say more. So I asked “why is that?” And she said “well, it just seems like all those kids are hypocrites. They come to youth group on Monday nights, but on Friday nights after that I’ll seem them out at parties and they’re doing the same stuff as everyone else. But on Sunday at worship, or on Monday at youth group, they’re right back at church praying, like nothing happened. They’re hypocrites.”
A long silence; then I said: “Absolutely. They are. But so are you; and so am I. We’re all trying. But we all still sin. We’re trying to be better, but as often as not, we mess up…” It wasn’t the answer she expected.
One of my theological heroes, Tony Campolo, wrote about this hypocrisy. He said that “for someone to be critical of the church for being full of hypocrites is like someone who says “hey, that’s a really beautiful new hospital, too bad it’s full of all those sick people!” Sick people are why a hospital exists! Likewise, sinful people are why a church exists. The church is like a spiritual hospital for sinners. It isn’t a place for people with perfect hearts…the church is a place for sinners…it’s a place for people who, like the disciples, have dirty hands and dirty hearts, it’s a place for hypocrites who worship on Sunday, and sin on Monday.
You see, unless we understand that we are broken…that we are sinful…that we aren’t even worthy of being in the presence of God, we will never stand a chance of knowing and understanding God. And Jesus is clear in our Gospel: The sin that separates us from God is not about the external. It’s not about whether we follow the law to the letter…it’s not about the kind of music we listen to…it’s not about how we dress or who we hang out with or our body piercings or our tattoos. What separates us from God is internal. It’s about what’s within our hearts.
Jesus says that it is “from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” We live in a state, or a condition of sin…our Lutheran confession says that we are “captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” From the inside out…we are stuck in sin, and Jesus knows that no amount of our scrubbing your hands…no amount of anything that we try to do…no rules…no laws…no sense of legalism is going to get us unstuck from this. And we are here in this Sanctuary, this hospital for sinners, because we know that we need help.
And Jesus gives each of you this help. He is not a distant God. Do you remember what happened when Jesus was crucified and breathed his last? All the people heard the sound…the sound of the temple curtain, that curtain that separated God from God’s people being torn in two. There was no more separation…there was no more distance. This was an important sign: Jesus is in this with you. Jesus is present. Jesus comes to you…it’s not about you coming to Jesus and making sure that your mind, hearts and hands are clean. Jesus has torn the curtain, broken the separation, and accepts you as you are and then works in your heart to change you.
Jesus wants to transform you from the inside out, not from the outside in. In Galatians 5, Paul writes “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Whatever the condition of your heart…whatever dirt you carry…whatever guilt you feel, Jesus wants to free you from it, and to make you clean. Jesus wants to give you a new, clean heart; a heart of faith, a heart of hope, and a heart of love.
And so today we stand at the door, like the date meeting the Father for the first time. We are imperfect; we’ve all got history we’re not proud of…our hands may be dirty… we may have our tattoos, our scars, our piercings…but God looks at our hearts, which Jesus has made clean because of love, and God swings the door wide open and with joy in his voice says “You are mine, and my love and grace are for you. Welcome!”
Receive that gift. Have your heart cleaned and filled by Christ. Let go of your need to do things to qualify for God’s grace, and accept that you are welcomed not because of your attempts to follow the law, but because of the love and grace of Jesus.
Amen.
Mark 7:1-8; 14-15 & 21-23
Todd Buegler
August 29-31, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who washes our sins away! Amen.
A father opens the door to greet his daughter’s date. There stands a young man, cap on sideways, hair dyed black and greasy, jeans that sag practically to his knees, tattoos up and down the arms, body piercings in the face, the nose, the lip, the ears, and wearing a set of ipod earphones. “Hello”, says Dad. “You must be here to pick up Chelsea?” The young man grunts hello and walks in past Dad, giving off the unmistakable vibe of “bored.”
The father is more than a little taken back. He goes upstairs where his daughter is finishing getting ready. “I don’t think you should go out with this boy,” says Dad. “He doesn’t look like a nice person.” The daughter is shocked. “Daddy,” she says, “That’s a terrible thing to say! If he wasn’t such a nice person, why would he be doing five hundred hours of community service?”
With apologies to my tattooed and body pierced friends, let’s be honest: While often you can’t judge a book by its cover, sometimes you can!
And humans are great at judging. I think it’s a part of our human nature. Even though we know we shouldn’t, we do. And it is easiest for us to judge based on the things that we can see; on the external.
Our Gospel lesson for today is all about judgment, and about righteousness. On what basis can a person be judged, and how does a person become righteous? In our story, the Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law had come from Jerusalem. As they gathered around Jesus, before they even spoke to him, they saw something that shocked and alarmed them: they saw his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. To put it into complicated theological terms, they freaked out. They rushed right over to Jesus, who was, as we know, a Jewish rabbi, and asked “Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions and the laws?”
At this point, it would be easy to start ripping on the Pharisee’s for being narrow minded and judgmental. But I do think we need to cut them just a bit of slack. In the Jewish cultural and political system, they were the ones whose job was to preserve the religious law. And clearly in this situation, the law was being broken.
You see, Jewish law, going all the way back to the time of Moses, required that devoted Jews did not eat unless they gave their hands a ceremonial washing. These laws were common, and well known. Psalm 24:3-4a asks the question: “Who shall ascent the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…” Of course the Pharisee’s, who were a bit obsessed with following the law, were going to make a point of highlighting when others aren’t following the law. These people, they believed, the ones with dirty hands, they would never be able to stand in the presence of God.
So this story is not really a story about hand washing. The Pharisee’s who stormed over to Jesus were asking a really serious question. They were asking Jesus “why don’t your disciples (and by default, you) have to follow the law?”
This was an indignant, “just who do you think you are?” question. But Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he annoys them by ignoring their question and answering a different question…one that the Pharisee’s didn’t ask, but which is really at the heart of their concern. It was a theological question. It was a question about what Christ’s church was to become. The real question at hand was “Who is worthy to come into the presence of the Lord?”
Understanding the context in this story is everything, and we have to remember that in the time of Jesus, God was perceived as being separate from the people. God was distant. And humans were not even worthy of being in the presence of God. Even the temple, their cultural, social and spiritual center for the Jewish people reinforced this separation. It was set up as a series of concentric squares. How far you could go into the temple depended on how “righteous” you were in the eyes of the law. Anyone could be in the courtyard. In the next area, the great court, the Jewish people could come to worship. In the next area, the “inner court”, only the religious leaders could enter. Inside that was the “Holy Place”, where only the priests could enter. And beyond that was the inner chamber, called the “Most Holy Place”, where the high priest would enter only once a year, to actually be in the presence of God…after going through a complicated cleansing ritual to ‘make himself right…to make himself worthy’. The Most Holy Place was separated from the other rooms by a large, heavy curtain. For all practical purposes, the Jews believed that it was in this place, behind this curtain, where God lived…separated from God’s chosen people.
Please understand that God had originally given the law as a tool to help people live righteous lives, to become worthy to be in God’s presence. But over time, this was were flipped over and the law was used as a tool to judge who was not living righteous lives.
Jesus saw what was in the hearts and minds of the Pharisees, and he wasn’t afraid to call it like it was. In response to the Pharisee’s challenge, He quoted verses from the prophet Isaiah…verses that the Pharisee’s would be very familiar with. Only here, Jesus was aiming these verses squarely at the Pharisees. He said: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the human traditions.” In other words, you are all missing the point. Whether the disciples have performed the ritual hand washing has nothing to do with whether they are or are not worthy of the presence of God, and the scriptures you use to justify your position, you use as a club to hurt others.
In the best traditions of the Pharisee’s, people have misused scripture this way throughout time. As a history student in college, I studied the growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Watonwan County, Minnesota, where my extended family has lived and farmed. In the late 18 and early 1900’s, Watonwan County was a hotbed of KKK activity. There, they focused largely on anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. In my research, I found an old history book of the county. Printed in the book was a copy of a flyer that the KKK distributed inviting people to a rally. In big type face on the top of the flyer was a verse from the Old Testament; a verse that the Ku Klux Klan used to justify their actions.
To do this is wrong. Scripture, both law and Gospel, are gifts. To use them as a club, as a way of justifying immoral and violent actions, or of judging others as not worthy, is dangerous and wrong.
In our Gospel, Jesus was telling the Pharisee’s that they were misusing scripture. He is telling them that their rules had become their religion, and what makes someone acceptable to God, what fulfills the law, isn’t the external and the visible…it’s not about washing hands…it’s about what affects someone internally…it’s about what’s in the heart.
Several years ago, I had a conversation with a high school kid. We were on a 10th grade retreat, and we had started talking. Suddenly, in the middle of a conversation about the high school basketball team she played on she just blurted out: “I don’t really come to the youth group.” There was an awkward silence, but I could tell that she wanted to say more. So I asked “why is that?” And she said “well, it just seems like all those kids are hypocrites. They come to youth group on Monday nights, but on Friday nights after that I’ll seem them out at parties and they’re doing the same stuff as everyone else. But on Sunday at worship, or on Monday at youth group, they’re right back at church praying, like nothing happened. They’re hypocrites.”
A long silence; then I said: “Absolutely. They are. But so are you; and so am I. We’re all trying. But we all still sin. We’re trying to be better, but as often as not, we mess up…” It wasn’t the answer she expected.
One of my theological heroes, Tony Campolo, wrote about this hypocrisy. He said that “for someone to be critical of the church for being full of hypocrites is like someone who says “hey, that’s a really beautiful new hospital, too bad it’s full of all those sick people!” Sick people are why a hospital exists! Likewise, sinful people are why a church exists. The church is like a spiritual hospital for sinners. It isn’t a place for people with perfect hearts…the church is a place for sinners…it’s a place for people who, like the disciples, have dirty hands and dirty hearts, it’s a place for hypocrites who worship on Sunday, and sin on Monday.
You see, unless we understand that we are broken…that we are sinful…that we aren’t even worthy of being in the presence of God, we will never stand a chance of knowing and understanding God. And Jesus is clear in our Gospel: The sin that separates us from God is not about the external. It’s not about whether we follow the law to the letter…it’s not about the kind of music we listen to…it’s not about how we dress or who we hang out with or our body piercings or our tattoos. What separates us from God is internal. It’s about what’s within our hearts.
Jesus says that it is “from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” We live in a state, or a condition of sin…our Lutheran confession says that we are “captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” From the inside out…we are stuck in sin, and Jesus knows that no amount of our scrubbing your hands…no amount of anything that we try to do…no rules…no laws…no sense of legalism is going to get us unstuck from this. And we are here in this Sanctuary, this hospital for sinners, because we know that we need help.
And Jesus gives each of you this help. He is not a distant God. Do you remember what happened when Jesus was crucified and breathed his last? All the people heard the sound…the sound of the temple curtain, that curtain that separated God from God’s people being torn in two. There was no more separation…there was no more distance. This was an important sign: Jesus is in this with you. Jesus is present. Jesus comes to you…it’s not about you coming to Jesus and making sure that your mind, hearts and hands are clean. Jesus has torn the curtain, broken the separation, and accepts you as you are and then works in your heart to change you.
Jesus wants to transform you from the inside out, not from the outside in. In Galatians 5, Paul writes “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Whatever the condition of your heart…whatever dirt you carry…whatever guilt you feel, Jesus wants to free you from it, and to make you clean. Jesus wants to give you a new, clean heart; a heart of faith, a heart of hope, and a heart of love.
And so today we stand at the door, like the date meeting the Father for the first time. We are imperfect; we’ve all got history we’re not proud of…our hands may be dirty… we may have our tattoos, our scars, our piercings…but God looks at our hearts, which Jesus has made clean because of love, and God swings the door wide open and with joy in his voice says “You are mine, and my love and grace are for you. Welcome!”
Receive that gift. Have your heart cleaned and filled by Christ. Let go of your need to do things to qualify for God’s grace, and accept that you are welcomed not because of your attempts to follow the law, but because of the love and grace of Jesus.
Amen.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
"Blue Highways"
“Blue Highways”
Ephesians 1:3-14
Todd Buegler
July 11-13, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who show us the way! Amen.
I have a theory: My theory is this: There are two kinds of people in the world. There are “Red Highway” people, and there are “Blue highway people.”
If you look on a map, the highways that are printed in red are the interstate freeways and the major highways that run across our country, from major city to major city. Red highway people are those who are generally interested in hopping on these expressways and getting to their destination as quickly as possible. Their goal is simply to get somewhere, be it on vacation…to work…to visit someone…their goal in any kind of travel or trip is simply the destination.
The blue highways on a map are those smaller highways, often just 2 lanes, that spread across our nation like a spider web, linking smaller towns. Blue highway people, those who prefer these roads, are more interested in the journey. They like to look around. They revel in the trip…and they see the journey as being at least as important as the arrival.
Now let me be clear. There’s nothing wrong with either one. It’s just about being a bit of a different personality type. Ok…a little poll…how many of you think that you’re probably a red highway person? How many of you have a higher quality personality and are blue highway people? I’m kidding…
You see, I am mostly a blue highway person, kind of in the tradition of Clark Griswald, of the movie “Vacation.” You know the type: “Look honey! The world’s biggest ball of twine! Should we stop?” When our family goes to the north shore, even though we might spend some time on the interstate, it’s a blue highway trip. We stop in Duluth for lunch…we wander around canal park. We then drift up highway 61. We might stop here or there at an interesting looking shop…or to grab ice cream. We might wander around split rock lighthouse…we’ll stop and climb around on the rocks on the Lake Superior shore. We’re not in a hurry. The point isn’t necessarily the destination, though we like that too…but it’s being together on the journey.
Our epistle lesson today is clearly a blue highway lesson. Please join me in taking a look at the scripture text from Ephesians 1. In your pew Bibles, it can be found on page _____.
In the time when the Apostle Paul lived, the main form of communication was the writing of letters. Greek letters, like this one from Paul to the Christians living in Ephesus, always began with a greeting, found here in verses 1 & 2. That was usually followed by a brief thanksgiving, or a brief wish for the health and well-being of the recipients. This was usually just a couple of verses.
In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, this brief declaration…well, it’s not so brief. If this were given as a grace before supper, you would guarantee that everyone’s dinner was cold long before you got to eat. It is a meandering, wandering blue highway kind of blessing. It travels through all the dramatic, scenic theological points of interest that are on the way to praising God for enabling early Christians to be God's own people.
In verses 3-9, Paul’s lengthy thanksgiving tells the Christian story and gives thanks for what God has done. What is God’s intent in doing these things? In verse 10 Paul writes that God has done these things to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In verse 11, Paul writes of our role in the plan. He writes that for these things to happen, we should live in accordance with God’s will, to put our hope first in Christ, and to praise God’s glory
In short, Paul is saying “God does have a plan for life here on earth…for unity, for peace and for life abundant. This plan…it is glorious...it is amazing…and you are it.” We, with the help of the Holy Spirit, are God’s plan for the bringing of God’s Kingdom to earth.
So then…what does God’s Kingdom look like?
The town of Witts Spring, Arkansas has a population of 100. The 1997 graduating class of Witts Springs High School has 41 students. Witts Spring High School isn’t exactly an athletic powerhouse. But they do field teams, and they manage to produce athletes that take team play to a new level.
“In a basketball game with rival Leslie High School, The Witts Springs Panthers trailed by over 30 points with just two minutes to go. The fans began to chant, ‘Put in Scotty. Scot‑TEE! Scot‑TEE! Scot‑TEE!’ Coach Nash, obliged and inserted senior guard Scotty Harmon. Harmon has cerebral palsy.
In the newspaper account of the game from the Arkansas Gazette, columnist Larry Pillow writes that “Scotty Harmon received a pass, alone and unguarded on the perimeter, and flung the ball toward the hoop. He missed. His teammates scrambled for the rebound and instead of taking another shot, passed back to Scotty and gave him a second chance. He missed again, which started another fight for the ball.
Coach Nash said “‘The kids know when Scotty’s in there, their game is over. They’re doing it for him now; the atmosphere changes. If they’re worn out, they’ll break their necks to get that rebound. Our kids will go above everybody to get the ball to Scotty.’
“On his fourth try, Harmon sunk a three pointer. Fans on both sides of the gym erupted in cheers. A few moments later, the buzzer sounded. The scoreboard said Leslie 89, Witts Springs 58”
This game was over long before the buzzer. Every person in the gym knew this to be true. But the fans, Coach Nash, and the members of the team had decided that even though the end was pre-determined, they were going to pay attention to how they got to that end. They could have folded up. They could have gotten sulkey. They could have gotten chippy. They didn’t. They treated those last few moments of the game as a gift. And they chose to give that gift to Scotty. This is a blue highway decision. And this is what the Kingdom of God looks like.
In our Christian faith, we know the outcome. The end result was determined over 2000 years ago through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On Easter morning, the buzzer sounded and the angels erupted in cheers and ‘Alleluias”. Death was defeated and we were given new life. Game over. The victory is ours.
What then we do with our lives then is a gift…pure gift. And we get to choose how we will use this gift. But it is so easily forget…it is so easy for us to lose track of God’s will for us.
Many of you are aware that our youngest son, Samuel, who is 6, was hospitalized a few weeks ago. To be honest, it was pretty scary. He developed a strep group-A infection that settled into his wrist joint. There was concern about the infection going into his bone, or into his blood stream. But 5 days, 18 doctors, 2 hospitals, 1 surgery, 1 procedure and a whole lot of antibiotics later, Sam was on the road to recovery. We cannot, by the way, even find words to express our gratitude to all of you for your prayers and support. We’re now halfway through the 6-weeks of ‘at home’ IV antibiotics for Sam, and he’s doing much better.
I learned a lot in the past month. I learned about antibiotics…bacteria… hospitals…insurance…surgery…anesthesia…
But I also learned a lot about my life and my faith. I learned what it was like to be totally dependent on people who I didn’t even know. I learned what amazing people doctors, nurses and others in the health care field can be. I learned about trust. I learned that I, like many of us, sometimes find myself cruising the red highway and that I miss things…I would take them for granted. I learned again about the preciousness of life, and the preciousness of the life and faith journey that we are all on.
I learned that sometimes I need to stop. To breathe deeply. To think. To pray. God has clearly been working in our family in the last month, through the medical professionals, through family, through all of you. I was reminded that I can see the different ways God works, if I just look.
I learned that I am dependent on God’s Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that Paul writes about In verse 14. Here, he writes that the Holy Spirit is God’s pledge guaranteeing our inheritance. In New Testament Greek, the word used there for “pledge” is arrabon, which means deposit or down payment. Paul is saying that God’s Holy Spirit is the first installment of God's kingdom that we're invited to experience every day of our lives. It is just a taste of what is to come.
God cares so much about our day-to-day, nine-to-five, overtime/overdrawn, understaffed/overworked existence that God found a way to redecorate and revitalize our realities with the presence of the Holy Spirit. There's no work we do, no task we accomplish, no agenda we plow through, that can't be transformed by God's kingdom which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is able to make your everyday life into a life that expresses the wonder and glory of of God's love and grace.
But even though God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is always given…even though it’s always present, how we respond to that is still our choice. Just as we have to intentionally choose to turn off onto a blue highway instead of staying on the red expressway, we must train ourselves to live our lives in the now…to be people who pay attention to the Holy Spirit’s work on the journey.
How do we do this?
Do you remember what they teach children about crossing streets on bikes? 4 things that I think can help us on our spiritual travels: Stop. Look. Listen and then Go.
Stop. We need to stop the frantic rush and fury of our lives and be still to know the presence of God.
Look. If we want to experience God's presence in the unexpected places of our lives, we have to train our eyes to look, to see the evidence of God's presence in our lives and in the world around us.
Listen. Listen for the voice of God. Spend time in the Scriptures. Listen to the words of Jesus. Give attention to the witness of the way the Spirit of Christ is at work in other people's lives. Having done those three, we can:
Go. Go into life with a new awareness and a new confidence that the God who is with us will fulfill his good purpose in our lives.
Stopping, looking and listening before going allows us to pay attention to the journey. It is a way of taking our fast-paced, red-highway lives and of transforming them into blue highway journeys that tend to what the Holy Spirit is up to.
Occasionally, life is going to be a rush…sometimes it just has to be that way. But please don’t mistake that for a lifestyle. Life isn’t supposed to be a footrace to the end…it is a journey that pays attention to the Kingdom of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit, here and now.
Take the exit ramp. Pull onto the blue highway. Stop, look, listen and then go.
Live and experience the journey that is our faith. God’s Holy Spirit is a gift…an amazing gift…and it is for you.
Amen.
Ephesians 1:3-14
Todd Buegler
July 11-13, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who show us the way! Amen.
I have a theory: My theory is this: There are two kinds of people in the world. There are “Red Highway” people, and there are “Blue highway people.”
If you look on a map, the highways that are printed in red are the interstate freeways and the major highways that run across our country, from major city to major city. Red highway people are those who are generally interested in hopping on these expressways and getting to their destination as quickly as possible. Their goal is simply to get somewhere, be it on vacation…to work…to visit someone…their goal in any kind of travel or trip is simply the destination.
The blue highways on a map are those smaller highways, often just 2 lanes, that spread across our nation like a spider web, linking smaller towns. Blue highway people, those who prefer these roads, are more interested in the journey. They like to look around. They revel in the trip…and they see the journey as being at least as important as the arrival.
Now let me be clear. There’s nothing wrong with either one. It’s just about being a bit of a different personality type. Ok…a little poll…how many of you think that you’re probably a red highway person? How many of you have a higher quality personality and are blue highway people? I’m kidding…
You see, I am mostly a blue highway person, kind of in the tradition of Clark Griswald, of the movie “Vacation.” You know the type: “Look honey! The world’s biggest ball of twine! Should we stop?” When our family goes to the north shore, even though we might spend some time on the interstate, it’s a blue highway trip. We stop in Duluth for lunch…we wander around canal park. We then drift up highway 61. We might stop here or there at an interesting looking shop…or to grab ice cream. We might wander around split rock lighthouse…we’ll stop and climb around on the rocks on the Lake Superior shore. We’re not in a hurry. The point isn’t necessarily the destination, though we like that too…but it’s being together on the journey.
Our epistle lesson today is clearly a blue highway lesson. Please join me in taking a look at the scripture text from Ephesians 1. In your pew Bibles, it can be found on page _____.
In the time when the Apostle Paul lived, the main form of communication was the writing of letters. Greek letters, like this one from Paul to the Christians living in Ephesus, always began with a greeting, found here in verses 1 & 2. That was usually followed by a brief thanksgiving, or a brief wish for the health and well-being of the recipients. This was usually just a couple of verses.
In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, this brief declaration…well, it’s not so brief. If this were given as a grace before supper, you would guarantee that everyone’s dinner was cold long before you got to eat. It is a meandering, wandering blue highway kind of blessing. It travels through all the dramatic, scenic theological points of interest that are on the way to praising God for enabling early Christians to be God's own people.
In verses 3-9, Paul’s lengthy thanksgiving tells the Christian story and gives thanks for what God has done. What is God’s intent in doing these things? In verse 10 Paul writes that God has done these things to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In verse 11, Paul writes of our role in the plan. He writes that for these things to happen, we should live in accordance with God’s will, to put our hope first in Christ, and to praise God’s glory
In short, Paul is saying “God does have a plan for life here on earth…for unity, for peace and for life abundant. This plan…it is glorious...it is amazing…and you are it.” We, with the help of the Holy Spirit, are God’s plan for the bringing of God’s Kingdom to earth.
So then…what does God’s Kingdom look like?
The town of Witts Spring, Arkansas has a population of 100. The 1997 graduating class of Witts Springs High School has 41 students. Witts Spring High School isn’t exactly an athletic powerhouse. But they do field teams, and they manage to produce athletes that take team play to a new level.
“In a basketball game with rival Leslie High School, The Witts Springs Panthers trailed by over 30 points with just two minutes to go. The fans began to chant, ‘Put in Scotty. Scot‑TEE! Scot‑TEE! Scot‑TEE!’ Coach Nash, obliged and inserted senior guard Scotty Harmon. Harmon has cerebral palsy.
In the newspaper account of the game from the Arkansas Gazette, columnist Larry Pillow writes that “Scotty Harmon received a pass, alone and unguarded on the perimeter, and flung the ball toward the hoop. He missed. His teammates scrambled for the rebound and instead of taking another shot, passed back to Scotty and gave him a second chance. He missed again, which started another fight for the ball.
Coach Nash said “‘The kids know when Scotty’s in there, their game is over. They’re doing it for him now; the atmosphere changes. If they’re worn out, they’ll break their necks to get that rebound. Our kids will go above everybody to get the ball to Scotty.’
“On his fourth try, Harmon sunk a three pointer. Fans on both sides of the gym erupted in cheers. A few moments later, the buzzer sounded. The scoreboard said Leslie 89, Witts Springs 58”
This game was over long before the buzzer. Every person in the gym knew this to be true. But the fans, Coach Nash, and the members of the team had decided that even though the end was pre-determined, they were going to pay attention to how they got to that end. They could have folded up. They could have gotten sulkey. They could have gotten chippy. They didn’t. They treated those last few moments of the game as a gift. And they chose to give that gift to Scotty. This is a blue highway decision. And this is what the Kingdom of God looks like.
In our Christian faith, we know the outcome. The end result was determined over 2000 years ago through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On Easter morning, the buzzer sounded and the angels erupted in cheers and ‘Alleluias”. Death was defeated and we were given new life. Game over. The victory is ours.
What then we do with our lives then is a gift…pure gift. And we get to choose how we will use this gift. But it is so easily forget…it is so easy for us to lose track of God’s will for us.
Many of you are aware that our youngest son, Samuel, who is 6, was hospitalized a few weeks ago. To be honest, it was pretty scary. He developed a strep group-A infection that settled into his wrist joint. There was concern about the infection going into his bone, or into his blood stream. But 5 days, 18 doctors, 2 hospitals, 1 surgery, 1 procedure and a whole lot of antibiotics later, Sam was on the road to recovery. We cannot, by the way, even find words to express our gratitude to all of you for your prayers and support. We’re now halfway through the 6-weeks of ‘at home’ IV antibiotics for Sam, and he’s doing much better.
I learned a lot in the past month. I learned about antibiotics…bacteria… hospitals…insurance…surgery…anesthesia…
But I also learned a lot about my life and my faith. I learned what it was like to be totally dependent on people who I didn’t even know. I learned what amazing people doctors, nurses and others in the health care field can be. I learned about trust. I learned that I, like many of us, sometimes find myself cruising the red highway and that I miss things…I would take them for granted. I learned again about the preciousness of life, and the preciousness of the life and faith journey that we are all on.
I learned that sometimes I need to stop. To breathe deeply. To think. To pray. God has clearly been working in our family in the last month, through the medical professionals, through family, through all of you. I was reminded that I can see the different ways God works, if I just look.
I learned that I am dependent on God’s Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that Paul writes about In verse 14. Here, he writes that the Holy Spirit is God’s pledge guaranteeing our inheritance. In New Testament Greek, the word used there for “pledge” is arrabon, which means deposit or down payment. Paul is saying that God’s Holy Spirit is the first installment of God's kingdom that we're invited to experience every day of our lives. It is just a taste of what is to come.
God cares so much about our day-to-day, nine-to-five, overtime/overdrawn, understaffed/overworked existence that God found a way to redecorate and revitalize our realities with the presence of the Holy Spirit. There's no work we do, no task we accomplish, no agenda we plow through, that can't be transformed by God's kingdom which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is able to make your everyday life into a life that expresses the wonder and glory of of God's love and grace.
But even though God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is always given…even though it’s always present, how we respond to that is still our choice. Just as we have to intentionally choose to turn off onto a blue highway instead of staying on the red expressway, we must train ourselves to live our lives in the now…to be people who pay attention to the Holy Spirit’s work on the journey.
How do we do this?
Do you remember what they teach children about crossing streets on bikes? 4 things that I think can help us on our spiritual travels: Stop. Look. Listen and then Go.
Stop. We need to stop the frantic rush and fury of our lives and be still to know the presence of God.
Look. If we want to experience God's presence in the unexpected places of our lives, we have to train our eyes to look, to see the evidence of God's presence in our lives and in the world around us.
Listen. Listen for the voice of God. Spend time in the Scriptures. Listen to the words of Jesus. Give attention to the witness of the way the Spirit of Christ is at work in other people's lives. Having done those three, we can:
Go. Go into life with a new awareness and a new confidence that the God who is with us will fulfill his good purpose in our lives.
Stopping, looking and listening before going allows us to pay attention to the journey. It is a way of taking our fast-paced, red-highway lives and of transforming them into blue highway journeys that tend to what the Holy Spirit is up to.
Occasionally, life is going to be a rush…sometimes it just has to be that way. But please don’t mistake that for a lifestyle. Life isn’t supposed to be a footrace to the end…it is a journey that pays attention to the Kingdom of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit, here and now.
Take the exit ramp. Pull onto the blue highway. Stop, look, listen and then go.
Live and experience the journey that is our faith. God’s Holy Spirit is a gift…an amazing gift…and it is for you.
Amen.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
"Friend Request"
“Friend Request”
John 15:9-17
Todd Buegler
May 16-17, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who calls us friend! Amen.
I have 887 friends. 887. I know this number, because Facebook tells me so. Every time I log on to Facebook, the popular social networking site, it gives me a running count of the number of friends I have. It shows me who would like to be my friend, it suggest people who I might like to be friends with, and then tells me what all these different people are up to. 887 and climbing.
Now, I tell you that I have 887 friends on Facebook, not because I want to show off how cool I must be…which is clearly not the case…or that I’d want to compare my number of friends with anyone else…say for example Pastor Peter, who on his Facebook page, has a whopping total of 8 friends. No, I’m talking about my 887 Facebook friends because the whole Facebook and social networking phenomenon is, I think, kind of a strange thing. I’m not sure that a person can actually have 887 friends, and the fact that Facebook says that I do forces me think about what it means to be a friend.
Many on my list of 887 really are friends of mine. But others might better be qualified as acquaintances…and some are friends of friends…and some…well I’m not even sure how I’d qualify them. It might be more accurate to say that on Facebook there are 887 people to whom I am connected. But what is really interesting to me is how the Facebook phenomenon, and social networking in general, is changing our language and our understanding of what it is to be a friend, and how we communicate.
An example: On Friday morning I was sitting in Caribou, working on this sermon; I changed my Facebook status to say what I was doing: “At Caribou…sermon writing.” Within 15 minutes I had 3-4 other pastors, Facebook calls them “friends” of mine from all over the country respond that they were doing the same thing…and we traded ideas back and forth. Were these people really friends of mine? Probably not. I don’t know them well enough to call them up just to see how they’re doing. But it did provide me with a form of networking and support that was helpful. It was a good ‘connection.’ So does that make them a “friend?” Not by my old definition. But in the fast-paced, information driven, wireless world in which we live, maybe they are. Maybe it’s my definition of what is a friend that needs to change. Maybe I need to be challenged to rethink, and create a new category for this kind of relationship.
The reason I bring this up is because our Gospel text for today presents a similar kind of a challenge to the disciples. And the cause of this challenge is none other than Jesus himself. Please turn with me to John 15:9-17. This small piece of scripture is stuck in the middle of a much longer set of teachings by Jesus to his disciples that many scholars have called the “Farewell Discourse.” In the Gospel of John, this discourse is Jesus’ last Word to his followers before he is arrested.
In this teaching, Jesus, as he is prone to do, completely turns upside down the disciples understanding of their relationship with him. Understand first that the Jewish culture was very hierarchical. Jesus was a rabbi. Socially, that put him at the top of the food chain. Disciples followed their rabbis around like puppy dogs. Rabbi’s would never be friends with their disciples.
But in this “Farewell Discourse”, Jesus is using new language and a new understanding for the relationship between God and God’s people: Jesus starts off in verse 9 by saying that the disciples should “abide in my live.” A curious phrase. Abide in love? That means literally, to dwell or to live in God’s love, as one would dwell in a house. This is not a normal rabbi – disciple relationship. Those relationships were built on learning and discipline. And the relationship between God and God’s people had always been defined by God’s law, and how well the people followed it. Here, Jesus is tossing that out, in favor of something completely new. It is love in which they should abide, not just the law.
But that’s just the beginning. Look at verse 12, where Jesus commands his followers to “Love each other as I have loved you.” Again, the fact that he was telling them that they had a relationship built on love would have been shocking. And to use that love as a template for how they should love each other was to change the way they understood their relationships to be. And then in verse 13, Jesus who knows what his short-term future holds, sets up what is coming: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus knows that later that night, he will be betrayed and arrested, and his life will be laid down for his friends. He is helping his disciples understand that what is going to happen because of his great love for them.
Friends. Jesus calls them friends. I can visualize their reaction when they hear this: “What did he say?” “Did he say “friends”. “Did he call us his friends?” That would be a totally foreign way of thinking for the disciples.
In this text, Jesus created new language…new vocabulary and new rules for describing the relationships between the disciples and their Lord. And he goes on. In verse 16 he says “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” They knew that against all conventional wisdom, Jesus had chosen them, a group of jr. high drop outs, to be disciples. But here, Jesus gives them the reason why: So that they could go and bear fruit…fruit that will last. Jesus is telling them that their purpose is not just to follow him, but then to go and create more disciples; to bear fruit. And 2000 years later, here we sit, a product of that effort.
Jesus changes everything. When Jesus came, everything about life, faith and our relationship with God shifted. And in this short piece of scripture, Jesus is describing that shift. The disciples knew that Jesus was rabbi. They had come to believe that Jesus was God. But now they were being told that Jesus was friend. This was unimaginable before that day.
And Jesus wasn’t saying that his friendship was going to make things easy, or was going to solve all their problems; far from it. Life remained difficult for the disciples. But, friendship with Jesus meant something to cling to in the midst of that difficulty. It gave them hope, purpose and mission.
I don’t have very many close friends. I have lots of acquaintances…lots of colleagues…lots of people I know. But only a few close friends. What marks the difference? Close friends are those I have grown up with…went to school with…lived with…they are those who call me up…who I get together with a few times a year for dinner, they are those who ask me the deep questions, who challenge me, and I them. Friends are those who know my heart, and I know theirs. Friends are people I love. I spent Friday night with two of these people, Peter and Chris, both college friends. It was a great night. There was way too much Asian food, there was laughter, there was good, deep, rich conversation about our hopes, our joys and our disappointments. We talked about our kids and our spouses. We talked about what it’s like to have parents who have health issues, and what that means. We talked about some kind of scary health problems that one of their son’s is having. There was nothing we could do to fix it. We just listened. And then after all of this, we went to see Star Trek. (It doesn’t get any better than that!) This is friendship.
What does this tell me about what Jesus means when he says “I call you friend?” It tells me that Jesus is seeking a level of intimacy different than the disciples had experienced, and different than I might expect. Jesus is not talking about being either a distant master or just a “Facebook Friend”, a connection. So what does it look like when the God of the universe want to be friends with us? I think it is less about what we do, and more about recognizing how God feels about us, and just being in…dwelling in…abiding in that relationship.
Brennan Manning is one of my favorite theologians and authors. There is one curious thing about him though: when Manning mails a letter or a postcard, his return address only has six words: He handwrites "I am the one Jesus loves." That’s what it says in small print in the upper left corner: “I am the one Jesus loves.” I heard him speak a few years ago, and at a Q&A session someone asked Manning why he used this for his return address. Manning started talking about John, the author of our Gospel. He was often referred to as “the one Jesus loved.” Manning said, "If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels.’ Rather, John would answer: 'I am the one Jesus loves.'"
So what would it mean, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"? How would my life change if I truly grasped the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
There is the story of an Irish priest who, on a walking tour of a rural parish, saw an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, "You must be very close to God." The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, "Yes, he's very fond of me."
I don’t know what your relationship with God is like. Maybe you feel distant from God. Many do. For some, God might feel like a stranger. Perhaps your relationship with God feels broken. I understand these things; I have felt them too. We live in a broken world and our relationship with God is often the first thing to fracture. But the Jesus who shifted his relationship with his disciples from “master” to “friend” does the same to each of us. Hear the words of John 15 as if they were being spoken directly to each one of you…one on one, face to face, eye to eye: Jesus says to you “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. And you are my friend. I no longer call you a servant…You are no longer distant…I call you my friend. You didn’t choose me. I chose you.
I have 887 people that I am connected to via Facebook. I have a handful of really good friends in whom I can confide. I have a family I love very much. But I have only one Savior who could say those things to me. He is someone who could be a distant master…but instead, because of how much he loves me, he calls me a friend.
You too have this Savior. He is your friend. Know that you are the one he loves very much…enough to die for you. He brings life. Believe in this love…feel his presence…so that someday, if someone asks you of your faith, you can answer with confidence: “Yes. This Jesus: he’s my friend. And he’s very, very fond of me.”
Amen.
John 15:9-17
Todd Buegler
May 16-17, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who calls us friend! Amen.
I have 887 friends. 887. I know this number, because Facebook tells me so. Every time I log on to Facebook, the popular social networking site, it gives me a running count of the number of friends I have. It shows me who would like to be my friend, it suggest people who I might like to be friends with, and then tells me what all these different people are up to. 887 and climbing.
Now, I tell you that I have 887 friends on Facebook, not because I want to show off how cool I must be…which is clearly not the case…or that I’d want to compare my number of friends with anyone else…say for example Pastor Peter, who on his Facebook page, has a whopping total of 8 friends. No, I’m talking about my 887 Facebook friends because the whole Facebook and social networking phenomenon is, I think, kind of a strange thing. I’m not sure that a person can actually have 887 friends, and the fact that Facebook says that I do forces me think about what it means to be a friend.
Many on my list of 887 really are friends of mine. But others might better be qualified as acquaintances…and some are friends of friends…and some…well I’m not even sure how I’d qualify them. It might be more accurate to say that on Facebook there are 887 people to whom I am connected. But what is really interesting to me is how the Facebook phenomenon, and social networking in general, is changing our language and our understanding of what it is to be a friend, and how we communicate.
An example: On Friday morning I was sitting in Caribou, working on this sermon; I changed my Facebook status to say what I was doing: “At Caribou…sermon writing.” Within 15 minutes I had 3-4 other pastors, Facebook calls them “friends” of mine from all over the country respond that they were doing the same thing…and we traded ideas back and forth. Were these people really friends of mine? Probably not. I don’t know them well enough to call them up just to see how they’re doing. But it did provide me with a form of networking and support that was helpful. It was a good ‘connection.’ So does that make them a “friend?” Not by my old definition. But in the fast-paced, information driven, wireless world in which we live, maybe they are. Maybe it’s my definition of what is a friend that needs to change. Maybe I need to be challenged to rethink, and create a new category for this kind of relationship.
The reason I bring this up is because our Gospel text for today presents a similar kind of a challenge to the disciples. And the cause of this challenge is none other than Jesus himself. Please turn with me to John 15:9-17. This small piece of scripture is stuck in the middle of a much longer set of teachings by Jesus to his disciples that many scholars have called the “Farewell Discourse.” In the Gospel of John, this discourse is Jesus’ last Word to his followers before he is arrested.
In this teaching, Jesus, as he is prone to do, completely turns upside down the disciples understanding of their relationship with him. Understand first that the Jewish culture was very hierarchical. Jesus was a rabbi. Socially, that put him at the top of the food chain. Disciples followed their rabbis around like puppy dogs. Rabbi’s would never be friends with their disciples.
But in this “Farewell Discourse”, Jesus is using new language and a new understanding for the relationship between God and God’s people: Jesus starts off in verse 9 by saying that the disciples should “abide in my live.” A curious phrase. Abide in love? That means literally, to dwell or to live in God’s love, as one would dwell in a house. This is not a normal rabbi – disciple relationship. Those relationships were built on learning and discipline. And the relationship between God and God’s people had always been defined by God’s law, and how well the people followed it. Here, Jesus is tossing that out, in favor of something completely new. It is love in which they should abide, not just the law.
But that’s just the beginning. Look at verse 12, where Jesus commands his followers to “Love each other as I have loved you.” Again, the fact that he was telling them that they had a relationship built on love would have been shocking. And to use that love as a template for how they should love each other was to change the way they understood their relationships to be. And then in verse 13, Jesus who knows what his short-term future holds, sets up what is coming: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus knows that later that night, he will be betrayed and arrested, and his life will be laid down for his friends. He is helping his disciples understand that what is going to happen because of his great love for them.
Friends. Jesus calls them friends. I can visualize their reaction when they hear this: “What did he say?” “Did he say “friends”. “Did he call us his friends?” That would be a totally foreign way of thinking for the disciples.
In this text, Jesus created new language…new vocabulary and new rules for describing the relationships between the disciples and their Lord. And he goes on. In verse 16 he says “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” They knew that against all conventional wisdom, Jesus had chosen them, a group of jr. high drop outs, to be disciples. But here, Jesus gives them the reason why: So that they could go and bear fruit…fruit that will last. Jesus is telling them that their purpose is not just to follow him, but then to go and create more disciples; to bear fruit. And 2000 years later, here we sit, a product of that effort.
Jesus changes everything. When Jesus came, everything about life, faith and our relationship with God shifted. And in this short piece of scripture, Jesus is describing that shift. The disciples knew that Jesus was rabbi. They had come to believe that Jesus was God. But now they were being told that Jesus was friend. This was unimaginable before that day.
And Jesus wasn’t saying that his friendship was going to make things easy, or was going to solve all their problems; far from it. Life remained difficult for the disciples. But, friendship with Jesus meant something to cling to in the midst of that difficulty. It gave them hope, purpose and mission.
I don’t have very many close friends. I have lots of acquaintances…lots of colleagues…lots of people I know. But only a few close friends. What marks the difference? Close friends are those I have grown up with…went to school with…lived with…they are those who call me up…who I get together with a few times a year for dinner, they are those who ask me the deep questions, who challenge me, and I them. Friends are those who know my heart, and I know theirs. Friends are people I love. I spent Friday night with two of these people, Peter and Chris, both college friends. It was a great night. There was way too much Asian food, there was laughter, there was good, deep, rich conversation about our hopes, our joys and our disappointments. We talked about our kids and our spouses. We talked about what it’s like to have parents who have health issues, and what that means. We talked about some kind of scary health problems that one of their son’s is having. There was nothing we could do to fix it. We just listened. And then after all of this, we went to see Star Trek. (It doesn’t get any better than that!) This is friendship.
What does this tell me about what Jesus means when he says “I call you friend?” It tells me that Jesus is seeking a level of intimacy different than the disciples had experienced, and different than I might expect. Jesus is not talking about being either a distant master or just a “Facebook Friend”, a connection. So what does it look like when the God of the universe want to be friends with us? I think it is less about what we do, and more about recognizing how God feels about us, and just being in…dwelling in…abiding in that relationship.
Brennan Manning is one of my favorite theologians and authors. There is one curious thing about him though: when Manning mails a letter or a postcard, his return address only has six words: He handwrites "I am the one Jesus loves." That’s what it says in small print in the upper left corner: “I am the one Jesus loves.” I heard him speak a few years ago, and at a Q&A session someone asked Manning why he used this for his return address. Manning started talking about John, the author of our Gospel. He was often referred to as “the one Jesus loved.” Manning said, "If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels.’ Rather, John would answer: 'I am the one Jesus loves.'"
So what would it mean, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"? How would my life change if I truly grasped the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
There is the story of an Irish priest who, on a walking tour of a rural parish, saw an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, "You must be very close to God." The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, "Yes, he's very fond of me."
I don’t know what your relationship with God is like. Maybe you feel distant from God. Many do. For some, God might feel like a stranger. Perhaps your relationship with God feels broken. I understand these things; I have felt them too. We live in a broken world and our relationship with God is often the first thing to fracture. But the Jesus who shifted his relationship with his disciples from “master” to “friend” does the same to each of us. Hear the words of John 15 as if they were being spoken directly to each one of you…one on one, face to face, eye to eye: Jesus says to you “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. And you are my friend. I no longer call you a servant…You are no longer distant…I call you my friend. You didn’t choose me. I chose you.
I have 887 people that I am connected to via Facebook. I have a handful of really good friends in whom I can confide. I have a family I love very much. But I have only one Savior who could say those things to me. He is someone who could be a distant master…but instead, because of how much he loves me, he calls me a friend.
You too have this Savior. He is your friend. Know that you are the one he loves very much…enough to die for you. He brings life. Believe in this love…feel his presence…so that someday, if someone asks you of your faith, you can answer with confidence: “Yes. This Jesus: he’s my friend. And he’s very, very fond of me.”
Amen.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Bandages
“Bandages”
John 11:38-44
Todd Buegler
March 28-29, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, and our Savior! Amen.
I love this time of year! I love March Madness, and the NCAA and high school tournament season. The tournaments always bring back great memories for me. And this March represents the 27th anniversary of my playing for Edina High School at the Minnesota State High School League State Hockey Tournament, the year that we won the championship.
Before you get too impressed, let me clarify…I played at the tournament…in the band.
But still, going to the tournament, back at the old Met Center, was a pretty big deal for everyone…the team…the band…the fans…
Edina was playing a night game. During the school day, my gym class was playing basketball. And I remember that I was trying to make a lay up when one of my friends jumped up to try and block me, and in the process his hand came down on my face and I wound up with a scratched cornea. Not a super-big deal, but painful. And the gym teacher had to call my Mom…my Mom took me to the eye doctor, who examined me, gave me some eye drops and put a small, round bandage on my eye to protect it and keep my eye closed. He said “You’ll need to wear this for a couple of days.” I asked “can I still go to the tournament tonight?” “Oh yeah, no problem. Just keep the bandage on and in a few days you should be fine.” Great. Because nothing was going to keep me from going to the tournament.
That night, just before I was going to leave to go catch the band bus to the game, where I was going to be playing the bass drum, the doctor’s eye patch started to come loose. “Mom, can you fix this?” My Mom was a nurse. “Sure, come here.” She worked on it, she fiddled, she fussed, she taped and re-taped. I went to look in the mirror. When the doctor had put the first patch in, it was small and subtle…about the size of a silver dollar. When my Mom finished, it looked like it covered half my head. “Mom, this thing is huge!” “Well, I don’t want it to come off!” And so I went…looking like half my head was gone.
So fast-forward to the game. You know what the TV stations do during a time out….they’ll cut to pictures of the bands playing. And as Al Shaver and Lou Nanne were talking about the game, the cameras cut to our band…and they panned along the row of flutes, and then up the row of drummers, going up the stairs, until they got to me at the top. And Lou Nanne, on statewide TV said “Wow. I wonder what happened to him?”
Bandages have been on my mind this week as I’ve been thinking about the scripture we’re looking at today in our journey through the book of John. So if you’d grab your Bible and would turn with me to John 11:38-42 we’ll take a look at the story of Jesus resurrecting his good friend Lazarus from the dead.
The funeral rituals of Jesus’ day were obviously very different than ours. When somebody died, there was no embalming but immediately the body was wrapped in a linen cloth…basically, a set of bandages and put into the burial vault, a limestone cave.
Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, was near death and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, sent word to Jesus, who had just healed a man born blind, that their brother Lazarus was very sick and perhaps soon to die. Jesus got the message. But he waited for two days before going to Lazarus. Why did Jesus wait two days? We have no idea. It could have been foreshadowing of Jesus’ own death and resurrection, because it would mean that Lazarus would be raised on the third day. But Jesus never actually explains this delay. So after two days, Jesus began his way to the home of Lazarus, knowing that his friend had died.
On the way, assertive, aggressive, “take charge” Martha came out to meet Jesus and let him have it. Look with me at verse 21: “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.” Jump to verse 23: Jesus said: “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha testily responded: “I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Can you hear her frustration? She’s asking ‘but what good does that do us now?’ Then Jesus spoke powerful words that have helped to shape our faith, and if you can look at verse 25, you can see for yourself: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” They will live! They will never die! Right here in this verse is the great promise of the Christian faith. Then Jesus asked one of the most important questions found in the Bible, “Do you believe this, Martha?” What a question. Do you believe this? Because this is the real deal…this is where the rubber hits the road…That whoever lives and believes in me will never die? Do you believe? This is the primary question that is asked throughout the Gospel of John: Do you…do we…have faith?
Martha confesses in verse 27: “I believe. I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Mary, the other sister, soon approaches Jesus, with the same testy reproach, “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.” But before Jesus could say anything, Mary burst into tears. What was Jesus’ response to her tears? The Bible says that he was “greatly disturbed.” But the Greek word used here for ‘greatly disturbed’ literally translates to “shuddered with sadness.” It says that Jesus’ body shook with emotion. This word in Greek is actually the same word used to refer to a horse, when it snorts, and the horse’s whole body shakes; Jesus’ whole body shook or shuddered with emotion.
You may have seen or even experienced this yourself, where a person is so grieved and sad, that their whole body shakes with sorrow. Then comes that classic verse, the shortest in the Bible; verse 35: “Jesus began to weep.” In our antiseptic way, we imagine a single tear running down his face. But again, the Greek suggests that Jesus “burst into tears.” So here, in this little episode with the sensitive Mary, there is no classic, eloquent teaching about eternal life. In fact, Jesus doesn’t speak at all. There are simply strong emotions and bursting tears that shake his body. Jesus grieved with Mary.
The story continues: In verse 38, we see that Jesus finally reached the little village of Bethany and then approached the burial vault of his friend Lazarus. The Bible says that he was again “greatly disturbed” as he approached the grave. His body again shuddered with sadness. Have you seen someone approach the grave of a loved one? It is often a time of intense emotion. He said, “Take away the stone.” And Martha, clearly the stubborn one, asked “Why? Already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.” Jesus ignored her and the gravestone was rolled away. Then Jesus said a beautiful prayer, in verses 41 & 42: “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always heard me. But I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” And then Jesus cried out with a loud voice: “Lararus, come out.” And Lazarus came out of the grave vault, covered with the graveclothes…strips of cloth…the bandages. Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.”
These might be the most important words in the story…this might be the most important command in the book of John: “Unbind him and let him go.”
And the bandages that Lazarus wore because of his illness…his wounds…his death came off…and Lazarus lived.
This is not just at story about Lazarus. This is a story about us. I don’t know what your wounds are. Physical…emotional…spiritual…social…but I do know this: You have wounds. I have wounds. Over the course of time, we are all hurt. Perhaps your wounds are about broken family…they may be about addiction…they may be about secrets…they may be about intolerance…they may be about money… They may be any one of 1000 different things.
And I know that many of these wounds are things that many of you have carried over a long, long time. Because in all honesty, sometimes it is easier for us just to slap another bandage on…to cover them up or bury them, than it is to deal with them. Dealing with our wounds can be difficult, painful work.
If this were where the story ended, with Lazarus dead in the grave…with us trapped by our woundedness…that would make for a life without hope. But this is not the end of the story. Because Jesus did stand before the tomb and he called “Lazarus, come out…” and then he said “unbind him and let him go.” Sin and death do not get the last word.
In the summer of 1989, I was a 24 year old youth minister here at Lord of Life, leading one of our sr. high AWOL (that’s “A work of love”) mission trips. We were in Portland, Maine to build a home for Habitat for Humanity. 24 youth, and 4 adult leaders. Shortly after we arrived, I got a phone call. It was my brother with bad news. Jim Campbell had been one of my best friends from college. He was a newspaper photographer and a cross-country bicyclist. 2 summers prior he had completed a solo bike trip from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic ocean. My brother told me that Jim had been mountain biking in Rocky Mountain National Park. He was returning to his campsite, riding down a dirt road, when a car driven by a 16 year old girl going too fast around a curve on a gravel road skidded and hit Jim.
Jim died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
I was sitting in Portland, Maine with our group. I worked out plans to get back home, and then to Nashua, Iowa for the funeral. Then I would fly back and re-join our group in Boston after they had finished the work week. The funeral was incredibly sad. Jim had been one of the kindest, funniest people I knew. He was very creative, and incredibly compassionate. I was sad. And I was angry. I was angry at Jim…angry at that 16 year old girl…angry at God.
Being the good, stoic Norwegian that I am, when I got back to Boston, I tried to act like the strong group leader, and to play it tough. My first night back at our evening devotions, we were going around the circle…talking about our highs and lows. When it got to me I talked about the flight…how good it was to be with friends and family…about the service…everything except about how sad I was…and how angry I was. When I finished, and was about to move on, I remember Andy and Kate in the group interrupted me and said “Todd, we’re really sorry for what happened…and we have this for you.” And they walked over and gave me an envelope. I opened it and inside was a condolence card that all of them had signed. And these amazing, beautiful high school students had taken up a collection and put cash in to help offset the costs of my flights back and forth. I just stared at the card, and at the pile of $1,s $5’s and $10…and I looked up at them, and I lost it. I just sat and sobbed. My body shook; it shuddered with sadness. And the group came around me, put their hands on my shoulders and sat with me.
Those young people were telling me: “Todd…come out. Come out of the darkness. Take off the bandages. They helped unbind me, and let me go.” And in that moment, I believe I came face to face with Jesus.
Again, I don’t know your wounds…but I do know these two things:
• First, I know that you are not alone in your pain. The Jesus whose body shook with grief at the loss of his friend, knows what you feel. And he feels this pain alongside you. Jesus promises his presence with you.
• Second, I know that your wounds…your pain…is not the end of the story. I know that Jesus stands before you, looks you face to face and says “Come out. Come out of the dark places…come out of the pain…the wounds you carry beneath the bandages that bind you are healed.” Because of God’s grace…because of God’s great love for you, you are healed, your bandages are released, and Jesus sets you free.
My friends, we are all Lazarus. We are all trapped in the darkness. But in this story, Jesus reminds us to hear his voice. Receive his gift. Come out…be healed…take off the bandages that cover your old wounds, and be given new life…it is for you.
Amen.
John 11:38-44
Todd Buegler
March 28-29, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, and our Savior! Amen.
I love this time of year! I love March Madness, and the NCAA and high school tournament season. The tournaments always bring back great memories for me. And this March represents the 27th anniversary of my playing for Edina High School at the Minnesota State High School League State Hockey Tournament, the year that we won the championship.
Before you get too impressed, let me clarify…I played at the tournament…in the band.
But still, going to the tournament, back at the old Met Center, was a pretty big deal for everyone…the team…the band…the fans…
Edina was playing a night game. During the school day, my gym class was playing basketball. And I remember that I was trying to make a lay up when one of my friends jumped up to try and block me, and in the process his hand came down on my face and I wound up with a scratched cornea. Not a super-big deal, but painful. And the gym teacher had to call my Mom…my Mom took me to the eye doctor, who examined me, gave me some eye drops and put a small, round bandage on my eye to protect it and keep my eye closed. He said “You’ll need to wear this for a couple of days.” I asked “can I still go to the tournament tonight?” “Oh yeah, no problem. Just keep the bandage on and in a few days you should be fine.” Great. Because nothing was going to keep me from going to the tournament.
That night, just before I was going to leave to go catch the band bus to the game, where I was going to be playing the bass drum, the doctor’s eye patch started to come loose. “Mom, can you fix this?” My Mom was a nurse. “Sure, come here.” She worked on it, she fiddled, she fussed, she taped and re-taped. I went to look in the mirror. When the doctor had put the first patch in, it was small and subtle…about the size of a silver dollar. When my Mom finished, it looked like it covered half my head. “Mom, this thing is huge!” “Well, I don’t want it to come off!” And so I went…looking like half my head was gone.
So fast-forward to the game. You know what the TV stations do during a time out….they’ll cut to pictures of the bands playing. And as Al Shaver and Lou Nanne were talking about the game, the cameras cut to our band…and they panned along the row of flutes, and then up the row of drummers, going up the stairs, until they got to me at the top. And Lou Nanne, on statewide TV said “Wow. I wonder what happened to him?”
Bandages have been on my mind this week as I’ve been thinking about the scripture we’re looking at today in our journey through the book of John. So if you’d grab your Bible and would turn with me to John 11:38-42 we’ll take a look at the story of Jesus resurrecting his good friend Lazarus from the dead.
The funeral rituals of Jesus’ day were obviously very different than ours. When somebody died, there was no embalming but immediately the body was wrapped in a linen cloth…basically, a set of bandages and put into the burial vault, a limestone cave.
Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, was near death and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, sent word to Jesus, who had just healed a man born blind, that their brother Lazarus was very sick and perhaps soon to die. Jesus got the message. But he waited for two days before going to Lazarus. Why did Jesus wait two days? We have no idea. It could have been foreshadowing of Jesus’ own death and resurrection, because it would mean that Lazarus would be raised on the third day. But Jesus never actually explains this delay. So after two days, Jesus began his way to the home of Lazarus, knowing that his friend had died.
On the way, assertive, aggressive, “take charge” Martha came out to meet Jesus and let him have it. Look with me at verse 21: “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.” Jump to verse 23: Jesus said: “Your brother will rise again.” And Martha testily responded: “I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Can you hear her frustration? She’s asking ‘but what good does that do us now?’ Then Jesus spoke powerful words that have helped to shape our faith, and if you can look at verse 25, you can see for yourself: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.” They will live! They will never die! Right here in this verse is the great promise of the Christian faith. Then Jesus asked one of the most important questions found in the Bible, “Do you believe this, Martha?” What a question. Do you believe this? Because this is the real deal…this is where the rubber hits the road…That whoever lives and believes in me will never die? Do you believe? This is the primary question that is asked throughout the Gospel of John: Do you…do we…have faith?
Martha confesses in verse 27: “I believe. I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Mary, the other sister, soon approaches Jesus, with the same testy reproach, “Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died.” But before Jesus could say anything, Mary burst into tears. What was Jesus’ response to her tears? The Bible says that he was “greatly disturbed.” But the Greek word used here for ‘greatly disturbed’ literally translates to “shuddered with sadness.” It says that Jesus’ body shook with emotion. This word in Greek is actually the same word used to refer to a horse, when it snorts, and the horse’s whole body shakes; Jesus’ whole body shook or shuddered with emotion.
You may have seen or even experienced this yourself, where a person is so grieved and sad, that their whole body shakes with sorrow. Then comes that classic verse, the shortest in the Bible; verse 35: “Jesus began to weep.” In our antiseptic way, we imagine a single tear running down his face. But again, the Greek suggests that Jesus “burst into tears.” So here, in this little episode with the sensitive Mary, there is no classic, eloquent teaching about eternal life. In fact, Jesus doesn’t speak at all. There are simply strong emotions and bursting tears that shake his body. Jesus grieved with Mary.
The story continues: In verse 38, we see that Jesus finally reached the little village of Bethany and then approached the burial vault of his friend Lazarus. The Bible says that he was again “greatly disturbed” as he approached the grave. His body again shuddered with sadness. Have you seen someone approach the grave of a loved one? It is often a time of intense emotion. He said, “Take away the stone.” And Martha, clearly the stubborn one, asked “Why? Already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.” Jesus ignored her and the gravestone was rolled away. Then Jesus said a beautiful prayer, in verses 41 & 42: “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always heard me. But I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” And then Jesus cried out with a loud voice: “Lararus, come out.” And Lazarus came out of the grave vault, covered with the graveclothes…strips of cloth…the bandages. Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go.”
These might be the most important words in the story…this might be the most important command in the book of John: “Unbind him and let him go.”
And the bandages that Lazarus wore because of his illness…his wounds…his death came off…and Lazarus lived.
This is not just at story about Lazarus. This is a story about us. I don’t know what your wounds are. Physical…emotional…spiritual…social…but I do know this: You have wounds. I have wounds. Over the course of time, we are all hurt. Perhaps your wounds are about broken family…they may be about addiction…they may be about secrets…they may be about intolerance…they may be about money… They may be any one of 1000 different things.
And I know that many of these wounds are things that many of you have carried over a long, long time. Because in all honesty, sometimes it is easier for us just to slap another bandage on…to cover them up or bury them, than it is to deal with them. Dealing with our wounds can be difficult, painful work.
If this were where the story ended, with Lazarus dead in the grave…with us trapped by our woundedness…that would make for a life without hope. But this is not the end of the story. Because Jesus did stand before the tomb and he called “Lazarus, come out…” and then he said “unbind him and let him go.” Sin and death do not get the last word.
In the summer of 1989, I was a 24 year old youth minister here at Lord of Life, leading one of our sr. high AWOL (that’s “A work of love”) mission trips. We were in Portland, Maine to build a home for Habitat for Humanity. 24 youth, and 4 adult leaders. Shortly after we arrived, I got a phone call. It was my brother with bad news. Jim Campbell had been one of my best friends from college. He was a newspaper photographer and a cross-country bicyclist. 2 summers prior he had completed a solo bike trip from the Pacific ocean to the Atlantic ocean. My brother told me that Jim had been mountain biking in Rocky Mountain National Park. He was returning to his campsite, riding down a dirt road, when a car driven by a 16 year old girl going too fast around a curve on a gravel road skidded and hit Jim.
Jim died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
I was sitting in Portland, Maine with our group. I worked out plans to get back home, and then to Nashua, Iowa for the funeral. Then I would fly back and re-join our group in Boston after they had finished the work week. The funeral was incredibly sad. Jim had been one of the kindest, funniest people I knew. He was very creative, and incredibly compassionate. I was sad. And I was angry. I was angry at Jim…angry at that 16 year old girl…angry at God.
Being the good, stoic Norwegian that I am, when I got back to Boston, I tried to act like the strong group leader, and to play it tough. My first night back at our evening devotions, we were going around the circle…talking about our highs and lows. When it got to me I talked about the flight…how good it was to be with friends and family…about the service…everything except about how sad I was…and how angry I was. When I finished, and was about to move on, I remember Andy and Kate in the group interrupted me and said “Todd, we’re really sorry for what happened…and we have this for you.” And they walked over and gave me an envelope. I opened it and inside was a condolence card that all of them had signed. And these amazing, beautiful high school students had taken up a collection and put cash in to help offset the costs of my flights back and forth. I just stared at the card, and at the pile of $1,s $5’s and $10…and I looked up at them, and I lost it. I just sat and sobbed. My body shook; it shuddered with sadness. And the group came around me, put their hands on my shoulders and sat with me.
Those young people were telling me: “Todd…come out. Come out of the darkness. Take off the bandages. They helped unbind me, and let me go.” And in that moment, I believe I came face to face with Jesus.
Again, I don’t know your wounds…but I do know these two things:
• First, I know that you are not alone in your pain. The Jesus whose body shook with grief at the loss of his friend, knows what you feel. And he feels this pain alongside you. Jesus promises his presence with you.
• Second, I know that your wounds…your pain…is not the end of the story. I know that Jesus stands before you, looks you face to face and says “Come out. Come out of the dark places…come out of the pain…the wounds you carry beneath the bandages that bind you are healed.” Because of God’s grace…because of God’s great love for you, you are healed, your bandages are released, and Jesus sets you free.
My friends, we are all Lazarus. We are all trapped in the darkness. But in this story, Jesus reminds us to hear his voice. Receive his gift. Come out…be healed…take off the bandages that cover your old wounds, and be given new life…it is for you.
Amen.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
My House
My House
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Todd Buegler
January 24-25, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, and our Savior! Amen.
We continue our week-by-week journey through the Old Testament together by taking a look today at Joshua. If you would grab your Bibles, and would turn with me to Joshua, chapter 24. If you’re using one of the pew Bibles, it can be found on page 213. And while you’re looking that up, I’m going to set the stage for you.
Last week we talked about the story of Moses, the Israelites and the Exodus. After the Jewish people left Egypt, they were headed for the Promised Land, the land of Canaan. However, in the journey, the Jews lost their faith and began worshipping other Gods. Remember the story of Charlton Hest…oops…I mean Moses going up on the mountain to the 10 Commandments? While he was on the mountain, the Jewish people lost their faith and began worshipping another God, a golden calf. When Moses returned, he found that they had completely wandered away from the God who had led them that far. And so God punished the Israelites. And for 40 years, he led them through the wilderness, so close to the promised land that they could almost touch it…but never quite taking them there.
After 40 years of this, and after Moses had died, God finally led them into the land of Canaan. He had selected a new leader, and his name was Joshua. Joshua was a man of faith and courage; a brilliant military leader and a strong spiritual influence. But the real key to his success was how he submitted himself to God’s will. When God spoke, Joshua listened, and was obedient.
This then, is the theme of the book of Joshua: Obedience to God and following God’s will. In the first half of the book, the story is told of the Israelites moving into the land of Caanan and the struggles that took place in that move. The second half of the book, from chapters 13-22, records the assignment and settlement of the territory. And the book concludes in chapters 23 & 24 with a gathering of all the people, a farewell address, and the death of Joshua.
We’ll pick up the story in chapter 24, verse 14. Joshua is giving what will be his farewell address to the people. He says to them “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
In these verses, Joshua clearly plants his flag. Look with me in verse 15. Joshua says “…if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” and then comes his slam-dunk line: “but as for me and my household…we will serve the Lord.” He is emphasizing that whatever you decide to do, is up to you. But Joshua’s house will be a house of the covenant. Joshua, widely admired and beloved, was making an important statement to the Jewish people; he was telling them now is the time. Today. Phone or get out of the booth; (wait…ok…you’d only get that reference if you’re over age 40.) Ok, fish or get out of the boat; make a decision about what kind of household, what kind of people you are going to be? People of the covenant? Or people who wander spiritually?
As I’ve been thinking about this piece of scripture over the last couple of weeks, it has led me to a question: What does my house stand for? It’s a question I’d like for us to think and wonder about this morning. I think it is a healthy question to ask ourselves, on a couple of different levels:
What about this house? This church? Lord of Life has been so blessed! In the 21 years I have worked with children, youth and families at Lord of Life, I have seen this place grow both wider and deeper. I have seen faith strengthened in young and old. I have seen homes built for people in need…I have seen hundreds of thousands of meals packed and shipped around the world…and tons of food distributed through our local food shelves. I have seen homeless fed and clothed…I have seen feet washed, literally and figuratively…I have seen the power of prayer…I have seen healing…I have seen God’s grace given through the water, the bread and the wine… As for this house. I have no doubt. This house…this community, it has, and it will continue to serve the Lord.
So what about our houses? What about in our homes?
You see, I believe that the home is the most important institution in this country; and in all honesty, I believe that it is an institution that is at risk. I’ve heard a story about a giant oak tree falling down in Vail, Colorado a few years ago. Trees fall down all the time. What’s the big deal? Well, this tree coming down was a big deal; such a big deal that it made all the local news broadcasts that night. This tree was more than five hundred years old. It had been a mere sapling when Columbus sailed to America. It had been struck by lightning fourteen times; it had survived storms, withstood earthquakes, and endured mud slides. Everyone was curious about what had finally brought it down. After an extensive examination, it was discovered that some tiny beetles had bored under the bark, dug into its heart, and eaten away at its fibers. The mighty oak was destroyed from within, and it came tumbling down.
Over the years, I have been blessed to spend time with many, many young people and their families. And my observation is that our culture places incredible strain on our homes, from the inside out. Whether your home is a family of 5, or you’re a single mother, or you’re a single person, we all struggle with the tyranny of busy-ness. We struggle with rampant consumerism. We all struggle with communications and with the pace of change. I have no doubt that our homes are under stress. It feels like a family’s faith life together frequently gets squeezed by everything around us. From my vantage point, it is clear: families are at risk. But the challenges families face are not political, social or time management issues; they are issues of faithfulness. Faithfulness to God, and faithfulness to each other.
And Joshua’s words to the Israelites, who have spent 40 years trying to be faithful, but occasionally losing their way, could be spoken to us as well. Joshua could look at each of our households and say to us: “choose whatever you choose…but as for me and my household, we will be faithful to the Lord.”
Faithfulness is a value. And families are places where values are taught, and are passed on. Whether house and home is 1person, 2 people, 4 people, 6, 8 or 10; however you define family, we all live within a values system and those values are passed on from person to person. It has been said time and time again that the home is the first and most influential school any of us attends. If we don't make an intentional effort to pass along Christian values and family traditions to others; parents to children, friends to friends, spouse to spouse…if we don’t; well then perhaps no one else will.
Here at Lord of Life we talk a lot about ‘passing on the faith’, and about ‘being families of faith. It’s a lot like a relay race in track; the most difficult part of a relay race is when one runner passes the baton to the other. Relay teams spend hours practicing this simple action; because they know, no matter how fast you run…if you screw up passing the baton, nothing else matters.
It's similar in the home. One of the primary responsibilities and opportunities of the Christian home is to pass values from one generation to the next; from one person to the next. It is not easy. But as Christians, we all live in households of faith, and we share the faith with others, and that’s how faith is grown. And studies have shown the benefits of being a family that practices its faith in the home; that prays together, that talks about their faith together, that serves together; relationships are stronger…at-risk behavior is reduced…school grades are higher…self-esteem is better, and marriages are stronger.
You might be familiar with Peder Eide, the Christian musician. Peder has sung at Lord of Life many, many times. This year he is our regular musician at our Confirmation Sunday Night Festivals. Peder and his wife, Sherri, are the parents of 5 young children. To help bring order to the chaos that can sometimes be a household of 7 people, Peder and Sherri have established what they call their “Family Rules”. These rules have become the DNA of their home. There are 5 things that they teach the kids and are re-enforced every single day. To help the kids remember, they have assigned one rule to each finger. For the thumb the rule is “have fun.” For the pointer finger, the rule is “glorify God.” Then it’s “serve your neighbor and your family”. Then “never give up”. Finally, it’s “family never leaves family behind.”
• Have fun.
• Glorify God
• Serve neighbor and family
• Never give up
• Never leave family behind.
They live and breathe these values. When one of the older kids gets tired of helping the younger sister with coloring, Peder or Sherri can just look at them and can point to their pinky finger, and without even saying a word, the kids know: “Never leave family behind.” When one of them grabs food before the family has said their dinner prayer, Sherri or Peder can hold up their pointer finger, and the kids know: Glorify God. They have integrated their faith into their household. They have decided. As for Peder, Sherri, and their house, they will serve the Lord. They have chosen faithfulness.
Faithfulness is the value Joshua was speaking of. Faithfulness is what we want our lives and our homes to be about. And we can do that. We can do it because God makes it possible for us. God gives us the gifts…and the tools to live lives of faithfulness. It isn’t easy…and there will be challenges. The same was true for the Jews. After Joshua’s death, while they worked towards faithfulness, they still encountered challenges. They still slipped. But they worked towards faithfulness.
We live lives of faithfulness because God is faithful to us. God looks at all of creation…he looks at our world…he looks at our nation…he looks at our church…he looks at your home…and God says “as for me and my house…” (and remember, that God’s house is really, really big. It is all of this) …”as for me and my house…I will be faithful to you. There is always room for you in my house…there is always love and grace…there is always forgiveness.”
• My friends, be faithful, because God is faithful.
• Be faithful, because God loves you unconditionally.
• Be faithful, because we are the children of God, and God never leaves family behind.
Amen.
Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18
Todd Buegler
January 24-25, 2009
Lord of Life
Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, and our Savior! Amen.
We continue our week-by-week journey through the Old Testament together by taking a look today at Joshua. If you would grab your Bibles, and would turn with me to Joshua, chapter 24. If you’re using one of the pew Bibles, it can be found on page 213. And while you’re looking that up, I’m going to set the stage for you.
Last week we talked about the story of Moses, the Israelites and the Exodus. After the Jewish people left Egypt, they were headed for the Promised Land, the land of Canaan. However, in the journey, the Jews lost their faith and began worshipping other Gods. Remember the story of Charlton Hest…oops…I mean Moses going up on the mountain to the 10 Commandments? While he was on the mountain, the Jewish people lost their faith and began worshipping another God, a golden calf. When Moses returned, he found that they had completely wandered away from the God who had led them that far. And so God punished the Israelites. And for 40 years, he led them through the wilderness, so close to the promised land that they could almost touch it…but never quite taking them there.
After 40 years of this, and after Moses had died, God finally led them into the land of Canaan. He had selected a new leader, and his name was Joshua. Joshua was a man of faith and courage; a brilliant military leader and a strong spiritual influence. But the real key to his success was how he submitted himself to God’s will. When God spoke, Joshua listened, and was obedient.
This then, is the theme of the book of Joshua: Obedience to God and following God’s will. In the first half of the book, the story is told of the Israelites moving into the land of Caanan and the struggles that took place in that move. The second half of the book, from chapters 13-22, records the assignment and settlement of the territory. And the book concludes in chapters 23 & 24 with a gathering of all the people, a farewell address, and the death of Joshua.
We’ll pick up the story in chapter 24, verse 14. Joshua is giving what will be his farewell address to the people. He says to them “Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
In these verses, Joshua clearly plants his flag. Look with me in verse 15. Joshua says “…if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” and then comes his slam-dunk line: “but as for me and my household…we will serve the Lord.” He is emphasizing that whatever you decide to do, is up to you. But Joshua’s house will be a house of the covenant. Joshua, widely admired and beloved, was making an important statement to the Jewish people; he was telling them now is the time. Today. Phone or get out of the booth; (wait…ok…you’d only get that reference if you’re over age 40.) Ok, fish or get out of the boat; make a decision about what kind of household, what kind of people you are going to be? People of the covenant? Or people who wander spiritually?
As I’ve been thinking about this piece of scripture over the last couple of weeks, it has led me to a question: What does my house stand for? It’s a question I’d like for us to think and wonder about this morning. I think it is a healthy question to ask ourselves, on a couple of different levels:
What about this house? This church? Lord of Life has been so blessed! In the 21 years I have worked with children, youth and families at Lord of Life, I have seen this place grow both wider and deeper. I have seen faith strengthened in young and old. I have seen homes built for people in need…I have seen hundreds of thousands of meals packed and shipped around the world…and tons of food distributed through our local food shelves. I have seen homeless fed and clothed…I have seen feet washed, literally and figuratively…I have seen the power of prayer…I have seen healing…I have seen God’s grace given through the water, the bread and the wine… As for this house. I have no doubt. This house…this community, it has, and it will continue to serve the Lord.
So what about our houses? What about in our homes?
You see, I believe that the home is the most important institution in this country; and in all honesty, I believe that it is an institution that is at risk. I’ve heard a story about a giant oak tree falling down in Vail, Colorado a few years ago. Trees fall down all the time. What’s the big deal? Well, this tree coming down was a big deal; such a big deal that it made all the local news broadcasts that night. This tree was more than five hundred years old. It had been a mere sapling when Columbus sailed to America. It had been struck by lightning fourteen times; it had survived storms, withstood earthquakes, and endured mud slides. Everyone was curious about what had finally brought it down. After an extensive examination, it was discovered that some tiny beetles had bored under the bark, dug into its heart, and eaten away at its fibers. The mighty oak was destroyed from within, and it came tumbling down.
Over the years, I have been blessed to spend time with many, many young people and their families. And my observation is that our culture places incredible strain on our homes, from the inside out. Whether your home is a family of 5, or you’re a single mother, or you’re a single person, we all struggle with the tyranny of busy-ness. We struggle with rampant consumerism. We all struggle with communications and with the pace of change. I have no doubt that our homes are under stress. It feels like a family’s faith life together frequently gets squeezed by everything around us. From my vantage point, it is clear: families are at risk. But the challenges families face are not political, social or time management issues; they are issues of faithfulness. Faithfulness to God, and faithfulness to each other.
And Joshua’s words to the Israelites, who have spent 40 years trying to be faithful, but occasionally losing their way, could be spoken to us as well. Joshua could look at each of our households and say to us: “choose whatever you choose…but as for me and my household, we will be faithful to the Lord.”
Faithfulness is a value. And families are places where values are taught, and are passed on. Whether house and home is 1person, 2 people, 4 people, 6, 8 or 10; however you define family, we all live within a values system and those values are passed on from person to person. It has been said time and time again that the home is the first and most influential school any of us attends. If we don't make an intentional effort to pass along Christian values and family traditions to others; parents to children, friends to friends, spouse to spouse…if we don’t; well then perhaps no one else will.
Here at Lord of Life we talk a lot about ‘passing on the faith’, and about ‘being families of faith. It’s a lot like a relay race in track; the most difficult part of a relay race is when one runner passes the baton to the other. Relay teams spend hours practicing this simple action; because they know, no matter how fast you run…if you screw up passing the baton, nothing else matters.
It's similar in the home. One of the primary responsibilities and opportunities of the Christian home is to pass values from one generation to the next; from one person to the next. It is not easy. But as Christians, we all live in households of faith, and we share the faith with others, and that’s how faith is grown. And studies have shown the benefits of being a family that practices its faith in the home; that prays together, that talks about their faith together, that serves together; relationships are stronger…at-risk behavior is reduced…school grades are higher…self-esteem is better, and marriages are stronger.
You might be familiar with Peder Eide, the Christian musician. Peder has sung at Lord of Life many, many times. This year he is our regular musician at our Confirmation Sunday Night Festivals. Peder and his wife, Sherri, are the parents of 5 young children. To help bring order to the chaos that can sometimes be a household of 7 people, Peder and Sherri have established what they call their “Family Rules”. These rules have become the DNA of their home. There are 5 things that they teach the kids and are re-enforced every single day. To help the kids remember, they have assigned one rule to each finger. For the thumb the rule is “have fun.” For the pointer finger, the rule is “glorify God.” Then it’s “serve your neighbor and your family”. Then “never give up”. Finally, it’s “family never leaves family behind.”
• Have fun.
• Glorify God
• Serve neighbor and family
• Never give up
• Never leave family behind.
They live and breathe these values. When one of the older kids gets tired of helping the younger sister with coloring, Peder or Sherri can just look at them and can point to their pinky finger, and without even saying a word, the kids know: “Never leave family behind.” When one of them grabs food before the family has said their dinner prayer, Sherri or Peder can hold up their pointer finger, and the kids know: Glorify God. They have integrated their faith into their household. They have decided. As for Peder, Sherri, and their house, they will serve the Lord. They have chosen faithfulness.
Faithfulness is the value Joshua was speaking of. Faithfulness is what we want our lives and our homes to be about. And we can do that. We can do it because God makes it possible for us. God gives us the gifts…and the tools to live lives of faithfulness. It isn’t easy…and there will be challenges. The same was true for the Jews. After Joshua’s death, while they worked towards faithfulness, they still encountered challenges. They still slipped. But they worked towards faithfulness.
We live lives of faithfulness because God is faithful to us. God looks at all of creation…he looks at our world…he looks at our nation…he looks at our church…he looks at your home…and God says “as for me and my house…” (and remember, that God’s house is really, really big. It is all of this) …”as for me and my house…I will be faithful to you. There is always room for you in my house…there is always love and grace…there is always forgiveness.”
• My friends, be faithful, because God is faithful.
• Be faithful, because God loves you unconditionally.
• Be faithful, because we are the children of God, and
Amen.
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