Tag: Grace

righteousness and mercy – a sermon

I invite you to join me in prayer. Would you pray for me even as I pray for us all?

Lord, it is not by might, it is not by power, and it most certainly is not by the cleverness of this human’s imagination that your word is read or proclaimed. But it is by your spirit. So may that spirit come now. May it rest upon each of us. May it work through all of us that we find ourselves in the presence of the Living Word, Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

From Luke, chapter 19, verses 1 through 10.

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man there named Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd, he could not because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because Jesus was going to pass that way.

When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today. So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, he’s gone to be the guest of a sinner. Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, look, half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.

Then Jesus said to him, today, salvation has come to this house because he too is a son of Abraham. For the son of man came to seek out and to save the lost. This is the word of God for us, the people of God.

Thanks be to God indeed. You know, folks, over the past several weeks as we’ve gone through this Lenten series entitled Everything in Between, we’ve been wrestling a lot and digging deeper into a lot of parables. You know, we had the Good Samaritan, we had the parable of the barren fig tree. We had a parable about lost and found sheep and a shepherd risking everything. And the one week here in Lent that we didn’t have a parable, we had to deal with the family drama between Mary and Martha as they tried to figure out who was doing the better thing.

So to tell you the truth, I was looking forward to dealing with some very straightforward up front story from the life of Jesus this week. Something concrete. Jesus walking through a town, a tree, crowds, something without all that having to dig into parables and find all the meaning that’s in those parables. Something besides all the family drama that we’ve had to deal with.

Used by permission of A Sanctified Art

And then, of course, we get to Zacchaeus.

Zacchaeus. The name Zacchaeus means righteous or pure. Did you know that righteous or pure is what this man is named? I mean, really, a Roman tax collector named that?

I mean, let’s be real. What’s the one word that is literally connected with tax collector in the gospel? With the conjunction and tax collectors and sinners. Yeah, tax collectors and sinners, exactly. And this one is named innocent and pure.

Not much of a break there. And as I studied a little deeper into this parable, I discovered that there were some interesting problems dealing with the original language of the parable. The original Greek is not so clear as to when it was that Zacchaeus started all this charitable giving that he was doing. Now, I don’t want to get. I don’t want to get lost in the weeds here or the thorns or go climbing up my own tree here and end up having nobody see or hear what I’ve got to say.

But suffice it to say, Zacchaeus could have been doing this giving and repaying for quite a while. Could have, just because of the words that are used in the original language. But what we do know for sure is that Zacchaeus went public with it after meeting Jesus. He declares what he’s doing and will do, and that changes a lot.

But still, as I was preparing for this week, I had to dig down into the roots of those words. Like that gardener dug down into that fig tree. I had to search like I was looking for a lost sheep in the wilderness. I began thinking, you know what? This might as well been a parable.

There was no break here.

And then, of course, there’s Jesus.

Jesus, there he goes and singles out this tax collector from the crowd. Zacchaeus, the man too short to see and too despised to be seen.

Zacchaeus, hiding in a sycamore tree, a man whose name was, to put it as mildly as you can, just a touch at odds with his reputation.

A man everyone knew was making money by taking money.

I tell you what, this series of everything in between really has drawn our eyes to the dichotomies that we can find in the world and even within scripture itself, dichotomies sometimes that we love to see. I mean, things like righteousness, we like that we can look at someone or something and say, that’s righteous. We know that’s good. It may even be trouble, but it’s good trouble, so we know that’s good. Righteousness, something we can look at and define.

And mercy, we like that, too, because we want to show mercy to those who deserve it, right? I mean, someone needs to deserve mercy. If you don’t believe me, just ask any old court judge. Or you can ask a young one, too. We’ve only got old ones in here today, though.

I think we like to keep our categories like righteousness and mercy separated.

But Jesus, well, Jesus doesn’t care all that much for our categories.

Jesus doesn’t see like we do. Jesus doesn’t even look in the same places we do for what needs to be seen in the story. Jesus sees: Zacchaeus, sees him up in the tree, hiding.

But Jesus sees him not as a tax collector, but as a human being. Jesus sees Zacchaeus as a child of Abraham.

And then Jesus just invites himself right into that person’s house, into the mess that is a tax collector’s life, into that space, that space that’s seemingly miles wide between righteousness and mercy. That’s where Jesus goes.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? That space between – that awkward, uncomfortable space where we don’t know what to do, the space where we’re not sure if we should be angry, judgmental, frustrated, or just compassionate.

That space where we must wrestle with verbs, when it comes to how we act.

A space where we must wrestle with names and labels and all those things. That space, that uncomfortable space where we must deal with, well, people.

We want it to be nice and easy one way or the other. Righteousness, mercy. Are they righteous? Do they deserve mercy?

And Jesus?

Well, Jesus fills that space.

Jesus doesn’t choose. Jesus just invites himself in. He stops at a tree and looks up and says, hey, you, I’m going to your house today.

Here’s Jesus looking where we don’t even want to look.

And in that moment, in that space filled with Jesus, something happens, something transformative. Zacchaeus, this person whose life was only known as the one who took from others, becomes and shows the whole community that everything is being made whole, everything will be made right.

Zacchaeus wants salvation, connection, community, not as a reward for being good, but as a gift freely given.

And Zacchaeus gets it. The community gets it. And that, my friends, is good news. Not just good news, but the good news. That’s the Gospel.

Jesus doesn’t just offer mercy to the undeserving and commend those who are righteous.

Jesus fills up the space in between.

Jesus fills up the space that is unfillable and even uncomfortable for us to go there.

Jesus brings together that which is broken, you know? Here, in just a few moments, Jesus will offer himself to you again in the act of taking apart of the broken body of Christ, we will be brought together in community.

It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it? In brokenness, there’s community.

But that’s what Jesus does. Jesus fills the spaces between those things that we have trouble filling.

Salvation, my friend, my siblings, salvation is offered to you today.

Come, come on down and let Jesus go to your house today. Amen. Amen.

As you leave this place, may you find God in every messy middle. May you know that the world is bigger than any two sides. May you trust that you are made in the image of God. Therefore, you contain multitudes. So may you move through the world with an open heart, with a curious mind, and with the confidence that you do not go alone.

God is with you in the mountains, in the valleys, and everywhere in between. Believe this good news and go in peace. Amen. Amen.

Reluctant Prophet

This morning I listened to part of the story of Jonah. I know that many people are familiar with his journey away from the call God placed upon his life. That running left him on a ship ready to be ripped apart by a storm until he was thrown overboard and swallowed by a big fish.

Many people are aware that this story tells of Jonah’s journey to the place God had called him to go via the belly of the big fish. Eventually Jonah is vomited up on the shore like spoiled seafood and he begins his real journey.

The story tells us that the place Jonah was sent was so large that it would take three days to walk across it. Jonah began his journey and began truly answering his call when he took those first steps into the city. Bleached white by the acid of the stomach of some big fish, seaweed tangled in his hair, and clouded with a stench that proceeded him by the full length of Ninevah, Jonah began to proclaim the destruction of the city. He did so with much reluctance – not because he didn’t want to give bad news to the Ninevites, but because he was afraid that they might hear him, repent, and be spared by God. So, God made certain the people God wished to spare would not miss the message by sending this mess of a prophet to their city.

The reluctance of the prophet came from his experience of the mercy of God.

I get that. Sometimes it is not my fear of being heard that keeps me from speaking. It is not my fear of being misunderstood that locks my lips. It is the fear of being perfectly understood and found standing in the very mess I created by not trusting in that goodness when I began.

The best way to travel to the home I see as God’s Kingdom is as one who is clothed in the mercy and goodness of the God I proclaim. I don’t always get that but I can count on God to dress me up in it – or dress me down with it – so that the message won’t be missed.

Even as the words of Jonah spoke to me this morning, words from Mary Oliver’s “Sometimes” also tugged on my Spirit:

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Yeah. That’s a whole lot easier than being bleached, tangled in seaweed and smelling like last week’s thrown out cat food. Perhaps my reluctance can be overcome by God’s mercy.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Amen.

Mugs of abundance

The following is a work of fiction. It is the first installment of many and may at some point cease to exist on this blog and take up residence elsewhere. Any resemblance to people living and or not living is just because sometimes the people I meet are incredibly more interesting than the people who hang around in my head. I try to be nice to the ones who have inspired me. Sure, some of them are pretty poorly hidden, but “Cary” is not me. Trust me. We almost share a calling, but even there things are different.

 

The ancient experienced hands of the retired nurse placed the ceramic mugs with great care on the shelves in the cupboard. An occasional clink, as one mug hit another, was all the new occupant was expecting to hear. There had not been much chit-chat between the volunteer laborer and the new resident. But the music was broken by lyrics he didn’t expect. “You think you have enough coffee mugs, pastor? Looks to me that you could serve a whole bunch of people with all these mugs. How many of you drink coffee?”

“Just two of us.” he said. “It does seem as if we’ve picked up a few extra along the way, though. Guess we like our mugs.”

“Hmph. Guess you do.” was the end of the song. But the music continued.

And that was two churches ago for the preacher. Long before others in the house began drinking coffee and adding to the plethora of caffeine dispensers that crowded the cabinet in their newest, smaller parsonage. He was quite certain that somewhere in the maze of boxes yet unopened there was a treasure trove of mugs aching to be used, long over their own sense of caffeine withdrawal and simply settled in the darkness of their moving paper rest home.

But the four were there.

Mugs

There was the one he had since his time in seminary, the last of a group of four that he purchased from the Baptist House at Duke Divinity. Cary always thought it a bit ironic that one of his most cherished possessions from his days at a United Methodist seminary was a Baptist mug. And yet, every Wednesday and every Sunday, this was the one that made the trip from cabinet to Kuerig. Well, truth be told, it would sometimes come straight out of the dishwasher and make its way to the coffee machine. But on Sundays and Wednesday, Cary needed the reminder that the mug brought with it.

It wasn’t a reminder of all that he has learned. It wasn’t a reminder of his Master of Divinity degree. It wasn’t even a reminder of particular people or places. He used that mug to remind him that truth be told, he wasn’t even close to having all the answers. On Sunday morning, as he got ready to somehow stand before a congregation and preach, he needed that reminder. He was just happy that it only took a mug and not a two-by-four upside his head. And sure, he used it on Wednesdays too as a reminder that when he taught Bible Study, the Bible was usually going to teach him more than he could manage to squeeze out in a lesson or two.

And then there was the brother mug. One of his two brothers got him that one, but truthfully he couldn’t remember which one. Didn’t matter much. He used Brother one day a week to remind himself of them. The three weren’t the best at staying in touch with one another but when the chips were down, they knew that they could count on one another. The mug reminded Cary of them, their differences, their similarities, but especially their connection to one another.  Since the loss of their father, Cary looked forward to the Monday encounter with this mug. He could sip and say a prayer for his brothers. And he needed that grounding as much as he needed the humility he found with the Duke.

He remembered offering the MTSO mug to his buddy, now a Chaplain in the Army, on one of his visits. “What in the world are you doing with a Methodist Theological School of Ohio mug?” was the question Ray asked. Cary shrugged and said, “I got it during a visit of their Course of Study one year. I hope I cleaned it before I filled it. Been sitting on the shelf a long time.”

Truthfully though, this mug got used as much as Duke and more often than Brother. MTSO came out twice a week, typically on Tuesday and Saturday to remind Cary of the two best friends he had in ministry. Ray went to MTSO but his other friend, Ann, went to Candler, or as Cary loved to jokingly call it, “Chandler.” No Candler mug in the mix but it didn’t matter. When he drank his coffee from MTSO he thought of them both, prayed for them both and gave thanks to God that he knew they were always just a call away. MTSO was a good memory mug – laughter from residency, long, late night talks at Annual Conference, and just the memory that these three very different people ended up so close to one another. If someone would have taken wagers on the military haircut Ray and the long haired Cary becoming friends, they would have lost a bundle. It was rocky, but perhaps the rockiness made the friendship that much stronger. Of the three, and sadly there used to be four, but that is a story for another day, Cary is the only one still serving a local church. He acknowledges that the other two do great work for the Kingdom…better work for the revolution that Jesus wishes to bring…than he often manages on his best days.

Friday was the day for the “Brown Mug from North Carolina.” Cary wasn’t sure of the pottery that produced it but it clearly was hand thrown and it was his Friday mug. Given to him by a former Associate Pastor, this mug was Cary’s Sabbath mug. (Yeah, pastors do take a Sabbath day and it ain’t Sunday, that for certain.) Cary uses BMNC because it’s all about grace. The Deacon who gave it to him taught him a lot about receiving grace. They worked well together, but they did so in a difficult place at a difficult time. Her creativity and spirituality helped to keep the church they served very well grounded. Truth be told, Cary wasn’t completely forthright about how bad things were when he brought this Deacon into the mess and that was wrong. And Cary didn’t talk about everything that went on with him while they worked together. It was one of the many wrongs Cary could never make right again. The BMNC was a reminder of that tragic truth of life. More so that despite the wrong, their was peace between Cary and Julia, the Deacon, not because of Cary’s honesty, but due solely to the amazing grace Julia showed.

“It’s a good way to start a Sabbath,” Cary would think. “The bitterness of coffee and the sweetness of grace.”

Yeah, there is an abundance of mugs in Cary’s parsonage. Most of them don’t get used by him. There are others in the house who find the other mugs more to their liking. But these four take up six important places in Cary’s life. And they cover six days.

And that leaves Thursday.

Well, you must wait to hear about Thursday because you don’t quite know enough about Cary to understand. You can rest uneasily, though, that there is a mug for Thursday.  And that mug is the only one he loathes to use.

Pruning

The surgeon wielded a chainsaw
Strapped to his hip
a low hanging gun.
Vines of artificial hemp lifted and held fast to the surgeon
as spiked heels dug into the patient’s flesh.

The mechanical, maniacal roar of the scalpel
would cut and prune
in a effort to bring the patient
to a place of acceptance.
Acceptance by those who occupied the structures
made of relatives long ago murdered.
Correction brought with
sharpened teeth,
anointed bar,
and a single finger that gripped and pointed,
pointed and gripped.

From time to time a telling thump
could be heard as branch or limb
fell to sun hardened earth.

Could anyone hear the cries of the patient?
“You cut too deep!”
“You pruned too much!”

Sap spilled over the skin from open wounds
tears not unlike those shed
by a jilted lover
a shamed child.
Silent, yet filled with experiences unshared,
unknown by any other.

Over time the20160617_151424 patient slept
and attempted to recover from correction
as sunshine teased wounded limbs
to bring forth life again.
Water sprinkled wound and ground –
for life?
for death?
or just to say the healing ritual had be done?

Yet, the surgeon cut too deep.
The patient, now a victim,
silently
rots within.

 

 

Indeed this piece is about the loss of a tree in my  front yard. At the same time, this tree and its loss has become something of a metaphor to me of battles I am seeing fought all to often.

On Unity


Do the actions of a few United Methodists threaten the entire denomination?

 

(A note to my readers: I have recently been engaging in quite a bit of debate with another United Methodist brother and blogger, Joel Watts, at unsettledchristianity.com over many of the events taking place in the UMC. After a protracted conversation over our first posts carried out on Facebook, we agreed to each write a post on “unity” and what that entails. I often say to Joel that I am not the theologian that he is. I am a pastor first and my theology grows from that work as a pastor. Like I say in the introduction to my blog, “Grace leads and I stumble along.”)

 

We can read about it in both national news and denominational resources. The United Methodist Church is struggling in the midst of learning how to be in ministry with people who are already in our fellowship. I refuse to say that we are struggling with the issues surrounding LGBTQ people because in my heart that reduces people to an issue. People are never an issue. People are children of God. As a church that affirms the sacred value of all persons, we recognize LGBTQ Christians as our brothers and sisters in Christ.

At the very same time, during a period when our denomination prepares for our quadrennial global gathering to work
on church doctrine and polity (re-write our Book of Discipline), there are events taking place among our churches, and by our clergy and bishops that some believe threaten the very unity of the church. In the last decade, a growing number of churches have become Reconciling Congregations. Lay people and pastors, such as myself, are joining support groups to understand how to best minister with this new community of believers and to become fully inclusive in our ministry. Some Clergy and Bishops are going against church polity by performing same gender weddings.[1] In other places, entire Boards of Ordained Ministries are ignoring the prohibition in our shared Book of Discipline prohibiting the ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals.” In recent days, fifteen current or soon to be ordained clergy have proclaimed that they are homosexual and seeking continued appointment with the United Methodist Church.[2] Some Bishops and episcopal candidates are saying in “somewhat nuanced” ways that they are not going to uphold the Discipline in all cases.[3]

I have proba
bly not even come close to listing all the recent developments in our denomination concerning our relationships with LGBTQ people. But it gives us a place to start.

Some people believe that all of these actions, actions which some claim belittle our Book of Discipline and break the very vows that certain people made to uphold said Discipline, show that we are far from the “United” Methodist Church. A better name for us could be the Untied Methodist Church.

I graciously disagree.

Maintaining ou
r vows before God at baptism, confirmation, holy matrimony and/or ordination are an extremely important part of living our lives as Christians. However, I am yet to meet one Christian – even in the mirror – who has managed to keep those vows perfectly and without fail.

Does the parent who fails to bring up their baptized infant in the church show such brokenness that the unity of the church is called into question? Does the young adult who lays aside their vow to reject evil in all forms while they buy a pair of tennis shoes made with child labor show such brokenness in our Discipline and vow keeping that the entire unity of the Church is called into question? Does an adulterer who divorces one spouse and marries another so disgrace the body with their broken vow that our church lo longer hosts the presence of Christ? Does an Elder who lays aside the vow to keep the Discipline of the Church in order to pastorally proclaim Good News to a same sex couple sow such brokenness into the body of Christ that our very existence as a church is called into question?

No. No. No. And, no again – with all the grace I can muster.

I think we are better served to look at what it is that unites us in the first place – our first love, Jesus Christ. If you like the book of Revelation, read the letter to the church of Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7). This congregation was in danger of losing the very presence of Christ from their midst because they forgot their first love – the grace that Jesus had given them. Sure, they were facing terrible persecution at the hands of the Romans and could easily survive by “turning coats.” This historical church in Asia Minor gives us a great hint as to what it takes to completely lose the light of Christ within a body of believers. It is not lack of discipline, the loss of a Temple, broken vows, or even smashed tablets of stones. It is forgetting what unites us in the first place – Jesus!

Rev. Wesley, one of the founders of our movement known as United Methodism, said in his sermon “Cathol
ic Spirit”:

Though we can’t think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences. These remaining as they are, they may forward one another in love and in good works.[4]

Rev. Wesley realized that we may never be of one opinion despite the fact that he worked hard to make sure that the “people called Methodist” shared in some common doctrine, polity, and worship even as they existed in the break-away or shunned Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. He provided this group with “The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America” which included Rev. Wesley’s “revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, ‘rectified’ and reduced to twenty-four in number.”[5] Did Rev. Wesley somehow break his vow as an Anglican Priest by providing these “rectified” Articles to the new congregations forming apart from the Church of England? That argument could be made, however, it would not reduce for one moment what truly made the Methodists in the North America a body of unity. That was due to the love and presence of Christ in their midst and in the midst of the Church of England. Rev. Wesley’s ability to maintain his Church of England ordination and help establish this new denomination shows that shared “discipline” has little to do with the unity of the body of Christ.

A further look into Rev. Wesley’s life and advice to the Methodists under his care in England gives to me the hope I think we need to weather the storm that we are in right now. Throughout England there were priests who were so hopelessly corrupt and such terrible preachers that Wesley would often recommend that they be avoided – except when it came to receiving the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

…people should not hesitate to take the Sacrament, even if administered by a wicked minister. He pointed out, from a practical point of view, that many (if not most) of the minister
s in his acquaintance for the last half century did not measure up to his basic criteria; they had ‘not been eminent either in knowledge or piety’ (Sermons, 3:471). But his principle in the matter is clear: ‘The unworthiness of the minister doth not hinder the efficacy of God’s ordinance. The reason is plain; because the efficacy is derived, not from him (sic) that administers, but from him that ordains it” (Sermons, 3:475). This statement was not only in keeping with Article XXVI of his own Church, but also had been fixed in Western Christendom as early as Augustine’s response to the Donatists.[6]

The presenc71761641_e5f3a60973e of Christ unites us. And that has not left the building, the gathering of delegates at General Conference in Portland or the denomination that is known as United Methodist. The one who ordained the Sacrament of Holy Communion still presents His body in one
piece and then offers it to us, broken, just as we are broken. Does the fact that we all receive just a part of this offering destroy the unity of the symbol of Christ’s Body that is presented in the Eucharist? No.

And neither does the brokenness that embodies the congregations called United Methodist. We will continue to receive the grace of Jesus and offer that grace to others just as scandalously as it has been given to me, to you, to all who have received Christ.

[1] I think it is important to note that our current Discipline prohibits our clergy from participating in ceremonies that celebrate same-sex unions or holding such ceremonies in our churches. However, this prohibition says nothing of weddings and marriages between same-sex couples. Some may think this is “splitting hairs,” however, many believe that there are great differences between the two.

[2] http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/15-united-methodist-clergy-candidates-come-out-as-gay1

[3] http://revjameshowell.blogspot.com/2016/04/our-united-methodist-book-of-discipline.html

[4] “Catholic Spirit” by Rev. John Wesley as found in John Wesley’s Sermons, An Anthology edited by Albert C. Outler and Richard P. Heitzenrater, page 301.

[5] Wesley and the People Called Methodist, Richard P. Heitzenrater, proof copy, Abingdon Press, 1993, page 289.

[6] Ibid, pp. 296-297.