Under Construction, Part 4: A Finished Work in Progress

 

Romans 12:1-8

Genesis lays out the story of God’s creation of the world as six days of work. And then a day of rest. Time to admire this thing God made.

Now we have reached the end of this series – Under Construction: A Spiritual Journey of Transformation. And we are at the end of the construction project in our sanctuary. For now.

But the reality is there is always more to do. There is always change. As long as Wicomico Presbyterian Church exists, there will be change. As long as we are living, there is opportunity for growth.

And so, while we now rest from the work of this renovation project, we know that God is not finished with is. And for the work of spiritual growth, we know that we are always a work in progress. 

In the 12th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, we see he is turning a page onto a new subject. Having set the stage for us – filled with grace that comes from God through Christ’s extraordinary triumph over the power of sin – we have arrived at this place of forgiveness and the invitation to new life. We can now turn to the matter of how we are to live. How do we live as new creations, no longer under the power of sin and death, but filled with the Spirit of God?

Or, we might ask, how do we make ourselves useful in Christ’s church? How do we become the body of Christ Jesus for the world?

About this, Paul says something kind of strange. He urges his readers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice – that is, a sacrifice of the old self, former life, for the sake of something new. He asks them to be renewed and transformed by the grace of God.  We give up the old for the sake of the new life in Christ, as his body in the world. 

Paul says in these verses that we are to be not conformed to the world, but to allow our lives to be transformed by the power of the Spirit into something new. Yet we struggle to understand just what this means for our lives. Sacrifice might make us nervous. How does one embrace such a thing?

Let me try to address this by telling a story.

Babette’s Feast is a Danish film made in 1987. There are many reasons why you would not have seen this film. It is very dreary – dark and colorless. It is in Danish, so you have to read subtitles. Nobody you know is in it, so it has no box office appeal. There is no reason you would have seen it except that someone may have told you it is an absolutely extraordinary film.

The story takes place in an isolated village in Denmark in the 19th century. It is inhabited by a rigid sect of Christians who try to practice an almost complete separation from those things that are valued by worldly standards. They have interpreted Paul’s words about the spirit and the flesh quite literally, and they shun all pleasures of the flesh – in their food, their dress, their furnishings, and all their activities. In these matters, they are making themselves a living sacrifice.

Babette comes to them from Paris as a political refugee. They cannot turn her away because it would not be virtuous to do so. But they don’t know what to do with her – she doesn’t fit in to their community. They are simple, pious Christians who shun worldly pleasures. Babette is from Paris. 

She offers to cook for them, to earn her keep. She is an excellent cook, and she is happy to share her gift with them. But she has to learn how to accommodate their bland tastes – because good-tasting food is a worldly pleasure of which they do not partake. She lives with them and cooks for them for fourteen years. 

Suddenly one day Babette receives some remarkable news.

When she lived in Paris, Babette played the lottery. Since she left, a friend who remained in Paris renewed a lottery ticket for her every year. This year, Babette won the lottery.

She tells the community that she wants to celebrate by making them a real French dinner. She makes arrangements for all the necessary supplies to be sent from Paris, and as these items begin to arrive, the people grow more and more worried: exotic birds, strange vegetables, crates of wine. This is going to be extravagant, they see. They don’t want to refuse Babette’s offer, but they are very uncomfortable being the recipients of such an excessive, sensual pleasure.

They decide among themselves that this is a temptation being put to them and they will steadfastly refuse to enjoy it. They will eat it because they have to but, with God as their witness, they will not enjoy it.

On the day of the feast they sit at the table and Babette places before them one course after another. The rich food and excellent wines they force into their mouths in small measure. They speak little and only about banal things like the weather.

However, there is one guest at the table, Lorens, a visitor who is not a part of this community. He isn’t aware of their plan to forgo enjoyment, so he does what any normal person would do. He exclaims over the wonders of each taste, praising the talents of the chef. He reminisces about a meal he enjoyed many years earlier at a famous café in Paris. Each sip of the wine makes Lorens more voluble in his praise, more sentimental in his remembrances. 

At the same time, a remarkable thing happens among the community. The others at the table can’t help but mellow a bit as they too have been drinking the fine wine and filling themselves with the rich food. Gradually, as they sit at table together and share course after course of this splendid feast, words are spoken that have been withheld for years. Old wrongs are forgiven, love that has become stale is renewed. There is redemption and a general renewal of the human spirit at this table. They had feared that this sensory pleasure would awaken a wickedness in them, but it does not. Instead it has awakened their hearts to love.

Babette, it turns out, was the chef at this famous Paris café Lorens remembered so fondly. 

Later that night, someone says to Babette she must be looking forward to returning to her life in Paris, now that she has won the lottery. But Babette tells them she spent all of her winnings on this meal for them. 

You see, the people of this community have been somewhat confused about what is valued. They thought that if they turned their back on all pleasures they would become a more Christlike people. As it turns out, in denying themselves so many things they had also denied themselves a great deal of love and forgiveness. Transformation had taken place at that dinner table, thanks to Babette’s gift.

They thought that Babette, and others like her, put value on the wrong things. Her life in Paris had been about creating earthly pleasures for people to enjoy, and no higher purpose than that. How shocked they were to discover that she had put all her worldly treasure into creating just such a feast for them to enjoy. Babette valued the wondrous things that could be done with the gifts of the earth, food and wine. And, perhaps without even knowing it, in this little village her gifts had been put to a higher purpose. Her life had been transformed by the gifts she had received in this simple community who gave her shelter. And in turn, her gift had transformative power for them.

What are we to say about such things? Perhaps only what Paul says: God gives us all the gifts God chooses for us, for the purposes of God alone. And God takes the offerings of each one of us as they are presented, doing amazing things beyond our expectations. In the giving and the receiving we are, and the world is, transformed.

The work here is finished – for now. We are and will continue to be a work in progress. Every day let us offer our lives to God, a living sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Picture from the 1987 film, Babette's Feast

Under Construction, Part 3: Wired for Power

Romans 8:1-11

There have been times during this chancel renovation project when it feels like nothing is happening. Every morning I come in and open the sanctuary door with anticipation. And there have been days when I would see – well, nothing new. Day after day it looked the same. Like nothing was happening.

But something was happening, actually: the wiring. All kinds of work was going on under the surface to wire us for power. 

We have electrical outlets, and audio connections for speakers and microphones. We have special outlets for the organ to be plugged in when it arrives. And wiring that will all be needed for the organ to play. So much was happening under the surface. As it happens in life, many critical works are hidden from our eyes.

Such as the work of the Spirit. 

We don’t see the Spirit of God. We hardly know what to say about this third person of the Trinity. We think of her as breath, as wind – and I say her because the Hebrew word for spirit, ruach, is feminine. The Spirit blows where she will. As Jesus says to the Pharisee Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

In the eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans, Paul conveys to us that it is the presence of the Spirit of God that marks us as Christ’s own. Because where the Spirit is, Christ is also.

And just as we can see the effect of the wiring by the sounds that it will enable, we can see the effect of the Spirit by the life she enables.

Paul contrasts the life of the Spirit with the life of the flesh, using language that, unfortunately, is easy to misunderstand. You might infer from it that anything that gives pleasure is sinful. Eating good food, dancing to beautiful music, playing games – and throughout history there have been faith communities that have drawn that line, saying bodily pleasure is, by definition, sinful. Some Christian communities have banned dancing. Some have prohibited singing anything other than the Psalms. Some have even tried to ban enjoyment of food, by making food so bland and tasteless, who could enjoy it?

But that’s not what Paul is talking about. What Paul means here is something a bit more nuanced. When he speaks of the flesh, he is not referring to our physical bodies, but rather our orientation to the world, to life. The life of the flesh is a life turned inward so that the self becomes the center of everything, and the central priority is consuming pleasure. “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,” Paul writes. The life of the flesh is a life of idolatry, where one’s own pleasure takes the place of God.

It sounds kind of crazy, extreme, and it certainly can be. For that reason, it is a real danger. It is important for people of faith to examine ourselves for signs that we may be turning inward in these ways. 

Even Christians sometimes choose the flesh – that is, choose to trade in God’s care over us for sin’s control – which is choosing a kind of spiritual death.

God did not make us for the life of the flesh, as Paul sees it. God offers us new life in the Spirit.

The life in the Spirit, in contrast, is to be set free from bondage to sin and self. To be in Christ and to receive the Spirit is to turn your life over to God, and to turn your life over to God is a freedom unlike anything else. Because we understand here that we are not doing any of this under our own power – it is the power of the Spirit.

The transforming work of the Spirit changes us, allowing us to live according to the Spirit, set our mind on things of the Spirit. And perhaps surprisingly, this reorientation connects us with our world in a deeper way. For to live in the Spirit is to live not only for ourselves but for the community, for the world God created. 

Through Christ, God offers us this different kind of life – to live at peace with God and our neighbors. And that is a powerful thing.

The writer Walker Percy wrote a story that illuminates these ideas Paul is presenting. It is called The Thanatos Syndrome. It was the last book he wrote before he died. It’s a strange sort of sci-fi story where residents of a small town start changing, all in essentially the same ways. They are becoming duller. Their language becomes much simpler, with short, abrupt sentences, and an apparent inability to follow a logical flow of thought. Their speech is flat, lacking any emotional resonance. 

They appear to be losing their ability to care about anything other than base appetites. They are losing some of the essential qualities that make them human, regressing to a less-than-human state. And, it turns out, there is an enemy who is doing this to them.

It is, literally, something in the water. Chemicals are being added to the town’s water supply that are having these dulling effects. The intention is to create a more subdued and controllable populace. A people who are, as Paul might say, living in the flesh rather than the spirit.

What happens when we turn from the power of the Spirit? We become dull, thick. Not less intelligent, per se. Just less interested in the fullness of life that God offers. Maybe bored. And boredom can lead to more regression. 

This turning away from the Spirit and toward the life of the flesh causes the people in the story to be more placid about anything that is happening in their world. But the Spirit leads us in the opposite direction. The Spirit gives us power to rejoice in beauty and goodness, and power to reject evil, to resist evil in all its forms. Life in the Spirit gives us power to care for all life. 

For a person who is in the Spirit, it can be very disturbing to see signs of this kind of regression in the ones who lead us. Such as -

When our leadership presents a view of the world God made that we may not recognize, a world that is only “dog eat dog,” lethal competition. 

When our leaders speak and act as though there is no reason to care for someone who cannot do something for you, that everything in life is transactional. 

When our leaders prioritize self-interest at the expense of others, particularly when it comes at the expense of those they are entrusted with leading.

A life powered by the Spirit enables one to speak against these things, to resist these forms of evil. Our baptismal vows call upon us to renounce these and all forms of evil.

Here is a beautiful thing: A life powered by the Spirit enables us to see a different way, to live a different way. And in that living, to show others a different way.

picture: ChurchArt.com

Under Construction, Part 2: The Scaffolding

Psalm 100

Romans 5:1-8

Sometimes when you are doing a big construction or remodeling project, one of the first things you have to do is build scaffolding – a framework that enables you to work at high levels. The scaffolding provides the support you need while you are getting the work done. And then when you finish the work, you take the scaffolding down. Scaffolding is always meant to be temporary. 

For this chancel project we haven’t needed that kind of scaffolding, because the work has been pretty much at ground level. We did need it, however, a few years ago during the project to repair and refinish the sanctuary walls. You can see how high the walls are. Scaffolding was necessary.

Scaffolding is a familiar term in construction. But it is also used in education to describe the tools and processes that are useful in helping someone learn a new thing. Very often it involves bringing in a more advanced student to work with the new learner, to model the kind of behavior that is being taught. That more advanced person serves as human scaffolding for the other.

The idea is that when there is something that the learner cannot do on their own, you provide help for a while, until they have learned it well enough to work without the help. And when they reach that point, the scaffolding is no longer needed.

So with this in mind, I have been wondering about how we might need scaffolding in our life of faith. Are there kinds of scaffolding that help us to grow as disciples of Jesus?

In the letter to the Romans, Paul writes, through Christ we have obtained access to the grace of God, in which we now stand. In Eugene Peterson’s translation called The Message he writes it this way: “We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand – out in the wide-open spaces of God’s grace.”

When I think of it that way, finding myself in a new, unfamiliar, wide-open space, it feels slightly intimidating. In fact, I might need some scaffolding to help me learn how to live in this space. 

When this platform first went up it looked to me like a wide-open space – too wide and open. But people helped me to make sense of it by drawing pencil lines on the floor to show me how it would be organized. Lines showing where the pulpit will be, where the organ will be, where the low wall will be placed. All of this has been helpful to me, to be able to imagine what will be and how we will use this space.

This kind of scaffolding is also needed for us as disciples of Jesus. God welcomes us into a brand-new space – a space that is different from the world as we know it. We arrive here not by our own power or wits or goodness. We arrive in this space of grace by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God gives us access through Jesus. If I am standing now in God’s amazing grace, through no credit of my own, how do I learn to live in this space of grace? How do I build a life fitted to this space?

I definitely need some scaffolding for that.

We know that our role model for this life is Jesus. He is the one we watch and learn from, by reading the gospels. This is where we learn about how Jesus spoke with other people, and who he chose to speak to. We learn how he treated people. We see what he prioritized. Every follower of Christ needs to hear the gospel to grow in understanding of how to live in this space of grace. Jesus is our model, our guide.

But then I am reminded of the story about the little boy who awakened in the night terrified by a thunderstorm. His mother came to his bedside to soothe him, and she assured him he need not be afraid because he always had Jesus with him. And the boy said, “I know, mama, but I need Jesus with skin on.” You and I might need models – scaffolding – with skin on.

Who do we know who inhabits the space of grace well? 

If grace is fundamentally about forgiveness, how God extends forgiveness to us for all our offenses and shortcomings, bringing us into this space of grace, then the big question for us becomes one of forgiveness. How do we extend forgiveness to others?

There is a song called God Will that is about forgiveness. Each verse asks the questions about who will forgive you for all the lying and cheating and betraying you do, and the refrain is, “God will, but I won’t. And that’s the difference between God and me.”

It’s a funny song. But it’s not a song to live by. Because if our answer is that God will, but I won’t, then I think we have missed the fundamental point in being a follower of Jesus.

When God moves us into this wide-open space of grace, it isn’t to continue in our old, selfish, unforgiving ways. It is for the purpose of being changed into a new being.

One who accepts the grace and sees the glory of God in all things. One who experiences suffering and challenges quite differently. A new being who recognizes that we are at peace with God only because God has done the work of making peace with us. But because we are freed of trying to do that work ourselves, we can turn to the work of making peace with our neighbors. By the power of God, extending grace to one another.

Again, I am going to need some scaffolding for this.

I think that, as a nation, one of the ways we struggle with forgiveness is seen in the remembrances of 9/11. This week we commemorated the 25th year of remembering the things that happened to us back then. Even now, 25 years later, there is a heaviness to the memory. We do this because we don’t want to forget – ever. But should we seek to forgive? And what would that forgiveness look like.

There is something called the Forgiveness Project. It was started in 2003 by a journalist, Marina Cantacuzino, who began collecting stories of reconciliation and forgiveness. This was at a moment when the memory or 9/11 was still fresh and the war in Iraq was beginning. Marina began a project of gathering stories of people who had been harmed by violence and, in response, chose forgiveness instead of retaliation.

The foundation has continued for more than 20 years to gather stories of forgiveness from all over the world. I read several of them this past week, and I noticed a pattern. In every case it seemed that part of the process was being able to see the person who harmed you as a human being. Just as much a human as you are. One storyteller described the exact moment she looked at her perpetrator and was oddly struck by how goofy he looked, how vulnerable he seemed. Another told about seeing the offender and being struck with just how young he was. The people who harmed them were just people – not monsters. So many of the stories described a process of either getting to know the person or learning more about them, helping them find forgiveness. 

Understanding that you share the basic human condition with a person who harmed you can be a powerful thing. But sometimes the ones who have harmed you are hard to put a face on. One of the stories was written by a woman whose struggle centered on the war in Iraq, which was a significant part of our nation’s response to 9/11. Her husband came home from the war carrying the burden of severe PTSD. Because of his actions, she lost almost everything, including her sense of self. Her anger was initially directed toward her husband, but eventually she was able to forgive him. It was then that she had to come to terms with the larger burden of anger she was carrying, which was directed toward the American people and government who wanted this war. That, it seems to me, is a hard enemy to live with.

Eventually, she found ways to talk about it and through conversations with other Americans who supported the war or, at least, did nothing to oppose it, she was able to work toward reconciliation. She was finally able to find some peace.

The pattern of finding some glimmers of humanity in the others, even in our very real pain, creates the conditions where grace may begin to seep into our hearts. When our very bodies may become a space of grace.

On Friday, Kim and I went to the 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony along with others from our community, including a few from our congregation. There were words of remembrance from our police and fire officers, words that expressed grief for where we have been and a sense of responsibility for where we are now and the choices we make for our future. I sensed a desire for Americans to be reconciled with one another, and felt hopeful that we might allow space for grace.

At the end of the ceremony a bagpiper played a very familiar tune – Amazing Grace.

We have to learn how to live in the wide-open space of God’s grace – it is our calling. It is a process of learning, often slow and hard. And no one does it all on their own. We need the scaffolding of others who can help us find the way, until we are doing it ourselves. Remember, scaffolding is meant to be temporary.

The truth is, though, we are always going to need some scaffolding, as long as we are in these mortal bodies. As our buttons say, we are a work in progress, and we will always be a work in progress. God is not finished with us yet, and as long as we are “in the flesh” God will not be finished with us. Beloved,

May you stand in God’s grace, knowing that you are standing with a host of other human beings who are also a work in progress.

May you seek out the models, the human scaffolding of one another, with a heart willing to learn, willing to hope.

May you open wide the space for God’s grace.

Photo by Josue Isai Ramos Figueroa on Unsplash

Under Construction, Part 1: Blueprint

 

Psalm 139:13-16

Romans 3:21-28

One of the things my mother used to say was, “Move is a four-letter word.” You see, we moved a lot during my childhood, and it was never a thing she was excited about. I think it is safe to say my mother did not like change all that much. 

In that way, she was no different from most people. They say the only one who likes change is a baby with a wet diaper. That’s almost true.

Change is, most of the time, a pain. It is disruptive. This work we are doing right now in the sanctuary is clearly disruptive to our worship patterns. We have to adjust. We have to do some things differently.

Change is messy. And that covers everything from changing the baby’s diaper to renovations to repaving roads and everything else. There is always some clean-up to do after a change.

Change is sad in some ways. Because every time you make a change you are losing something. And there is some sorrow there, even if you feel like the change is for the better.

Yet, with all these negatives, change is what the Christian life is about. A person who chooses to follow Jesus Christ makes a commitment to a new life. Choosing to follow Jesus involves repentance, which means turning, changing. Choosing to follow Jesus is choosing to let yourself be transformed. 

From the very first disciples he called to put down their fishing nets and follow him, every person called to follow Jesus is asked to change in some ways. In the letter from Paul to the Romans, he lays this out beautifully.

Martin Luther called Paul’s letter to the Romans “the purest gospel.” It was here that Luther found the hope he needed. Luther’s epiphany was understanding that his attempts to earn his salvation by good works would never succeed. All his efforts to lift himself out of sin were and always would be futile, making him feel even more the failure. No one can work their way into salvation. It is a gift from God that we may receive by faith.

The simplicity of this doctrine is beautiful. But it is perhaps not as simple as we might believe. It hinges on just how we understand the word faith.

Faith is a word that appears prominently in English translations of the letter. It is from the Greek word pistis, which can mean trust, or trustworthiness. When speaking of the faith of God, we might understand this as God’s trustworthiness. When speaking of the faith of human beings, we understand this to mean our trust in God. The word includes concepts such as loyalty and honesty, because these are qualities that contribute to trust. 

To say that we are justified by faith is to say that our trust in a God who is trustworthy puts us on the right path. 

This is the beautiful simplicity of this doctrine. We put our trust in God. We surrender our self-improvement efforts to God’s design. We don’t change anything – God changes everything.

When we say we have faith in Christ, when we put our trust in him, we make room for change.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul makes it very clear that things have to change. Things have to get cleared out, cleaned up. Renovated according to God’s plan. The blueprint for it all.

When you start a building project you have a plan – a blueprint. And the blueprint shows what the current situation is and the ways you hope to change it. To make a blueprint, you have to take a careful and thorough examination of the structure, so you know what you are dealing with.

When we began this project to renovate the chancel for the new organ console, we had people in here looking around, under, inside, over, and behind it. There were discussions about the electrical wiring, the heating and cooling systems, the floor and the subfloor. All of this goes into the blueprint. 

It is also helpful in a project like this to have some history. We have some people here who hold valuable knowledge about the history of this building. Knowing what has been done before, when it was done, and how it was done, is very helpful in preparing for what we want to do next.

And I suggest to you that Paul is offering the church a kind of blueprint in this letter to the Romans.

In the letter, Paul is saying that God has been working throughout history for the redemption of the world. When God called Abraham, God claimed a covenant people, saying “I will be your God and you will be my people.” In the scriptures of the Old Testament, we hear about God’s relationship with this people, Israel, through centuries of ups and downs. We hear of the times and ways they were faithful, and we hear of the times and ways they were unfaithful, when they broke the covenant, and the consequences they suffered. And we hear, through it all, how God was with them always. Even when the people broke covenant with God, God never broke covenant with them. Because God is faithful. And God has purpose.

When God called Abraham, God’s promise to him said, “By your descendants, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.” God chose to work through history, through all our human weaknesses and defects, all our brokenness and willfulness, to bring redemption that will be fully realized through Jesus Christ. God chose to work through a particular people to affect all people. This history is important to Paul. It tells us where we have been and where we are going.

Paul recounts the history because he wants the church to know we are on a timeline. To know that God is working things out to transform the world. To understand that it is a choice – a decision – for each and every one of us to be a part of this work. This transformation.

In other words, we have a blueprint. We know where we have been. We know where we are now. And we have the decision about where we will be; to allow ourselves to be transformed by Jesus Christ. Even if we have always been Christian. Even if we were born and raised in the church. It is still a decision that faces each one of us daily, to turn away from our sinful nature and turn toward Christ. To rely on Christ. To be in Christ.

As Paul wrote, our righteousness comes through faith in Christ. and this faith, pistis, is about trust. It is about surrendering ourselves to Christ. To give up the old self and put on the new self.

John Calvin said “to be in Christ is to be out of ourselves,” and that is precisely what trusting in Christ can mean for us. Reaching out to receive the grace that is offered, takes us outside of ourselves and into Christ.

That’s big. That’s consequential. 

To accept the lordship of God through trust in Jesus Christ will mean a radical reorientation of the very core of our being. When we receive the grace God offers us, we no longer have to prove our own worth to be acceptable, to be loved. We no longer need to be self-centered in this way. When we receive this grace, we are free to open ourselves to others and to turn our concerns toward others. We are reoriented. Reformed. Redeemed.

These are so many big words. Evidently, Paul had a lot of faith in the Christians of Rome to be able to digest some really heady stuff. But, I have a friend who I know would say to me right now, “So what? 

“What does any of this mean for our lives?”

Kim and I went to see a movie this weekend about Anthony Bourdain, the famous chef. The film followed him for a summer in his youth where he discovered his passion for food working in a restaurant kitchen. During this summer he starts out as an arrogant, obnoxious, defensive liar. He boasted to everyone about the academic fellowship he was sure to be awarded, and when he didn’t get it, he just lied to everyone. He stole, he took advantage of people. He acted as though he was superior to everyone else but watching him you got glimmers of a different truth. Anthony seemed to be ashamed of himself. 

There was one man who was a constant presence for him that summer. A mentor with a gentle, kind nature. Chef Jose was a man who could see something better in Anthony. He looked out for him and forgave him, again and again, until Anthony was finally ready to confront himself just as he was. And begin to change.

This was not what anyone would call a Christian film. But it was the faith of Chef Jose that played a key part in the story. His Christian faith shone through him and gave him the ability to stick with Anthony. It gave him the vision to see something redeemable in Anthony and enabled him to give Anthony the grace he needed to find his way.

Chef Jose’s transformation in Christ shows in his interactions. And watching him shows us how we may be transformed by faith in Christ. It is his grace-filled attention to Anthony that gives him the chance to become a better version of himself. 

That is one thing that Paul’s letter to the Romans can mean for our lives.

Each one of us has a history with God, who formed us in our mother’s womb, who knew all the days that were written for us, as the psalmist wrote. And collectively, we have a history with God, who called Abraham and made a plan to bless all the people of the world through him.

There is a plan for us. A blueprint. And the decision for each of us about what to do. Put our trust in God? who works on us through Jesus Christ, allowing ourselves to be transformed into something new? 

It is a choice, a decision, to renew every day of our lives. 

Finding the Right Key

Matthew 16:13-20 

A pastor named Ryan Burge has been making a name for himself – although not for pastoral work. Ryan left his full-time ministry in the American Baptist Church some years ago and now works in academia as a demographer. He studies and writes about the numbers.

And the numbers tell Ryan that the middle is falling out of the church.

His research finds that the church is becoming increasingly polarized – which is not surprising, because our society is growing increasingly polarized. But one thing I found interesting: Ryan attributes this change in the church to the decline in the mainline denominations, including the PC(USA).

Membership in our denomination – along with others like the United Methodist, the Episcopalian, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutherans, and the American Baptists – has been declining for many years now. These churches were at one time the backbone of Christianity in America. They tended to be moderate because they were made up of people from all across the spectrum, who were happy to be together with one another and lean to the middle.

And I suppose the reason this was possible was that church members did not particularly align their faith with their political positions. That seems to have changed.

I don’t know, maybe we should have seen this coming? We all know that we are living in a hyper-partisan age, that our society has been sorting ourselves out by partisan politics for some years. Sociologists have called this the Big Sort. Ryan Burge calls what is happening in the church the Big Church Sort. It is a case of people choosing their church affiliation on the basis of their partisan political affiliation. 

But should partisanship determine how we see Jesus? Does our political identity tell us who Jesus is?

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus asks his closest disciples to tell him what people are saying about him. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” These men have some ready answers for him. People say you are John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or another of the prophets. 

It strikes me as peculiar that the people are saying that Jesus is someone else. They are drawing out well-known individuals from history. Elijah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets of Israel all lived hundreds of years earlier. They are a part of Israel’s history. John the Baptist is the outlier, because he has only recently died. Still, all of the names they offer Jesus are names from the past. They may as well say, “We’ve seen all this before. We’ve got this all figured out. Nothing new here.”

People are pegging Jesus into a mold. They want to pin him down into something they understand – or think they understand anyway. 

But then Jesus asks these men, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter answers him, “The Messiah.” Now that is something different.

The Messiah is the one that the nation of Israel has been waiting for. The word messiah, Christ in Greek, means “anointed one.” If God has chosen a person for a special job, such as a king or a priest, they would be anointed to that position. Anointing with oil is the external action that affirms the internal calling.

But over time, the term Messiah came to be understood in a unique way. The Messiah was the one who was to come and redeem Israel. The Messiah, many people believed, would come from the lineage of King David and would rebuild Israel to its former strength. They looked back at the kingdom of David as the glory days for Israel and there was a deep longing to return to that state. 

So, you might say, calling Jesus the Messiah is something new. But it is also seemingly about returning to something old and familiar. 

Because people had pretty clear ideas of what the Messiah would be like, what he would do. They were looking for a savior who would restore strength, prosperity, and peace to Israel.

 Which is what we hope to get from our politicians, by the way. 

The disciples thought Jesus was the Messiah. And they thought they knew just what the Messiah would be. But they did not yet know that Jesus was all about something entirely different.

Something quite different from what they may have hoped for.

It seems that the people wanted to make Jesus into the image that conformed to their desires. Instead of conforming themselves to Jesus. And I am afraid that we are doing the same thing. Maybe we have always done the same thing.

When you look at the ways Jesus has been portrayed in art through the centuries, you discover these portrayals seem to reflect what was going on in the world at that time. In the earliest images, Jesus looked like a Greek or Roman shepherd, full of caring and gentleness. For a small, young, vulnerable church finding its way, that must have seemed comforting and assuring – but that changed.

During the age of the imperial church, once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, we began to see images of Jesus as king or warrior – a man who radiated power seated on a throne or carrying weapons of war.

As time went by and the church spread and grew in all parts of the world, some portrayals of Jesus took on certain ethnic or racial features. There are images of Japanese Jesus, African Jesus, Native American Jesus. And of course, the most dominant ones we see are of Jesus as a white man of European descent. Humans want to see Jesus in their own image. We want to recognize Jesus.

That is not inherently wrong. Jesus does not belong to any one ethnic group if he is the savior of the world. It can be helpful for an image of Jesus to assure you that you do, indeed, belong to him.

But it is also possible for our images of Jesus to go badly astray. Like the images of Jesus that make him look like he’s on steroids. The images of Jesus carrying a big gun. He looks like a hero in one of the revenge movies that are popular now. He looks like someone to be afraid of. Nothing about this image says forgiveness, let alone, “Love your enemies.”

Humans have created many faces of Jesus – some good, some meh, some just bad. But to worship a Jesus that seems to largely contradict the gospel message is a problem for the church. And that is a real risk when we let partisan politics set the tone of our religious life.

This temptation to turn things upside down and let partisanship call the shots for the church comes in all flavors. I have heard Christians on the political left declare an ultimatum, saying that if your church is not preaching about the most current front-page, hot-button news controversy, then you need to find another church. And I have heard Christians on the political right say that Christians who do not follow their party line are Christians in name only; or worse, apostate – a traitor to the faith.

Too often I get the impression that Christians are making such statements too hastily, before actually checking in with Jesus; before reflecting faithfully on the message of scripture. That takes time; it requires faithful, open-hearted, humble reflection.

We know Jesus is the Messiah, but it is not always clear that we understand what that means. Jesus is identified as the Messiah in the very first sentence of the New Testament. Matthew 1:1. It is a fact that we know from the get-go. But it is only the beginning of understanding what that means.

Jesus’ disciples surely did not understand yet while they were having this conversation with him – even Peter. Real understanding would take some time. So when Jesus forbids them to talk about it, he is trying to prevent them from going off with some halfway understanding and calling it the good news. He wants to keep them from going out and sharing a little bit of knowledge that would be way more harmful than helpful. He wants them to have the whole story before they try to tell it to others.

Well, we have it – the whole story. And the challenge for us is to remember it. The challenge is to let the story stand, without distorting it. The challenge is to conform our lives, our ministry, our church, to the gospel, rather than to conform Jesus and the gospel to our comfortable lives.

It is a challenge.

Jesus offers Peter the keys to the kingdom, meaning that he is given authority. We, the church, are given this authority. But if you misuse the story, what are you going to do with the keys? If you have the wrong story, will the keys even work? 

Maybe the church needs to get serious about finding the right keys.

May we listen to the story in a spirit of humility. 

May we seek the authentic Jesus rather than the one that is a pleasing reflection of ourselves. 

May we become the church that looks and acts just like Jesus.  

 

Redeeming Time

Genesis 45:1-15

Some years ago When I was a campus minister, I knew a student named Megan – a very dear young woman. She had many beautiful qualities, but one that really endeared her to me was this ability Meagan had to find the silver lining in everything. Megan could find something hopeful in every disappointment, and she would always say: “In a way, I’m glad this happened,” and then she would tell me how she had found some new opportunity in the setback. Megan had a talent for reframing her disappointments. 

Megan had her share of disappointments, thankfully all of them the non-life-threatening kind. I don’t know how she would have handled a real crisis, the kind of thing Joseph was thrown into again and again and again. I hope she never has to.

So much has happened to Joseph since he was trotted off to Egypt with the Ishmaelite caravan. There he was sold to Potiphar, an official in Pharaoh’s court, and Joseph rose quickly in Potiphar’s household, soon put in charge of everything. But then Mrs. Potiphar came along and, as the book says, she “cast her eye” on Joseph. When Potiphar found out, he had Joseph thrown in jail. 

Where he languished for years. But during that time his gift for interpreting dreams was recognized and put to use. Other prisoners would seek him out to help them understand their circumstances better. It was here that Joseph interpreted dreams for Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer.

Years later, the chief cupbearer was back in his position serving Pharaoh, and he remembered the man from prison who had interpreted dreams – and that’s how Joseph finally came to Pharaoh’s court. It was a long road of suffering for Joseph. We have to remember that to imagine how it felt:

When the day arrives that Joseph sees his eleven brothers in the palace of Pharaoh. The eleven brothers who had thrown him into a pit, and then pulled him out to sell him into slavery. The eleven brothers who had then gone home and lied to their father, telling him Joseph was dead. The eleven brothers who, for all these years Joseph had been exiled, enslaved, imprisoned, they had been in the comfort of their family home, surrounded by loved ones. Imagine how Joseph felt. 

To see these eleven brothers who treated him so cruelly, now all of them bowing to the ground before him – at this moment, imagine how he felt. 

How would you have felt?

It has probably been about 20 years since the brothers dumped him in the pit. Joseph’s life has gone on and he has done quite well – in a position of power, fully immersed in the Egyptian culture. Yet, one does not fully forget trauma like Joseph has been through. It lives somewhere within us. What must it have been like for Joseph to see his brothers after all this time?

I should tell you that this scene when Joseph reveals his identity to the brothers is not the first time he has seen them – that’s important. And the fact that they don’t recognize him – that’s important too. This all gives Joseph some time and space to process it, to figure out how he feels about this.

And what he figures out … is how the hand of God has moved through all of this. 

Joseph sees God in everything that he has been through. He sees how every single thing that has happened to him has led to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing – and finally taken him here, in the same room with his brothers and in a position to save his whole family from famine.

Joseph sees the hand of God in all of it – he sees design instead of malice. He sees purpose and meaning. And because he can see all this, he can forgive his brothers for their deeds. Joseph is able to let go of it, and to experience gratitude instead of resentment.

What is it like to be able to exchange resentment for gratitude? 

I can think of conversations I have had with people who carry their bitterness for years. They cannot forget, they refuse to forgive for how they have been hurt. I can recall people who have carried around resentment for the losses they have experienced in their lives, never forgetting them and never letting them go. 

But, on the other hand, I remember a story shared with me by my friend Jo, who has a son with schizophrenia. At a certain point, the family could not ignore his sometimes-violent tendencies, and so they decided that it was best for everyone if he moved out of Jo’s home. She inquired about getting him into a group home but discovered there was a years-long waiting list. So Jo added his name to the list, and then she moved him into an apartment on his own, and tried to make it work. She drove over every morning to bring him coffee and cigarettes. When I asked her why she couldn’t just do it every few days or once a week, she said that if she gave him a week’s worth of cigarettes he would smoke them in a day. 

But her son was an easy target for anyone who would take advantage of him. Pretty soon he was befriended by some people who wanted to do just that. They began using his apartment to make drug deals. When the police showed up and arrested the drug dealers – Jo’s son was evicted.

Jo was in crisis. She made a phone call to find out where they were on the waiting list for a placement in a group home, hoping it was moving faster than expected. She explained the situation over the phone and she was told that now everything was different. Since he was evicted, he was considered homeless, and that put him at the top of the list. Jo’s son was placed in a group home within a week.

Jo told me this story as a way of saying this is how God sometimes works. If her son had not been abused by the drug dealers, and if the police had not come in, and if he had not been evicted, he would not have been moved to the top of the list and found the home that was right for him.

Jo never said to me that she believed that God wanted her, and her son, and her entire family to suffer in the ways they had. She did not believe that. Jo did not even consider the notion that God had actually designed such a twisted and frightening and dangerous path for her son. She simply believed that God is able to bring blessing out of hardship. And I believe that too.

God is always there, watching. I don’t say that God is a master puppeteer, pulling all the strings on us but God is with us. God’s dream, as I said last week, is for all people to be fed and to thrive. God’s way is to love and increase love in the world. 

We are careless, and often cruel, people. We hurt one another unnecessarily. We fail to care for the most vulnerable around us and make excuses for why we are not responsible for any of the suffering we see. These are the kinds of things we say in our confession of sin every time we gather for worship. We are broken people who often break things. But we also know, as we are reminded every week, that we are forgiven by our God who loves us.

Sometimes a terrible thing happens, because of what we do or because of what we fail to do. And sometimes a terrible thing opens the way for a good thing to happen – not that we should minimize the terrible thing. But, perhaps, we can see it as a part of a process, part of a greater whole. And the truth is, you are the only one who can do that for yourself.

Joseph was able to forgive his brothers because he was able to see the way that God used what was evil to make something good – and God used him, Joseph, to do it. 

All kinds of things happen in life that would seem to be out of God’s control. Yet, stories like this one show us that God has ways of redeeming us from the pits of despair, redeeming relationships that seem beyond repair. God has ways of redeeming time, working back through time and making good use of misfortunes that we have experienced. 

There is an incredible gift for Joseph when he declares that God has, in a surprising way, given his life purpose and meaning. It is the gift of grace, gratitude, forgiveness. 

How can you receive this same gift?

May you look back on the hardships and losses of life and ask if there is a way God was present in it, working through it.

May you reflect on present hardships and losses and ask God to show you the blessings in it; ask God to show you the wisdom there is to be gained from it.

May you look beyond the hardships and losses, and trust that God will work through it all, bring you through it all, and carry you into the presence of Jesus.

Dreams that Disturb

Genesis 37:1-28

When we reach the story of Joseph, we know we are near the end of this Genesis narrative. Let’s consider for a moment where it has taken us. From the beginning, when God created the world as we know it, to the calling of a man and his family, to the formation of a people, Israel, and now to the shaping of a state. It is not the state of Israel, of course – Joseph’s story takes us to Egypt. But it is the first story about living in a large society, about a nation with power to govern and organize and care for a people.

The story of Joseph is really much more than a story about one individual. Sunday school lessons love Joseph and his coat, which may or may not have been colorful. There are actually more ways of translating the description of Joseph’s coat than you can imagine, suggesting that we don’t have any idea what it looked like. We only know it was very special.

The coat is significant simply because it makes clear how Jacob favored Joseph. His obvious partiality seemed to create a pretty toxic home environment, which was only made worse by Joseph’s dreams.

Reading the story, we might form the impression that Joseph is a brat. He is spoiled, and he is oblivious to the kind of effect he has on his brothers. Why else would he be so insensitive, so offensive in what he says? We think he should really be more discreet, more tactful.

Joseph’s dreams disturb his brothers. But it is quite likely that they disturb Joseph as well. What in the world was he to make of a message like this, which seemed to upset the natural order of things? a message from God!

There is a scene in Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye wakes his wife in the middle of the night pretending that he had a dream. She sits up and says, “Tell me your dream.” Because it is understood by both of them that the dream must be interpreted to understand what God is telling them.

In the story of Joseph and his brothers, this same assumption is there. To people in the ancient world, dreams mattered. And Joseph had some powerful dreams. The meaning of his dreams was clear to everyone: that Joseph, the youngest of them all, would somehow rule over the rest of them. That all of these men who were bigger, stronger, older than Joseph, would bow down to him. What a crazy notion – what a threatening notion.

Generally speaking, dreams are seen as blessings. It is a blessing to be spoken to by God. But some blessings are uncomfortable. And in this story, we can see how the discomfort of dreams plays itself out. The brothers hated Joseph and his dreams.

One day, at the direction of their father, Joseph walked out to where his brothers were pasturing the flocks. When they saw him coming, they began to work up a plot to kill him. This is quite extreme, but it isn’t the first case of attempted fratricide in the Bible. 

Cain killed his brother Abel. Esau threatened to kill his brother Jacob. Family violence seemed almost endemic among these characters. You might recall the story of Hagar and Ishmael, Abraham’s first son, being banished from the home, abandoned in the wilderness.

In fact, some of Israel’s foes throughout the Old Testament are clearly and directly related to them. The Ishmaelites are descendants of Ishmael. The Edomites are the descendants of Esau. The Midianites are descended from Abraham’s wife Keturah. They are all brothers and sisters, who are sometimes ready to murder one another. 

It is appalling, isn’t it? But it is also an expression of our human sinfulness, which is the same today as ever. We don’t necessarily think of our enemies as kin when we go to war with them. But that doesn’t mean they are not. In God’s eyes we are all one family, and the Bible makes a point of showing us how connected we all are.

In any case, the sons of Jacob were hatching a plan to get rid of Joseph all the while he was walking toward them, blissfully unaware. But, because Rueben was the eldest son, he had a spasm of guilt at the idea of killing his father’s favorite son. Not out of any love for Joseph, more likely out of a sense of shame about letting his father down. So the brothers negotiated and reached a decision to not kill him, but merely throw him into a pit. With no water. In the desert. So, probably, to die anyway.

But then Judah got the brilliant idea to sell him instead of letting him die. That would be a little more merciful, don’t you think? But, alas, they were beaten to the punch by a band of Midianites who then sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver.

So Joseph ends up as a slave in Egypt. The brothers concoct a gruesome tale to take home to their father about Joseph being torn apart by a wild animal. Jacob begins a period of mourning that will continue for years. The brothers will carry the weight of their guilt for just as long. 

Because Joseph dreamed some dreams. 

The power of the dreams is immense – it is the power of God at work in the world.

In Egypt, Joseph discovers a gift for interpreting dreams. When he is imprisoned, he interprets dreams for his fellow prisoners. And his gift of interpretation ends up being his ticket out of prison and into the palace of the Pharaoh, where he interprets the Pharaoh’s dreams. This is how the dreamer gets intricately involved in the process by which all of Egypt will survive the coming drought. And it is, ultimately, how the family of Israel survive – and how they end up in Egypt.

So, if you know the story, you know that in the end it is all deemed a good thing. All the trouble that Joseph went through was necessary, we are told, for the sake of God’s dream: the survival of the people. Maybe the Egyptians weren’t the chosen people of God. Nonetheless, God ensures that they survive the long and deadly drought, that all would be fed.

But what if it had gone differently? What if the brothers had stuck with their original plan? What if they had killed Joseph and his dreams?

I suppose the brothers would have gone home with the same or a similar story for their father. Setting Jacob up for a lifetime of grief and the brothers to carry the weight of guilt. And then the famine would have come along. But there would be no Joseph, the one who was able to foresee the need to set aside reserves of food. There would be no national safety net to prevent mass starvation, which appears to be God’s desire, God’s dream. There would be no international aid organization to sell grain to others outside of Egypt, which also appears to be God’s dream. There would be no hope for anyone, including Jacob and his sons, if the brothers had killed Joseph and his dreams.

We can look at the story of Joseph and his brothers as a story about family, which it certainly is, but it is so much more than that. It is also a story about how God’s dreams intersect with and play out in our dreams. It is a story about the ways God’s dreams can be worked out through human history, whether or not we are aware of it. And it is also a story about the ways humans resist God’s dreams. As did the brothers of Joseph. 

Let us imagine one other “what if” scenario. What if one day Joseph said to his brothers, I had a really weird dream last night. And the brothers turned to him, like Tevye’s wife, and said to him, “Tell us about your dream.” Imagine then, that the brothers all listened, thoughtfully, as Joseph described his dreams. They discussed, perhaps even argued with one another, the possible meaning of the dreams and the particular message they held for Joseph and the brothers. 

There is a beautiful phrase that we hear in the gospel of Luke: that Mary, when she is confronted with the strange ways that God is working through her and her little family, she treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. What if the sons of Jacob heard Joseph’s dreams, and they treasured these words and pondered them in their hearts?

In this broken and frightened and sinful world, there is always the temptation to kill the dream, and the dreamer too, if necessary. Because dreams truly are disturbing. They disturb the comfortable order of things. The kingdom of God is all about disturbing the comfortable. 

Because the only way we will reach the kingdom of God is to disturb the comfortable. 

There is a phrase we often hear these days: Trust the process. We hear it in the realm of sports, of politics, of business, of life in general. What if we trust the divine process? What if we expect that God will work things out in this world, through us and all kinds of people? What if we listen to one another, particularly to one another’s dreams?