The Resister

 

Matthew 4:1-11

I have some friends who told me once that in their basement they have a room full of provisions – stocked floor to ceiling with cases of bottled water, cartons of canned and dried food. It all started because of Y2K. Back in the year 1999 when we all wondered if the computers that run everything would make it through the millennium safely. And if they didn’t it would be Armageddon, for sure. The computers were okay, it turned out, nothing terrible happened. But since that time, there have been other reasons to stockpile. There is always, it seems, a reason to stockpile things. But you have to maintain it, replenishing as necessary, with new items as the older ones pass their expiration date. The old ones then get tossed in the trash.

I thought of that recently when I was talking with another friend about her parents. Some time ago, they built their dream house. They built it in the perfect location, a quiet place on the water. They outfitted it with all the things that make them happy – a room for her art, a room for his model-building, a state-of-the-art kitchen, a garden, and more. It is beautiful and comfortable. But unfortunately, my friend told me, her parents are not content. They find themselves worrying way too much. It is a lot to take care of, and a lot to worry about. A storm could destroy everything. Burglars could break in and take their valuables. My friend wishes her parents lived in a place that didn’t have so many wonderful things to be worrying about.

How does that happen, that we get to the point where we are practically enslaved by our stuff? Well, it starts out with a real need. We all need to eat, we need shelter, a sense of security.

But sometimes our real needs get corrupted and grow like a cancer, into something that is neither good nor healthy. Our need for nourishment can become a need to hoard food, waste food, or overeat. Our need for security can become grossly oversized because all we can think of is how someone or something might harm us – or our stuff, which for most of us is an extension of ourselves.

And then there is our need for agency, that is, to have some control over our own lives. This can grow and extend far beyond the boundaries of our own bodies or homes. It can become a craving, not only for power over ourselves but over others.

How does it happen? It starts out as something seemingly benign, even something good. But then it grows into something harmful – to ourselves and others – something evil. And every one of us is vulnerable to the temptations that lead us into evil.

Jesus was too. He had just been baptized by John in the Jordan river – a baptism of repentance, John was clear – and then the Spirit alighted on him. The voice of God was heard saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” No sooner had all this occurred, but that same Spirit of God sent him out into the wilderness to be tempted by evil. The devil, our Bible says. Satan, as he is also called. Satan is a Hebrew word that means adversary, for the devil is God’s adversary. Satan is the enemy of the good, the opposite of love.

Jesus is sent out to the wilderness, freshly baptized, ready to make a new start. But this will be a test of his readiness. He will fast, go without any food, for forty days. He will be alone, without companionship, for forty days. He will be in the wilderness, without security. This was Jesus’ Lent, his preparation for what would lie ahead.

At the end of the forty days Satan came to him. You see, by this time the rosy glow of baptism would have worn off. Whatever optimism he felt when he started out for the wilderness, he would have lost by now. Forty days of hunger and solitude, insecurity and powerlessness, would have left him in a pretty vulnerable place.

I say this because Jesus was human, like us, and we know very well our own human frailties and limitations. We know what hunger can do to us, even a little bit of hunger. Just imagine the hunger that comes from going without food for weeks.

We know what loneliness can do to us, too; what a lack of security and control can do to us. These things can change us.

And it is a moment like this when the temptations of evil can draw us in. Satan seized the moment and made an offer. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 

Jesus responds by quoting scripture to the tempter.  One does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God.  Not easy to say, after fasting for 40 days and nights.  He might have easily relieved his suffering, but he declined to do so.  There was purpose in this suffering.

The tempter continued with his taunts, and he upped the ante by throwing scripture back at Jesus.  You see, he might have said, even the Devil can play that game.  He took him to the top of the temple and said, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up.’” 

But Jesus made a decision that he wasn’t going to live like that.  Again, he declined the offer.

So, in a final act, the tempter takes him to a high mountain and offers to give him all power and glory if only he will worship him.  “That’s enough,” Jesus says to him.  Be gone. 

And that’s it.  At least for now. The time will come again for Jesus to face off against evil, but for now he is done. And he has won.

Jesus resisted evil. He did it by leaning on the teachings of scripture. When Satan confronted him with lies, he confronted Satan with the truth of God’s grace and love. The only way to resist evil, for any of us.

What are some of the lies we fall prey to? Perhaps it is the lie that says you are unlovable and the only way to fill up that gnawing, aching hole inside of you is to fill it with stuff – more food, more toys, more substances that will give short-term satisfaction, but will ultimately hurt you.

Perhaps it is the lie that says you are alone in this world. No one cares about you, you have only yourself to rely on. Then you need to fill that awful need by putting your self-interest first because everyone else is your enemy.

Perhaps it is the lie that says everyone else is doing it. That this is a dog-eat-dog world and if you want to get ahead, or just get along, you have to play the game like everyone else does. Lie, cheat, steal. Go for as much as you can get because, you can be sure, someone else is trying to get everything you’ve got.

But there is another way.

This week I heard a woman named Natalie speak about a project she has become involved in. It is called Nourish, in Los Angeles. It is a network of volunteers that go out and gather food. Restaurants and stores will call them and say, “We have food we can’t keep, and they go get it.

At the end of the week, all the volunteers come together to organize the food and pack it in bags. They take it to distribution sites all around the city. For anyone. No questions asked, if you want food, take it. There is more than enough.

That is the amazing thing: there is always more than enough.

Natalie said, “The world wants to trick you. The world wants to say, oh, you know, you’ve got to make sure that you’re taken care of before you can take care of others. The thing is, there are going to be times in your life that you’re going to need to lean on others and vice versa. I think it really is in the giving that you actually receive.”

It seems to me that Natalie has chosen the way of grace.

One of the very first things we do when we baptize someone is to renounce evil and affirm our reliance on God’s grace. It is grace that gives us a different way of viewing the world and all the choices we face. It is grace that allows us to choose the different way, and grace will carry us through each step of the way.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

In the Cloud

 

Exodus 24:12-18

Matthew 17:1-9

An interesting thing has been happening at a small Christian school in Kentucky, Asbury University. On Wednesday February 8, students gathered in the chapel for morning prayer service. This is a normal part of college life at Asbury, like many religiously based schools. People say it was routine. Ordinary. Unremarkable.

Then, when the service ended a small group of students stayed behind to continue praying together. All morning, they prayed. All afternoon. When evening came, they were still there and more students were joining them. They continued in prayer all through the night and the next day, and the days after that. And they are still praying.

Some people posted videos on TikTok, which caught the attention of the world. Pretty soon, young people were dropping their plans and heading to Asbury. Flying in from Hawaii, driving down from Illinois, college students are being drawn to this place to be a part of the experience. They have filled the 1500-seat chapel and overflowed into other spaces. They’re calling it a spiritual revival.

This is not the first time such a thing has happened at Asbury University. Since its founding there have been more than a half dozen revivals. Back in February of 1970, there was one that ran for eight days. Revivals are in the Asbury DNA, you might say. The school is named for the Methodist preacher Francis Asbury, a circuit-rider in the 1800s. His preaching drew large crowds and tremendous enthusiasm. Spontaneous revivals sometimes grew out of these meetings.

The people at Asbury are saying that this thing happened spontaneously. There was nothing special about the day it started. There was no plan to begin a revival. It just happened. But here’s the thing: there is a definite tension between, on the one hand, the understanding that authentic spiritual revival can only happen spontaneously and, on the other hand, the desire to make it happen.

Another circuit-riding preacher, George Whitfield, preached to large crowds as he traveled around the colonies in the early 1700s. He also had a powerful impact on the people who came to hear him. But I recently read that after each of these meetings, someone would report to Whitfield on the numbers who repented of their sins, whose lives were changed by his preaching. And each time Whitfield would say, “Allegedly.” Because he knew that high emotion was sometimes the work of the Holy Spirit, but sometimes it was just emotion.

Sometimes, people just want to get swept away. Sometimes, people are just looking for an escape.

That doesn’t mean that every sign of spiritual revival is fake. It just means that it takes time to tell the difference. No one should go out and write the book about the historic Asbury revival of 2023 just yet. But for people with hearts hungry for the Spirit of God to move through our world, there is fervent hope.

We call things like this mountaintop experiences. Lots of us have had them a time or two. Maybe at a large church conference or church camp. Maybe even alone on an actual mountaintop. The powerful sense of the presence of God touching you and changing you – it does happen. And it may feel so good, you want it to keep on happening. You want to stay in it forever.

But, as they say, eventually you have to come down from the mountaintop. Back into the world. Because the purpose of mountaintop experiences is not just to feel good. It is to make real and lasting change for good.

Jesus didn’t bring Peter, James, and John with him up to the mountaintop because he wanted to make them feel good. They all went up there with him to bear witness to his glory. The sight of Jesus shining like the sun, surely much too bright for them to look at comfortably. The presence of Moses and the prophet Elijah standing beside him, talking amongst themselves, must have been intimidating.

It was thrilling, even if not comfortable. So thrilling that Peter wanted to stay up there. He wanted to build little shelters for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, and enjoy this glorious gathering forever. But it was a bad idea. And if Peter remembered what Jesus had said to them six days earlier, he would have known that.

Six days before this mountaintop experience, Jesus had spoken with his disciples and told them that he was going to Jerusalem, where he would undergo great suffering at the hands of the religious leaders – the scribes, the elders, the chief priests. He told them that he would be killed and rise again on the third day. And he said to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

If he remembered that, Peter knew that the mountaintop was not the destination. But it was a very important sojourn along the way, because on the mountaintop Peter, James, and John had a glimpse of the power and glory at work through Jesus.

They went back down the mountain and returned to the others. Jesus continued his work of healing the sick, casting out demons, and teaching – all the way to Jerusalem.

The ones who were caught up in it couldn’t necessarily tell what it was they were a part of. Only time would tell, and it did.

One thing we can say with certainty is that spiritual revival leads to something bigger than itself. The historic revivals we have known in our nation have led to historic changes. The first Great Awakening, as it is called, led to the evangelical movement in America, creating new forms of worship, casting a wide net for Jesus. The second Great Awakening led to the abolition of slavery in our nation. The Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles in the early 20^th century led to the Pentecostal movement that has taken the gospel all around the globe.

On the morning of February 8 when this current movement began at Asbury, there was a multicultural gospel choir singing in the chapel service and I can’t help but wonder about the significance of that. The movement of the Holy Spirit is always expansive and inclusive. The movement of the Holy Spirit always leads to greater love. As Jesus’ life very clearly showed, it does not come without sacrifice, but sacrifice that shows forth the glory of God.

Presbyterians aren’t big on revival. Maybe because we like decency and order too much. The Holy Spirit wants to disrupt our order and make something new.

It turns out Asbury University likes some order too. The administration announced this weekend they will be imposing a schedule in the coming week. No more round-the-clock praise and worship. They will set the times for it to begin and end and some limitations on who will be welcome to attend. They will have time for students only, and some time set aside for the general public. There seems to be some concern about safety, which I can sympathize with, but we will see what happens. Will the revival just spill over into other, unrestricted areas? Will it go on about the same, only in a slightly more orderly way?

Or will they effectively stifle the work of the Spirit? I hope not.

But maybe what we will see is people moving down from the mountaintop and into the world with the engaging, inspiring, inclusive, and loving Spirit of God, doing the work, just like Jesus did.

The truth is the church needs revival, as often as we can get it. We need revival to remind us what we are for, why we are here. We need revival because we get tired and hungry for God’s goodness, thirsty for God’s Spirit.

We need the mountaintop experiences, even if they are a little scary. We need them so we can go back down the mountain refreshed, renewed, and ready to change the world in Christ’s name.

May it be so.

Photo by Bree Anne on Unsplash

The Heart of the Matter

 

Deuteronomy 30:15-20    

Matthew 5:21-37    

There is a story by Graham Greene called The Heart of the Matter. It takes place during the Second World War in an unnamed British colony in Africa. Greene does a very effective job of showing what a difficult cultural experience it was for everyone involved. Those who felt the oppression of British rule, of course, but also the peculiar discomforts of the British working in this foreign land. There was much talk about the weather – far too hot and humid and sunny for the English, except during the rainy season, six months when they all fear they may drown. There was the malaria, which seemed to be an inevitability for anyone who was there long enough, and apparently no treatment for it except quinine. So, lots of gin and tonics. And there was the overwhelming level of distrust – which went in every direction, and this is where we see the real problem.

The distrust, the constant tendency to be suspicious of others’ motives, the lack of understanding, and the resentment that every group seemed to have for the others, all contributed to a sort of sinister atmosphere.

One of these British officers is named Scobie. He has been there 15 years, an unusually long time and, consequently, the other Englishmen regard him as suspect. Because they wonder how anyone could have survived in this place for so long. They know how hard it is. They know that many men have come and gone, corrupted by their experiences to a greater or lesser degree. And so they are very interested in, and suspicious of, Scobie. They spread rumors about him and all the corrupt things they imagine he has done. Yet Scobie is so disciplined he never allows himself to react to the rumors in the smallest way.

It seems that Scobie has managed to survive because of his discipline. He knows where the fault lines are, and he is always conscious of steering clear of them. He goes to the officer’s club in the early evening but refuses a drink because he will be on duty that night. He diligently reports every infraction of the rules, dotting every I and crossing every T. In fact, Scobie is even careful when he writes to his wife, lest he put down anything on paper that would be, even in the smallest sense, a lie. He would simply be unable to sign his name to a written document that contained any untruth.

If he errs it is on the side of omission. Every interaction of his life is handled as though he were under oath on the witness stand.

But one day he does something unusual. In a certain way it is wholly consistent with his character. Yet, in another way and at the same time, it is completely out of character for Scobie. He has a moment of sympathy for a man who broke a rule for what seemed to be a good reason. Rather than submit an honest report about a rules infraction, Scobie hides it.

He doesn’t do it for a bribe – even though he was offered one, he refused it. He only does it because it feels like the humane thing to do. But, after he does this, a strange thing unfolds.

It is as though this one action has punctured a hole in Scobie’s moral cloak. And he is no longer able to guard himself from the evil in the atmosphere, the opportunities for sin that always hover around him. One small act leads to another slightly larger act, then another even larger act. And Scobie is drowning.

It is as though he has lost his moral compass, because Scobie’s compass was only upheld by a perfect submission to the rules. Unfortunately for Scobie, it is not in the nature of humans to be perfect.

Presbyterians have no illusions about that. We are aware that our nature is fallible, that there is a weakness built into us that makes us liable to do the wrong we would try to avoid, and to fail to do the things we know we ought to do. It is not for nothing that we confess our sinfulness when we gather together each Sunday. We stand in need of God’s forgiveness. Every day.

Given that, the words we hear Jesus say in this part of his sermon to his disciples and the crowds listening to him seem incredible.

You thought it was hard when he called you salt. Now he calls you to tear out your eye. You were surprised when he said he had not come to abolish the law and its hold over us but rather to fulfill the law. Now he seems to be showing just how hard it might be.

If you are angry, you will be liable to judgment. If you insult someone you will be liable to the fires of hell. Jesus takes the laws they already know and raises the stakes to the nth degree.

And that seems to be what Scobie is doing also. He has created a ten-foot fence around the faults he might be liable to commit. He strives to live a perfectly upright life in every way.

He fails.

It takes a rather long time, but he eventually fails. And when he does, he has not a compass, an anchor, nor a lifeboat. He is utterly adrift at sea, and will, without doubt, drown.

It doesn’t work. It simply never works when you aim for faultlessness.

Scobie holds his failure close. It is indelibly marked in his memory as the day he lost his integrity. Once he had crossed over the line, that ten-foot fence he had created, he just didn’t know anymore where the boundary lines were.

The story of Scobie is a tragedy, because he is a good man. The reader sympathizes with him as we watch him falter and falter again. We watch him grow more confused about everything around him. He goes to his monthly confession and he says to the priest, “All through this month I have done the minimum.” In a moment of insight he says, “I don’t know how to put it, Father, but I feel – tired of my religion. It seems to mean nothing to me.” Yet the priest finds no real fault in him and seems to have nothing much to offer. He assigns him his Hail Marys and Our Fathers and dismisses him.

Scobie is a man who has always tried to avoid doing wrong. His downfall, perhaps, is that he has not thought enough about doing right. He has not paid attention to the heart of the matter.

And the heart of the matter is that we are created in the image of a loving God. For Christians, Jesus is our model for what it means to be made in God’s image. The heart of the matter is that in Christ we receive forgiveness for our trespasses, yes, but also the Spirit that allows us to grow in grace.

This is what Jesus wants us to see: To avoid the wrong is the bare minimum.  To seek the good is to live into our identity as the image of God.

This is the heart of the matter:

To accept God’s forgiveness for our wrongs yet to strive anew for the good.

To know ourselves as humble and frail creatures yet to seek to be like Christ.

To turn, once again, from sin and to center ourselves in God’s love.

In the words of Moses: God sets before us blessings and curses, life and death. “Choose life,” he says. Choose life.

It is a choice that we all have. When we keep our focus on the edges, the boundary lines, we are keeping our focus on sin, failure, death. But when we look to Jesus, his words and actions, we see all the possibility there is for us. We see the possibility of life in all its fullness.

When all is said and done, that is the heart of the matter.

Photo by Nedelcu Catalin: https://www.pexels.com/photo/hand-drawing-a-heart-on-the-steamy-car-window-15316723/

Salt and Light

 

Matthew 5:13-20        

When I was a graduate student in Texas, I attended a Lutheran campus ministry. We had services every Sunday morning, just like most churches. We followed the lectionary, we heard a sermon, and we celebrated the sacraments. Our pastor, whom we called PJ, had a certain way he liked to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. He would invite us all up to the front, to stand in a circle around the altar. And the first thing he would do was take a little dish of salt. He would go around the circle to each one of us, take a pinch of salt and put it on our tongues, saying, “remember your baptism.”

Remember your baptism. I was always a little bit mystified by this ritual. I wasn’t entirely certain I understood what salt had to do with my baptism. But I liked it. A little bit of salt tastes good. The taste, the gesture, the familiar words all felt right. And the strength of the experience stayed with me.

I did understand at the time that he was intentionally linking our baptism to the experience of communion. Because that is what the church does. In baptism, we are made a member of the family of Christ and we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit. In communion, each time we receive it, the bread and the cup, we are nourished again with the gifts of the Spirit, the good things of life that enable us to grow in goodness and faith.

This I understood. But I was not quite as clear about the salt. I wonder if the crowds and the disciples who listened to Jesus call them salt, maybe they were not quite clear either. Maybe they murmured to one another, “Salt? Says we’re salty, did he? Hmm.” And they wondered what he meant. Jesus probably had them thinking about that for a long time. Maybe every time they added a little salt to their food, they thought of Jesus’ words.

PJ would bring a big box of donuts to church every Sunday. After he gave the benediction he would race out of the sanctuary, grab his donuts and then run out the front door with them on the area he called the tarmac. He knew that as soon as the service ended we would all pick up our backpacks, head out the door and “take off” for other places – the library, the student union, the coffee shop. He would stand out there grinning with his donuts, blocking the runway so we had to slow down. Take a minute to talk to somebody. Be friendly. Care about one another. PJ sweetened the deal with his donuts.

This was all good training, I think. Those of us who sat in church each week, we had mostly been raised up to sit quietly, listen, follow instruction. So when PJ held out a pinch of salt in front of our faces, we all opened our mouths for him like baby birds. When he blocked our paths on the tarmac we all slowed down and accepted one of his donuts. We were good students and he was teaching us how to be good disciples of Jesus.

One Sunday he asked us all to all bring in a wash rag. He said, “Bring me one that you have used – don’t go out and buy a new one. I want a rag that you have used to wash yourself with.” And so we all did. Mine was blue. Then PJ took all these rags and he sewed them together in a patchwork stole. He wore this stole every Sunday. I could see a piece of my blue wash rag sewn together with all the rest. Another powerful image.

Good teachers use powerful images, images that stick with us, that we continue to think about for a long time – maybe all our lives long – because we somehow sense that there is still more to unravel, more that it can teach us.

Jesus used powerful images in his all teaching. With his parables he left his listeners with such images etched into their minds, of seeds and vines and harvests; masters and servants, debts and debtors, fathers and sons. When he said, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” When he said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls.”

And we spend a lifetime turning these images over in our minds, pulling out threads here and there. Threads that may fill us with comfort, assure us of safety. Threads that may spark energy and desire to do something new. Threads that keep us seeking something more, because we always feel that we are on the edge of comprehending it.

I think I will probably never feel that I have a solid comprehension of the salt image. I hope that doesn’t cause you to feel disappointed in your pastor. But I think I will be turning this one over in my mind for as long as my mind is able. For me it’s an image that never quite gives itself to me fully, but it always gives me something.

Sort of like that tiny pinch of salt that PJ would give me every Sunday before I received the bread and the cup. Just a little bit that leaves you wanting more.

When Kira was born, we asked PJ to baptize her. He was beside himself with joy. As you might imagine, being a campus pastor didn’t give him many opportunities to baptize babies. Actually, this may have been his first. On the day of her baptism, he filled a washtub with warm water, we lowered her body in. He poured the warm water over her head, and when he lifted her out of the tub, her patted her dry with his patchwork stole.

After that, every time we celebrated communion, I would carry Kira into the circle with me. And PJ would smile and offer her a little pinch of salt and say, with a tear in his eye, “Remember your baptism, Kira.”

One Sunday when she was about two years old, PJ gave her the little pinch of salt, like he always did, and began to turn to the next person when we heard Kira say, “More.” She wanted more.

So it is with the goodness of God. A little taste goes a long way, but it will always leave us wanting more. More of God’s goodness. More of God’s guidance. More of the flavor of God.

Perhaps that is sort of what it means to be the salt and be the light. Each one of us can shed a little light in this world for others. Each one of us can bring a little flavor to the world. And when we do bring the wonderful flavor of God, the light of God, to our interactions with others, we may leave them wanting a little bit more.

May you be the salt that brings a taste of the kingdom to this world.

 

The newly baptized squirming and squealing with delight.

Top Photo: Kira with parents and godparents at University Lutheran Center at UT-Austin.