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 time 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?

Eating with Jesus

Matthew 14:13-21

Every Sunday morning we take a bit of the scriptures to read and proclaim for the day. And so often it is the case that the passage begins with words that will pique our curiosity, as they do today.

“Now when Jesus heard this…” And you wonder: What did Jesus hear? Why did he withdraw from everyone? What happened that he felt the need to be alone?

What he heard was that his friend John had been executed by Herod. John the Baptizer – his cousin, according to Luke; the one who had prepared the way for Jesus’ ministry, baptizing and proclaiming that one greater than he was coming; John, the one who baptized Jesus. 

He had been arrested by Herod because Herod did not like what John was saying, nor did Herod’s wife. John was a prophet and he often said things that were offensive. The truth often is offensive. So John was thrown in prison in order to shut him up. And while he was in their prison, Herod’s wife, Herodias, used her influence to get John killed. 

When Jesus heard this, he withdrew to a deserted place by himself. It was time to grieve.

I know that feeling. Filled with grief, you feel like you have nothing left for anyone else. No energy for being pleasant, so you may just as well haul yourself off to be alone in your misery. I have done that very thing. 

But in this case, it seems that no one would leave Jesus alone. It’s like the mother in that children’s book who just wants five minutes peace, but as soon as her children get the sense that she is withdrawing from them they are all over her. Mama can’t get a few minutes to herself and neither can Jesus.

They swarm to him, bringing their needs to him, and he feels compassion for them. And so he responds to their needs by giving them comfort, healing their sicknesses, whatever they may be. 

It is interesting, because it wasn’t what he intended to do, but when confronted with the pain and grief of others he responded by giving of himself to them. There is an important truth in this: although our grief might send us off to be alone in our suffering, there is evidence that turning outward and tending to the needs of others can be a healing force for grief.

Jesus turns to the ones who come to him and ministers to them. He makes them whole, each one in turn. He gives them what they need. All day long, until the hour is late. And then his disciples step in.

Send them away, they tell Jesus. They are the voice of practicality when Jesus seems to be anything but practical. They say, in this deserted place that you have led us all out to, there is nothing. They will soon grow hungry and tired and what will they do?

And perhaps they are also thinking we are hungry and we are tired, and we would like to return to the villages to find some creature comforts.

So Jesus’ response to them is surprising: You give them what they need.

Why should the people need to go somewhere else to get what they need? Why can’t you give them what they need? something to eat? 

We don’t have enough, is their response. Their excuse. We cannot care for these people because we are not prepared for that. We are too few, our resources are too little, this was not what we were expecting to do today, Jesus.

But Jesus knows something they don’t seem to know. With him, they do have enough. They have what they need.

For his disciples, Jesus’ presence with them is enough.

The story about the feeding of the thousands is one the whole church knows. It is told six times in the four gospels. You heard that right – six times. Matthew and Mark thought it was so nice, they told it twice. It is a beloved story that feeds us, the hearers, in so many ways. Each time it is told a little bit differently; each telling offers something slightly different. In each hearing we receive something more.

It is a miracle story, but we might ask just what the miracle is. Perhaps it is the five loaves and two fish that are magically multiplied, but that might actually be too small a way to hear this story.

Some have said that it was a miracle of communal generosity, that everyone there opened their satchels and shared what they had with the others. But that, too, shrinks the story down to something too small.

What was the miracle that happened that day? 

When the disciples came to Jesus with their advice to wrap things up and send the people away so they could find something to eat, Jesus told them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” This felt like a slap to his disciples, because they knew this was something they could not do. 

Once in a children’s message I gave a girl a small packet of crackers and asked her to share them with everyone – I was trying to draw an illustration for this gospel story. And the girl, with her hands on her hips, said to me, “Who do you think I am? Jesus?”

Who could possibly do something like that other than Jesus? Who could possibly feed thousands of men, women, and children with five loaves and two fish other than Jesus? His disciples were not happy to be asked to do something they knew they could not do.

But Jesus did not expect them to do this all on their own. Jesus knew they did not have the resources for it. He knew they needed him, even if they didn’t know it.

They rejected his words when he said to them, “you give them something to eat.” They argued, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” Simply not enough. 

But Jesus didn’t back down. He said, “Bring them here to me.” 

Church, what we hear next should feel familiar in every fiber of our being. Jesus looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples.

Are these not the words we say every time we celebrate the sacrament of communion? Are these not the words of institution that you can hear in every church on every Sunday the bread and the cup are shared?

These are the words that Matthew repeats later, when Jesus sits with his disciples one last time, in Jerusalem. It is the Passover meal, the last one he would share with them before his suffering. And every time we share the sacrament, we remember how he took the bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it to his disciples.

This is my body, broken for you.

He gives of himself to meet our need. And just as he did at that Passover meal, just as he surely did countless times over the years he spent with his disciples, he did on that evening in a deserted place – he took the bread, he blessed it and broke it, and gave it to his disciples –

So his disciples could feed the people. They did, and everyone ate their fill and there were twelve baskets full of leftovers. 

What is the miracle that happened that day? It is the same miracle that has happened countless times over thousands of years, when people have gathered together in Jesus’ name and did the work he intended for us to do. It is what has happened innumerable times when a congregation sees a need, a hunger, and says to themselves, “We are too few or too old, or too poor to do anything about this.” But then they pray, and they do something. And it turns out they can do more than anyone thought they could.

It is what happens when the session discusses whether or not to respond to a need, weighing the pros and cons, such as, “Will people get mad if we do this thing – invite the winter shelter to set up in our space, or allow the church kitchen to be used four days a week to serve meals to hungry folks? Will this be a problem for us because people won’t like it?” And then they decide to do it anyway, because as the Apostle Paul wrote, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

That is the miracle. Not just that there was enough food for everyone, but that through Christ we can do what is needed to meet the needs of the world. This is what is affirmed from the story of Jesus’ feeding of the thousands.

It’s one that we never grow tired of hearing, a story that always feeds us. Jesus guides and supports his disciples and together they feed the thousands of people gathered that day.

And whenever we gather at Christ’s table, we might think of this story, among the many stories we have about Jesus eating with others and feeding others. When we gather at Christ’s table we remember that he is there, present with us. This is something he promised us. 

We also know that whenever we share the bread and the cup at Christ’s table we renew our spirits. We draw the strength that we need to do the work of the church – none of which is possible without Jesus. Remember this.

All the disciples all through the history of the church, ever since those first disciples, have been saying, “But Jesus, we don’t have enough. But Jesus, we are not enough.” That’s what we do. But listen, every time he hears that Jesus says, “Come here to me.”

 

The Kingdom of Heaven Is Like …

 

Matthew 13:31-52

More than two decades ago when I was going through the process of ordination to ministry, our denomination was going through a process of its own. At that time, there was a lot of conflict, competing forces wanting to shape the way the church would look, feel, and move in the world going forward. It was mostly about whether or not the church would fully embrace our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

We were in the thick of this controversy when I went before the presbytery as a candidate for ministry to be examined. In this process, all the ministers of the presbytery were free to ask me any questions they wanted that in any way pertained to my faith. The first person who rose to ask a question wanted to know what I thought about salvation.

He began by saying that he knew the idea of universal salvation was currently popular – the belief that every human being is saved and goes to heaven. It was clear that he disagreed with the idea. And his question to me was this: Do you believe there is a biblical foundation for the notion of universal salvation?

What his question was about was what the kingdom of God is like – which is a concern that the gospels share. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus had an awful lot to say about what the kingdom of God is like.

Just in this one passage from Matthew, five times we heard Jesus say, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”

This is the way Matthew phrases it – while in Mark and Luke Jesus often speaks of the kingdom of God, in Matthew he refers to the kingdom of heaven. It is the same thing.

As soon as he begins to speak and we hear, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” we know we are about to hear a parable. And so we must listen carefully.

When we listen to a parable we must be ready to hear what is behind the words. We also must be willing to listen to ourselves – notice where we are surprised, where our feelings are provoked, our buttons pushed. Pay attention to how we can make use of what we do know to learn about something that we do not know.

It is necessary to speak about the kingdom of God in parables, because the kingdom is beyond our knowing. The parable, which uses words and images to walk alongside our lives, our experiences, and begins to help us see the shape of something that is beyond our experiences.

The parable is a teaching tool that is also an art form – painting pictures, evoking feeling, inspiring response. And in this handful of verses in Matthew 13, Jesus gives us five of these gems.

Five parables about the kingdom of God, and each one is exquisite in its own right. Each one deserves a full hour to explore its value. But our time is finite, so I would only offer a few brief takeaways from these sayings. A few things we can learn from these parables about the kingdom of God.

First – The kingdom has always been with us. Take the parable of the yeast. If you have experience making bread, you know that the yeast comes first. It is dissolved in water, then the flour is mixed in to create dough. Back in the days Jesus told this parable, they weren’t using the convenient little packets of dry granulated yeast that we buy from the supermarket – their yeast was much messier.

When Jesus spoke about a woman hiding yeast in flour, his listeners would have imagined a small amount of starter, like people now use for sourdough bread. Wet, soggy, stinky. Not the most pleasant substance, but what was needed to make the dough that would become bread. Therefore, just as there never was any dough without the yeast, there never was any world without God's kingdom. The kingdom of God is hidden in everything in the world God made.

This means that the kingdom will be found in the ordinary stuff – not in some pristine and pure location, because the world is not pristine and pure. The kingdom of God co-exists with all the brokenness of the world. We, the church, co-exist in this world with everything and everyone who opposes the kingdom. We work with humility and hope. We may not see progress, but we maintain hope. Too often we will see the evil increase and grow in power - but we do not abandon our work or our hope because we know that the kingdom is always with us.

The kingdom has always been with us.

Second – The kingdom is contrary to what is expected. It is amazingly powerful, yet inscrutably small, like the mustard seed. It is, in the words of the Apostle Paul, power made perfect in weakness – and we see this well in the life of Jesus. He was not a soldier going against soldiers; just so, the church is not an army fighting against an army.

This is crucially important for the church to know. We have been given a mission, and this is to bring the light of the kingdom to this world. But we won’t do it by meeting the world’s brutality with our own brutality.

This is radically different from everything we know of the world. This means that the kingdom changes our perspective – it must. Just as in the parable of the hidden treasure, which a man unwittingly stumbles upon. He never before knew it existed, but once he did, this changes everything for him. He knows now that everything he may have valued before is nothing in comparison to this treasure.

Imagine this: something that has always been present but never before seen - when we see it, we are radically changed by it. It might be a serendipitous discovery, like the man who found the treasure. But it’s not always like that. Our process might be a much slower and more deliberate one - like the merchant who, at last, found the pearl of great value. He will search no more; he has found what he was searching for. Either way, it leads to a fundamental and complete shift. Now we know what really matters.

Finally – the kingdom is for everyone - and all of creation. As the fisherman throws his net into the sea and pulls out anything and everything that gets caught up in it, so does the kingdom of God. All the good Christians get in the same bus with everyone else. Really - everyone. We might not particularly like it; we might resent it; we might feel we have absolutely nothing in common with these folks – but we don't need to worry about it. Because, as the final parable says, God's angels will sort it all out in the end. And they will use God's judgment - not ours – and that is a good thing, because our judgment can be lousy. As the Episcopal priest Robert Capon says, in the final sorting, it is not the inherent goodness or badness of the fish, as we might see it, that matters, it is their acceptability to the fisherman. Their usefulness, their beauty in God's eyes.

This one is, you might have noticed, a parable of judgment. But the judgment is not a threat, it is a promise. It is good news that God will eradicate all evil: every disease that afflicts us, every murderous impulse that takes hold of us, every selfish and craven habit that consumes us. We will all be cleansed of the evil that harms us.

And yes, I suppose if we are unwilling to let go of that evil - well, then we will be cast out right along with it.

But hear me when I say: the kingdom of God is for everyone. And this is what I might have said in response to the questioner at my ordination exam. Do I find a biblical foundation for universal salvation?

I knew then that what he was concerned about was whether the church was going to let a minister into their ranks who might believe that Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists could possibly go to heaven along with us. Whether men who love men and women who love women and people who, somehow, just have a different sense of who they are, different from what the world might see – he wanted to ascertain whether I thought all these people are welcome in God’s kingdom.

I began my answer that day saying that I honestly did not know if there is clear biblical support for universal salvation. But I also said that what I did know – was very certain of – is that it is clearly God’s desire that we are to love all of God’s children, in the same way God loves us all. Period.

And that, I believe, is how the kingdom of God works.

The kingdom is a wondrous and mysterious thing. It is radical, subversive, powerful – it is always and everywhere. The kingdom of God opens its arms wide to God’s creation with absolutely unconditional love. It is patient, as St. Paul describes God’s love. It is power made perfect in weakness.

The kingdom of God has been given to us. We have been allowed into the secrets of these hidden things – yeast and seed, pearl and treasure. The question is this: what will we do with all this?

I have heard it said that where the will of the king is calling the shots, there is the kingdom. So, is the will of God calling the shots in your life? Will you be an effective agent, witness, model for the kingdom in this world?

Will you?

Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash

Entitlement

 

Genesis 25:19-34

Matthew 13:1-9

When we were little, my older sister and I convinced our younger sister that her duty as the youngest child was to wait on us; run down to the kitchen and get us a snack if we were hungry, even run down to the 7-Eleven if we had a sudden craving for Doritos or Laffy-Taffy. We had our moments when we were bad, I am ashamed to say.

Older siblings often dominate the younger ones because they’re bigger, smarter, stronger – at least for a while.  But sometimes even when things even out; when the younger siblings are as big and strong and smart as the older siblings they still let themselves be dominated, simply because they are used to it.  It’s the way things have always been. 

If you ever see a younger sibling gain any advantage over the older sibling, it’s probably because they carefully watched and listened and schemed, like Jacob.  Even though they were twins, even though they were born minutes or even seconds apart – the story says Jacob was born grasping Esau’s heel – still, everybody knew and respected that Esau was the elder and Jacob the younger.  That’s just the way things are. In family.

The story about Isaac’s family is a story about family unhappiness. Brothers and sisters fail to treat each other with care and respect; mothers and fathers choose favorites and the children can’t help but notice it. It’s our human nature – we are flawed, imperfect beings who fail to love as we should.

The story of Esau and Jacob is a puzzling one because it’s just hard to figure out what to make of these characters.  Would Esau really trade his birthright for a bowl of soup?  Would Jacob really withhold food from his brother unless he gave him his birthright?  And is this really a binding legal transaction?

To the third question, I really don’t know.  It seems to be mostly symbolic; it’s not as though there was any magic involved, like a Freaky Friday sort of thing where the two people switch bodies with each other.  But it does seem to indicate consent on the part of Esau to give over to Jacob the right to his inheritance, presumably the traditional double share that the first son is entitled to.  It is remarkable that he gave it up so casually. And cheaply.

The scripture says he despised his birthright.  In the way we understand what it is to despise something, I don’t believe we really see that in the story.  A newer translation, the Common English Bible, uses the phrase “showing just how little he thought of his birthright.” I think that makes more sense to us.  Clearly, Esau thought little about his birthright. 

He didn’t trouble himself to think about it, to appreciate it, to truly value it.  Maybe Esau took his birthright for granted, never questioning that it was his.  After all, his birthright was his natural right, wasn’t it?  He couldn’t really give it away to his brother any more than he could give his brother his natural red hair.  By the laws of nature it was his and his alone. Right?

Well, the message that the story in Genesis seems to be driving home is:  the way we think things should be is not necessarily the way God ordains that they should be.  And that God enjoys stirring the pot now and then to remind us of that. Don’t get too complacent; don’t be too self-assured about your rights, your entitlements. 

By what right do we have anything at all? It is a question we might ask ourselves, because I think we all – at some time, about some things – have that sense of entitlement.

We get this sense of entitlement from growing accustomed to certain things.  The culture we live in, the people around us; what we have always known and had and learned to expect.  It trains us to see a thing as our due – instead of seeing it as gift.

And if we ever do think of the ones who don’t have all these things that we are somehow entitled to, we tell ourselves that in some way they are different from us, and perhaps less deserving than us.

This sense of entitlement inevitably leads to resentment, because when we are no longer getting that thing we feel entitled to get – well, that feels unfair.

Don’t think this applies to you?  You never have this sense of entitlement?  Maybe. But next time you feel resentful or irritated about something, ask yourself this: Am I resenting this because I feel entitled to something else? 

In the end a sense of entitlement hurts us because at some point we will be grieving the loss of that thing that maybe we never really had, but somehow believe we should have.  And oh how much better our lives would be if we had that thing. But again, by what right do we have anything at all?  Our God-given right, perhaps?

Esau may have felt entitled to what he had.  But Jacob did not. He knew he had to plan and grasp; Jacob knows that none of these things will be given to him.  He will have to use his heart and mind and strength to get anything.

Esau thought it was his God-given right to carry the promise, to receive the inheritance, to be the chosen one – but it wasn’t. That would belong to Jacob, who certainly had the God-given talents to seize it and hold it and succeed with it – this will be apparent in the rest of the story.

The stories of Genesis show us again and again that God’s plan was often not what God’s people expected. That the word of God frequently turned their world upside down.

Thousands of years later, Jesus told a little parable about what it is like to hear the word of God. It is like seed being sown. Some of it fell on a path and was quickly devoured by birds. Some fell on rocky ground where it failed to put down roots. Some of the seed fell among thorns and was choked. But other seeds fell on fertile soil and brought forth an abundance of grain.

After this, Jesus raises the question: what kind of soil are you? Are you complacent, entitled? Or will you recognize that everything is, truly, gift. And your responsibility is to care for and nurture the gift you receive? To be good soil for the gift.

May we lose our sense of entitlement and gain the joy in remembering that it is all gift.

May we practice gratitude for all these gifts, forgoing resentment about the gifts we don’t have.

May we follow the light and listen to the word that guides us on the path God lights before us.

The Kingdom is Near

Luke 10:1-11

This week, I remembered a sermon I listened to a few years back. The preacher talked about hiking in the redwoods of California with his wife. It was a peaceful experience; it felt like nothing else mattered but just being there in that moment. 

When it was time to leave, they got in their car to drive home. They turned on the radio and heard the news of the day: a mass shooting. War in Ukraine. Leaks about Supreme Court decisions. Toxic politics in primaries of one state after another. And just like that, their peace was gone.

As soon as they reentered the world, their peace evaporated, and they wondered if what they had been feeling was really peace at all. Or maybe just an illusion.

Do you ever feel that way? That the only way to find a moment of peace is to escape from the world we live in?

In the gospel of Luke, we are in a section in which, as Luke tells us, Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem. We know what this meant for him – in Jerusalem was his death, so this means he was beginning to look beyond this world. This seemed to be a bit off-putting for some people, but for Jesus it was essential. He needed to set his face toward Jerusalem.

To prepare his disciples, he began sending them out on their own, to try their hand at ministry. First, he sent out the 12 who were closest to him, his inner circle. Their mission was to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. Later, in this passage, he sends out a much larger group to go in pairs to all the places he, himself, intends to visit. He sends them with instructions to bring peace with them and virtually nothing else – no purse, no bag, no sandals. Just peace. And healing. And the message that the kingdom of God has come near.

The kingdom of God is near. And just as it was a bit off-putting for some of the people Jesus approached, it probably had the same effect on some towns and villages the disciples entered. 

Jesus gave them instructions about what to do when their message was rejected. I suppose that some people didn’t understand what the kingdom of God had to do with the world in which they lived.

I don’t blame them. Sometimes, it can seem like the peace of Christ is just a temporary escape from the world in which we live. 

I suppose the fact that we find the world’s problems challenging is nothing new. I know that there have always been hard times, but it does seem hard these days to find our equilibrium. 

I have been reading the work of a German sociologist, Hartmut Rosa, who offers some intriguing thoughts about all this. His book is called The Uncontrollability of the World – a good title, I think. Modern people have a tendency to believe that we can control the world, but, alas, the world stubbornly remains beyond our control.

Rosa has put a name to something we experience now in our lives: the contraction of the present. The length of time in which our past experience can reliably predict our future is shrinking. Change comes faster than ever before, meaning that our ability to feel comfortable in our knowledge of how things work, how things will go, is shrinking. We feel more unsure about everything. We grow more distrustful of institutions. The ground beneath our feet is shifting.

And we react by getting angry. I spoke to you last week about anger as something that can be useful, but only if we also have the courage to do something about it. Anger by itself is just letting off steam, and if you turn on the TV, it seems like everyone is doing a lot of that. It almost doesn’t even matter what you choose to listen to, what news source you decide is reliable. They are all angry. And we get angry too.

There is not much that happens these days where you don’t feel like you have to pick a side. Take a position for or against, and if you’re against it then you’re angry about it. We feed our anger every day. 

And, instead of supporting one another as we go through a hardship together, we attack one another. We distrust one another. We distrust our institutions. Conspiracy theories, accusations, and attacks are constantly in the air. It feels like our whole system is broken. And there is no peace.

But, that preacher I was listening to, who talked about the peace he found in the woods, then quickly lost? He said that he thinks true peace is a whole lot more than just the nice feeling you get when you’re not fighting with anyone; true peace is the presence of real justice. And it seems like justice is in short supply in our world. 

There are so many kinds of injustice, which are all interconnected. Martin Luther King said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere; that we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. That is to say, we are all in this together. If we try to separate ourselves from the needs of the world, we do harm to ourselves as much as to the needy. Justice is complicated. The need is overwhelming.

And so, this preacher said, when we feel overwhelmed we sometimes just decide to pull back. We feel inadequate to the task. Let someone else, someone better equipped, try. And when we pull back, we leave a vacuum that will be filled by more injustice, more hate, more violence. The answer, this preacher said, is for each of us to take back our moral autonomy and be a force for what is right, for justice. And this is where we may find that ever-elusive peace.

It was an inspiring sermon. This was not a Presbyterian preacher, though. This was not a preacher from any church, actually, or even any other religion. This was a sermon delivered at a gathering called Civic Saturday, where you find people who maybe have no desire to be a part of religion, but they still have a very human hunger for meaning. For meaning that is found in community. They come together for the mutual support of one another, for healing, for inspiration, and then they go out into the world and try to make a difference. 

They are a lot like church – without Jesus. But there may be another important difference: They might have a greater sense of urgency about bringing peace to this world – what we as Christians would call the kingdom of God. They may or may not believe there is something to look forward to after this; regardless, though, they are looking for that kind of peace and love right here in this world.

I don’t know if Civic Saturday gatherings are still going on – I hope they thrive and continue to serve this nation well. 

But I also need the church to say loud and clear, “The kingdom of God is near.” And to do our very best to bridge the gap between this world and God’s kingdom, to make the kingdom more visible in this world.

I cannot think of a time when our nation has been more needful of Christians who will do this: bring healing, bring justice, bring peace.

I once asked a group of church people how they felt about the notion of being sent out into the world as Jesus sent out the 70 disciples. They all said they felt inadequate. And it’s true, we are inadequate. We are easily overwhelmed with the needs as we see them – the fighting, the toxic politics, the gross inequality, the ways we see our civic norms breaking down and raw power taking their place. It’s enough to make you withdraw into your prayer closet. 

But let us remember that Jesus sent his disciples out. He sent them with instructions to heal. He sent them with peace to share. He sent them with a little bit of the kingdom of heaven, which was more than adequate.

This weekend we celebrate the 250th birthday of our nation. It was 250 years ago that the Declaration of Independence was signed. I don’t know if you have read it lately, but it is worth taking a look at. 

When you read the document, you notice the sense of unity in it. The people of the original colonies are spoken of as “one people.” The idea of forming a new nation carried the clear sense of being united in purpose, even though they were quite different in other ways. The closing words of the document are: “for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Two hundred fifty years later, we feel a bit of sadness that there is so much hostility between us. We are disappointed at the fact that we cannot really be united in our celebrations, because of how polarized our politics have grown. 

Some might believe the solution is to become a Christian nation – to make our laws explicitly Christian. Inevitably, that would be one particular flavor of Christian – something that not even all Christians could agree on. 

The best path for our nation is not to impose a set of religious laws for everyone, because our nation was created to ensure freedom of religion for all people. But the best path for us, as followers of Christ, is to do what he asked his disciples to do: send peace, everywhere we go. Be a little bit of the kingdom of heaven. Let them know that the kingdom has come near to them, carrying peace.

In the midst of a world that is struggling, a nation sometimes overwhelmed by fear and distrust and polarization, may we know that the kingdom of heaven is not for some time later. It is not for our escape. The kingdom of heaven is for here and now, and it is given to us. 

When you are overwhelmed, remember this: the kingdom of heaven is here.

May we share it.

All thanks and glory be to our God. Amen.

Photo: Joshua Earle on Unsplash